Free Republic

The fact that an FBI agent involved in the Clinton emails investigation was reportedly a partisan Democrat is not in itself damning. I’m taking a “wait and see” attitude on FBI agent Peter Strzok, who is now enmeshed in a political storm involving both the Clinton and the Trump investigations. You know why? Well . . . it’s because I can’t stand the Clintons. What difference does that make? Well, because I didn’t like them any better in 2001. That was when I used to run the satellite U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York — the office based in White...

In today’s big media news, gonzo video journalist James O’Keefe had yet another of his undercover sting operations blow up in his face. The Washington Post caught O’Keefe and his Veritas Project trying to scam the paper into running a false sexual abuse allegation against Roy Moore:

Our Constitution carefully separates the legislative, executive, and judicial powers into three separate branches of government: Congress enacts laws, which the president enforces and the courts review. However, when all of these powers are accumulated “in the same hands,” James Madison warned in Federalist No. 47, the government “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” The rise of the administrative state over the last century has pushed us closer and closer to the brink. Today, Congress enacts vague laws, the executive branch aggrandizes unbounded discretion, and the courts defer to those dictates. For decades, presidents of both parties...

Roy Moore is the Steve Bannon project in a nutshell. For the former Trump operative, the Alabama Senate candidate’s tattered credibility is a feature, not a bug. If Moore had well-considered political and legal views, good judgment and a sterling reputation, he’d almost by definition be part of the establishment that Bannon so loathes. Since Moore has none of those things, he’s nearly an ideal representative of the Bannon insurgency. Events in Alabama make it clear that Bannon’s dime-store Leninism — burn everything down, including perhaps the Republican Senate majority — comes at a considerable cost. In this project, the...

Roy Moore’s reputation depends on denying the allegation that he dated teenage girls as a grown man, and yet he can’t quite bring himself to do it. The Alabama Republican’s campaign for the Senate has been rocked by allegations of sexual improprieties with underage girls. While he’s denied the worst of the allegations, he turned in a rocky performance in an interview with radio talk-show host Sean Hannity that lent credence to the charges against him rather than dispelled them. The alleged conduct dates back 40 years and, absent some difficult-to-imagine documentary proof, it will always be Moore’s word against...

The allegations against Roy Moore are disgusting — and if you find yourself reluctant to say so because of your politics, then you’re pretty gross, too. The Leigh Corfman story, reported by the Washington Post, is about so much more than just some older guy having a relationship with some younger girl. That, of course, would be bad enough — many girls haven’t even had their f***ing periods at age 14 — but this is also about a man who abuses his power to prey on the powerless. It’s about a respected district attorney finding a girl in a vulnerable...

"Roy Moore is a dangerous man who never should have received the GOP nomination. Republican primary voters selected as their champion a person who seeks to suppress the civil rights of his fellow citizens and defies the law whenever it suits his ideological and political purposes. Even before today’s allegations, he was unfit to be a United States senator. Now the question is whether he’s dangerous, unfit, and vile. The Alabama GOP options for replacing him on the ballot are limited, at best. It’s time to consider a write-in challenge, and if he wins the election, the Senate should consider...

The editors of the National Review are back on their high horse again, recalling the days of their “Against Trump” issue devoted to foiling his quest for the GOP nomination.  This editorial in National Review, calling for a “time out” on the NFL for Trump (like some naughty preschooler) and calling for better “judgment” (in other words, their judgment) from the president: The president has conducted himself here in an unseemly fashion, to say the least, and has exhibited his remarkable knack for making everything he touches about him, which the NFL protests weren’t until he stuck his nose...

When, in November 2016, Nikki Haley was nominated U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Professor Charles Tiefer of the University of Baltimore reacted with outrage. "No one in the United Nations," Tiefer said, "will think that Haley is someone to talk to who will be either knowledgeable or close to the president." Tiefer must feel a bit stupid right now.

Is there an enduring American character? For those who view our nation as at a tipping point, the question is urgent. Others scoff, “Why?” After all, if the American character is truly enduring, it will endure — the ship eventually will right itself to the extent it is off course. And if not, history will inevitably evolve it into something better, right? My friend Mark Levin would counter that this is the wrong way to look at it. The foundation of Americanism, he posits, is natural law. That does not just spontaneously appear, nor passively persevere. Understanding our natural-law roots,...

...He did even worse; he launched a campaign of punitive lawsuits against anyone who criticized him. He has sued Mark Steyn, National Review Online, and climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball. Mann shot himself in the foot with that last. For several years, Mann had refused to produce his data for the court (in support of his own case), claiming that it was “proprietary.” After missing a February 20th deadline, he now finds himself in contempt. Under Canadian law, the court is now required to dismiss the suit. John O'Sullivan goes into detail: "The defendant in the libel trial, the 79-year-old Canadian...

To believe, in the 1980s, that Ronald Reagan was going to blow up the world may have been merely peculiar. To believe so today is a symptom of raging Reagan Derangement Syndrome. And yet here we are, with The Reagan Show, a new documentary rehashing the paranoid style of Reaganography, set for limited theatrical release on June 30 and video-on-demand release shortly thereafter. The continuing popularity of President Reagan is a source of profound irritation and unease to liberals. To assuage their pain, they have gone back to their initial rationalization for how Reagan became so beloved: He cheated. Though...

The LGBTQ+ Equality March has little to no basis in reality. Another week, another protest against the president. Russian hookers and pathetic attempts at infrastructure week aside, the never-ending cavalcade of self-aggrandizement has to be the most annoying feature of Trump’s America...  But the upcoming LGBTQ+ Equality March has little to no basis in reality. At the beginning of the century, Hillary Clinton was proudly declaring that marriage is between a man and a woman on the Senate floor while Barack Obama was doing so in the pages of The Audacity of Hope. Donald Trump did the same in a...

It’s magic: What can’t his nefarious powers not do? As a Nazi, President Trump has proved lackluster. The brownshirts and concentration camps that Hollywood types warned us to expect haven’t materialized. As an authoritarian, too, Trump is falling short of expectations: When judges defy his executive orders, he doesn’t send in the goon squads. He simply sends out a couple of tweets. Liberals these days, especially showbiz types, are subtly altering the way they frame Trump. They can’t plausibly identify anything he’s actually done as an outrage to the Republic. So they’re internalizing the supposed Trump threat, claiming injury to...

Fresh on the heels of a budget deal that fully funds Planned Parenthood, Donald Trump has signed a religious-liberty executive order that — if reports are correct — is constitutionally dubious, dangerously misleading, and ultimately harmful to the very cause that it purports to protect. In fact, he should tear it up, not start over, and do the actual real statutory and regulatory work that truly protects religious liberty.

"Second, where Le Pen fetishizes national division, Macron speaks of patriotism joined to opportunity. Even as words alone, this is a political narrative that France desperately needs. As Andrew Hussey explains in his 2014 book, The French Intifada, many young French Muslims feel that their citizenry exists on paper only — that when it comes to education, opportunity, and respect, their country has no interest in them. American conservatives should be alarmed by that sentiment. The glory of American patriotism is its combination of shared opportunity and personal responsibility. Indeed, American Muslims’ patriotism is proof that Le Pen is wrong....

Kate O’Beirne was part of National Review’s world before she joined the staff. When she became the magazine’s Washington editor in 1995 her resume already included stints at Senator Jim Buckley’s office, the Reagan administration, and the Heritage Foundation. She served NR in that position for eleven years and then became president of National Review Institute for six more.

If you follow the news with any diligence beyond reading the loudest early headlines and social-media clickbait, you are wearyingly familiar with the pattern of heavily-hyped “hate crimes” (ranging from violent crimes to nasty notes on restaurant receipts) that turn out to be “false flag” hoaxes, frequently perpetrated by the very sorts of left-leaning folks who make the stories go viral in the first place.

Why Baptists Should Support Muslims’ Right to Build Mosques Given the shift in American demographics, it might not be long before the Baptists are once again a powerless minority. And this time, it might be Muslims before whom they are pleading for ‘soul freedom.’

The billionaire brothers are pulling out all the stops in support of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Pity the interns who answer the phones in Colorado senator Michael Bennet’s office. Concerned Veterans for America estimates that as of March 2, it had connected with 80,000 Colorado supporters, urging them to phone Bennet’s office in an effort to convince him that he should support Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court. CVA is leading the Koch brothers’ network of libertarian-leaning advocacy groups in its effort to maximize pressure on senators to confirm Gorsuch.