RNI

Texas has carried out the execution of Jose Medellin, a Mexican National who participated in the brutal gang rape and murder of two, teenaged girls. Despite the heinous nature of the crime, which is described in detail in the comments below, the Bush Administration went to federal court and tried to force the State of Texas to abide by a ruling of the International Court of Justice, that Medellin should have been apprised of his right to speak first with the Mexican consulate and thus should have his sentence commuted. Bush joined with leftist groups, at the behest of the Mexican federal government, to seek commutation, even while still ignoring Ramos and Compean. Click here for more.

Hari Sud, a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager, holds that the United States is as vulnerable today as China and India to the rising price of oil on the international market but actually is better positioned than her competitors to overcome this problem, if the United States manages soon to consume less oil and to promote more internal manufacturing (thus cutting imports that in turn will decrease all oil consumption in China and provide fewer dollars for oil speculation). In the comments below, RNI contributor Rene Guerra explains how best to lower domestic oil consumption. Click here for more.  

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson do not get it. Congress is largely asleep at the switch. Few in positions of real power over our economic and financial policies are asking the questions that matter: how do we reinvigorate domestic manufacturing and how do we bring massive malfeasance in the banking and financial sectors under greater control? If various banks and Wall Street investment firms are "too big to fail," then why does not the same principle apply to many large domestic manufacturers?  Click here for more.

William Engdahl, author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, writes about the collapse of the securities markets in the United States and the effect in real terms that that has had on our employment situation. The American middle class is being eviscerated by joblessness, lowered real purchasing power, and diminished home equities, while the men who were supposed to regulate banking practices for the good of the American people apparently were "fiddling while Rome burns." Read the Engdahl article below.

All too often pandering and positioning are the hallmarks of a Senate mentality, as both the Democrats and the Republicans focus more on circling their wagons to protect one another, than on providing a spirited debate on issues of importance to their own constituencies. The McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill in 2007 was a prime example of this Senate disconnect in action, and it is on display now in how McCain is running his campaign. If conservatives continue to grumble that they have no dog in this fight, then they are right. Click here for more.

Eagle Forum founder and conservative nationalist leader Phyllis Schlafly provides a helpful chronology of the development of the Republican Party platform, since the Nixon faction in 1960 compromised with Rockefeller and allowed the platform to legitimize the more liberal positionings of the New York Governor. By displaying how the grassroots struggle to make the Republican Party platform conservative again actually aided in the 1980 nomination and election of Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Schlafly makes the case that we too have just as much an obligation to preserve our own platform from RINO changes. Click here for more.

Despite legislation pending in the United States Congress, the Bush Administration acted today to extend a test program allowing long haul trucks from Mexico totally full access to our United States highways for up to two years. Organized labor, highway safety, and also consumer groups have joined with foes of NAFTA to oppose the action as reckless, in light of weaker safety laws in Mexico for their own vehicles, and as hurtful to American truckers. Republicans for the National Interest shares their concerns and opposes the test program. Click here for more.

On the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China has cracked down even harder than usual on dissidents, has restricted internet accessibility for the upcoming games, and has reminded all of us that it is in the clutches of a tyrannical regime that degrades the human person, the environment, and the prospects for international stability, in the service of their profit interests. Part of the reason why they can get away with their bandit behaviors is the unwillingness of the United States to call them to task on much of anything, even when our own interests are under assault. Sadly, it appears as if McCain will continue that defeatist policy. Click here for more.

The United Nations has granted "consultative status" to two, European based homosexual rights groups. Opponents fear that these groups serve to undermine national sovereignty of member states, in order to lower the agreed upon age of consent for homosexual sex. This fear arises from the well established association of these radical groups with organizations advocating pedophilia. Click here for more.

Food workers at the Shelbyville, Tennessee plant for Tyson Foods, which boasts on its corporate website that it strives "to honor God," will have time off for Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holy day closing off the month of Ramadan, rather than the very traditional, American Labor Day. Republicans for the National Interest strongly opposes such corporate coddling of an unassimilated labor pool and sees this move as just one more indication of the willingness of too many "American" corporations to denigrate our national culture for the bottom line. Click here for more.