Free Republic

Donna Shalala, the former president of the University of Miami who was brought in to lead the Clinton Foundation this year, had a stroke shortly after the closing ceremonies of the organization’s major fall event early Tuesday evening, officials said. Ms. Shalala, 74, fell ill after departing the closing events around the Clinton Global Initiative, which was held at the Sheraton New York hotel on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, according to a statement from foundation officials.

There has been an impressive amount of angry liberal commentary, which has spilled over into the mainstream press coverage (or do I repeat myself?) of the issue, about how in the last Republican presidential debate Carly Fiorina allegedly cited an entirely imaginary video in order to make a crazy claim about Planned Parenthood’s brain-harvesting ghoulishness that’s totally unsupported by the facts. Here’s Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, in a representative rant, attacking Fiorina’s “big fib,” the sheer “enormity” of which has shaken Lithwick’s faith in honesty in politics and journalism: Nobody—not even Fiorina’s staunchest defenders—can say that these videos that clearly don’t...

Donald Trump’s tax plan, released Monday, does not live up to the populist language he has offered on taxes all summer. When talking about taxes in this campaign, Donald Trump has often sounded like a different kind of Republican. He says he will take on “the hedge fund guys” and their carried interest loophole. He thinks it’s “outrageous” how little tax some multimillionaires pay. But his plan calls for major tax cuts not just for the middle class but also for the richest Americans — even the dreaded hedge fund managers. And despite his campaign’s assurances that the plan is...

LIKE so many others, I was stunned by Speaker John A. Boehner’s announcement on Friday that he would step down at the end of October. For nearly six years — first as Republican whip and then as majority leader — I met with John on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis as we worked to lead the House Republican Conference. (SNIP) We are in the midst of a campaign to elect the next president. After two terms of President Obama, an economy that is growing too slowly and a retrenchment of American power abroad, the conservative to-do list for the next...

... Today’s disastrously punitive criminal justice system is actually rooted in the postwar social and economic demise of urban black communities. It is, in part, the unintended consequence of African-Americans’ own hard-fought battle against the crime and violence inside their own communities. To ignore that history is to disregard the agency of black people and minimize their grievances, and to risk making the same mistake again. The draconian Rockefeller drug laws, for example, the model for much of our current drug policies, were promoted and supported by an African-American leadership trying to save black lives. During the 1960s, concentrated poverty...

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Monday. Thomas Erdbrink, the Tehran bureau chief for The New York Times, looks at what message Mr. Rouhani has for international leaders and how it might be received. What’s different from the last time President Rouhani spoke to the General Assembly? Mr. Rouhani, Iran’s leader since 2013, now has something to show for his presidency at the assembly: He concluded a nuclear deal with six world powers, including Iran’s nemesis, the United States. And, for the first time in years, Iran can look forward to...

The surging candidate’s remarks on Planned Parenthood drew Steinem’s ire. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem blasted Carly Fiorina in a post on her Facebook page, saying the presidential hopeful’s commentary on Planned Parenthood at the Republican debate last week “was a 100 percent lie.” “I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes,” Fiorina railed during the debate. “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” Fiorina was referring to a series of “sting” videos produced by the Center for Medical...

Today's Donald Trump news: As a thick crowd gathered Thursday afternoon on New York's Fifth Avenue to get a glimpse of Pope Francis, the faithful caught sight of someone else – Donald Trump. The presidential candidate stepped out of his company headquarters at about 4:30 p.m. and waved. But the crowd quickly reminded Trump that – despite countless appearances on talk shows, rallies and over-populated debates – they weren't there to see him. Trump heard some cheers, but was mostly showered with boos, a reaction that might not have pleased the pope, who had just finished preaching about the Golden...

A string of emails that has been provided to the State Department raises new questions about whether Hillary Rodham Clinton has accurately described her use of a personal account when she was secretary of state.Mrs. Clinton has said that she retained no emails from her first two months in office because she used an account that she no longer has access to. She has said that on March 19, 2009, she began using the personal account — hdr22@clintonemail.com — that she relied on for the rest of her time in office.But on Friday, State Department officials said they had been...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday’s “Morning Joe” Twitter is “amazing,” and that “it’s like owning The New York Times without the losses.” Trump claimed that he likes using Twitter so much because he is able to “fight back” when “a dope like a Rich Lowry goes on, or people like Megyn Kelly says things that are wrong, I’m able to tweet.”

But Ms. Raimondo was able to revamp her state’s pension system, keeping some of the traditional structure while lowering the cost, and surviving lawsuits by workers and retirees who called her moves unconstitutional. Mr. Emanuel’s attempts to rein in pension costs, in contrast, have been thrown out by a judge, leading to his appeal this week for a big tax increase

A senior editor at the New York Times became embroiled in a testy back-and-forth exchange with a Jewish pro-Israel reader of the publication, who had criticized it for launching a website aimed at tracking how Jewish lawmakers are voting on the Iranian nuclear deal, according to emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The Times’ “Jew tracker” was described as anti-Semitic and offensive by pro-Israel officials who slammed the paper for feeding into stereotypes about Jewish power and money. The controversial chart listed all lawmakers who voted against the nuclear deal and highlighted in yellow whether or not that person...

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner, under intense pressure from conservatives in his party, will resign one of the most powerful positions in government and give up his House seat at the end of October, throwing Congress into chaos it tries to avert a government shutdown. Mr. Boehner made the announcement in an emotional meeting with his fellow Republicans Friday morning.

Watching CNBC - Reporting Boehner is Resigning from Congress!

IN 2006, the television comedy “The Office” aired an episode in which one of the characters, Dwight Schrute, nervously faces the prospect of delivering a speech after winning the title of top salesman of the year for his company, Dunder Mifflin. As a prank, his co-worker preps him for his moment by cribbing a speech from a dictator, coaching him to deliver it by pounding the lectern and waving his arms wildly. Dwight does it, and the audience gives a standing ovation to a manic tirade. Watching a cartoonish TV character deliver authoritarian lines with no principles, just audacity, was...

Ronald O. Perelman, the hard-charging billionaire businessman who became chairman of Carnegie Hall earlier this year, told his fellow board members on Thursday that he would step down next month because he had been frustrated that they had been slow to investigate his concerns about the governance of the hall, several people familiar with the proceedings said. Mr. Perelman had accused Carnegie’s well-respected executive and artistic director, Clive Gillinson, of a “troubling lack of transparency” and had criticized the board for failing to provide “appropriate oversight.”

   MEDIA: HALLIBURTON PAID DICK CHENEY TO COMMIT RAPE IN IRAN August 3, 2011A front-page story by James Risen in The New York Times on Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008, reported on a "troubling trend" of sexual assaults committed by American employees of military contractors in Iraq. The centerpiece of his story was Jamie Leigh Jones, who claimed to have been brutally gang-raped in 2005 while working in the Green Zone. (Risen also interviewed other women claiming to have been sexually assaulted in Iraq and -- for journalistic balance -- their attorneys.) Jones famously claimed that days after arriving in Iraq...

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — The leading Republican presidential hopefuls have spent the weeks since their first debate provoking one another, with distant taunts and tweeted insults.

On Sept. 11, The New York Times demonstrated once again the media's peculiar sense of patriotism. The 9/11 attacks were not remembered at all on the front page. Instead, the top-right headline in capital letters read "DEMOCRATS HAND VICTORY TO OBAMA ON PACT WITH IRAN." The House of Representatives voted against it. The Senate voted against it. The American people are overwhelmingly against it. None of that mattered. Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer relayed sugary words from Sen. Charles Schumer -- who, last we checked, opposed the Iran deal -- proclaiming "fair-minded Americans should acknowledge the president's strong achievements in combating...

Retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson has pulled to within 4 points of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, a new poll shows. In the New York Times/CBS News survey released Tuesday, Trump maintains the lead of the presidential pack, with 27 percent support. But Carson is within striking distance, at 23 percent, which is within the margin of error, making it a statistical dead heat.Carson's rise compared with his polling at 6 percent support in the pre-Aug. 6 debate Times/CBS News survey; Trump was at 24 percent in that earlier poll, showing Carson's gains the most significant in that time frame,...