Free Republic

<p>Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was supposed to run a narrow investigation into accusations of collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government. But so far, Mueller's work has been plagued by almost daily improper leaks (e.g., "sources report," "it emerged," "some say") about investigations that seem to have little to do with his original mandate.</p>

<p>History shows that special counsels almost inevitably overstep their mandates.</p> <p>Former FBI director Robert Mueller was supposed to run a narrow investigation into accusations of collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government. But so far, Mueller’s work has been plagued by almost daily improper leaks (e.g., “sources report,” “it emerged,” “some say”) about investigations that seem to have little to do with his original mandate.</p>

The world equates American military power with the maintenance of the postwar global order of free commerce, communications and travel. Sometimes American power leads to costly, indecisive interventions like those in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya that were not able to translate superiority on the battlefield into lasting peace. But amid the frustrations of American foreign policy, it is forgotten that the United States also plays a critical but more silent role in ensuring the survival of small, at-risk nations. The majority of them are democratic and pro-Western. But they all share the misfortune of living in dangerous neighborhoods full of...

Seventy-five years ago this month, the Soviet Red Army surrounded --and would soon destroy -- a huge invading German army at Stalingrad on the Volga River. Nearly 300,000 of Germany's best soldiers would never return home. The epic 1942-43 battle for the city saw the complete annihilation of the attacking German 6th Army. It marked the turning point of World War II. Before Stalingrad, Adolf Hitler regularly boasted on German radio as his victorious forces pressed their offensives worldwide. After Stalingrad, Hitler went quiet, brooding in his various bunkers for the rest of the war. During the horrific Battle of...

It is now fashionable to demonize Russia, but most Americans have forgotten key aspects of 20th-century history, including the Russians’ fight to stop the march of Nazi Germany. Seventy-five years ago this month, the Soviet Red Army surrounded — and would soon destroy — a huge invading German army at Stalingrad on the Volga River. Nearly 300,000 of Germany’s best soldiers would never return home. The epic 1942–43 battle for the city saw the complete annihilation of the attacking German 6th Army. It marked the turning point of World War II.

Given North Korea's nuclear lunacy, what exactly are the rules, formal or implicit, about which nations can have nuclear weapons and which cannot? It is complicated. In the free-for-all environment of the 1940s and 1950s, the original nuclear club included only those countries with the technological know-how, size and money to build nukes. Those realities meant that up until the early 1960s, only Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States had nuclear capabilities. Members of this small club did not worry that many other nations would make such weapons because it seemed far too expensive and difficult for...

The president’s fiercest critics still do not grasp that Trump is a symptom, not the cause of the GOP’s internal strife. For all the talk of a Civil War in the Republican party over Donald Trump, 90 percent of Republicans ended up voting for him.   Bitterness Over the 2016 Election? So a vocal Never Trump Republican establishment had not much effect on the 2016 election. Voters do not carry conservative magazines to the polls. They are not swayed much by talking heads, and on Election Day they do not they print out conservative congressional talking points from their emails....

Despite having both an expansive budget and a large legal team, Special Investigator Robert Mueller likely will not find President Trump culpable for any Russian collusion—or at least no court or congressional vote would, even if Mueller recommends an indictment. That likelihood becomes clearer as the Trump investigators—in Congress, in the Justice Department, and the legions in the media—begin to grow strangely silent about the entire collusion charge, as other scandals mount and crowd out the old empty story. This news boomerang poses the obvious question—was the zeal of the original accusers of felony behavior with the Russian collusion merely...

The Democratic Party, as it did after Hubert Humphrey’s close loss in 1968, seems still to be misdiagnosing its 2016 defeat. Democrats see too little identity politics rather than too much as their trouble, and thus are redoubling on what has been slowly shrinking the party into coastal enclaves. Promoting Black Lives Matter and open borders, promising free tuition and tax hikes, opposing fracking and pipeline construction, pushing single-payer health care and an ever-expanding transgender agenda as well as abortion—these are not majority positions. Neither will embracing Hollywood, the media, or the NFL protests win over voters. Thinking (or hoping)...

Almost a half-century ago, in 1968, the United States seemed to be falling apart. The Vietnam War, a bitter and close presidential election, antiwar protests, racial riots, political assassinations, terrorism and a recession looming on the horizon left the country divided between a loud radical minority and a silent conservative majority. The United States avoided a civil war. But America suffered a collective psychological depression, civil unrest, defeat in Vietnam and assorted disasters for the next decade -- until the election of a once-polarizing Ronald Reagan ushered in five consecutive presidential terms of relative bipartisan calm and prosperity from 1981...

The National Football League is a glass house that was cracking well before Donald Trump's criticism of players who refuse to stand during the national anthem. The NFL earned an estimated $14 billion last year. But 500-channel television, internet live streaming, video games and all sorts of other televised sports have combined to threaten the league's monopoly on weekend entertainment -- even before recent controversies. It has become a fad for many players not to stand for the anthem. But it is also becoming a trend for irate fans not to watch the NFL at all. Multimillionaire young players, mostly...

When left and right finally agree on something, watch out: The unthinkable becomes normal. So it is with changing attitudes toward Silicon Valley. For the last two decades, Apple, Google, Amazon and other West Coast tech corporations have been untouchable icons. They piled up astronomical profits while hypnotizing both left-wing and right-wing politicians. Conservative administrations praised them as modern versions of 19th-century risk-takers such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs and other tech giants were seen as supposedly creating national wealth in an unregulated, laissez-faire landscape that they had invented from nothing. At...

Think of the Korean Peninsula turned upside down. Imagine if there were a South Korean dictatorship that had been in power, as a client of the United States since 1953. Imagine also that contemporary South Korea was not the rich, democratic home of Kia and Samsung. Instead, envision it as an unfree, pre-industrialized and impoverished failed state, much like North Korea. Further envision that the U.S. had delivered financial aid and military assistance to this outlaw regime, which led to Seoul possessing several nuclear weapons and a fleet of long-range missiles. Next, picture this rogue South Korean dictatorship serially threatening...

The quiet resistance — the one without black masks and clubs — is the more revolutionary force, and it transcends race, class, and gender. After the election of Donald Trump, there arose a self-described “Resistance.” It apparently posed as a decentralized network of progressive activist groups dedicated to derailing the newly elected Trump administration. Democrats and progressives borrowed their brand name from World War II French partisans. In rather psychodramatic fashion, they envisioned their heroic role over the next four years as that of virtual French insurgents — coming down from the Maquis hills, perhaps to waylay Trump’s White House,...

"The Bard," William Shakespeare, had a healthy distrust of the sort of mob hysteria typified by our current epidemics of statue-busting and name-changing. In Shakespeare's tragedy "Julius Caesar" -- a story adopted from Plutarch's "Parallel Lives" -- a frenzied Roman mob, in furor over the assassination of Julius Caesar, encounters on the street a poet named Cinna. The innocent poet was not the conspiratorial assassin Cinna, but unfortunately shared a name with the killer. The terrified poet points out to the mob this case of mistaken identity: "I am Cinna the poet." The mob answers: "Tear him for his bad...

Much of the country has demanded the elimination of references to, and images of, people of the past -- from Christopher Columbus to Robert E. Lee -- who do not meet our evolving standards of probity. In some cases, such damnation may be understandable if done calmly and peacefully -- and democratically, by a majority vote of elected representatives. Few probably wish to see a statue in a public park honoring Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the founding members of the Ku Klux Klan, or Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote the majority opinion in the...

Progressives used to pressure U.S. corporations to cut back on outsourcing and on the tactic of building their products abroad to take advantage of inexpensive foreign workers. During the 2012 election, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney as a potential illiberal “outsourcer-in-chief” for investing in companies that went overseas in search of cheap labor. Yet most of the computers and smartphones sold by Silicon Valley companies are still being built abroad — to mostly silence from progressive watchdogs.

FP: ...One of your special expertises is on how leftists, and some of our European allies, have chosen to side with our enemy. Now, after the Madrid terror attack, we see another European ally succumb to appeasement.... Hanson: Well, even before the terrorists' communiques were fully disseminated the Spanish electorate voted for appeasement and a socialist government that would distance itself from the United States. This is the most profound example of capitulation since Daladier and Chamberlain and sets a truly awful example... Worse, this was not panic from a fickle leader but an overwhelming expression of public fear and...

Progressives used to pressure U.S. corporations to cut back on outsourcing and on the tactic of building their products abroad to take advantage of inexpensive foreign workers. During the 2012 election, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney as a potential illiberal "outsourcer in chief" for investing in companies that went overseas in search of cheap labor. Yet most of the computers and smartphones sold by Silicon Valley companies are still being built abroad -- to mostly silence from progressive watchdogs. In the case of the cobalt mining that is necessary for the production of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, thousands of...

Just seven months into Donald Trump’s administration we are already bombarded with political angling and speculations about the 2020 presidential race. No one knows in the next three years what can happen to a volatile Trump presidency or his psychotic enemies, but for now such pronouncements of doom seem amnesiac if not absurd. Things are supposedly not going well politically with Donald Trump lately, after a series of administration firings, internecine White House warring, and controversial tweets. A Gallup Poll has him at only a 34 percent positive rating, and losing some support even among Republicans (down to 79 percent)—although...