Free Republic

We need to make America great again, and for that Donald Trump might be our man. For all the anxiety the White House has caused, brewing constitutional crises at home and anger abroad, Mr. Trump has opened a path to reunify this politically divided nation. A “team of rivals” that transcends party lines, composed of eminent men and women, could rein in the administration. This bipartisan group, preferably endorsed by past U.S. presidents, would be made up of former cabinet members and heads of independent federal agencies. Inspired by the British Shadow Cabinet, it would be structured to mirror the...

As Donald Trump continues his pundit-defying dominance of the national polls, with early primaries just days away, the once-unthinkable has become all too thinkable: Could Trump actually pull this off? Could he become president? I'm going to stake out a firm answer: no. Absent extreme and unlikely circumstances*, Trump will never be president. Jack Shafer argues that Trump's success so far is a "black swan" event, an unpredictable and unrepeatable concatenation of improbable circumstances. That sounds about right. But just because some political rules and conventions have been violated doesn't mean they've all vanished. Just because Trump makes no sense...

... the Bundy militia members occupying a federal wildlife preserve in Burns, Oregon are motivated by the very same mix of resentments and hobby horses that are driving the Donald Trump movement. Both Trump's supporters and the Bundy agitators are moved by an unsubtly racialized sense of entitlement, a belief that federal benefits and giveaways are great when going to conservative white people but illegitimate if they go to anyone else, especially people of color. As David Roberts at Vox recently pointed out, Trump supporters aren't motivated by some ideological opposition to the concept of government benefits. They are perfectly...

Shocking New Theory! The Titanic was sunk by a German submarine, not an iceberg, stunning new evidence reveals. "The one thing people think they know about the Titanic is that she struck an iceberg," says David Roberts, an historian with the Merseyside Maritime Museum in England. "However, based on survivor testimony, we can't necessarily make that assumption. In fact, when we look at the evidence, the only thing we can take for granted is that the Titanic skimmed past the iceberg, barely making contact with it. "Subprofiler images of the Titanic's hull have now proven that the damage she sustained...

Among the things they left behind are beautiful ruins, a gorgeously woven basket and a nearly impossible to get to granary on a cliff. David Roberts is a well-known mountaineer who made the first ascents of some of Alaska’s most challenging peaks. For his new book, The Lost World Of The Old Ones: Discoveries in The Ancient Southwest, he set off with a backpack to explore some of the remotest corners of the American Southwest. Rappelling down cliffs to reach ancient granaries, or stumbling across artifacts that have not been touched for 1,000 years, he follows the trail of long...

The following 65 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein 2. Dave Weigel 3. Matthew Yglesias 4. David Dayen 5. Spencer Ackerman 6. Jeffrey Toobin 7. Eric Alterman 8. Paul Krugman 9. John Judis 10. Eve Fairbanks 11. Mike Allen 12. Ben Smith 13. Lisa Lerer 14. Joe Klein 15. Brad DeLong 16. Chris Hayes 17. Matt Duss 18. Jonathan Chait 19. Jesse Singal 20. Michael Cohen 21. Isaac Chotiner 22. Katha Pollitt 23. Alyssa Rosenberg 24. Rick Perlstein 25. Alex Rossmiller 26. Ed Kilgore 27. Walter Shapiro 28. Noam Scheiber 29. Michael Tomasky 30....