Free Republic

If anyone were in Nunes’s position, he or she might doubt that the new Trump administration could fully trust Director Comey or others in the intelligence agencies to provide disinterested appraisals of such information, given that a number of intelligence officials may themselves, in theory, have been involved in the intercepts and their dissemination. He might advise that any possible sources connected even remotely to the White House should have disclosed the existence of such information to his boss. Nor would he necessarily believe that Representative Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) would be a reliable partner on the intelligence committee. Would...

It is now reported that the Obama administration during the campaign went to a FISA court to tap the communications of Trump-campaign officials and unofficial supporters. FISA applications are almost never rejected (and never leaked), but the court rebuffed this one in June 2016, ostensibly for insufficient cause. Ostensibly it is also unprecedented for a sitting president’s administration to order surveillance of campaign personnel of an opposite party before an upcoming election — a fact suggesting that Obama-administration officials may have assumed that a grateful shoo-in successor Clinton Justice Department would not worry greatly about such interference. News reports further...

<p>Outraged New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently compared Trump's victory to disasters in American history that killed and wounded thousands such as the Pearl Harbor surprise bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.</p> <p>The New Republic -- based on no evidence -- theorized that Trump could well be mentally unstable due to the effects of neurosyphilis.</p>

Paradox: How does a supposedly bad man appoint good people eager to advance a conservative agenda that supposedly more moral Republicans failed to realize? We variously read that Trump should be impeached, removed, neutralized — or worse. But until he is, are his appointments, executive orders, and impending legislative agenda equally abhorrent? General acclamation followed the Trump appointments of retired Generals H. R. McMaster as national-security adviser, James Mattis as defense secretary, and John Kelly to head Homeland Security. The brief celebration of Trump’s selections was almost as loud as the otherwise daily denunciations of Trump himself. Trump’s equally inspired...

Activists portray illegal immigration solely as a human story of the desperately poor from south of the border fleeing misery to start new, productive lives in the U.S. -- despite exploitation and America's nativist immigration laws. But the truth is always more complex -- and can reveal self-interested as well as idealistic parties. Employers have long sought to undercut the wages of the American underclass by preference for cheaper imported labor. The upper-middle classes have developed aristocratic ideas of hiring inexpensive "help" to relieve them of domestic chores. The Mexican government keeps taxes low on its elite in part by...

Trumps’ critics, left and right, aim to bring about the cataclysm they predicted. A 1964 political melodrama, Seven Days in May, envisioned a futuristic (1970s) failed military cabal that sought to sideline the president of the United States over his proposed nuclear-disarmament treaty with the Soviets. Something far less dramatic but perhaps as disturbing as Hollywood fiction played out this February... Currently, the political and media opponents of Donald Trump are seeking to subvert his presidency in a manner unprecedented in the recent history of American politics. The so-called resistance among EPA federal employees is trying to disrupt Trump administration...

This shift from the ideal of the melting pot to the triumph of salad-bowl separatism occurred, in part, because the Democratic Party found electoral resonance in big government’s generous entitlements and social programs tailored to particular groups. By then, immigration into the United States had radically shifted and become less diverse. Rather than including states in Europe and the former British Commonwealth, most immigrants were poorer and almost exclusively hailed from the nations of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, resulting in poorer immigrants who, upon arrival, needed more government help. Another reason for the shift was the general protest culture...

Oroville dam, the tallest in the nation, is currently in danger of structural failure. Thousands living downstream from its desperate cascading water releases are evacuating their homes in Hollywood disaster-film fashion. Something premodern and apocalyptic like this was not supposed to have happened in a postmodern California of Google, Hollywood, and Napa Valley wineries. California’s politicians and pundits in recent years of drought swore the state was entering a cycle of permanent drought (and thus saw no need to start construction on a single dam to store the rain and snow that supposedly would not return). Instead, they warned of...

The spark that ignites populist movements is not so much disparities in wealth and status (they are not always French Revolution or Bolshevik-like class-driven attempts to grab power) as rank hypocrisies: Elites condescendingly prescribe nostrums to hoi polloi, but always on the dual premise that those who are dictating will be immune from the ramifications of their own sometimes burdensome edicts, and those who are dictated to are supposedly too dense to know what is good for them. (Think Steven Chu, the former energy secretary, who either did not commute by car or had a short drive to work, while...

Threatening secession is far from the only thing that the Golden State has in common with the Old South. Over 60 percent of California voters went for Hillary Clinton — a margin of more than 4 million votes over Donald Trump. Since Clinton’s defeat, the state seems to have become unhinged over Trump’s unexpected election. “Calexit” supporters brag that they will have enough signatures to qualify for a ballot measure calling for California’s secession from the United States. Some California officials have talked of the state not remitting its legally obligated tax dollars to the federal government. They talk of...

Over sixty percent of California voters went for Hillary Clinton -- a margin of more than 4 million votes over Donald Trump. Since Clinton's defeat, the state seems to have become unhinged over Trump's unexpected election. "Calexit" supporters brag that they will have enough signatures to qualify for a ballot measure calling for California's secession from the United States. Some California officials have talked of the state not remitting its legally obligated tax dollars to the federal government. They talk of expanding its sanctuary cities into an entire sanctuary state that would nullify federal immigration law. Californians also now talk...

For all the hysteria over the bluntness of the mercurial Trump, his agenda marks a return to what used to be seen as fairly normal, as the U.S. goes from hard left back to the populist center. Trump promises not just to reverse almost immediately all of Obama's policies, but to do so in a pragmatic fashion that does not seem to be guided by any orthodox or consistently conservative ideology. Trade deals and jobs are Trump's obsessions -- mostly for the benefit of blue-collar America. He calls for full-bore gas and oil development, a common culture in lieu of...

In truth, we are on the cusp of a great experiment. For decades, conservatives, both traditional and pro-growth supply-siders, have preached that deregulation, reasonable and predictable Federal Reserve interest rates, reduced government, a radically simplified and pruned-back tax code, new incentives for investment, an open energy market, and a can-do psychological landscape that encourages entrepreneurship will make the economy soar at rates of 4 percent GDP and more. We shall soon see. If Trump unleashes American know-how and strengthens the economy, then his cultural and domestic agendas, as well as his personal demeanor and language, however radical and jarring, will...

Furor has arisen over President-elect Donald Trump's charges that our intelligence agencies are politicized. Spare us the outrage. For decades, directors of intelligence agencies have often quite inappropriately massaged their assessments to fit administration agendas. Careerists at these agencies naturally want to continue working from one administration to the next in "the king is dead; long live the king!" style. So they make the necessary political adjustments, which are sometimes quite at odds with their own agency's findings and to the detriment of national security. The result is often confusion -- and misinformation passed off as authoritative intelligence. After Barack...

<p>At 7 AM in California’s rural Central Valley, not long before the recent presidential election, I stopped to talk with an elderly irrigator on the shared border alleyway of my farm. His face was a wrinkled latticework, his false teeth yellow. His truck smelled of cigarettes, its cab overflowing with flotsam and jetsam: butts, scribbled notes, drip-irrigation parts, and empty soda cans. He rolled down the window and muttered something about the plunging water-table level and whether a weak front would bring any rain. And then, this dinosaur put one finger up on the wheel as a salutation and drove off in a dust cloud.</p>

In its remaining days in power, the Obama administration suddenly punished Vladimir Putin’s Russia for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential election. It claimed that Russian or Russian-hired hackers tapped into the records of the Democratic National Committee as well as the correspondence of John Podesta, a Clinton advisor. But what the Obama administration did not say was that such cyber-crimes are by now old hat. Both the Russian and Chinese governments have been hacking into far more important U.S. records and government archives for years without earning retaliation The administration also did not mention that the election hacking occurred...

Last week in Chicago, a white special-needs teenager was held captive by four black youths. The victim was bound, gagged, tortured, forced to drink toilet water, partially scalped, and subject to racially and politically motivated verbal abuse. The perpetrators streamed portions of their violent savagery on Facebook. After the victim escaped from his assailants and was found on the streets by a police officer, a Chicago police commander initially said he was unsure whether the attack constituted a hate crime -- as if that distinction might calibrate the crime's viciousness. President Obama was likewise initially hesitant to label this cruelty...

Coastal elites set rules for others, exempt themselves, and tolerate rampant lawlessness from illegal aliens.

One reason for the emergence of outsider Donald Trump is the old outrage that elites seldom experience the consequences of their own ideologically driven agendas. Hypocrisy, when coupled with sanctimoniousness, grates people like few other human transgressions: Barack Obama opposing charter schools for the inner city as he puts his own children in Washington’s toniest prep schools, or Bay Area greens suing to stop contracted irrigation water from Sierra reservoirs, even as they count on the Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy project to deliver crystal-clear mountain water to their San Francisco taps. The American progressive elite relies on its influence, education, money,...

The Middle East surrounding democratic Israel is a nightmare. Half a million have died amid the moonscape ruins of Syria. A once-stable Iraq was overrun by the Islamic State. The Arab Spring, U.S. support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the coup of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to regain control of Egypt, and the bombing of Libya all have left North Africa in turmoil. Iran has been empowered by the U.S.-brokered deal and will still become nuclear. Russian President Vladimir Putin's bombers blast civilians not far from Israel's borders. Democrats are considering Rep. Keith Ellison as the next chairman of...