Free Republic

A presidential campaign is figuratively called a "race." Two runners sprint toward the Election Day finish line for the prize of the presidency. But the 2016 presidential campaign has spawned lots of weird races. The first sprint is one between embarrassments and scandals. Will another WikiLeaks disclosure confirm that Hillary Clinton is a dishonest and conniving hypocrite? Or will yet another open-mic tape, disgruntled beauty queen or old Howard Stern interview remind us that Donald Trump's private life was -- and perhaps still is -- uncouth? The winner will be the candidate leaked about the least by Election Day. Here,...

Hillary Clinton herself was not worried about even the appearance of scandal caused by transmitting classified documents over a private home-brewed server, or enabling her husband to shake down foreign donations to their shared foundation, or destroying some 30,000 emails. Evidently, she instead reasoned that she was within months of becoming President Hillary Clinton and therefore, in her Clintonesque view of the presidency, exempt from all further criminal exposure. Would a President Clinton have allowed the FBI to reopen their strangely aborted Uranium One investigation; would the FBI have asked her whether she communicated over an unsecure server with the...

Nothing quite gets to the root of an issue like a James Woods tweet. The fate of 800,000 to upwards of 3 million (now we’re told) Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, or so-called “DREAMers,” has the American political landscape on fire of late. The fact that most Americans want to protect DACA recipients but also want border security and are generally conservative on immigration hasn’t fazed Democrats intent on obstructing and even holding the government hostage over DACA without offering or even considering anything meaningful in return. So, what drives Democrats who clearly lack a mandate, not to mention...

Not all conspiracy theorists are unhinged paranoids—even when they insist there was a loosely organized if not sometimes incoherent effort to destroy Donald Trump’s candidacy beyond the bounds of “normal” politics and later a renewed and unprecedented endeavor to abort his presidency. After all, did anyone believe that in the year 2017 the losing side in an American election would immediately dub itself the “Resistance”—channeling the World War II nomenclature of the guerrilla campaign against the Nazi occupation of France? Or that the defeated candidate Hillary Clinton would formally embrace the imagery of liberationist patriots fighting a Nazi-like Trump’s occupation...

Trump is commonsensically undoing, piece by piece, the main components of Obama’s legacy. Donald Trump continues to baffle. Never Trump Republicans still struggle to square the circle of quietly agreeing so far with most of his policies, as they loudly insist that his record is already nullified by its supposedly odious author. Or surely it soon will be discredited by the next Trumpian outrage. Or his successes belong to congressional and Cabinet members, while his failures are all his own. Rarely do they seriously reflect on what otherwise over the last year might have been the trajectory of a Clinton...

Trump is commonsensically undoing, piece by piece, the main components of Obama’s legacy.onald Trump continues to baffle. Never Trump Republicans still struggle to square the circle of quietly agreeing so far with most of his policies, as they loudly insist that his record is already nullified by its supposedly odious author. Or surely it soon will be discredited by the next Trumpian outrage. Or his successes belong to congressional and Cabinet members, while his failures are all his own. Rarely do they seriously reflect on what otherwise over the last year might have been the trajectory of a Clinton administration....

For good or evil, we may see radical changes in North Korea in 2018. The beefed-up United Nations sanctions by midyear could lead to widespread North Korean hunger, as well as the virtual end of the country's industry and transportation. In the past, the West had called off such existential sanctions and rushed in cash and humanitarian aid on news of growing starvation. Would it now if the bleak alternative was a lunatic's nuclear missile possibly striking San Diego or Seattle? To survive an unending trade embargo -- and perhaps to avoid a coup -- Kim Jong Un would likely...

<p>We’ve gone from hard left, under Obama, to hard right, under Trump. Judge the ideologies by their results.</p> <p>Most new administrations do not really completely overturn their predecessors’ policies to enact often-promised ideologically driven change.</p> <p>The 18-year span of Harry Truman to Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy was mostly a continuum from center-left to center-right, back to center-left. Kennedy was probably as hawkish and as much of a tax cutter as was Eisenhower.</p>

America has always enjoyed two antithetical traditions in its political and military heroes. The preferred style is the reticent, sober, and competent executive planner as president or general, from Herbert Hoover to Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter. George Marshall remains the epitome of understated and quiet competence. The alternate and more controversial sorts are the loud, often reckless, and profane pile drivers. Think Andrew Jackson of Teddy Roosevelt. Both types have been appreciated, and at given times and in particular landscapes both profiles have proven uniquely invaluable. Grant/Sherman Both Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were military geniuses. Grant...

<p>Almost every supposedly informed prediction about President Donald Trump's compulsive Twitter addiction has so far proved wrong.</p> <p>He did not tweet his way out of the Republican nomination. Spontaneous social media messaging did not lose Trump the general election race with Hillary Clinton. Nor has Trump tweeted his presidency into oblivion.</p>

Stacking the deck with anti-Trump staffers is proving to be a really bad idea. Special prosecutors, investigators, and counsels are usually a bad idea. They are admissions that constitutionally mandated institutions don’t work — and can be rescued only by supposed superhuman moralists, who are without the innate biases inherent in human nature. The record from Lawrence Walsh to Ken Starr to Patrick Fitzgerald suggests otherwise. Originally narrow mandates inevitably expand — on the cynical theory that everyone has something embarrassing to hide. Promised “short” timelines and limited budgets are quickly forgotten. Prosecutors search for ever new crimes to justify...

<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)...