Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Scores of former Trump political appointees gathered at a GOP social club Wednesday night to hear Steve Bannon detail how they could help the next Republican president reconfigure government. "If you’re going to take over the administrative state and deconstruct it, then you have to have shock troops prepared to take it over immediately," Bannon said in a telephone interview with NBC News. "I gave 'em fire and brimstone." ... Trump often railed publicly about career civil servants and Obama administration political appointee holdovers whom he saw as obstacles to his agenda, referring to them collectively as the...

The election of President-elect Joe Biden does not signal the end of violent anarchist group antifa, sometimes portrayed by sympathetic media as a national anti-Trump movement. Instead, according to a journalist who has tracked its every move, antifa is likely to feel emboldened to challenge pro-Trump critics of the new Democratic administration. And following Wednesday’s violent protests in the halls of Congress by Trump supporters, said Andy Ngo, “They will feel, in their own right, legitimized” to retaliate. Ngo is a self-made antifa expert and critic who has used his platform on Twitter, with 842,200 followers, and as editor-at-large at...

It is a crime spree and viral internet sensation that started in Chicago last May and is spreading across the country like wildfire. […] It's called “Put ’Em In A Coffin,” and it was created by a rap musician named VonMar, who has posted dozens of videos of himself doing it. He's even been arrested for it. Just what is “Put ’Em In A Coffin”? James McHugh, 28, lives in the Fifth Ward, and he can tell you exactly what it is, because it happened to him this past weekend. “A group of young idiots, just out for laughs, to...

It took four months of dodging, ducking, bobbing, and weaving, but bloggers have finally pinned Franklin Foer and The New Republic to the mat. Yesterday afternoon, Foer's online edition of the magazine published a long, self-pitying, highly defensive screed about the Scott Beauchamp articles that accused American soldiers of casual atrocities in Iraq in which the Editor of The New Republic admitted the magazine would no longer stand behind or vouch for their accuracy: "When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that....

Remember Scott Beauchamp? The soldier who wrote stories from the Middle East, about things like mocking a disfigured woman in a chow hall, running over a dog and wearing pieces of baby skull under helmets? The tales never rang true, but the editors of The New Republic ran with them like crack addicts looking for more baking soda. Now that TNR has posted a whinging, non-apology, Franklin Foer is your editorial man of the hour whose self-effacing pen is less mighty than his apparent ego. And that’s why there’s already a new movie out. See source for lotsa kewl links....

SHOCK DOCS: THE NEW REPUBLIC 'SHOCK TROOPS' STORY COLLAPSESWED Oct 24 2007 12:29:44 ET The DRUDGE REPORT has optained internal documents from the investigation of THE NEW REPUBLIC'S "Baghdad Diarist", Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army private turned war correspondent who reported tales of military malfeasance from the Iraq War front. The documents appear to expose that once the veracity of Beauchamp's diaries were called into question, and an Army investigation ensued, THE NEW REPUBLIC has failed to publicly account for publishing slanderous falsehoods about the U.S. military in a time of war. Document 1: Beauchamp Refuses to Stand by...

The Weekly Standard has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp -- author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns -- signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods -- fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source. Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad: "An investigation has been completed and...

We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Major Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, "I have no knowledge of that." He added, "If someone is speaking anonymously [to The Weekly Standard], they are on their own." When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, "We don't go into the details of how we conduct our...

Bottom Line: Following the standards of journalism adopted by The New Republic and by my post-modern colleagues in the Academy, I have decided to report on my experiences in Iraq. Now I have never been to Iraq, but I am told (by modern academics) that it is not the literal truth of the story that counts, but whether the story “smells right” or has the right over arching plot. It seems good to try this out and write a story that is not true, but which accepts all the premises about the War and the troops that I am supposed...

In a famous passage in his Confessions, St. Augustine admits that as a young boy he ran with a bad crowd and fabricated stories to impress his friends. I was ashamed among other youths that my viciousness was less than theirs: I heard them boasting of their exploits...not only for the pleasure of the act but for the pleasure of the boasting....and when I lacked opportunity to equal others in vice, I invented things I had not done, lest I might be held cowardly for being innocent, or contemptible for being chaste....Someone cries, 'Come on, let's do it'--and we would...

After a thorough investigation that lasted nearly a week the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division has concluded that the allegation made by Private Thomas Scott Beauchamp, the "Baghdad Diarist", have been "refuted by members of his platoon and proven to be false" The official investigation the 4th IBCT Public Affairs Office qualified as "thorough and professional" concluded late August 1st. Officials would not speculate on the possibility of further action against Private Beauchamp, nor would they confirm his current whereabouts or status. Sergeant First Class Robert Timmons, the acting public affairs official of the 4th IBCT, 1st...

A STATEMENT FROM SCOTT THOMAS BEAUCHAMP: As we've noted in this space, some have questioned details that appeared in the Diarist "Shock Troops," published under the pseudonym Scott Thomas. According to Major Kirk Luedeke, a public affairs officer at Forward Operating Base Falcon, a formal military investigation has also been launched into the incidents described in the piece. Although the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published, we have decided to go back and, to the extent possible, re-report every detail. This process takes considerable time, as the primary subjects are on another continent, with intermittent access...

Manuel II Paleologus reigned as emperor of Byzantium from 1391, the year in which he is believed to have composed the text from which the Pope quoted last week, until his death in 1425. A brief overview of his experience of Islam: 1390: Manuel is sent as a hostage to the court of Sultan Bayezid I. As his writings demonstrate, he reads widely in Muslim texts and engages in repeated debates with Muslim scholars. He is also forced to participate in an attack on his own people, the siege of Philadelphia, which eliminated the last Byzantine settlement in Anatolia. 1394-1402:...