Free Republic

Rand Paul launched a typically obnoxious attack on Gina Haspel today. Here is one account: “To really appoint the head cheerleader for waterboarding to be head of the CIA? How can you trust somebody who did that to be in charge of the CIA,” Paul wondered, adding, “To read of her glee during the waterboarding is just absolutely appalling.” Paul was referring to an account of a waterboarding session with suspected al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah, who was subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques now widely considered to be torture. ., . The problem is that this conduct appears to...

Donald Trump has sacked his national security advisor H.R. McMaster just days after ousting his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, as his purge of White House staff continues, it has been reported. Five people with knowledge of the plan have stated that Mr Trump is eyeing up several replacements for Mr McMaster that include former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton and the Chief of Staff for the National Security Council, Keith Kellogg. The dismissal of Mr McMaster has not been officially confirmed.

President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration. Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up, these people said. The turbulence is part of a broader potential shake-up under consideration...

As Republicans face a potential Democratic wave in this year's midterm elections, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake argued Thursday that his party "might not deserve to lead" given its support for President Donald Trump. "If we are going to cloister ourselves in the alternative truth of an erratic leader, if we are going to refuse to live in a world that everyone else lives in ... then my party might not deserve to lead," the Arizona senator said in a speech at the National Press Club.

CNN is pushing a story that compares ICE to Nazis, citing a Jewish woman who believes that deporting illegal immigrants is similar to actions the Nazis took during the Holocaust. In a tweet on Thursday, CNN wrote, “A Jewish woman heard an undocumented immigrant and her two daughters were on the run from ICE. Driven by thoughts of the Holocaust, she risked her own comfort to offer them shelter.” @CNN A Jewish woman heard an undocumented immigrant and her two daughters were on the run from ICE. Driven by thoughts of the Holocaust, she risked her own comfort to offer...

Republicans are citing numerous problems at polling sites in Tuesday's special election in Pennsylvania, which remains too close to officially call but appears to be trending toward an extremely narrow victory for Democrat Conor Lamb. [Snip] Among the listed concerns are "miscalibrated" voting machines in Allegheny County, the only county of four in the district that went for Lamb, according to the source, who said there have been many reports of voters who intended to vote for Saccone ending up casting a ballot for Lamb. Furthermore, Republicans say their attorneys were ejected from polling sites as the absentee ballots were...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Spoiled high school children across the country skipped class on Wednesday to go pretend to know something about guns and gun control policy. It was, like, totally rad, and of course Democrat politicians around the country exploited the kids’ acting out to make political points. San Fran Nan, Chuck Schumer and the execrable New York Governor Andrew Cuomo all made anti-gun speeches to groups of students while surrounded by security guards armed with…wait for it…you know what’s coming…guns! None of the kids noticed the irony in that, mainly because pretty much none...

There are two certainties following nearly every mass shooting event: Cable news television will have its programming schedule set for the next 72 hours, and a significant number of gun control advocates will reveal they lack even a basic understanding of the items they wish to regulate. The first certainty is to be expected. After all, if it bleeds it leads. The second certainty is more remarkable. It’s remarkable that so many proponents of stricter regulations appear to be generally ignorant of not just the minutiae of firearms, but also the basics. It’s also remarkable that this ignorance continues unabated,...

The abrupt firing Tuesday of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson follows months of infighting between the State Department and White House over efforts by Tillerson to save the Iran nuclear deal and ignore President Donald Trump's demands that the agreement be fixed or completely scrapped by the United States, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon. In the weeks leading up to Tillerson's departure, he had been spearheading efforts to convince European allies to agree to a range of fixes to the nuclear deal that would address Iran's ongoing ballistic missile...

As of this writing, Democrat Conor Lamb is clinging to a lead of roughly 600 votes in the special election for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District. There are probably not enough uncounted votes out there for Republican Rick Saccone to pull out the win. It also really doesn’t matter much, one way or the other (unless you are a Democrat living in the 18th who feels strongly about having a Democrat represent you in Washington). Here’s why: The House is increasingly polarized. There was a time that a narrowed House majority for a party would make for interesting politics in Washington,...

Women’s March Youth EMPOWER is calling for students, teachers, school administrators, parents and allies to take part in a #NationalSchoolWalkout for 17 minutes at 10am across every time zone on March 14, 2018 to protest Congress’ inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to the gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods. We need action. Students and allies are organizing the national school walkout to demand Congress pass legislation to keep us safe from gun violence at our schools, on our streets and in our homes and places of worship. Students and staff have the right...

The Clinton’s get busted again. It’s a never-ending saga that somehow always seems to out do itself. Special counsel Robert Mueller is getting the cooperation of a Lebanese-American businessman with ties to Arab royalty in his probe of foreign influence on the Trump presidential campaign, including the possibility of a back channel between the Kremlin and the Trump transition team. George Nader testified last week to the Mueller grand jury. Mr. Nader is an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates. According to The Times, Mr. Mueller...

So here’s where we are now. On Friday President Trump abruptly fired his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, forcing him to cut short a trip to Africa. https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/973550099585478657/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhurryupharry.org%2F2018%2F03%2F13%2Ftrump-fires-tillerson%2F https://twitter.com/AP/status/973592726787756032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhurryupharry.org%2F2018%2F03%2F13%2Ftrump-fires-tillerson%2F Although Tillerson and Trump publicly disagreed on many things, I found this particularly interesting: On the flight from Nigeria, Tillerson appeared to break with the White House in his assessment of the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He singled out Russia as responsible for the attack, echoing the finger-pointing of the British government. “It came from Russia,” Tillerson said, according to the Associated Press. “I cannot understand why...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) The Pantsuit Princess was in the news on Monday for rolling out yet more excuses for why she lost the presidential election in 2016. If you thought she had already blamed everyone else in the United States of America for her failure except for herself, boy, were you wrong. Speaking to an audience in India, of all places, where the great majority of the population is poor, uneducated and unproductive, the Coughing Crook blamed her loss on people who are poor, uneducated and unproductive. Oh, and they were all racists, too. No...

(Skip) “Most evangelical Christians like me exclaimed, ‘Who are these people?’” wrote Mark Galli, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, in his essay. “‘I know hardly anyone, let alone any evangelical Christian[s], who voted for Trump.’” In trying to understand Trump-supporting evangelicals, journalists and commentators have often smoothed over the vast diversity within evangelicalism. “Many of us shake our heads at the ‘evangelical leaders’ that the news media anoints for us,” wrote Tom Lin, the president of InterVarsity Fellowship, in his essay. (Skip) Fundamentalism, argued Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, is the driving force behind the...

Clapper allegedly leaked information to CNN in early last year regarding the classified briefing given to then President-Elect Donald Trump and President Barrack Obama on the salacious dossier and its contents claiming the Russians had compromising information on the president-elect, according to government sources, who noted the evidence of the leak was collected during the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation. Clapper, who was one of four senior Obama administration officials to attend the briefing with the presidents, also stated his “profound dismay at the leaks” in an official statement issued in January, 2017 and warned that the leaks were “extremely...

Two student survivors of last month’s deadly shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school are urging President Donald Trump to break his ties with the National Rifle Association and live up to his pledge to push for stricter U.S. gun laws.

(CNN)Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee reached an opposite conclusion Monday from the intelligence community they oversee, announcing that Russian President Vladimir Putin was not trying to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election.

CNN has claimed that a Russian anti-Hillary Clinton video game titled Hilltendo, played only 19,000 times, influenced the 2016 presidential election, prompting mockery of the news outlet online. Dedicating over 1,600 words to the cartoon flash game Hilltendo, which lets you play as Clinton riding a bomb while she destroys emails, CNN claimed the game was part of a Russian effort to influence the 2016 presidential election, prompting mockery from Russian news outlets and Twitter users alike.

Obama and Netflix have found the way to legitimize Fake News Did former president Barack Obama learn the ropes to be a Netflix prime content producer from his 19-year-old daughter, Malia, who herself learned the ropes at disgraced Harvey Weinstein’s New York production company? It certainly now looks that way. Both Malia’s mother and father will be live streamed talking heads on Netflix following what the New York Times called “advanced negotiations” to produce a series of programs that would be exclusive to the company, which is said to be allocating $8 billion toward acquiring new and original content this...