Free Republic

After Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders’s strong showing in the primary, many in the Democratic Party are able to read the writing on the wall: They need to move left. But who wants to step in? Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York. In the past two years, Mr. Cuomo - with an eye on national office - has rebranded himself from conservative insider to left-wing populist. Last year, he even held a news conference with Mr. Sanders to announce a “free college” plan. The truth is, the governor wears his new identity like a cheap...

For white-knuckle flyers like me, this week's tragic accident aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from New York to Texas reinforces our worst fears but also reassures us that flying remains the safest means of travel within the United States. I fly 100,000 miles a year, despite my phobias, and have encountered everything but an actual crash or loss of life aboard the many flights I've taken -- last-minute aborted landings, engine failure, lightning strikes, fires in the galley, loss of the hydraulic system, geese sucked into the engine during takeoff. Some of these incidents required emergency landings with runways foamed...

After being pressed by former top Bill Clinton political aide George Stephanopoulos on ABC News, James Comey admitted that he had "screwed up a couple of things." The former FBI director wasn't talking about his failure to notify then-President elect Donald Trump that unsubstantiated rumors paid for by his political opposition were helping fuel the creation of a special counsel. No, Comey was admitting that he had made mistakes regarding the 2016 investigation of Hillary Clinton. And no, he wasn't begrudgingly apologizing for failing to recommend criminal charges against the candidate. It's an article of faith among Democrats and many...

The Democratic Party has never been more reliant on the support of upper-middle-class voters than it is today. And the economic fortunes of affluent Americans - and those of the typical working-class household - have rarely been more disparate. These twin developments have inspired much commentary about the class tensions beneath Team Blue’s “big tent”. There is little doubt that it would be easier to advance radical economic reform in an America where politics was sharply polarized along class lines, and working people of all races were concentrated in a single partisan coalition. It is absolutely true that a liberal...

I originally assumed that former FBI Director James Comey is an honorable and truthful man who was striving to be objective and avoid undue political influence. He has earned my change of mind. Our law enforcement and judicial institutions should operate, to the extent possible, above politics to ensure equal justice under the law. The term "justice is blind" is more than a cliche. Justice, by definition, must be administered impartially, without regard to wealth, power, gender, race, religion or any other special status. The law must guide the judicial system, from start to finish -- from the decision to...

As the likelihood that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia seems headed toward zero, the likelihood of proof of a different form of collusion seems headed upward toward certainty. The Russia-collusion charge had some initial credibility because of businessman Donald Trump’s dealings in Russia and candidate Trump’s off-putting praise of Vladimir Putin. It was fueled by breathless media coverage of such trivial events as Jeff Sessions’s conversation with the Russian ambassador at a Washington reception — and, of course, by the appointment of former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel. But Mueller’s prosecutions of Trump campaign operatives were for...

I don't normally watch the GLAAD Media Awards. Not that there's anything wrong with them. GLAAD, by the way, originally stood for "Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation" before the organization declared that GLAAD was its name and not an acronym. But I did see a video of Britney Spears' acceptance of GLAAD's Vanguard Award last week. "I feel like our society has always put such an emphasis on what's normal, and to be different is unusual or seen as strange," Spears said. She added some other stuff about how we're all individuals together, or something. There was a time...

The coffee chain's anti-bias training is a potentially positive step. But white people need get real about the extent of racism in America. Can black folks do anything without scrutiny? The arrest of two black men sitting quietly in a Philadelphia Starbucks has set off a national discussion about whether there are any places or activities where race doesn’t color the experience. Even something as innocuous and common as waiting at Starbucks for a friend looks different when viewed through the lens of America’s ongoing race problem. And so well-meaning outrage aside, it’s time that white people in America get...

The intense fear and loathing that permeates news coverage of President Donald Trump is being multiplied on television dramas. Impeachment scenarios and 25th Amendment removal strategies are rolling around in the brains of scriptwriters. Barbara Hall, the creator of the pro-Hillary Clinton CBS show "Madam Secretary," claimed "We just take things that are already in the atmosphere, and if we find them interesting in terms of a civics lesson, we show you what it would look like. We're not campaigning for it. We're not politicizing it, really. We're just saying, 'Here's what the process looks like.'" Agenda? What agenda? It's...

A pro-Trump political action committee has filed a complaint with the FEC alleging the Hillary Clinton campaign laundered $84 million in contributions from big-name donors, such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, filmmaker Steven Spielberg, and designer Calvin Klein. The complaint outlines a money laundering scheme that violated multiple campaign finance laws, specifically laws related to limits on contributions by independent donors. As of this week, the complaint has escalated with a lawsuit urging the FEC to take action on the complaint which appears to have been largely ignored by the FEC since being filed in December of 2017. Using both civil...

If you are a white, law-abiding gun owner, never forget: the left hates you. If you are a gun-wielding jihadist, leftists will find every excuse to turn a blind eye to your evil and direct their outrage toward white, law-abiding defenders of the Second Amendment. If you are a gun-wielding, non-white illegal alien like the multiple-felony murderer of San Francisco’s Kate Steinle, the left will shield you in a sanctuary city and blame Steinle for being white, pretty, and causing trouble for you by getting in the way of your bullet. If you are part of a gun-wielding black...

One of the biggest ongoing problems of U.S. foreign policy is a failure to understand what we’re really up against. This problem is nothing new, although Barack Obama took it to new heights by banning all mention of Islam and jihad from counterterror training, with many of his loyalists still in place and hampering our ability to deal realistically with the jihad threat today. This myopia goes back decades. In Theodore H. White’s America In Search of Itself, there is this telling passage about the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979: Of the negotiating effort, the most biting summary was...

Dr. Assim Rahaibani, a Syrian doctor, has told journalist Robert Fisk, writing for the British publication, The Independent, that last week’s alleged chemical gas attack by the Assad government on civilians in Douma did not happen. The alleged chemical attack was the pretext for a combined bombing raid by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. “I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred meters from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened,” Rahaibani told Fisk. “There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over...

RUSH: There’s also a piece today by Thomas B. Edsall. Now, let me remind you who this guy is. Thomas B. Edsall, if I’m not mistaken, has written for the Washington Post. Now he’s with the New York Times. Although he may have always been with the Times. I’m not sure. But it was Thomas B. Edsall that in November of 2011 wrote a piece published in, I think, the New York Times/Washington Post — again, I don’t recall — in which he made it clear… He was writing almost as a member of the Obama presidential campaign strategy team,...

RUSH: Yesterday in New York City there was another James Comey book-signing event. Conservative journalist Laura Loomer stood up — as many media people do whenever public figures show up — and started shouting questions at James Comey. LOOMER: How is it ethical to brief the president of the United States on an unverifiable and salacious dossier, and how is it ethical leadership to not tell him that his political opposition, Hillary Clinton, paid for that? You are not an ethical leader! MAN: Ma’am, you’re gonna have to leave. LOOMER: You’re gonna get prosecuted, Comey! You’re gonna get locked up!...

RUSH: There’s an op-ed in the Washington Post today. It’s by Beverly Weintraub. And the headline: “‘Sully’ Was Just a Hero. Why Label the Southwest Captain a ‘Female Pilot’?” Beverly Weintraub — by the way, this is cool. She’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, member of the New York Daily News editorial board. She’s a member of the Ninety-Nines. Do you know what that is? You probably don’t. It’s an international organization of women pilots. Millie Limbaugh And she’s on the board of directors of the Air Race Classic. My mom was a Ninety-Nine. (interruption) Yeah, my mom was a pilot....

One interesting aspect of James Comey's recent interview on ABC was that he made it clear, though without realizing it, that the Steele dossier isn't true. Comey did so by saying Trump was thinking about having Comey prove that the salacious allegations in the document weren't true. If those allegations were true, the last thing in the world Trump would want is the FBI taking a closer look at them. Remember that at that time, the FBI was saying it couldn't verify the accounts, meaning that if Trump were guilty he would think that he was safe. So why would...

Accountability is sorely lacking in the administrative state. Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats make decisions significantly affecting our daily lives with too little involvement from our elected officials. The Congressional Review Act was intended to restore at least some degree of democratic accountability to the administrative process. It requires agencies to submit to Congress every rule they wish to impose on you, giving the people you elected an opportunity to oversee what federal bureaucrats are up to. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, agencies have failed to comply with their obligations under the statute, withholding rules from Congress and thereby avoiding...

News outlets are routinely filled with commentary and analysis suggesting that 21st-century America is a deeply polarized nation. Countless stories are presented as a battle between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, private sector and public. Political activists fan the flames with talking points "proving" that they hold the moral and rational high ground. They convey a sense that anybody who disagrees with them is either stupid or corrupt. Watching all this makes many people fighting mad and fills them with a burning desire to beat the other team. Far too many nice and reasonable people get so riled up...

A few weeks ago, President Donald Trump was an outwardly happy man because of the utterance of one solitary word from the lips of special counsel Robert Mueller to one of Trump's lawyers. The word that thrilled the president and his legal team was "subject." It seems that Mueller and one of Trump's lawyers had been negotiating the terms under which the president would submit to an informal interrogation by Mueller and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents. Mueller's request for such an interview was not unusual. Investigators are usually looking to trap an unwary potential defendant into lying...