Free Republic

If you can't define the problem, then you can't solve it. It's that simple This is what the failed establishment sounds like. After decades of failure, it’s still the same tired old echo. “Don’t offend the Muslims or they won’t help us fight Islamic terrorism.”

MCMASTER OF THE UNIVERSE: Dead Drop sources almost universally breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday when President Trump appointed LT Gen H.R. McMaster as National Security Advisor. McMaster literally wrote the book on speaking truth to power (his two-decades-old “Dereliction of Duty” shot to #1 on Amazon.com this week). It was announced that the 3-star general will remain on active duty while in his new post. The White House claimed that Brent Scowcroft, the role model of how to handle the job running the NSC staff, remained on active duty in the Air Force when he first held the...

Donald Trump has made his choice to replace Michael Flynn, and it’s hard to think of a better man. Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster will be the new national security adviser: General McMaster is a former commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, my old unit. I served in Iraq with a host of guys who’d served under McMaster in the Battle of Tal Afar in 2005, and almost to a man they loved him. I never served under him (I came along for the next deployment), but many of the people I respect the most were with him during one...

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser has told his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, rejecting a key ideological view of other senior Trump advisers and signaling a potentially more moderate approach to the Islamic world. The adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, told the staff of the National Security Council on Thursday, in his first “all hands” staff meeting, that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” was not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic,” according to people who were in the meeting. That is a repudiation of the language regularly used by both...

In 2011, I was hired, straight out of college, to work at the White House and eventually the National Security Council. My job there was to promote and protect the best of what my country stands for. I am a hijab-wearing Muslim woman––I was the only hijabi in the West Wing––and the Obama administration always made me feel welcome and included. Like most of my fellow American Muslims, I spent much of 2016 watching with consternation as Donald Trump vilified our community. Despite this––or because of it––I thought I should try to stay on the NSC staff during the Trump...

Shortened title. Full title: NYTimes in Full Panic Mode Over Reports Trump May Designate Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Organization The New York Times this week continued its month-long campaign against designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization amid reports the Trump administration is debating the possibility of issuing an executive order making such a designation. Declaring the Brotherhood a terrorist organization would add the U.S. to the growing list of nations to do so, including Muslim countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Times’ crusade culminated in the newspaper’s publication on Wednesday of an oped written from Egyptian prison by...

Trumps’ critics, left and right, aim to bring about the cataclysm they predicted. A 1964 political melodrama, Seven Days in May, envisioned a futuristic (1970s) failed military cabal that sought to sideline the president of the United States over his proposed nuclear-disarmament treaty with the Soviets. Something far less dramatic but perhaps as disturbing as Hollywood fiction played out this February... Currently, the political and media opponents of Donald Trump are seeking to subvert his presidency in a manner unprecedented in the recent history of American politics. The so-called resistance among EPA federal employees is trying to disrupt Trump administration...

The Department of Homeland Security Tuesday began rolling out President Donald Trump's plans to aggressively crack down on illegal immigrants. The plan, outlined in two DHS memos, includes an attempt to deport almost all illegal immigrants caught in the U.S., hire thousands more border patrol and immigration agents, and start building the promised wall along the Mexican border. ~~snip~~ The memos were sent to heads of key agencies and signed by DHS Secretary John Kelly. Kelly said in one memo that it "implements new policies designed to stem illegal immigration and facilitate the detection, apprehension, detention, and removal of aliens...

Evidence of political corruption should be.It has been obvious since the early Republican primaries that most media coverage of a Trump presidency would be adverse and presented out of context. Perhaps a recent editorial at The Week Magazine explains why, albeit inadvertently. Or maybe this cartoon better explains the media view: Trump and Putin as seen by the lamebrain media[/caption] According to The Week Magazine, all leaks are equal. However, we approve of those which fit our politics and disapprove of those which don't. Live by the leak, die by the leak. When WikiLeaks was releasing a steady stream of embarrassing emails hacked...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- A senior Trump administration official was fired following criticism in a private speech of President Donald Trump's policies and his inner circle of advisers.</p> <p>Craig Deare, whom Trump appointed a month ago to head the National Security Council's Western Hemisphere division, was on Friday escorted out of the Executive Office Building, where he worked in Washington.</p>

Not much can get between senators and a recess. Except, perhaps, FBI Director James B. Comey. Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, along with ex-officio member and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, huddled for a total of more than two hours on Friday with Comey. The FBI director’s visit was not announced publicly, and it’s possible members of the Capitol Hill press corps only found out because he was spotted in the hallways and entered a secure room used for intelligence briefings. But leaving that secure room in the Capitol Visitor Center, senators declined to even confirm the presence of...

Senior White House officials and members of the National Security Council are pushing former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton as a replacement for ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon. Among Bolton's most vocal supporters are senior administration officials loyal to Flynn and who are upset at the general's firing. Multiple sources described an effort by these Flynn loyalists to ensure that Bolton is selected as his replacement. The selection of Bolton as the next national security adviser would empower Flynn's allies still...

Hugh Hewitt has been all over this idea lately.(TWEETS-AT-LINK) Bolton was a candidate for Secretary of State during the transition period, then a candidate to be a key undersecretary at the Department under Rex Tillerson, and then more recently … nada. His name hadn’t been mentioned in connection lately with any major staffing positions, which is odd given that Trump reportedly came to admire him from his appearances on Fox News. (Also a key qualification for KT McFarland in landing her job as deputy NSA, apparently.) Bolton had two big problems in landing a job at State. One: Rex Tillerson...

Hackers have breached a database containing a wealth of sensitive information from federal employees’ security background checks, the Obama administration said Friday — news that experts say could deal a devastating blow to U.S. intelligence gathering. The revelations came just a week after officials disclosed a previous massive cyber intrusion into the same federal personnel office, compromising records of more than 4 million current and past employees in a breach that administration officials have privately blamed on Chinese hackers. The stolen records in the hack disclosed Friday included data on intelligence and military personnel, The Associated Press reported. A senior...

<p>The abrupt Obama administration pre-election pullout from Iraq in 2011, along with the administration's failed reset with Russia and the Iran deal, created a three-headed hydra in the Middle East.</p> <p>What makes the Middle East monster deadly is the interplay between the Iranian terrorist regime and its surrogates Hezbollah and the Assad regime, Russian President Vladimir Putin's deployment of bombers into Syria and Iraq after a 40-year Russian hiatus in the region and the medieval beheaders of the Islamic State.</p>

The fallout from the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is not over. We have Russia, leaks, and palace intrigue about former Obama administration officials laying the foundation to topple Flynn, who was knows for being staunchly opposed to the Iran nuclear deal. Guy wrote a post about the allegations. Frankly, Flynn misled the vice president, which alone is an act that warrants him being shown the door. Multiple writers, namely Damon Linker at The Week and Eli Lake at Bloomberg have noted another sinister angle to this story, which is the number of leaks of highly sensitive information coming...

King said, “You go back to the question of the leaks, that is a criminal action. I mean to have a wiretap of anyone, a foreign national, and to have an American come on that, an American citizen come on that tape, there is all sorts of precautions in the law, how that person’s identity has to be masked, how it can’t be made public. Yet, it was not only made public; it was leaked to a newspaper. So you have the national security advisor being taped. That could have been a legal wiretap aimed at the Russians. Yet, to...

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 4 minutes ago The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by "intelligence" like candy. Very un-American!

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) is asking the White House to provide his panel with details about how sensitive information was handled during a weekend meeting at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Chaffetz requested detailed explanations of the Trump administration's security protocols at the Florida estate, including what documents were present at Saturday's powwow and how the administration vetted club guests. The request came after it was revealed that Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a meeting in plain sight on Saturday to discuss North Korea's...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said Tuesday that those who leaked the contents of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s phone calls “belong in jail.” “That’s nine leakers that all belong in jail,” Nunes said. “Those nine people broke the law, clearly, by leaking classified information to anybody.” Nunes said he also wanted to know how U.S. intelligence agencies were wiretapping Flynn’s calls, which he said may also have been illegal. The chairman said there are only two ways that intelligence agencies can listen in on an American’s phone call — after obtaining a warrant, or inadvertently, such...