Free Republic

Ten weeks into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Kyiv’s tiny, aging air force is in much better shape than anyone should have expected prior to the invasion. Videos that have circulated on social media in the last week depict each of the Ukrainian air force’s manned fighter and attack types, at least some of them while in action near the front line in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. The videos underscore what U.S. defense department officials said in mid-April: that an influx of spare parts from Ukraine’s allies helped the air force to repair around 20 grounded jets. As a...

<p>VLADIMIR Putin is facing a catastrophic collapse in army morale, after reports emerged of Russian soldiers turning their guns on their Chechen comrades.</p><p>Furthermore, Russian officers are alleged to have gone on strike and are refusing to carry out orders in protest at their conditions and the war. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a close ally of the Russian despot and has been a strong supporter of Putin's war in Ukraine. He has sent his militias, known as the "Kadyrovtsy", to help bolster Russian forces in their invasion.</p>

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks reacted to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson by stating that there are some “Republican senators who are not really senators. They’re cable TV hosts.” And ask questions like the definition of a woman.

Ukraine landed a significant blow on Russia Saturday after it allegedly killed a large group of bloodthirsty Chechen special forces dispatched to assassinate the country's president Volodymyr Zelensky. The armed group - famed for their barbaric violence and human rights abuses - are said to have been obliterated after their convoy of 56 tanks was blown to smithereens near Hostomel, just northeast of Kyiv, by Ukrainian missile fire on the second day of the Chechens' deployment. It is unclear how many died - but the number is likely to run into the hundreds. Their deaths were announced as officials in...

Former President Trump is reportedly still communicating with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, according to a new book set to be released by a New York Times journalist. The news comes amid reports in recent weeks that the country had continued to conduct missile tests. In her new book titled "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America," New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman reports that the former president says he has continued to stay in contact with the North Korean leader.

<p>Sean Hannity isn't happy about being called Fox News's dumbest anchor by a Wall Street Journal columnist. Hanniry fired back at the Journal's Bret Stephens Thursday night after the foreign policy editor tweeted that "Fox News' dumbest anchor had a message for y'all," linking to a Yahoo News article about Hannity saying he will blame Republican leaders if Donald Trump loses the presidential election.</p>

Another generation, another crop of Clinton Media spearcatchers. The youngsters are stepping up to grab the water buckets of the Clintons from their Media grizzled and faltering predecessors of the impeachment wars of the late 1990s. Time to start the list anew.

It is no surprise, at least to conservatives, that the recent Wikileaks emails have revealed the collusion and moral turpitude behind the Democrats’ smiling façade. Among other things, they expose a chilling incest between leftists in the political sphere and their comrades in the press. The fact that an increasingly radical political party has nestled into intimacy with the so-called watchdogs of our public domain should be one of the breaking news events of this still-young century. Instead, what we’ve witnessed is an echoing, empty silence, interspersed occasionally with an embarrassing level of deflection, deception, and legerdemain. The absence of...

Despite characterizing himself as a “hard grader,” President Obama rated his performance for the recently concluded 2014 an “A+.” “My critics want to harp on their pet issues to claim my Administration was a failure, but let’s look at what I was able to accomplish,” he asserted. “Republicans are slapping each other on the back for taking more seats in Congress than their Party has had since 1928, but it was my agenda that Congress enacted with the Cromnibus bill in November,” the President boasted. “I broke new ground in how the country is governed by stepping in to enact...

Has Hillary Clinton’s Tuzla fantasy opened a bigger can of worms for the presidential aspirant? Jake Tapper at ABC News wonders whether the press should take a look at earlier Hillary anecdotes to determine whether a pattern of fabulism exists. Sure enough, he discovers an old chestnut from 1994 that Hillary has not bothered to dust off for the current campaign: In light of Tuzla-gate (catchy, no?), reporters are going over past statements by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, (and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois) to see if others don’t stand more rigorous examination.One that may get renewed scrutiny is a story...

Deconstructing Clinton is a lot easier than parsing sentences. Language has its own structure and rules, what we call grammar and syntax. It is these things that allow us to communicate efficiently with each other, even when we are not schooled in the rules of language. But in Clinton’s post-modernist world there are no rules because there is no reality. Existence is a matter of opinion and reality is what I think it ought to be. In such a world facts are fiction and fiction is reality with each reality being as good as any other. Hence whatever I say...

Rick Rodriguez: Griego Erwin resigns amid internal inquiry into her columns By Rick Rodriguez -- Bee Executive Editor Published 2:15 am PDT Thursday, May 12, 2005 Diana Griego Erwin, whose column has appeared in this space three days a week, resigned Wednesday amid an internal inquiry into whether some people mentioned in several recent columns actually existed. During our inquiry we found we could not authenticate the existence of several people even though they were identified by name, age and sometimes by the neighborhoods in which they were reported to have lived. We used extensive online database searches as well...

Mike Barnicle, the hard-hitting veteran journalist whose lively commentary has engaged and informed New Englanders for almost 30 years, is returning to the Boston newspaper scene as a columnist for the Boston Herald, Publisher Patrick J. Purcell announced today. Purcell said that Barnicle, who has been a columnist for the New York Daily News for the past five years, serves as a commentator on national and local news programs and hosts his own radio talk show, will join the Boston Herald as a featured columnist every Tuesday and Thursday, beginning tomorrow. ``It's not every day that you have an opportunity...