Free Republic

What was Obama doing while terrorists attacked Americans in Benghazi? You couldn’t help but feel for Robert Lovell. The retired brigadier general is haunted by the failure of AFRICOM, the U.S. military’s Africa Command, to respond when Americans were under siege in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. His congressional testimony this week was somber — no faux “What difference, at this point, does it make?” indignation, no “Dude, this was two years ago” juvenilia for him. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the State Department’s Sean Smith were killed in the early stage of the jihadist attack. By then, the actions that...

We know that we’re not going to deport all of these people. Why we’re waiting so long to make these de facto citizens legal makes no political sense.

So Why is Mark Steyn No Longer at National Review? I didn't even find him in the contributing editors section. I do go to www.steynonline.com but reading Steyn was a good 40% of why I subscribe to NR.

The Wall Street Journal reported last night that House Speaker John Boehner told donors at a fundraiser last month in Las Vegas that he was “hellbent on getting this done this year,” in reference to an amnesty/immigration bill. His spokesman did not dispute the account. In related news, President Obama is meeting with the National Commander of the American Legion this morning. Ordinarily, that would mean little, but the meeting comes just days after the Legion came out against a plan to amnesty illegal aliens who join the military. The number of people who would benefit from such an amnesty...

Rice’s recent speaking gigs on college campuses and her ascension to the board of the file-sharing company Dropbox have sparked protests calling for her to be disinvited, cashiered and generally isolated and shamed --snip-- When the University of Minnesota invited her to give a lecture Thursday as part of a series marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the herd of independent minds that is the school’s faculty roused itself. Roughly 200 of them demanded that the invitation be revoked, mostly for her association with George W. Bush’s interrogation and detention policies, but also because she is unfit...

March 29, 2014 4:00 AM Which Side Are You On? If you don’t care whether Republicans win, care that Democrats lose. By Kevin D. Williamson For conservatives, the story of the Obama years has been the depressing spectacle of Republicans fighting a rearguard action covering their retreat from a Democratic agenda backed by superior numbers. Republicans began the Obama administration with effectively no leverage: Barack Obama in the White House, Nancy Pelosi in the speaker’s chair, and Harry Reid running the Senate. The outcome of that was the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the worst domestic defeat for the...

Has Nancy Pelosi seen a newspaper lately? (Pro tip, hon: As with the Obamacare monstrosity, you have to read it to find out what’s in it.) I’d love to see her face in the wake of the veritable epidemic of Democratic corruption now sweeping the country. Pelosi’s blink count must be off the charts. to make it easy on Pelosi and put all of the latest cases in one handy rogues’-gallery reference list. But let’s not be naïve. It’s clear to me that the Barack Obama/Eric Holder DOJ is clearing the decks before the midterms. Prediction: The FBI’s GOP corruption...

here’s an old joke about what the newspaper you read — remember reading newspapers? — said about you: The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country, the New York Times is read by the people who think they run the country, the Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country, the Boston Globe is read by people whose grandparents used to do a damned fine job of running the country, the San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure whether there is a country or if anybody’s running...

WASHINGTON, February 21, 2014 – Hang around Republican circles long enough and you will hear, “We have got to stop these circular firing squads.” The logic is simple; Republicans are killing themselves with internecine wars instead of going out and defeating liberals. It is a great theory. Perhaps the best word for it is theory. As conservatives are discovering, though, what Republicans who complain about the circular firing squad really want is a semi-circular firing squad. These voices in the Republican Party want conservatives to stop shooting at them, while they try to take out insurgent conservatives. Texas Senator...

The Nevada Division of Insurance must turn over records regarding Obamacare navigators’ criminal histories, Carson City district judge James E. Wilson Jr. ordered yesterday. Unless the division manages to get a stay, it is required to release the public records next week. Joined by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, National Review filed the lawsuit in January after the Division of Insurance refused to turn over any responsive records — that is, records relevant to our inquiry — whatsoever, stonewalling the two publications for weeks. NR filed a records request in Nevada after discovering eleven name-matches between Nevada Obamacare navigators and criminal...

I believe Mark Steyn’s new column is a triumph, and wrote him on Friday to say that. The ensuing critical take on it by my colleague, Jason Steorts, left me shaking my head. My diminished intelligence, compared to NR’s Big Brains, should lead me to remain quiet, but I won’t.One brother — or sister, or let’s say a sibling — of the gay issue, from the perspective of the Left, is environmentalism. Or, specifically, “global warming,” now in its 2.0 version as “climate change.” Its advocates pronounce their positions with utmost scientific certainty, and just as eagerly label their foes...

Today I'm launching a fund and I wonder whether anyone would like to contribute. Please, I implore you all, PLEASE chip in to help finance Professor Michael Mann's suit for defamation against sinister, right-wing Canadian climate-change denier Mark Steyn and the fascist-denialist organ for which Steyn writes, National Review Online! I don't think Mann is going to win his case, not for one fraction of a millisecond. That's why I think it's so important that we give him all the financial encouragement we can at this sensitive early stage. There's a danger that Mann may yet take advice from his...

This column originally appeared in the January 27th print edition of National Review: America is a land of acronyms, and, useful as they are, acronyms can quickly curdle into jargon. SLAPP stands for "strategic lawsuit against public participation" — i.e., using legal action to cow an opponent into silence, and withdrawal from the public square. It was coined in the Eighties by Penelope Canan and George W. Pring at the University of Denver, and in the Nineties they turned it into a book: SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out. And it proved so influential that by the Oughts various jurisdictions...

National Review Online (NRO) is currently running an ad/article explaining that Professor Michael Mann, the creator of the highly questionable "hockey stick" graph that global warming alarmists latched onto to pummel the entire world with dour warnings about the effects of man-made CO2 emissions on life as we know it, is suing NRO and Mark Steyn for defamation of character: ******** "Let me recap: A lawsuit has been formally filed by Professor Michael Mann against National Review and Mark Steyn. You know Mann: The Penn State academic and self-proclaimed (and bogus) Nobel Peace Prize awardee best known, famously and infamously,...

Enlarge Image Public figure? Michael Mann must prove he isn't a private figure, among other challenges, if he is to win in a new libel case. Credit: Wikimedia/Pennsylvania State University Climate scientist Michael Mann is hoping for yet another court victory in his battle with climate skeptics. Earlier this week, the Pennsylvania State University researcher filed a libel lawsuit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia against two conservative commentators and their respective publications over their attacks on his research. Legal experts say he stands a shot at getting at least part of his libel case heard...

On Tuesday morning, January 21st, I filed a motion with respect to Dr Michael Mann's defamation suit against me, National Review, Rand Simberg, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. I did so because I felt the procedural fiasco the case has been reduced to since last July 10th thanks to the incompetence of the previous judge, Natalia Combs Greene, required what I called "an act of jurisprudential hygiene" from the new judge, Frederick Weisberg. Unfortunately, the DC Superior Court seems disinclined to clean up its act. I appreciate that, to those who followed the fun and frolics of my free speech...

It’s hardly notable when a climate scientist’s findings come under attack from right wing pundits, but it definitely turns heads if they compare that scientist to a child molester. Even more unusual is if that scientist—in this case, Penn State climatologist Michael Mann—retaliates by suing for libel.

Get specific. That’s the message conservative intellectuals and strategists have for the Republican Party as it faces an assault from President Obama and Democrats on issues resonant with struggling voters such as the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits. Obama’s income inequality push comes as the tide appears to be rising for the left on economic and social issues, something evident in everything from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s election to the legal selling of marijuana in Colorado. Some conservatives fear that the party has failed to make its case on how its policies can improve the lives...

<p>“We believe the next step is to use this as an opportunity for Phil to sit down with gay families in Louisiana and learn about their lives and the values they share,” the spokesman said.</p> <p>Actually, “the next step” is for you thugs to push off and stop targeting, threatening and making demands of those who happen to disagree with you. Personally, I think this would be a wonderful opportunity for the GLAAD executive board to sit down with half-a-dozen firebreathing imams and learn about their values, but, unlike the Commissars of the Bureau of Conformity Enforcement, I accord even condescending little ticks like the one above the freedom to arrange his own social calendar. Unfortunately, GLAAD has had some success with this strategy, prevailing upon, for example, the Hollywood director Brett Ratner to submit to GLAAD re-education camp until he had eaten sufficient gay crow to be formally rehabilitated with a GLAAD “Ally” award.</p>

"Obamacare was sold on a trinity of lies." That ornate phrase, more suitable for the Book of Revelations or perhaps the next installment of "Game of Thrones," comes from my National Review colleague Rich Lowry. But I like it. Most people know the first deception in the triumvirate of deceit: "If you like your health insurance you can keep it, period." The second leg in the tripod of deception was "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." But the third plank in the triad of disinformation hasn't gotten much attention: Obamacare will save you, me and the...