Free Republic

Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) discussed President Joe Biden’s speech in Atlanta a day earlier promoting congressional Democrats voting legislation. In the speech, Biden suggested opponents were akin to former Democrat Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a self-declared segregationist at the height of his popularity.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rejecting the recommendation of prosecutors, a federal judge sentenced a Jan. 6 rioter to probation on Friday and suggested that the Justice Department was being too hard on those who broke into the Capitol compared to the people arrested during anti-racism protests following George Floyd’s murder. U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden questioned why federal prosecutors had not brought more cases against those accused in 2020 summertime protests, reading out statistics on riot cases in the nation’s capital that were not prosecuted. “I think the U.S. attorney would have more credibility if it was even-handed in its...

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, declared Wednesday on CNN’s “OutFront” that former President Donald Trump was “dangerous.” Schiff argued it was because Trump is perfectly fine with endangering the life of the Capitol Police officer who allegedly shot Ashli Babbit on January 6. Burnett said, “So I just played a moment ago. I don’t know if you heard it as you were hooking up, congressman, but what the former president said today about Ashli Babbitt. Obviously, what he says about the guns is incorrect, but this is not new. He keeps talking about this even...

After eight people were killed in the Atlanta area last week — including six women of Asian descent — Meghan McCain, cohost of “The View,” expressed regret about her previous comments that supported former President Trump’s anti-Asian rhetoric. “STOP ASIAN HATE” she tweeted Wednesday, punctuating her message with three broken-heart emojis. Thousands responded to her post with likes. But for TV host John Oliver, who opened Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” by placing the shootings in the context of anti-Asian racism in U.S. history, McCain’s actions rang hollow.

Biden's China policy amounts to promising to 'work with allies,' but the American people deserve to know exactly what was accomplished by his administration at the Alaska summit.The Biden administration’s first high-level meeting with Communist China in Anchorage, Alaska, last week opened with a war of words, then closed with nothing meaningful to show in the end. Still, there are some critical takeaways from this important summit.1. Diplomacy Is Political Theater for Domestic AudiencesThe traditional understanding of diplomacy is that through dialogue and negotiations, countries seek to influence each other’s behaviors to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome while avoiding war....

At the start of the recent talks between senior US and Chinese diplomats in Alaska, the Chinese Foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, made uncharacteristically public belligerent statements. Yang proclaimed that the US did not come to the meeting from a “position of strength” in this first US-China meeting of the Biden Administration. According to a Tweet from Disclose TV: “China's FM Yang threatens ‘firm actions’ in response to ‘US interference’ on arrival for Alaska talks: US is the champion of cyberattacks; Black Americans are slaughtered in the US; US uses military might & financial supremacy to pressure countries.” This level of...

Many people snickered at the claim made in Texas v. Pennsylvania that there is only a one in a quadrillion chance that Joe Biden won all the swing states as currently claimed. The true meaning beneath the statistic is simple: the vote counts certified in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia are fake, so let's cut through all the noise and decide what to do next. "One in a quadrillion" is a rarified way of saying it just didn't happen. Texas's case was shot down because in the United States both grammar and logic have been overtaken by rhetoric. The old...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) - The storming of the U.S. Capitol is a jarring but natural product of years of violence and hateful rhetoric stoked by disinformation and conspiracy theories, experts on far-right extremism said as they pored over images of Wednesday’s riot. Members of far-right groups, including the violent Proud Boys, joined the crowds that formed in Washington to cheer on President Donald Trump as he urged them to protest Congress’ counting of Electoral College votes confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s win. Then they headed to the Capitol. Members of smaller white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups also were spotted in...

Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) said Tuesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric has caused hate crimes to increase “exponentially over the last four years.” Cooper said, “When you heard the crowd at President Trump’s rally over the weekend, chanting “lock her up” referring to you— I don’t know if it surprised you given all you have been through and come to expect— but the fact that that’s where this has sunk, and the president still continues to attack you in the wake of this is stunning

<p>Labels. Language games. Imagery. Flooding. Keep the people reacting. At all costs keep them from thinking.</p> <p>That’s the left’s strategy; do they have any other? Do they even need one? This one’s been working just great for them — up until the last week or so. Now it’s failing them. Badly. They don’t know what to do, and it shows.</p>

Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, tore into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over his plans for the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. "The oath of loyalty is to the United States of America, not to Donald Trump. These senators, Democrats and Republicans, have an obligation to hear the facts, to hear witnesses, and make a decision," Painter said Thursday on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. "And for Mitch McConnell to say he’s working with the White House, coordinating with the defendant in this trial before the trial has even begun, is atrocious....

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently announced that the social media platform will no longer run political advertisements of any kind. Twitter is a private company and is free to adopt whatever policies it wants, but this decision is not the win for civil discourse and our “democratic infrastructure” that Dorsey claims it is. Defending his decision, Dorsey drew a Manichean dichotomy between meritoriously “earned” media and misleading paid content. That dichotomy is shallow and misleading. While he is right that, absent paid political advertising, “a political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet,” Dorsey does...

For President Trump, the case built by Democrats over his alleged effort to recruit foreign help for his reelection effort isn't just a "WITCH HUNT," it's "treason." It isn't just "presidential harassment," it's an invitation to "Civil War." The president is bringing the rhetorical heavy artillery to the most serious challenge to his presidency in nearly three years. Expanding on the lexicon of outrage and victimhood honed during the probe into Russian interference in the last election, Trump is invoking the idioms of the country's beginnings. Ratcheting up of his rhetoric is also indicative of Trump's tendency to interpret any...

I think it's a fair suspicion that our Education Establishment lie much too often. If not that, their ideas are narrow, their horizons limited. Most children, they seem to believe, are mud, lacking any special gifts. Last week I met a different kind of educator, a Roman named Quintilian, 35-100 AD. (He and Cicero, 106-63 BC, have long been considered the two great masters of oratory, language, and education.) All it took was a few quotes and I knew that Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was brilliant, big-minded, and bold. If we had a dozen guys like this, the ed games are...

During Sunday’s broadcast of “The Cats Roundtable” on New York AM 970 radio, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker weighed in on a liberal judge defeating a conservative in a Wisconsin Supreme Court election. He said that conservatives needed to “wake up” because the left was “angry and their rhetoric is filled with hate.” “We had a bit of a wake-up call on Tuesday. On Tuesday in our state, Wisconsin, had the elections for Supreme Court justices. And for the first time in about 20 years in an open seat for the Supreme Court, a liberal judge defeated a conservative judge,” Walker...

President Barack Obama says his talks with Gulf fishermen and oil spill experts are not an academic exercise. They're "so I know whose ass to kick." One target for the presidential foot: Tony Hayward, the embattled chief executive of BP. Obama was asked by Matt Lauer of NBC's "Today" about Hayward's past comments that "I want my life back," that the Gulf was "a big ocean" and that "the environmental...

The Committee to Protect Journalists swiftly condemned a new tweet by President Trump by saying the message he's sending is that violence against journalists is acceptable. After a week that was dominated less by policy and more by media fighting, Trump tweeted a video clip on Sunday morning showing him attacking WWE owner Vince McMahon, except that the CNN logo was superimposed on McMahon's head. "Targeting individual journalists or media outlets, on or offline, creates a chilling effect and fosters an environment where further harassment or even physical attack is deemed acceptable," the statement from the CPJ read. "Just a...

It was a bad day for America. It was an ugly day.A former Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer who hated President Trump opened fire on Republicans during baseball practice Wednesday. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise is in critical condition. Two incredibly brave Capitol Police officers were also injured along with a House aide. Rep. Mark Walker told NBC News it appeared the "gunman was there to kill as many Republican members as possible." Rep. Rodney Davis blamed what he called "political rhetorical terrorism. "This political discourse has led to gunfire," the Illinois Republican, said. What I'm about to say is politically...

After Republican Rep. Steve Scalise was shot yesterday, many liberals on twitter CELEBRATED and said things like,“The Only Good Fascist is a Dead One.”“That’s a Shame but babies blown to bits at Sandy Hook was worse and Scalise takes money from the @NRA” “If the shooter has a serious health condition then is taking potshots at the GOP leadership considered self defense?” “If KKK support Steve Scalise dies, the shooter deserves a holiday, true leadership. Now the trumps, kush, & miller need to be transitioned.” Is it any wonder? The most prominent liberals in America regularly accuse conservatives of being...

US State Department Acting Spokesman Mark Toner The United States State Department’s Acting Spokesperson Mark Toner called on European and Turkish government representatives to “tone down the rhetoric” in a press conference in Washington D.C. on Thursday.Answering a journalist’s question on whether he “agrees with the behaviour of the president of Turkey (Recep Tayyip Erdogan) who threatens Europeans every day,” Toner said “I think what we have said about some of the back and forth we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks [is] that we want to see everyone get along and tone down the rhetoric.”“Look Turkey is an...