Free Republic

Several journalists have been caught lying to the public and committing fraud, new video footage reveals. Before we begin analyzing the Michelle Fields hoax, watch this video, which surfaced last night. This video clip shows Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski (the man in short cropped hair), moving past Michelle Fields (the handsome woman in glasses). Consider how deep this media hoax goes. Michelle Fields, a “conservative,” fabricated a story with Ben Terris, a “liberal.” Jabin Botsford of the Washington Post lied about being at the event, and then hid evidence that would have exposed the hoax. Lloyd Grove of the...

War was just an experiment for two of the U.S. military’s oldest and most unusual warplanes. A pair of OV-10 Broncos—small, Vietnam War-vintage, propeller-driven attack planes—recently spent three months flying top cover for ground troops battling ISIS militants in the Middle East. The OV-10s’ deployment is one of the latest examples of a remarkable phenomenon. The United States—and, to a lesser extent, Russia—has seized the opportunity afforded it by the aerial free-for-all over Iraq and Syria and other war zones to conduct live combat trials with new and upgraded warplanes, testing out the aircraft in potentially deadly conditions before committing...

Following our story on Rubio’s partying days and arrest in a known gay “hookup” site, the interwebs have lit up in his defense, but not quite from where you would expect. While CNN and Fox News have done all that they can to hide from the story, the liberal publication, the Daily Beast, has come out swinging from the trees like an angry orangutan to beat down anyone who whispers the words, “foam party.” The defense is surprising considering that Chelsea Clinton sits on the board of IAC, the parent company of the Daily Beast. Their tactic to protect Rubio?...

Chelsea Handler said political correctness isn't working for Americans. In a op-ed written for The Daily Beast, the 40-year-old comedian said she sat down with representatives from the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, American Indians in Film & Television and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We had an honest discussion about whether or not it's funny, appropriate, helpful, or hurtful to traffic in ethnic, racial, and religious stereotypes," Handler said. Handler said they all "ended up smiling and laughing about examples of politically incorrect humor because they could see...

Campaigns are about conflict. It is absolutely necessary not only to show why you are better but the other candidate is worse. Say what you will about Donald Trump, but he understands that to win a fight, you have to fight. Now the race is at a stage where it is clear to beat Trump, a candidate must engage Trump and drive him from the race. .... The good news should be that Trump is one of the easiest candidates to engage and defeat in modern history. But no one is taking advantage of his vulnerabilities. To defeat a candidate,...

Trickle-down economics died last Tuesday. The post-election chatter has been dominated by demographics, Latinos, women, and the culture war. But economics played a strong and even pivotal role in this election too, and Reaganomics came out a huge loser, while the Democrats have started to wrap their arms around a simple, winning alternative: the idea that government must invest in the middle class and not the rich. It’s middle-out economics instead of trickle-down, and it won last week and will keep on winning. Supply side was rejected. And in its place, voters went for an economic vision that says: don’t...

Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson reportedly met privately in a storage closet Thursday night in Greenville to try and cool relations between the two campaigns ahead of the primary here. But the clandestine meeting allegedly did not go well. Cruz called the meeting, The Daily Beast reports, to smooth over what has been a contentious public spat with the Carson campaign ever since the Iowa caucus. Carson accused Cruz of using dirty campaign tactics after one of Cruz's staffers saw a CNN report and told voters Carson was dropping out of the race right before voting started in Iowa....

The senator's super PACs have launched an unprecedented ground effort in South Carolina and seem intent on going where few super PACs have gone before--door knocking. We all know super PACs have permanently changed the face of American politics. But in South Carolina, right now, we're getting a preview of the unprecedented ways they can alter a campaign. South Carolina, as you may know, is kind of a big deal. It has a large population--4.8 million people--and a bad reputation because it's a place where candidates love to break out their dirtiest tricks. Or, in the case of Ted Cruz's...

This is in some respects a political show, and we are in the throes of hands-down the most insane presidential race in history. What do you make of it, and more specifically, of the rise of Donald Trump? It seems to me that, given the relentless 24-hour news cycle, it was only a matter of time before we had a media-savvy reality star ascend to this perch. Man, I don't know! Trump leaves me speechless. When he came down that escalator to announce that he was going to run for president, I thought to myself that it was a smart...

Rafael Cruz, father of Ted Cruz, is a preacher of the far-right doctrine of dominionism, which holds that Christians should take over the government and save it from the wicked. When Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for president, many assumed he would quietly distance himself from his father, Rafael Cruz, since the elder Cruz has long been extreme in his religious views, and outspoken in proclaiming them. But the opposite has been the case. Rafael Cruz has been the senator's primary surrogate on the campaign trail, particularly with the evangelical voters who are now Ted Cruz's base. The two have...

Appearing as a guest on Thursday morning's CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello, CNN political commentator and Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon used praise for Ted Cruz's ads and social media campaign to take an underhanded swipe at the GOP presidential candidate by suggesting that, unlike the ads, he is not "effective" or "charming." His jab at Cruz inspired laughter from host Costello as she mildly chided him for being "kind of harsh." The exchange came at 10:21 a.m. ET during a discussion of a Cruz campaign ad using humor to attack Donald Trump over the issue of his past...

The president's speech at that Baltimore mosque reassured a nervous population and struck just the right note-we're Muslim and American.

Republican operatives from inside and outside New Hampshire agree: Sen. Ted Cruz is all but doomed to finish below the top tier in the Granite State. The winning coalition Cruz put together in Iowa won't work in New Hampshire, they say, pointing to the fact New Hampshire has the second-lowest rate of church attendance in the country. So the edge that Cruz had among evangelicals isn't particularly applicable there. "I would advise Cruz to skip New Hampshire and go to South Carolina. I believe you shouldn't compete anywhere where it's not a favorable battlefield to win," said Stuart Stevens, a...

There's a lot about Ted Cruz that should worry constitutionalists considering voting for the senator in the presidential election of 2016.Recently, Infogram published brief but illuminating biographies of several of Cruz's key foreign policy advisors. The information disclosed in these revelations could trouble many constitutionalists otherwise keen on the senator and who rely on him to restore the rule of law to the White House.The first person highlighted in the article is the chairman of Cruz's foreign policy team, Chad Sweet.Sweet's professional and political background betrays Cruz's claims of being someone who promises "not to continue going in the same...

Kraig Kitchin will stay with the company, but resigned from the top job after friction with fellow Beck executive Jonathan Schreiber. A ‘mass exodus’ of staff may follow. In what knowledgeable observers say is a sign of increasing turmoil in Glenn Beck’s troubled media empire, Beck’s longtime mentor and corporate executive, Kraig Kitchin, has quit as CEO of The Blaze. Kitchin’s replacement, Stewart Padveen, a digital startup entrepreneur who joined Beck’s company last summer, will be the fourth leader of The Blaze since late 2014. Kitchin, 54, who took over operations of Beck’s conservative-leaning subscription digital and cable television enterprise...

LONDON — No doubt Donald Trump will be thrilled that the entire world is mesmerized as he steamrolls over his Republican rivals for the presidential nomination. He probably doesn’t care that most of the international publicity is bad publicity—but even the master of ill-tempered putdowns and Twitter vitriol will struggle to keep up with the sheer number of attacks and jibes pouring in from every corner of the globe. He does have a select band of fans—more on those later—but they are being drowned out by an incredulity that stretches from Europe’s capitals to post-conflict Afghanistan; from the African deltas...

...there’s no basis for the common claim Obama won through a superb, unprecedented, supremely effective get-out-the-vote effort by the Democrats. Even downcast Republicans have hailed the opposition’s turnout operation as magnificent, but they fail to note that it resulted in far fewer voters showing up for President Obama. - The president drew 7.6 million fewer votes than he did in the hope-and-change election of 2008. - Exit polls showed that Obama got a slightly smaller percentage of the black vote than last time and that turnout was sharply down, delivering at least 1.5 million fewer African-American ballots for the Democrats....

The host of HBO's Real Time, which returns Friday, on why he's scared of Cruz, and the 'underage hookers' scandal that could sink Hillary Clinton's campaign. For the past month and change, there's been a void in the political commentary arena--and political incorrectness, in general. Yes, Bill Maher was on vacation. But the acerbic satirist seems recharged and ready to dive headfirst into election season--which he'll do by kicking off the return of his late-night series Real Time with Bill Maher with a big campaign of his own. You'll have to tune in to HBO Friday night to see exactly...

In 2015, once high-minded disagreements over policy and ideology descended into something much more primitive.When it comes to politics, in 2015 we witnessed nothing less than a paradigm shift. The old rules are out the window. Technology and changing mores have conspired to lower barriers of entry--and acceptability. Gatekeepers no longer exist. What we have right now is closer to direct democracy than we've ever seen, and our civilization is regressing as a result. One party (the Democrats) already represents the liberal half of the nation. The other half seems to consist of modern, Buckleyite conservatives, but also an increasingly...

During the darkest days of communism, Romanians had something to brighten their oppressed existence illicit American movie parties. Under Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship, the Eastern European country had very little contact with the West. But thanks to Teodor Zamfir who was willing to smuggle VHS tapes, and his translator Ilina Nistor who dubbed them, over 3000 movies made it over to Romania between 1985 and 1989. Millions of lives were changed and uplifted as a result. Chuck Norris v. Communism (Variety Interview)After recognizing Nistor's voice at a film festival, Ilinca Calugareanu chatted with the woman whose inflection and tone were nearly...