Free Republic

With his Justice Department and FBI facing broad attacks from some of his former colleagues on Capitol Hill, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Friday that he’ll stand up to any “unfair” attacks on the men and women of the Justice Department he now oversees. Sessions, in a speech in Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday, mentioned the “sharp criticisms” of DOJ coming from Congress. He said the Justice Department demands “the highest level of integrity, ethics, and professionalism from every person” in it, and that all employees are expected to “advance the mission of the Department honorably” in the service of...

A pair of former US intelligence chiefs blasted President Donald Trump Sunday after he attacked them a day earlier while discussing his recent conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Sunday on CNN"s "State of the Union" that Trump's downplaying of the threat posed by Russia's meddling in last year's election was dangerous to US national security and allows countries like Russia and China to "play" the President. Former CIA Director John Brennan said Trump is allowing Putin to get away with Russia's efforts to disrupt the presidential election. Speaking alongside Brennan, Clapper...

Hundreds of websites broadcast the same misguided message: children must memorize Sight-Words. This message is false. Probably the most aggressive falsehood is that such memorization is easy to do. One popular site proclaims this malarkey: “Because many Sight-Words are phonetically irregular, tend to be abstract, have limited visual correspondence, or even easily understood definitions, students must memorize them to read quickly and fluently.” Note the casual tone: “Students must memorize them.” The school certainly wouldn’t ask children to do something difficult or impossible, would it? Yes, it would! And therein lies the essence of the hoax. In the context of...

In a recent interview with CNN’s Newsroom with Brook Baldwin, Montel Williams took the opportunity to express how angry he feels about the new Health Care Act. And while debate from every side should be present in the formulation of legislation, his comments suggest that he is either willfully ignoring the acts, or is perhaps just ignorant. In the opening lines he says: “They (the Republicans) want to go back and see if they can find a less expensive medication; well the bottom line is There Is No Less Expensive Medication”. And then goes on to say that they are...

Jimmy Kimmel was crying before he even started talking. “I have a story to tell about something that happened to our family last week,” the late-night host said at the top of his show Monday night. “Before I go into it, I want you to know it has a happy ending.” It’s a good thing he said that because otherwise, this 13-minute monologue would have been even more unbearable to endure. Kimmel went on to tell his audience and viewers that this past week, his wife gave birth to a baby boy named William John Kimmel—Billy for short. Everything seemed...

Republican congressman Darrell Issa is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the possible connections between Trump officials and Russia. Appearing on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night, the California Republican said that it would be inappropriate for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to handle the investigation...

There is 'clear evidence' of direct Russian interference in British elections, a former Labour minister has claimed. Chris Bryant also warned that many believed some of the highest level security decisions affecting the UK had now been compromised by Russian interference. Another Labour MP Ben Bradshaw was mocked for claiming it was 'highly probable' the Russian interfered with the Brexit vote via cyber warfare - something ministers say is unfounded.

The Russian government's cyber-espionage campaign against the American political system began more than a year ago and has been far more extensive than publicly disclosed, targeting hundreds of key people -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- whose work is considered strategically important to the Putin regime, official sources told NBC News. The targets over the past two years have included a Who's Who of Hillary Clinton associates from her State Department tenure, the Clinton Foundation and her presidential campaign, as well as top Republicans and staffers for Republican candidates for president. Starting in earnest in 2015, Russian hackers used sophisticated...

Leaked emails from former Secretary of State Colin Powell show him strongly criticizing Donald Trump, labeling him a "national disgrace and an international pariah." He also called the birther movement, which the Republican presidential nominee helped lead, "racist." "That's what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn't keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim," Powell wrote in an August email.

For some reason for a while, I kept trying to turn him on in the first hour, but after five minutes of listening, I'm convinced he's actively campaigning for Clinton. At this point in the election, what else does he hope to accomplish with his constant Trump-bashing? He said early on that if Trump won, he would spend the campaign promoting the congressional races, but he seems to have dumped that for an outright Never-Trump message. He spends much more time bashing Trump than he does Clinton. I've turned him off completely... ...have you?

Donald Trump has hired the lawyer who helped Hulk Hogan win an invasion-of-privacy case against Gawker and given him a new mission: threaten legal action against several media outlets that picked up a Slovenian magazine's report claiming that Melania Trump worked as an escort in the 1990s. The website Liberal America on Monday posted a letter it received from Hollywood attorney Charles Harder demanding a retraction and an apology. Politico reported that at least three other news organizations, including London's Daily Mail, received the same notice, which warns that Melania Trump will "institute immediate legal proceedings against you" if her...

A volleyball match Saturday between the U.S. and Puerto Rico in Rio de Janeiro included a ball out call against the Americans, prompting the Brazilian audience to cheer, according to The Daily Caller. The unidentified NBC announcer was quick to point out that U.S. teams receive negative responses “everywhere” they play, other than at home. “And you heard the cheers from the pro-Brazilian, pro-Puerto Rican crowd here,” the person said. “You don’t know, the United States gets cheered against everywhere in the world except the United States.”

Pressure is growing on the White House to respond to Russia’s apparent hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), placing President Obama in a delicate political position. Evidence has mounted that the Russian government was behind the theft of tens of thousands of damaging internal emails from the DNC, leading prominent lawmakers from both sides of aisle to call for some form of response. The ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee have all issued calls for Obama to “seek justice” for the alleged attack.

As both parties rapidly approach their respective nominating conventions, it’s clear that both parties are not unified. The Republican Party still has a choice in Cleveland. Will the party choose established Republican principles or their “presumptive” candidate who has the necessary delegates but wants to do this campaign his way? In response to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s continued call for Trump to support conservative principles in the party plank, Donald Trump suggests that the GOP leaders “have to get a lot tougher and be quiet. Just please be quiet, don’t talk…. We have to have our Republicans either stick together...

Democrats on Capitol Hill have discussed the possiblity of removing Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz from her position prior to the party's national convention this summer in Philadelphia. According to The Hill, some Democrats believe that Wasserman Schultz's ongoing battles with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have made her too divisive a figure to unite the party ahead of this fall's election campaign. "There have been a lot of meetings over the past 48 hours about what color plate do we deliver Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s head on," one Democratic senator who supports frontrunner Hillary Clinton told The Hill. "I...

Morley Safer, the longest-serving correspondent in the history of “60 Minutes,” says it is time to retire. Safer, 84, said in a statement, “It’s been a wonderful run, but the time has come to say goodbye to all of my friends at CBS and the dozens of people who kept me on the air.” CBS announced on Wednesday that the network will broadcast a special hour-long look at Safer’s broadcasting career on Sunday night. …

MORIA, Greece (AP) — Pope Francis gave Europe a concrete lesson Saturday in welcoming refugees by bringing 12 Syrian Muslims to Italy aboard his charter plane after an emotional visit to the Greek island of Lesbos, which has faced the brunt of Europe's migration crisis. Refugees on the overwhelmed island fell to their knees and wept at his presence. The Vatican said Francis wanted to make a "gesture of welcome" at the end of his five-hour visit to Lesbos, where he implored Europe to respond to the migrant crisis on its shores "in a way that is worthy of our...

The assumption for months was that everything would fall into place. That there was no need to really dig in, that the outcome was obvious. And then, too late, it became clear that this optimism was unfounded. Or maybe not too late, but late enough in the process to mean that folks would have to scramble. And now everything is up in the air. The paragraph above describes the Republican establishment’s attitude about Donald Trump’s candidacy, obviously. But it also describes Trump’s push for the nomination itself. From the moment he stepped onto that escalator on Trump Tower until about...

Even Trump’s most trusted advisors didn’t expect him to fare this well ” the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count. That was it. The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy. I don’t think even Trump thought he would get this far. And I don’t even know that he wanted to, which is perhaps the scariest prospect of all. He certainly was never prepared or equipped...

Over the past few months, the Republican race has morphed from a seventeen-headed gorgon into a more manageable monster with four faces. The first face belongs to front runner Donald Trump, who has run an idiosyncratic campaign, focused almost entirely on his own personality. He has no discernible platform, represents no clear faction of the GOP, and is running as Trump rather than as a Republican. The next two faces are recognizably Republican. Ted Cruz, a respectable second, is running as the strong constitutional conservative. He favors a smaller government; decentralization of authority; a foreign policy grounded in the national...