Free Republic

On an October afternoon before the 2016 election, a huge banner was unfurled from the Manhattan Bridge in New York City: Vladimir V. Putin against a Russian-flag background, and the unlikely word “Peacemaker” below. It was a daredevil happy birthday to the Russian president, who was turning 64. In November, shortly after Donald J. Trump eked out a victory that Moscow had worked to assist, an even bigger banner appeared, this time on the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington: the face of President Barack Obama and “Goodbye Murderer” in big red letters. Police never identified who had hung the banners,...

More than five million riders crowd into New York City’s subway on an average workday, and officials say some of them are making everybody late. At the 34th Street-Penn Station stop, Frank Gallagher thrust his foot between the closing doors of an uptown 2 train on a recent morning and wedged his way inside. “I made up my mind I was going to catch that train,” said the 57-year-old entertainment industry union rep. “I’m five minutes late as it is.” But nothing enrages commuters more than train delays. Except, maybe, blaming commuters for train delays.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is challenging a bombshell story in The New York Times alleging that he discussed secretly recording President Trump last year, calling it “inaccurate” and “factually incorrect.” Rosenstein in a statement released by the Justice Department also said that there was “no basis” to invoke the 25th Amendment, after the Times reported that he proposed recruiting various Cabinet officials to take such a step in order to remove Trump from office over his unfitness. “The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” Rosenstein said. “I will not further comment on a story based on...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is denying a report in The New York Times that he suggested last year he secretly record President Donald Trump in the White House to expose chaos in the administration. Rosenstein says the story is “inaccurate and factually incorrect.”

Giving Christine Blasey Ford the opportunity to testify about her unsubstantiated accusations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is, somehow, silencing her, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) declared Wednesday night. Refusing to launch an FBI investigation into Ford’s claims is also “silencing her,” Sen. Gillibrand said in a tweet: “Denying Dr. Ford an FBI investigation is silencing her. Forcing her into a sham hearing is silencing her. And pushing through Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation is silencing her.”

Let’s take New York Democrat Senator Kristen Gillibrand at her word regarding the duty of anyone who is accused of wrong doing to ask to be investigated. Senator Gillibrand has said that by not asking for an FBI investigation of the “charges” against him, Judge Brett Kavanaugh is not acting like an innocent person. This is an especially strange statement in view of the lack of specifics in the charges against the judge. The accuser has not been able to supply even a vague idea of the year of this attack, where it took place or who else was present...

Mayor de Blasio and new Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza on Thursday approved a controversial plan to scrap admissions standards in one of the city’s top districts as part of their crusade to diversify student bodies. Effective immediately, the 11 middle schools in Brooklyn’s District 15 — which spans Park Slope into Sunset Park — must ditch education-based entrance criteria for a weighted lottery system that reserves roughly half of their seats for kids who are low income, homeless or learning English.

Brooklyn’s District 15 isn’t just barring middle schools from selecting students based on their grades — the area’s lone performing-arts middle school is now forbidden from holding auditions. Entry into New Voices School of Academic & Creative Arts in Sunset Park will now be determined solely by lottery — with no pirouettes or piano-playing required.

Rochester, N.Y., resident Herbert Smith wasn’t aware of the controversy he was about to create when he was moved to post a photo of a local bar’s dress code to his Facebook page. But since he took to social media to share the long list of items that can’t be worn inside the Murphy’s Law Irish Pub in his neighborhood, some people are calling out the bar for enforcing a “racist” dress code. While making plans with a friend to meet up at a nearby bar, Smith received a picture of the questionable dress code posted in the front window...

WASHINGTON — The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.

The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit. Mr. Rosenstein made these suggestions in the spring of 2017 when Mr. Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director plunged the White House into turmoil. Over the ensuing days, the president divulged classified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to...

A 52-year-old day care worker allegedly stabbed five people, including three baby girls no more than a month old, at an overnight facility in Queens early Friday, and cops say they found a butcher knife and meat cleaver at the scene. A 3-day-old girl and a 1-month-old girl were stabbed in the stomach; a 20-day-old girl had a laceration to her ear, chin and lip. All are in critical but stable condition, authorities said. Two other people, a father of a child at the day care and another woman who worked there, were also stabbed at the Flushing center just...

Brett Kavanaugh is a casualty of an anything-goes political resistance. Consider the spectacle: Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court, the embodiment of a modern rule of law, is being decided in the Senate by the medieval practice of trial by ordeal, such as surviving immersion in fire or ice. Trial by ordeal was outlawed by the Lateran Council in 1215. Or worse, the standards of the mob in the Roman Colosseum, turning thumbs up or down on the combatants. Though unlike the Senate Democrats, the Roman mob at least had an open mind. Incidentally, the standard trope that...

Did anyone notice Hirono ‘prompt’ Gillibrand this evening, when Gillibrand was braying about Kavanaugh?

Nikki Haley, President Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, said Thursday that The New York Times knew she had not been involved in the purchase of expensive curtains for her New York residence when it printed a story implying she did. "They knew the facts and they released the story anyway," Haley told Fox News' "The Story." "I hadn't even taken the job when these curtains were picked out," she said. "We told the reporters that these were the facts." The Times issued an editor's note at the top of its piece, which was originally titled "Nikki Haley's View of...

More than 500 women and teenagers will be bailed out from Rikers Island as part of a national campaign to dismantle a bail system that activists say discriminates against minorities and the poor. The effort is being spearheaded by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights group, which plans to raise at least $5 million to fund the releases. While there have been other so-called mass bailouts around the country, organizers said they believe this effort at Rikers has the potential to be one of the largest ever.

Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, seem determined to call a vote next week on the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court, even in the face of this week’s sexual assault allegations against him. Senate Republicans assume, correctly, that if they can hold the party line, his installation on the Supreme Court is a sure thing. This is certainly true — even if the Democratic caucus in the Senate holds firm against Mr. Kavanaugh, they simply lack the votes to block him....

Clinton says Trump supporters don't "fully appreciate what is potential under this presidency." Hillary Clinton predicted Tuesday that President Donald Trump will "wholesale fire people" in the White House and become increasingly unaccountable, if Democrats don't check his power by winning a majority of seats in the House or Senate in the November midterm elections. Clinton made the remarks during the former secretary of state's appearance on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show." "What I worry about, Rachel, is that after this election this president is going to wholesale fire people," Clinton said. " ... And if we [Democrats] don’t have...

Leading congressional Democrats are looking to stall the process to release documents related to the Russia investigation, which President Donald Trump ordered declassified on Monday. Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff and Sens. Chuck Schumer and Mark Warner, sent a letter Tuesday asking Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to provide an “immediate briefing” to the Gang of Eight before declassifying and releasing the documents. The four Democrats expressed “profound alarm” at Trump’s order to declassify the records. Trump ordered the Justice Department and Office of the Director of National...

President Trump in an exclusive interview with Hill.TV said Tuesday he ordered the release of classified documents in the Russia collusion case to show the public the FBI probe started as a “hoax,” and that exposing it could become one of the “crowning achievements” of his presidency. “What we’ve done is a great service to the country, really,” Trump said in a 45-minute, wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office. “I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I’ve done… in its own way this might be the most important thing...