Free Republic

A racism scandal in Madison struck a national chord this week— the New York Times reported on it, CNN reported on it, Cher even offered to help. When Marlon Anderson, a black security guard, politely asked a student to stop calling him the n-word he was fired for inappropriate language. I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in. The incident spread rapidly. Yes, social media expedites the spread of stories but I couldn’t help but think this story must have been bigger than just one isolated event. There had to be some universal component. So what was it...

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday blasted right-wing commentators who have questioned National Security Council official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s loyalty, calling such pundits “chickenshit.” After it was reported that Vindman would testify to Congress that he twice raised concerns to his superiors over President Trump’s infamous July call to the Ukrainian president, Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, ex-Bush Administration official John Yoo, and CNN contributor Sean Duffy all suggested Vindman was a Ukrainian double agent. After playing a clip of Yoo claiming “some people might call [Vindman’s actions] espionage,” Wallace railed: “Except those people aren’t chickenshit...

I want to thank Claremont for the opportunity to reply to Michael Anton’s review of my book Bronze Age Mindset. Since at least 2015—but in fact from before Trump ever came along—there has been a tremendous intellectual disturbance or ferment online...that has escaped the notice or surveillance of the mainstream media, the literary and pundit-political establishment, and all those who imagine themselves gatekeepers of public taste and opinion. Trump’s campaign beginning in 2015 brought this countercultural phenomenon to view of the authorities, who have been struggling to understand it and contain it ever since. What are the “crazy Pepe frog...

FARGO — A Fargo man is on a mission to expose local massage parlors for what he believes they are — fronts for commercial sex and human trafficking. Keith Coates, 26, said he visited four such parlors in the metro area, all with the same result — an unmistakable offer from the masseuse for a sexual service in exchange for money, which he declined each time. “I couldn’t believe it. It just seemed so surreal,” said Coates, who has worked as a massage therapist in Fargo for more than two years. In addition, he said he has what he believes...

The spineless Republicans in the Senate should come to the realization that if they do convict the president and do impeach him and remove him from office that he will not be able to retaliate in any way. Once he is no longer a sitting president, I believe he will be indicted for all the crimes he has perpetrated on our country and he will be put away for a long time. Please take that long look in the mirror and realize that a mistake was made and do what’s right for our country. All the president’s men will take...

Rep. Elijah Cummings’s funeral Friday, marked by speeches from Barack Obama, the Clintons, and Cummings’s family, was as much a heartfelt celebration of a man who dedicated his life to public service as it was an indictment of President Donald Trump’s character in office. In his last months, Cummings, who chaired the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform — one of the committees carrying out the impeachment inquiry into Trump —became the subject of Trump’s ire. Trump called Cummings a “brutal bully” in July and derided the Congress member’s Baltimore district as the “worst in the USA,” a “rat...

A few days ago men removed some female figurines (centerpieces for several weird ceremonies in Rome the last few weeks) from a church and tossed them into the Tiber River. Vatican spokesman Paolo Ruffini dismissed the act as a “stunt”. Regardless of how one assess this act, however, I think it not accurate to describe it as a mere “stunt”. A “stunt” is a gesture that calls attention to a problem but does not itself solve the problem. For example, chaining oneself to a lamppost could call attention to the plight of the unjustly imprisoned but does not itself free...

“Today, more than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, America is again divided, by geography, party, ideology, economics and race.” —From “Is America Heading For Another Civil War?” Austin Sarat on July 30, 2019. The debate over the merits of Donald John Trump’s presidency continue with no sign of closure in sight. The constituency that elected him has remained steadfast in its support, as the marginalized and ethnically diverse who oppose him, stay at odds with his policies and (in their view) offensive rhetoric. Vast segments of the psychiatric community, including the editorial staff of Psychology Today,...

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) defended his oft-used analogies comparing President Donald Trump and his administration to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany amid widespread criticism. “It is the comparison of last resort and that is where we are,” O’Rourke replied when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer questioned if he understood the backlash coming from Democrats and Republicans alike. “I don’t mean the last resort politically or last resort in terms of defeating the president in November,” he explained. “[I mean] the last resort for this country that is descending into open racism and intolerance and violence led by the president.” “Now, whether...

London (CNN) — Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, will take a break from royal duties towards the end of the year, dividing their time between the US and the UK, a royal source has told CNN. Confirmation of a break comes hours before an ITV documentary filmed during the couple's recent South Africa tour is broadcast in the UK.

Watergate is the ur-text for how Americans imagine the defeat of a sitting president, but it shouldn’t be how to think about the impeachment of Donald Trump. Watergate was a formative political experience for many of the older Democrats who run the House of Representatives these days. And the semi-fictionalized version of the scandal portrayed on film in All the President’s Men is an emotional and intellectual touchstone for many journalists. To this day, it’s conventional to denote the existence of a political scandal by appending “-gate” to a noun, as if “Watergate” had to with water rather than originating...

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, gave a rare glimpse into her personal life when she admitted that she has struggled to deal with the repercussions of being a new mother in the spotlight. A snippet of the her powerful interview with reporter Tom Bradby was released by ITV on Friday. The clip is a part of the British television channel's documentary, "Harry & Meghan: An African Journey," which will be released in the UK on Sunday. In the video, Meghan talks about the issues she's grappled with as a new wife, mother, and duchess whose life has been judged and dissected...

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) told CNN Friday that President Trump should be impeached after acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said the Trump administration had frozen military aid as leverage to get Ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory about a DNC server. "To me, it's totally inappropriate. It's an abuse of power. Now I know that there are presidents that will withhold aid because they have policy differences, but this is not a policy difference. So my view is that — look, I fought with people on the air about 'Is there a quid pro quo?' and 'Does...

Trump has already “flipped” the Third Circuit. He’s made serious inroads on other circuits. Now, he’s posed to fully flip the Eleventh Circuit. At the outset of the Trump administration, it had an 8-3 Democratic majority (with one vacancy). So that’s an impressive swing. One administration, not even in power for three years, has flipped the federal circuit for Florida, Georgia, and Alabama from 8-3 Democrat to 7-5 Republican, with a majority of those Republicans being Trump judges.

Laurence Tribe explains why Congress should aim to work at three speeds. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke to Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard, about some of the legal questions the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s behavior has brought up. A portion of that conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, is below. Dahlia Lithwick: We’ve had quite anxious listener mail this week saying, what does Congress do? What teeth can Congress put into a system where essentially the nihilist argument has been made—“I spit on your system, your system does not...

President Trump isn’t the first American leader to turn his back on foreign friends who were counting on U.S. assistance: President Dwight D. Eisenhower did it in Hungary in 1956; President John F. Kennedy in Cuba in 1961; and President Gerald Ford in South Vietnam in 1975. But no previous chief executive has ever sold out the United States’ allies as nonchalantly and unnecessarily as Trump has done with the Syrian Kurds. At least with Eisenhower, Kennedy and Ford, there was a good reason they failed to come to the aid of freedom fighters: Doing so would have embroiled the...

A Portland antifascist activist was killed in the early hours of Saturday in an apparent hit-and-run near Cider Riot, a cidery and taproom popular with the city’s anarchist left that has been the scene of conflict with rightwing groups. According to the Portland Police Bureau, the car involved was fired upon and crashed into a nearby building. Its occupants fled the scene. Police said in a statement that the 23-year-old victim, Sean D Kealiher, was taken to a local hospital by associates. The Multnomah county medical examiner determined the cause of death to be homicide, caused by blunt force trauma....

The moment may come when soldiers have to choose between the Constitution and Donald Trump. No doubt most will embrace the Constitution. But some will see that as a tough call. Earlier this week Donald Trump, commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, tweeted that his impeachment “will cause a Civil War” from which the country might never recover. Picking up on remarks made by an evangelical pastor on Fox News, Trump did not just say his removal would lead to a huge electoral defeat for the Democrats, or even mass demonstrations. He said “civil war”. Americans taking up...

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci did not mince words about President Trump on Friday, calling him a "traitor to the United States." Appearing on CNN, Scaramucci accused Trump of "disavowing his oath to the Constitution" for asking Ukraine and China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden over their financial ties with the two countries during the Obama administration. Scaramucci, who served for only a very short time in the White House earlier in Trump's term of office, labeling his actions "disgusting" and referred to the controversy as "systemic criminality." "He's under a...

Of all the reasons to start a civil war, preserving slavery is the worst. But keeping President Trump in power is pretty high up on the list. On Sunday, Trump tweeted the following statement by evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress: "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal." Jeffress isn't the only one predicting civil strife. Rudy Giuliani warned that impeaching Trump would risk "domestic tranquillity [sic]." Franklin Graham said that impeachment "could lead to...