Free Republic

NO DOUBT it's difficult to refuse a visit with a former president of the United States. Still, Attorney General Loretta Lynch should have found a polite way to excuse herself when Bill Clinton dropped by her airplane, parked next to his at a Phoenix airport Monday. Given that Ms. Lynch has ultimate responsibility for the federal investigation related to Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state. Our view of the matter, stated in previous editorials and supported by a fair reading of the law and publicly available evidence, is that Ms....

It’s time to wind down the Clinton email investigation By Editorial Board July 1 at 8:21 PM NO DOUBT it’s difficult to refuse a visit with a former president of the United States. Still, Attorney General Loretta Lynch should have found a polite way to excuse herself when Bill Clinton dropped by her airplane, parked next to his at a Phoenix airport Monday. Given that Ms. Lynch has ultimate responsibility for the federal investigation related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state, even an impromptu chat between the attorney general...

...Chávez was either admired as a progressive visionary who gave voice to the poor or dismissed as just another third-world buffoon. Reality was more complex than that: Chávez pioneered a new playbook for how to bask in global admiration even as he hollowed out democratic institutions on the sly.Step one was his deft manipulation of elections. Chávez realized early that, as long as he kept holding and winning elections, nobody outside Venezuela would ask too many questions about what he did with his power in the interim. And so he mastered the paradoxical art of destroying democracy one election at...

The Obama administration has proposed a new agreement on Syria to the Russian government that would deepen military cooperation between the two countries against some terrorists in exchange for Russia getting the Assad regime to stop bombing U.S.-supported rebels. The United States transmitted the text of the proposed agreement to the Russian government on Monday after weeks of negotiations and internal Obama administration deliberations, an administration official told me. The crux of the deal is a U.S. promise to join forces with the Russian air force to share targeting and coordinate an expanded bombing campaign against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch...

Did Donald Trump violate IRS rules, by using a charity's money to buy himself a signed football helmet? Four years ago, at a charity fundraiser in Palm Beach, Donald Trump got into a bidding war at the evening's live auction. The items up for sale: A Denver Broncos helmet, autographed by then-star quarterback Tim Tebow, and a Tebow jersey. Trump won, eventually, with a bid of $12,000. Afterward, he posed with the helmet. His purchase made gossip-column news: a flourish of generosity, by a mogul with money to burn. "The Donald giveth, and The Donald payeth," wrote the Palm Beach...

Apparently following up on his Washington Post column earlier this week, the paper's Chris Cillizza appeared on Thursday's Morning Joe show and observed that Hillary Clinton has "large-scale problems on honesty and trustworthines," that "she is the status quo" and "represents the past." Because of that, and despite the conventional wisdom in much of the establishment press that Mrs. Clinton can't possibly lose in November, Cillizza argues that her Republican opponent "can win this race." Cillizza has previously staunchly denied media bias in the coverage of Mrs. Clinton's campign. That's hard to square with what Tim Graham at NewsBusters observed...

"We don’t often question the typical world map that hangs on the walls of classrooms — a patchwork of yellow, pink and green that separates the world into more than 200 nations. But Parag Khanna, a global strategist, says that this map is, essentially, obsolete. Khanna is the author of the new book “Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization,” in which he argues that the arc of global history is undeniably bending toward integration. Instead of the boundaries that separate sovereign nations, the lines that we should put on our maps are the high-speed railways, broadband cables and shipping...

No Trump campaign buttons or bumper stickers for me. I’m part of the new silent majority: those who don’t like Donald Trump but might vote for him anyway. For many of us, Trump has only one redeeming quality: He isn’t Hillary Clinton. He doesn’t want to turn the United States into a politically correct, free-milk-and-cookies, European-style social democracy where every kid (and adult, too) gets a trophy just for showing up. Members of this new silent majority, many of us front-wave baby boomers, value hard work and love the United States the way it was. We long for a bygone...

In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy, a new poll shows that most young people do not support capitalism. The Harvard University survey, which polled young adults between ages 18 and 29, found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Just 42 percent said they support it. It isn't clear that the young people in the poll would prefer some alternative system, though. Just 33 percent said they supported socialism. The survey had a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. The results of the survey are difficult to interpret, pollsters noted. Capitalism...

Once upon a time, Democrats would sit-in to press for civil rights. Today, they sit-in to take civil rights away. How else to describe the goal of last week's 24-hour sit-in by House Democrats? They took to the floor Wednesday demanding a vote on gun control legislation in the wake of last week's terrorist attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Gun ownership is a right. Due process of law is a right. The government needs to meet a very high threshold before denying citizens either one. Rep. John Lewis led the protest, which devolved into screaming matches early Thursday....

Rachael Larimore, a Senior Editor at Slate, has written a unusual piece for the publication.  It is titled Bullet Points.  You can be forgiven for expecting this will be another uninformed diatribe against those evil conservatives, who if they would only stop licking the boots of their NRA masters, would allow common sense legislation to pass that would prevent crime by outlawing evil guns.  The expected would, in this case, be wrong. Ms Larimore, who has been at Slate since 2002, was, as of 2008, the only Republican at the publication.  That makes her remarkable.  She actually knows how...

In May, under pressure from the news media, Donald Trump made good on a pledge he made four months earlier: He gave $1 million to a nonprofit group helping veterans’ families. Before that, however, when was the last time that Trump gave any of his own money to a charity? If Trump stands by his promises, such donations should be occurring all the time. In the past 15 years, Trump has promised to donate earnings from a wide variety of his money-making enterprises: “The Apprentice.” Trump Vodka. Trump University. A book. Another book. If he honored all those pledges, Trump’s...

On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Washington Post columnist George Will explained why he left the Republican Party over presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Will said, “I left it for the same reason I joined it in 1964 when I voted for Barry Goldwater, because I was a conservative. I leave for the same reason, I’m a conservative. To give you a time line, shortly after Trump became the presumptive nominee he had a summit meeting with Paul Ryan where they stressed their vast shared ground, which is more important than their differences. I thought that was puzzling...

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has finally acknowledged that to best compete against Hillary Clinton he needs more than the bare-bones campaign team that led him to primary success. But many of the most experienced Republican political advisers aren’t willing to work for him. (Snip) While there are exceptions, many strategists who best understand the mechanics of presidential politics fear that taking a Trump paycheck might stain their resumes, spook other clients and even cause problems at home. They also are reluctant to devote months to a divisive candidate whose campaign has been plagued by infighting and disorganization. “Right now I...

This report refers to Shannon Watts as one in a group of “regular people” who began advocating for stricter gun control measures in recent years. After the December 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., she created the “One Million Moms for Gun Control” Facebook page. It later became “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.” We should have noted that Watts has a background in corporate communications. From 1998 to mid-2012, she was a corporate communications executive or consultant at such companies as Monsanto and FleishmanHillard. Before that, Watts had what she says was a...

Hillary Clinton surged to a broad advantage against Donald Trump in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, capitalizing on Trump’s recent campaign missteps. Two-thirds of Americans see him as biased against groups such as women, minorities or Muslims, and a new high, 64 percent, call Trump unqualified to serve as president. These and other doubts about Trump have produced a sharp 14-point swing in preferences among registered voters, from +2 points for Trump in mid-May, after he clinched the GOP nomination, to +12 points for Clinton now, 51-39 percent. That snaps the race essentially back to where it was in...

Local Motors, the Arizona-based automaker that crowdsources vehicle design, has introduced a 3D-printed, autonomous, electric shuttle bus that is partially recyclable called Olli. Local Motors says that it's the first vehicle to use IBM Watson’s car-focused cognitive learning platform, Watson Internet of Things (IoT) for Automotive. It’s a boxy, far-out concept that may be the first of its kind, but that’s the point for a company that isn’t focused only on making vehicles — it’s about remaking the car manufacturing business. If all goes according to plan, Olli will be giving autonomous rides at the company’s introductory event on the...

Young people with Down syndrome are constantly surprising their communities by showing how much they can achieve. They are learning to read and write, graduating from high school and college, and becoming fashion models and business owners. Now, a Washington, D.C. teen made history last week when she became the first student with Down syndrome to graduate with a full high school diploma from the D.C. Public Schools, The Federalist reports. Madison Essig graduated with 3.7 GPA and National Honor Society honors, but her mother had to fight to ensure her daughter had that opportunity, Fox 5 News reports. Madison’s...

JERUSALEM — Work has begun to save the holiest shrine in Christendom. It won’t be a simple patch-and-paint job. This is the alpha and omega of restoration projects. They are going to repair Jesus’ tomb — with titanium bolts. Over the next nine months, a team of Greek conservationists will restore the collapsing chapel built above and around the burial cave where the faithful believe that Jesus was buried and rose from the dead after the Crucifixion. To fix the chapel, which is buckling under its own weight, the crew will have to enter a few square meters of the...

THE BIG IDEA: Paul Ryan calls it “a publicly stunt.” That may be true. But it is proving to be a darn effective one. Republicans, unsure about how to deal with a sit-in that started on the House floor yesterday at 11:30 a.m., tried to talk over Democrats and hold routine votes. Then, around 3:30 a.m., they adjourned the chamber until after July Fourth – two days earlier than planned. In so doing, they’ve guaranteed that the debate about gun control will roil the congressional recess and remain a dominant storyline for the next two weeks. Democrats continue to occupy...