Free Republic

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin speculated on Sunday that more Republicans will die of coronavirus than Democrats. Appearing on MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” Rubin blamed media consumed by supporters of President Donald Trump, including Fox News, for downplaying the threat and keeping their “core viewers” from taking precautions. There is a particular cruelty/irony that it is their core viewers, the Republican older viewers, who are the most at risk,” Rubin said. “And when you think about it, which party immediately canceled all of their rallies? Which party immediately started having their political figures really portray and use their lies as an example?...

... let's look at Morford assessment of Pruitt (bolds are mine throughout this post): Why the EPA director’s security now costs $2 million ... Behold, this banally evil, milquetoast, science-denying government administrator who now, due to an unprecedented, surprising-but-then-again-not-really number of death threats – the agency has already investigated 70 so far – demands a round-the-clock security detail, one totaling dozens of henchmen making six figures apiece and costing taxpayers more than $2 million a year, a ridiculous situation unheard of in the modern era. It is yours to ponder why. Here's a wild guess, Mark: The far-left has become...

Among Donald Trump's many shortcomings are the vast amount of history he doesn't know and the little he does. Perhaps someone told him that when Richard Nixon faced an unwelcome investigation, he fired the investigator. Perhaps no one told him it only made Nixon's plight worse. Trump owes most of his achievements to his talent for getting attention. Whether the attention was positive or negative was immaterial. His fame became larger and more lucrative either way. In the White House, though, making yourself conspicuous is not always a winning tactic. By firing the FBI director who was in charge of...

On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump may have unleashed his most bone-chilling tweet -- at least to those who believe the United States should not become a Trump-led dictatorship. And I don't make that comment simply to be provocative or without giving it a great deal of thought. Our democracy is far more fragile than some might grasp and Trump is engaging in a concerned effort to undermine the workings of it. Here is Trump's truly jaw-dropping tweet from Saturday morning: "The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be...

He entered the White House a living symbol, breaking a color line that stood for 220 years. Barack Obama took office, and race immediately became a focal point in a way that was unprecedented in American history. No matter his accomplishments, he seemed destined to be remembered foremost as the first black man to lead the world’s most powerful nation. But eight years later, Obama’s racial legacy is as complicated as the president himself. […] Perhaps most strikingly, the president’s successor, Donald Trump, is seen by many as the antithesis of a colorblind society, a one-time leader of the “birther”...

More than a third of all the trees in California – more than 100 million of them, covering roughly 7.7 million acres – are dead. But it’s OK, because the forests are largely empty anyway, given how we as a glorious human species have thoughtfully killed off half of all animals on planet Earth, all in just the past 45 years or so, because people.

For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations—all of it still unsolved and unpunished. Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22...

Hillary Clinton may have been unwise to say half of Donald Trump's supporters are racists and other "deplorables." But she wasn’t wrong. If anything, when it comes to Trump's racist support, she might have low-balled the number.

BALTIMORE — Hillary Clinton may have been unwise... But she wasn’t wrong. If anything, when it comes to Trump’s racist support, she might have low-balled the number. ..... But this isn’t a matter of gratuitous name-calling. This election has proved that there is much more racism in America than many believed. It came out of hiding in opposition to the first African American president, and it has been welcomed into the open by Trump. The American National Election Studies, the long-running, extensive poll of American voters, asked voters in 2012 a basic test of prejudice: to rank black and white...

You may have heard that the government is forcing businesses not to discriminate. It isn’t. If you chose to run a business, you have to follow the laws. If you don’t, that’s a choice—and you choose to suffer the consequences. Still, in the wake of the controversy surrounding Indiana’s law, conservatives don’t see it that way. Even potential Republican presidential candidates are getting in on the assertions. Rick Santorum recently said: If you’re a print shop and you are a gay man, should you be forced to print ‘God Hates Fags’ for the Westboro Baptist Church because they hold those...

Have we gone stark raving mad? The question is brought to mind by the new gun law signed last week in Georgia by Gov. Nathan Deal. You might have thought that since the United States couldn't possibly have more permissive firearms laws than it does now, nothing more could be done to coddle the gun lobby and tip the balance of our statutes away from law enforcement. Alas, you would be wrong. The creativity of the National Rifle Association and other organizations devoted to establishing conditions in which every man, woman and child in our nation will have to be...

From Phil Robertson to Megyn Kelly, peddling white grievance became a bigger, crazier, more lucrative racket. Maybe it was the very fact of enjoying a wonderful Christmas with my family and friends, against the manufactured backlash to a nonexistent “War on Christmas,” that let me appreciate the perilous mental state of a small but noisy and paranoid swath of white America. Somehow over the holiday it became clear: 2013 was the year white grievance mongering became an uglier and even more lucrative racket. Fox News has been peddling the phony “War on Christmas” for years, of course, but it...

Bush’s legacy keeps getting worse By Eugene Robinson, Published: April 25 In retrospect, George W. Bush’s legacy doesn’t look as bad as it did when he left office. It looks worse. I join the nation in congratulating Bush on the opening of his presidential library in Dallas. Like many people, I find it much easier to honor, respect and even like the man — now that he’s no longer in the White House. But anyone tempted to get sentimental should remember the actual record of the man who called himself The Decider. Begin with the indelible stain that one of...

I SAW “Argo” with Jerry Rafshoon, who was a top aide to President Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis, when six Americans escaped and were given sanctuary for three months by courageous Canadian diplomats. We were watching a scene where a C.I.A. guy can’t get through to Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief of staff, to sign off on plane tickets for the escaping hostages, so he pretends to be calling from the school where Jordan’s kids go. “Hamilton wasn’t married then and didn’t have any kids,” Jerry whispered, inflaming my pet peeve about filmmakers who make up facts in stories about...

As he tries to engineer a comeback in this week's presidential debate, President Barack Obama needs to recognize two things. First, when it comes to politics, Mitt Romney treats himself as a product, not a person. Second, Republicans cannot defend their proposals in terms that are acceptable to a majority of voters. Romney, Ryan and the entire right know that their most deeply held belief – the one on which they won't compromise – is rejected by the vast majority of Americans. That's their faith that every problem in the economy and in society can be solved by throwing more...

Justice Antonin Scalia needs to resign from the Supreme Court. He’d have a lot of things to do. He’s a fine public speaker and teacher. He’d be a heck of a columnist and blogger. But he really seems to aspire to being a politician — and that’s the problem. So often, Scalia has chosen to ignore the obligation of a Supreme Court justice to be, and appear to be, impartial. He’s turned “judicial restraint” into an oxymoronic phrase. But what he did this week, when the court announced its decision on the Arizona immigration law, should be the end of...

It's understandable if unfortunate that the controversy surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin has polarized the country along both racial and ideological lines. But there is one issue that should not have any racial connotations: the urgency of repealing "Stand Your Ground" laws. And leave it to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to speak the blunt truth about why these laws are dangerous -- and why the National Rifle Association keeps pushing them anyway. "In reality," Bloomberg said in a speech before the National Press Club last week, "the NRA's leaders weren't interested in public safety. They were interested in...

Maureen Dowd is a woman of many talents. She is, of course, a New York Times featured columnist, a Pulitzer Prize winning commentator, and the liberals acknowledged Queen of Snark. Ms. Dowd has also completely blown a gasket, if her column of last week (April 5th) is any indication of her psychological-emotional state. In her column of last week entitled, Men In Black, Maureen employs language and phraseology that her fellow liberals would quickly label “hate speech” if it were uttered by their foes. Ms. Dowd assails the Supreme Court in the most personal and vitriolic terms for their...

WASHINGTON — How dare President Barack Obama brush back the Supreme Court like that? Has this former constitutional law instructor no respect for our venerable system of checks and balances? Nah. And why should he? This court, cosseted behind white marble pillars, out of reach of TV, accountable to no one once they give the last word, is well on its way to becoming one of the most divisive in modern U.S. history. It has squandered even the semi-illusion that it is the unbiased, honest guardian of the Constitution. It is run by hacks dressed up in black robes. All...

Go ahead, call it shooting fish in a barrel. As soon as Ed Schultz mentioned at the top of his MSNBC show this evening that Alan Grayson would be a guest, you knew the former Dem congressman from Florida would say something outrageous. Sure enough, the guy who was roundly defeated last time around—but is giving it another go—delivered, claiming that Newt Gingrich is running "the most overtly racist campaign" since George Wallace. Grayson also managed to work in a reference to the Ten Commandment's prohibition of adultery. View the video here.