Free Republic

One could say Virginia Democrats got what they deserved for getting involved with the Lincoln Project in the run-up to Tuesday’s election. There was the incident last Friday when the Lincoln Project paid Democrat Party officials to dress as “white supremacists” and volunteer for Republican Glenn Youngkin’s campaign. The stunt failed, the perpetrators were identified, and Democrats were left with egg on their faces for trying to paint the leader of the most diverse statewide ticket in Virginia history as a racist. As noteworthy as that was, it did not change the trajectory of the race. The tide had turned...

Dozens of jobs were slashed at HuffPost that day, following a round of layoffs at Gannett Media; further jobs were about to be disappeared at BuzzFeed. It was a grim day for the media, and I just wanted to channel my tiny part of the prevailing gloom. Then the responses started rolling in—some sympathy from fellow journalists and readers, then an irritating gush of near-identical responses: “Learn to code.” “Maybe learn to code?” “BETTER LEARN TO CODE THEN.” “Learn to code you useless bitch.” Alongside these tweets were others: “Stop writing fake news and crap.” “MAGA.” “Your opinions suck and...

**SNIP** The Russia-interference-was-no-big-deal crowd also clings to the fact there’s no evidence of the greatest fear when it comes to election stealing — that hackers accessed electronic voting systems on election night and changed vote totals to hand the contest to Trump. And yet — buried beneath the headlines on Friday’s indictments — were two largely new revelations that dramatically elevated the possibility that Russian meddling wasn’t just morally and criminally wrong but actually went a long way toward snatching victory away from Clinton and handed it to Trump on Election Day. — Hacking of state voter rolls. — The...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s Twitter cannon roared over the weekend as the latest turn in the Russia investigation seemingly placed him on the defensive. He denied he had ever absolved Russia of meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, despite his plentiful record of voicing doubts on that question.Resurrecting an old tale from the campaign, Trump also described a diplomatic transaction between the U.S. and Iran during the Obama years as a dark plot that should have been investigated by U.S. authorities. The transaction actually was money the U.S. owed to Iran from decades ago and one in a...

A photograph of then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan that was taken in 2005 at a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, DC, was released Saturday after a 13-year cover-up to protect Obama’s political career. Journalist Askia Muhammad told TriceEdneyWire.com that he took the photograph after Obama had engaged “in a warm conversation with constituent and fellow Chicagoan Minister Louis Farrakhan.” However, he realized that the photograph could endanger Obama’s presidential ambitions, which were already being widely discussed. Farrakhan is a black supremacist and antisemite who also holds anti-gay views. Rumors of an...

With lawmakers preparing to vote on a bill blocking parents from skipping vaccinations for their children, prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived at the Sacramento screening of a film linking autism to the vaccine preservative thimerosal and warned that public health officials cannot be trusted. “They can put anything they want in that vaccine and they have no accountability for it,” said Kennedy, who walked onto and left a Crest Theater stage to standing ovations, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Wednesday afternoon will see the first hearing for a bill eliminating the personal belief...

Imagine there's no IRS. It isn't hard to do. No Obamacare to pay for. And no budget deficits too. Imagine all the people, living with a flat tax. You may say Ted Cruz is a dreamer, but he's not the only one. He hopes some day—especially if you live in Iowa—you'll join him, and, well, he'll be president. That, at least, was the message during his announcement, oddly redolent of John Lennon, that he's officially seeking the highest office in the land. It was a conservative wish list to not only repeal the 21st century, but the 20th, too. About...

In her upcoming book “Off the Sidelines,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., reveals she was the subject of insensitive comments about her weight from male colleagues in the House and Senate. According to an excerpt posted by PEOPLE magazine, Gillibrand details an incident in her book where a male colleague  saw her in the gym said, “Good thing you’re working out, because you wouldn’t want to get porky!” According to the Huffington Post, Gillibrand responded, “”Thanks, a–hole.”

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)KRYSTAL BALL: Next Monday is Patriots' Day in Boston and thousands of modern patriots will take to the streets to run, to celebrate and to come together out of tragedy, proving true the words of our pledge, one nation, under God, indivisible. That word though, patriot, has become a really loaded one. To see what I mean, consider Cliven Bundy, the rancher who has refused to pay the people of the U.S. what he owes for use of our land because he views the U.S. federal government as a foreign interloper. Mr. Bundy denies the legitimacy of our republic. And...

A year after being clumsily removed from the web following complaints, a controversial paper about “the possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science” is being retracted. The paper, “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation,” was authored by Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Klaus Oberauer, and Michael Marriott, and published in Frontiers in Psychology: Personality Science and Individual Differences. Here’s the retraction notice, which isn’t live on the journal’s site yet: In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers...

Missouri Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill said on Wednesday that America's $17 trillion debt threatens to put the nation "in a position where we're not a first-tier nation anymore." McCaskill added, "I do believe a $17 trillion debt is irresponsible. I do believe that." McCaskill's Kansas City comments were part of her "McCaskill on Main Street" tour. The Missouri Democrat explained that the federal government is now doing things it should not be doing because lawmakers "want to be loved." "We have ourselves doing things the federal government was never intended to do. I mean, we weren't supposed to be buying...

Louisiana and a national left-leaning political group may be headed to court over a Baton Rouge area billboard that criticizes Gov. Bobby Jindal. Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne sent a cease-and-desist order to MoveOn on Thursday, asking the advocacy organization to take down a billboard along Interstate 10 that parodies Louisiana’s “Pick your Passion” tourism slogan. The billboard, which mentions Jindal by name, is critical of the governor and legislators’ decision not to expand the state Medicaid program under federal health care reform. “LOU!SIANA Pick your passion! But hope you don’t love your health. Gov. Jindal’s denying Medicaid to 242,000 people,”...

This is actually an update to a story which first broke last October and it takes place in upstate New York’s 23rd congressional district, currently represented by Republican Tom Reed. Democrat hopeful Martha Robertson is seeking to unseat Reed and has run into some tough sledding in terms of attracting donors and broad support. But last fall she appeared to have hit upon an idea to generate some sympathy (and cash) when she sent out the following fundraising e-mail. (Revealed by Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection.) Clearly that’s a pretty serious charge, and if either the Reed campaign or the...

Secretary of State John Kerry continues to assert, misleadingly, that the signing of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement will immediately usher in peaceful relations between the Jewish state and the world’s Islamic nations. He has made the statement several times in public since launching the drive last July for a “final status” Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Citing the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (API), he says, if Israelis and Palestinians agree to a negotiated settlement then all 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will normalize ties with Israel. He has said moreover that this would happen “instantaneously”—“the minute” that an Israeli-Palestinian...

I'm usually a lurker here, but I may have something to contribute today. :) I was listening to a hard core Liberal in another non political forum I frequent go on and on about how Obama just implemented the Republican healthcare plan that the Heritage Foundation suggested. I have read about the Heritage Foundation spin before, but this seems to really be popping up a lot on my journeys around the interwebs lately so I did a little digging and noticed that pretty much all of the Wiki pages about the ACA have very recently been edited to insert the...

It was one of the most iconic, most agonizing, most rebroadcast moments of TV coverage after Hurricane Katrina. Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Sept. 4, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard sobbed as he told of a colleague's mother begging her son, day after maddening day, to be rescued: "The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything," said Broussard, justifiably upset by the slow federal response. "His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, `Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he...

Stephanie S. Cordle/Associated Press Jenna Bush, campaigning for her father last week, makes an unintended splash. WASHINGTON — Well, that was a fine how-do-you do. This was supposed to be the new Jenna Bush. Fresh out of college, ready to shed the "Jenna and Tonic'' image she earned as a partying undergraduate, she posed for Vogue in a couture gown and declared an interest in working with charter schools. It was all a prelude to becoming a public figure at 22 and heading out on the campaign trail for Dear Old Dad. Then last week she stuck out her...

The Veep Needs a Wig By Robert Haught Potomac Junction WASHINGTON -- The handwriting is on the wall for Dick Cheney. The vice president's future political fate was sealed when John Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate. The Democrats now have two white guys with lots of money and lots of hair seeking to recapture the White House in November. The Republicans also have two rich white guys, and President Bush has a presentable head of hair. But the balding Cheney is no match for the blow-dried senator from North Carolina. If the GOP has any chance of...

Democrat queen Barbra Streisand is in a Daschle-like snit over CBS's decision to dump its vicious miniseries "The Reagans" into the lap of Showtime. "Indeed, today marks a sad day for artistic freedom - one of the most important elements of an open and democratic [sic] society," said Malibu Barbi, whose hubby, James Brolin, stars in Viacom's $16 million embarrassment. Of course, Babs and the other self-styled defenders of free expression wailing over the demotion of "The Reagans" were failed to support Dr. Laura Schlessinger from left-wing attacks and boycotts that forced her off the TV airwaves.