Free Republic

The suspect in a synagogue vandalism act that forced the cancellation of a Democratic event is reportedly a former City Hall employee who worked on anti-hate crime issues and is a Democratic activist, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. The New York Times and a Jewish couple helped the impoverished gay black man attend college where he studied African American studies, according to The Times. He resented New York liberals as patronizing, and railed against Israel and cultural appropriation, according to his Facebook profile. Before knowing his identity, politicians said the vandalism demonstrated why voting Democratic was needed and...

The left adjusts the pitch of its dog whistles week by week and they have become more and more strident and vile. Thing is, lately they've gone largely berserk. CNN's John Avlon approaches the outer markers of Godwin's Law. CNN’s John Avlon Compares Trump to Mass Murderers Lenin, Stalin Today it was the language dog whistle: CNN’s Camerota: Trump ‘Using Some of the Same Language’ as Pittsburgh Synagogue ShooterCBS’s O’Donnell Slimes: Trump Used Same Language as Synagogue ShooterJulia Ioffe GQ WRITER JULIA IOFFE: TRUMP HAS RADICALIZED MANY MORE PEOPLE THAN ISISIf the day ends in "Y" there will be another Joe...

More than 1,600 scientists signed a letter denouncing President Trump administration’s plan to narrow the definition of gender to be strictly biological, according to Buzzfeed. The letter was written in response to a memo reportedly drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to the New York Times. The memo states that any disputes about a person’s sex would be clarified using genetic testing, which scientists who signed the letter called unscientific and unethical. “This proposal is fundamentally inconsistent not only with science, but also with ethical practices, human rights, and basic dignity,” the scientists wrote. Among the...

HOUSTON — J. Mark Metts, a 60-year-old partner at one of this city’s prestigious law firms, had never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate until 2016. Now he and some of his neighbors in the moneyed River Oaks enclave of Houston are about to oppose a Republican once again, to register their disapproval of President Trump. “With Congress not really standing up to Trump, this election is becoming a referendum,” Mr. Metts said, explaining why he would no longer support the re-election of Representative John Culberson, an eight-term Republican. Mr. Culberson is now running roughly even with the Democratic candidate,...

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s closing argument is now clear: Build tent cities for migrants. End birthright citizenship. Fear the caravan. Send active-duty troops to the border. Refuse asylum. Immigration has been the animating issue of the Trump presidency, and now — with the possibility that Republicans could face significant losses in the midterm elections on Tuesday — the president has fully embraced a dark, anti-immigrant message in the hope that stoking fear will motivate voters to reject Democrats. In a rambling speech on Thursday afternoon that was riddled with falsehoods and vague promises to confront a “crisis” at the border,...

The hostility she’s felt from the public recently wasn’t necessarily the last straw in television news photographer Lori Bentley-Law’s decision to quit the business after 24 years, but it was one of them. Bentley-Law’s recent blog post explaining why she was leaving Los Angeles’ KNBC-TV hit home for many colleagues. While President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media are usually centered on national outlets like CNN and The New York Times, the attitudes unleashed have filtered down to journalists on the street covering news in local communities across the country. When a president describes the press as enemies of the...

For a few hours on Saturday morning, I felt good about America. I was at a smallish rally in the Atlanta suburb of Riverdale, listening to Democratic politicians including Senator Kamala Harris and Georgia’s Stacey Abrams, who could become the first African-American female governor in American history. Abrams told a story she often repeats on the campaign trail, about being 17 and arriving at the governor’s mansion for a reception for Georgia’s high school valedictorians. Her family didn’t have a car, and she described getting off the bus and walking with her parents along a driveway to a set of...

...For the last two weeks, Mr. Trump and his conservative allies have operated largely in tandem on social media and elsewhere to push alarmist, conspiratorial warnings about the migrant caravan more than 2,000 miles from the border. They have largely succeeded in animating Republican voters like Ms. Hooten around the idea of these foreign nationals posing a dire threat to the country’s security, stability and identity. Mr. Trump described them as “an invasion of our country” on Monday and his administration announced plans to deploy at least 5,200 active-duty troops to the southern border by the end of this week,...

Mr. O’Rourke was perceived by many as siding with the moneyed elite against angry barrio residents, small business owners and even the Jesuit priests who ministered to the immigrant community at Sacred Heart Church. “Mr. O’Rourke was basically the pretty face of this very ugly plan against our most vulnerable neighborhoods,” said David Dorado Romo, a local historian who says the episode resurrected longstanding race and class divisions in the city. Barrio residents feared they would lose their homes through eminent domain, and a city-funded branding study suggested that the residents of El Paso were perceived as “dirty” and “lazy.’’...

The left-leaning New York Times editorial board said that those who committed political violence and harassment in recent days are "responsible for their own actions," even as some others in the news media have attempted to make President Trump responsible.

With Beto O’Rourke all set to lose bigly next week, it seems even the New York Times is taking the opportunity to pour a little salt in his impending wound: Long before he became a national liberal hero, Beto O'Rourke sided with the moneyed elite — including his investor father-in-law — against angry barrio residents, small business owners and even Jesuit priests in a redevelopment fight. ⁦@stefsaul⁩ https://t.co/3C9zS1wN7b — Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) October 29, 2018 Ruh-roh! Also, did not know until today that Beto is a billionaire (or rather, is married to one). https://t.co/df4gWp2oTl — Emily Zanotti (@emzanotti) October 29,...

From the article: “With what happened early today, that horrible, horrible attack in Pittsburgh, I was saying, ‘Maybe I should cancel both this and that.’ And then I said to myself,...We can’t make these sick, demented, evil people important,” Trump said.

While it doesn’t get much play in the heat of the final days leading up to the midterms, U.S. energy policy is still in the news. Unfortunately, not all of the coverage is quite as honestly depicted as you might hope. We’re still riding a nearly unprecedented energy boom in the United States, but the New York Times found a way to cast a dark cloud over it this weekend. Eric Lipton et al. published a look at oil and gas drilling on federal lands in Wyoming designed to send chills down your spine just in time for Halloween. To...

“No, Mama Steph, go away. I want Mama Sabby to read to me!” These words from my 3-year-old daughter, Marty, level me like the most withering insult. Lately, her extreme favoritism for my spouse, Sabrina, has reached new heights. She even gets mad if I peck Sabrina on the cheek or place my arm around her seat as she drives. I distinctly remember rebuffing my dad’s affections and interfering with his attempts to kiss or hug my mom when I was a kid. It makes me wonder: Am I the dad in this family? At one time, I might have...

Ina Garten plans to cook up something special, should she ever have the opportunity to host some of Washington's top politicians. The Food Network's "Barefoot Contessa" star was asked by New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni what she would serve political figures. For Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, Garten would prepare lobster macaroni and cheese. For Senate hopeful Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, an avowed BBQ lover, she would serve pulled pork shoulder with maple beans, cornbread, and a kale salad. Former Vice President Joe Biden would receive "something fun, like a lobster and clambake," Garten said. And President Trump? "A...

NBC morning host (and former Fox News host) Megyn Kelly controversy is seemingly out at the network, after a politically incorrect discussion of Halloween costumes and so-called cultural appropriation caused outcry -- not at the puzzling phenomenon of liberals demanding Halloween costumes be policed, but at a clumsy comment Kelly made that was quickly spun as racist. TV writer James Poniewozik even compared Kelly's remarks to "tiki torches" at the Nazi march in Charlottesville. During a freewheeling discussion on her Tuesday show, Kelly said “So truly you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on...

The left’s Meltdown of Kavanaugh Rage Pot Luck & Hootenanny has certainly been entertaining. Corey Booker’s Concern Face alone was worth the price of admission. By far the most amusing has been the spectacle of liberal men falling on their Nerf swords to advance the fiction that Brett Kavanaugh was guilty of -- well, it doesn’t matter what, exactly. The important thing is that The Bitter Injustice enters the left/media bloodstream and becomes conventional wisdom. (This is something the left excels at: The Supreme Court “gave” George W. Bush the presidency. JFK was murdered by racist Texas conservatives, rather than...

The New York Times published a crude and revealing article October 23, “#MeToo Brought Down 201 Powerful Men. Nearly Half of Their Replacements Are Women.” The piece...inadvertently points toward an important truth: the #MeToo campaign is fundamentally an effort by...upper middle class women to advance their economic interests at the expense of their male rivals... The Times does not...evaluate the truth or non-truth of the accusations. The authors begin from the assumption that allegations are to be accepted at face value—or, more cynically, that they are useful as part of a gender purge... “Research has repeatedly shown that women tend...

The latest report from the world’s climate scientists has made clear the size of the challenge if the world is to stay below the global warming limit hoped for in the Paris climate agreement. Unfortunately, with current trends we are likely to cross this threshold within the next two decades because we are already two-thirds of the way there. But how do we know what is driving these climate trends? It comes down to the same kind of detective work that typifies a crime scene investigation, only here we are dealing with a case that encompasses the whole world. Let...

An explosive device was found on Monday near the Westchester County home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who is a favorite target of right-wing groups, according to a law enforcement official. The device did not explode on its own, and bomb squad technicians “proactively detonated” it, the official said.