Free Republic

When you sup with the Devil, you must bring a long spoon. Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky has never been a favorite of mine, but I love irony, and this week he’s my avatar of people whose actions have come back to bite them. He has publicly bragged, for example, how much easier it is to avoid anti-discrimination laws in his faculty hires than it is in student admission, tacitly admitting that is what he has done and what he encourages others to do. But that seems to be of no avail to him now that he’s become a target...

If Javier Milei can pull Argentina out of the red, we can do it here. A day after his pumped-up divisive State of the Union address, unsurprisingly headlined “fiery” by the copycat media lackeys, President Biden speaking in Pennsylvania reverted to his old befuddled self. "Pennsylvania, I have a message for you: send me to Congress!" "Last night [at] the U.S. Capitol -- the same building where our freedoms came under assault on July the 6th!" "We added more to the national debt than any president in his term in all of history!" Well, the last statement is true. I’ll...

The juxtaposition of the Department of Justice’s handling of Hunter Biden with its outrageous treatment of Donald J. Trump justifies Scott Adams's view: "We can now see all of the machinery of government, from influence peddling to fake news to intel-supported hoaxes to political persecutions.” Diving even deeper, as have Jonathan Turley, James Freeman, Dan Bongino, and David Samuels, it’s beginning to look as if Barack Obama knew of Hunter’s corruption and the danger it posed to national security and did nothing about it. In exchange, he’s serving a third term as president behind the scrim while the demented present...

This week, as accounts of the whistleblowers who blew the lid off the hampered investigations of the President’s crackhead son Hunter were made public, I imagined a writer making a pitch to producers for a dramatic program called Wilmington, a political version, if you will, of Dallas with more than a hint of the Godfather. Clearly, my proposed dramatization covers so much ground, it will have to be serialized. For one thing, there’s a very sordid background to the story. The family has a long history of corruption and drug use unhampered by legal prosecution. Informed by writers like Jonathan...

The continued life of this Constitutional Republic is in grave danger from the cabal of sociopaths in critical positions of power. If we learned anything this week, we’ve learned that the continued life of this Constitutional Republic is in grave danger from the cabal of sociopaths in critical positions of power, and that it is because scaremongers and a supine press and judiciary have permitted enactment of dangerous legislation and illegal conduct to go on and on unpunished. Worse, the perpetrators are being richly rewarded for their violation of law and public trust. FISA Friday the FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance...

Elon sneezes, and the Left catches pneumonia. In between watching the scandalous FTX crypto scam unfold and making all the Thanksgiving fixings, I’ve joined Twitter, which I’ve refused to participate in for years. One reason for my about-face on the social media site is that Elon Musk, the new owner, is creating a genuine open forum and he’s actively participating as a commentator in the most amusing way. I prefer the Facebook technical setup but despise the way it (like the former Jack Dorsey-run Twitter) uses it to stifle real debate, regularly in one way or another blocking other than...

This week Mitt Romney confessed that he was posting on Twitter under the absurd moniker Pierre Delecto and set up himself for some serious online satirizing. It’s way overdue. The #NeverTrumpers in the Republican party have exposed themselves as Democrat Me Tooers. They do themselves, their party, and the nation no favors. As the Russian collusion nonsense fades into the ether absent any fact basis and the Schiff-Pelosi impeachment funhouse proceedings head in the same direction, some congressional Republicans, like the brave band that shut down the Miami-Dade vote harvesting charade in the Bush-Gore election, stood up at last for...

Every now and then droplets of reality splash on the noggins of the world’s big thinkers. Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine seems to have highlighted -- to all but the Biden administration -- the folly of a singleminded attempt to curb carbon emissions, emissions which by the way may be more of a boon to the well-being of the earth and its inhabitants than not. (A discussion for another time.) In Foreign Policy, Ted Nordhaus suggests the invasion may end the cold war on fossil fuels. He argues that global leaders have had too great a focus on carbon emissions...

Should the projections of a Republican tsunami at the midterms prove true, there are so many things that a Republican Congress must prioritize. Not the least of which is revising the civil-service laws to permit removing incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats, cutting drastically the federal bureaucracy and reforming, among other agencies, the CDC, NIH, FBI, and the IRS. I’m focusing now on the IRS, which first hit my radar screen when with no consequences whatsoever. Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice declined to press criminal charges against Lois Lerner, whose outfit delayed and denied the Tea Party reform groups the tax-exempt status...

The Ukraine situation is both more complex and fluid than many think. My brother-in-law long hosted a radio show called “Whad’ya know?” The answer to which was always, “Not much.” I feel that way about the Russian attacks on Ukraine. It’s not that I haven’t tried. I’ve read everything I consider reliable on the subject and can’t begin to answer if the Russians are bogged down or simply regrouping. If they or the Ukrainians will win this fight. Oh, there are some things I do know. I know that we've been bombarded by propaganda on both sides, and the Ukrainians...

Save for the Wall Street Journal, few big media operations have reporters with the background or editors and media producers with journalistic principles to accurately inform you about legal matters. This week, looking at John Durham’s Danchenko indictment and the Kyle Rittenhouse case in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that point was made crystal clear. The Hillary DossierIt has taken far too long for the Department of Justice to reveal the underpinnings of the phony Trump-Russian collusion story, a story in which Clinton associates and contractors fobbed off shoddy opposition research as “intelligence” to a credulous and corrupt FBI and press. But this...

Dilbert creator Scott Adams tweeted this week: ”The country’s energy is strange. Everything is amped up in every direction. Something big is coming.” He’s rarely wrong about such things. Adams said he doesn’t know what that something big is, but I’m hoping it is a major shift in America’s political tectonic plates. I may be looking too hard for it, but I, too, feel it in my bones. Infrastructure FaceplantFor one thing the wacky spending program the Democrats were proposing and fiddling with seems to have hit the shoals, trapped between the far left and the more moderate senators Kyrsten...

Wretchard summarizes Biden’s challenging week and notes the challenges are going to get even bigger: Joe Biden is facing simultaneous challenges. The collapse of Afghanistan in place of a “decent interval”; The resurgence of the Covid Delta variant in place of the anticipated reopening of society; Looming inflation and economic problems in place of the anticipated boom. The unending border crisis. It’s a dramatic reversal of fortune on all fronts. Biden failed to anticipate either the events or their speed and intensity and there is little to suggest he can handle the second order crises that is coming in its...

Before I get to the bad news, let me start with some good news. Christopher F. Rufo tweets that the revulsion against Critical Race Theory being taught in schools is showing results. Nine states have already banned it: Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Idaho. As more people realize this effort to divide us into what Scott Adams calls “losers and assholes” I expect we will see more states banning the teaching of this perfidious, noxious, baseless nonsense. On the other hand, there seems no backing off of it in the military, where it can do...

Can the Left make things even crazier? Just wait and see. This week, I’m sorry to say, madness of celebrities, corporate media, educational institutions, and the administration, only increased and like Victor Davis Hanson, I wonder if the madness of last year will last? Let’s start with Harry, formerly known as Prince. He claimed this week that mental health and climate change are linked. I agree they are linked, though not in the way he thinks they are. I think anyone who seriously believes man can control climate is nuts. And when you get right down to it there’s ample...

Three incidents this week confirm that something is seriously amiss with our legal system. I’ve always had great respect for our legal system. It’s as good as any of which I’m aware. No, I’m not naive. I’m fully aware that every institution depends on the competence and integrity of those involved and that means sometimes decisions are rendered that are wrong -- muddy thinking and sometimes corrupt judges; self-seeking prosecutors; incompetent counsel; bad and poorly written laws; false testimony by liars -- all contribute now and then to unjust resolutions. But in recent years, my faith has been even more...

Democrat hopes for show trials a la Stalin's Great Purge are beginning to fade. Two weeks ago, I wrote of the Department of Justice’s overreach respecting some of the hundreds of January 6 defendants. On Friday the D.C. Circuit clipped the department’s wings. I expect more such losses as time goes on and the Department must actually present evidence in contested trials. The ploy of keeping in D.C. jails without bail some of the protestors who engaged in no specific violent acts at the Capitol until their cases can be heard was very obviously designed to compel them to plea...

In all the perfervid reporting this week (Victor Davis Hanson calls this “concocted melodramas”) there are only three big stories to my mind: The President’s stunning success in the Middle East, Secretary of Education Betsy De Vos’ brilliant parlay to Princeton’s virtue-signaling president and the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Each of these are likely to further tip Trump toward an election victory in which according to Rasmussen he’s already reached 53% approval among likely voters.No one has better described the significance of the Abraham Accord than Spengler (David Goldman). The President, defying the conventional wisdom of decades of...

Has President Trump just eaten Joe Biden's lunch? Sure looks that way based on multiple indicators flashing pro-Trump signals in the wake of the Democratic National Convention. Sure, the leftist press is reporting that Biden's favorability numbers have notched up in the wake of his curiously gaffe-less convention speech, but it's thin gruel. Fact is, that's the only thing they have. But if you look mostly on the right column of the front page of RealClearPolitics, it's pretty clear the trend is President Trump's friend. Apparently the artifice and over-processed convention infomercial, with its many technical sleights of hand (see here and here), didn't fool the voters. And...

Every few years it seems that the Democrats gin up riots in response to the death of a black criminal at the hands of the police. And each time the media play along. I don’t need to remind you of the Holder DoJ stirring up the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases, which fell apart before juries when the facts were finally presented in open court. Not before the false tales precipitated substantial destruction to lives and property... *snip* This time, the race baiting has gone beyond targeting the individual citizens and cops involved to argue that there is systemic...