Free Republic

On Tuesday, New York magazine published an essay by a 24-year-old law student who recently paddleboarded around Manhattan for the first time. “I signed up for the race because I thought it sounded cool,” writes our participant. “Of course, when I asked around, everyone said it was really hard and I’d better start training.” The smugness, the entitlement, the painfully obvious observation — one might wonder: Who cares? Until you look at the byline and realize: Oh, of course. Another Kennedy foisted upon us. Our diarist is none other than Jack Schlossberg, grandson of JFK, son of Caroline, accomplishment-free save...

Meet Mattel’s latest doll: dressed conservatively, covered head to toe with only her hands and face visible. The fabric she wears is extra-thick, so there’s no chance of seeing skin. This Barbie wears no adornments. She also wears a hijab. This new Barbie has been spun by Mattel and the doll’s inspiration, Muslim Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, as “empowering” for young girls. Really? Growing up in Maplewood, New Jersey, Muhammad wasn’t an integrated American teen: Her parents insisted she cover up at all times, even when playing on volleyball and softball teams. In 2011, she told the Wall Street Journal...

Lena Dunham may be the first person to fabricate details of her alleged rape, then proclaim all women’s claims need to be believed, and then publicly accuse a young woman of lying about having been raped. Finally, the star and creator of “Girls” has been exposed as the empty vessel she is. “Girls” was never the smart, generational criticism Dunham always claimed; really, it was just a smuttier, younger “Sex and the City.” Nor is there as much daylight between Dunham and her shallow, entitled character Hannah Horvath as she’d have us believe. “I think I might be the voice...

Back in early November, we talked about the little-noted demise of two of the weekly local papers in New York City, the Gothamist and DNAinfo. At the time, I noted that it was really a sad development because papers like that have the somewhat unique ability to focus all of their time and resources on covering local news which is often drowned out amidst all the national and global stories which eat up the front pages of the bigger papers. Those two outlets broke many stories about municipal corruption and waste, as well as keeping a finger on the pulse...

Speaking as Congress neared final approval of the historic tax bill, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders hailed the culmination of a year of major accomplishments. She cited the defeat of the Islamic State, the creation of 1.7 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in 17 years, a rollback of excessive regulations, and more than 60 record highs of the stock market. It is an impressive list, yet a catch was reflected in a question. Why, a reporter asked, in the face of such accomplishments, do polls show President Trump’s approval stuck at under 40 percent? Sanders is good...

Friday’s bloodthirsty attack on a mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula during noontime prayers was a crime against all humanity. It wasn’t “just” an attack on Muslims. It was an attack on all of us who believe in civilization, tolerance and decency. At least 235 peaceful worshippers died, with more than 100 wounded. One is tempted to call it the work of beasts, but no creature in the animal kingdom behaves with such avid, calculated cruelty. Yet, the attack can be explained — though the explanation only makes it worse. Islamist fanatics struck with bombs and automatic weapons, slaughtering first the...

The owner of one of the city’s most famous celeb hangouts, the Spotted Pig, has been accused of routinely groping female employees and demanding sex and nude photos from them — while allowing his buddies to molest them too, a new report says. An after-hours space on the third floor of restaurateur Ken Friedman’s tony Village hot spot is even known among workers and industry insiders as “the rape room” — where public sex is on display, according to the New York Times, quoting 10 women who are accusing the powerful businessman of unwanted sexual advances. Former longtime server Trish...

Just when it seems that the Clintons have been transformed from the ultimate power couple on an inevitable path back to the White House into political pariahs, Democrats would be wrong to ignore how the 1992 and 1996 elections were won. The Clintons’ fall from grace was long overdue, and not without irony. The new consensus about the way prominent men got away with harassing and assaulting women has caused many liberals to express regret for the scorched-earth campaign they waged against Bill’s accusers. The notion that saving his presidency was more important than the claims of the women he...

Jenna Jameson has gone off on yet another anti-Muslim Twitter tirade, and this time she also bizarrely defended the Klu Klux Klan. The ex-porn star’s rant started on Tuesday after she tweeted claims about the existence of “Muslim rape gangs.” When other users fired back, she called them “sympathizers” and continued to double down on what she said was a “Muslim rape epidemic.”

Civil War

The New York Post released a special preview of tomorrow's cover page, where they dubbed Hillary Clinton "Grillary".

Just what will it take to cut off US funding for Palestinian terror? That question has taken center stage amid the wave of murderous “lone wolf” attacks against Israeli civilians, egged on by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Thursday, a Palestinian killed a sleeping 13-year-old girl in the West Bank. The next day, another opened fire on a car, killing a dad and wounding his wife and two kids. –– ADVERTISEMENT –– Since September, the terror spree has left 40 dead and 430 injured. And every one of the terrorists — or their families — gets a hefty reward from Abbas’...

The New York Post came up with a hilarious front page title:

Hillary Clinton was a White House monster when she was first lady. That’s the assertion in a new book called “Crisis of Character” by Gary Byrne, which hits stores Tuesday. One of Hillary the Monster’s favorite targets was Vince Foster, according to Byrne, a member of the Secret Service who was stationed in the White House during the Clinton administration. Foster was the lawyer who relocated to Washington from Arkansas after his childhood pal, Bill Clinton, was elected president. “Word circulated that (Hillary Clinton) berated (Foster) mercilessly … I knew what it was like to be yelled at by superiors,...

Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued a report on Monday in which they said that Hillary Clinton was cleared of any responsibility for the deadly terrorist attack. The report was quickly condemned by Republicans as a “partisan” whitewash. “We have been hampered in our work by the ongoing Republican obsession with conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality,” says the 344-page report on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in the Libyan city, during which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

Firefighters and medics will take their first “Trans 101” course on Tuesday, learning the correct way to interact with transgender people — and even getting a lesson in what LGTBQI actually stands for, a city official said. The two-hour sensitivity training was launched in March by the city Commission for Human Rights after Mayor de Blasio signed an executive order allowing people to use any public bathroom or locker room they identified with, regardless of their sexual anatomy.

The mainstream media have been hysterical this week in their response to Donald Trump’s revocation of the Washington Post’s campaign press credentials in response to coverage and headlines so unfair that the paper went back and changed them. Yet those same media outlets remained silent in 2008 when the Obama presidential campaign booted 3 major newspapers that had been writing unfavorably about the campaign off its press plane. Joe Concha of Mediaite remembers what happened 8 years ago, and contrasts the media response in the two instances: The year was 2008. The candidate had a big lead in the polls...

If it is true that the best defense is a good offense, President Obama should be celebrating in the end zone now. Obviously furious over criticism that his anti-terror policies are weak and that the Orlando slaughter proves it, he went on a televised tirade to let America know he’s mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. He laid waste to a field of straw men, cable-TV pundits and the always-evil “partisan rhetoric,” by which he means anyone who disagrees with him.

The bottom feeders at Gawker are going under. Arrivederci, a- -holes! News of the slime Web site’s bankruptcy filing is schadenfreude-licious for those of us who, like wrestler Hulk Hogan and Silicon Valley financier Peter Thiel, were victimized by these Internet thugs but didn’t have the resources to fight back in court.