Free Republic

Senior U.S. officials knowingly lied to the public about their progress throughout the 18-year war in Afghanistan, consistently painting a rosier picture of the state of the war than they knew to be true, according to a cache of documents obtained by the Washington Post. In private interviews conducted by a watchdog that span the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations – which the Post obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request -- U.S. officials frequently acknowledged a lack of understanding, strategy and progress in a war they regularly described publicly as being on the cusp of success. “After the...

Paul A. Volcker, who helped shape American economic policy for more than six decades, most notably by leading the Federal Reserve’s brute-force campaign to subdue inflation in the late 1970s and early ’80s, died on Sunday in New York. He was 92. The death was confirmed by his daughter, Janice Zima, who did not specify the cause. Mr. Volcker had been treated for prostate cancer, which was diagnosed in 2018. Mr. Volcker, a towering, taciturn and somewhat rumpled figure, arrived in Washington as America’s postwar economic hegemony was beginning to crumble. He would devote his professional life to wrestling with...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Debating the grounds for impeachment, Republicans said there's nothing here. Democrats said it's a slam dunk. Weighty questions about a president's alleged malfeasance and whether that merits the extraordinary step of impeachment drew some too-simple answers at a House hearing Monday aimed at laying the foundation for charges that Donald Trump abused his power on Ukraine. A sampling of rhetoric from the House Judiciary Committee: Rep. DOUG COLLINS, top Republican on the committee: “We don’t have a crime.” THE FACTS: That's an opinion, not an established fact. But while Democrats do allege Trump engaged in some criminal...

High-tech sector job growth is overwhelmingly benefiting three California cities, plus Seattle and Boston, while the rest of the U.S. has been left behind in the dust, according to a new study. The findings published Monday by The Brookings Institution offer yet another a sign that economic disparities continue to negatively impact middle America. High-tech sector job growth is overwhelmingly benefiting three California cities, plus Seattle and Boston, while the rest of the U.S. has been left behind in the dust, according to a new study. The findings published Monday by The Brookings Institution offer yet another a sign that...

Pierce Bush, the grandson of former President George H.W. Bush, announced his candidacy Monday for a congressional seat in Texas, becoming the latest member of his famous Republican family to enter politics. But his first run for office won’t be easy. Bush joins one of the nation’s most crowded congressional races of 2020 in his bid to replace Republican Rep. Pete Olson, who is retiring from his suburban Houston district that Democrats nearly flipped last year and are aggressively targeting again.

~snip~ Megan Rapinoe is Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year. She is just the fourth woman in the award’s 66-year history to win it unaccompanied, a feat that is both a remarkable athletic achievement and a reflection of entrenched gender biases. Rapinoe challenged perceptions of her, of female athletes, of all women. She led her teammates, three months before their tentpole tournament, to sue the U.S. Soccer Federation for equal pay; to declare in advance that they would not visit the White House when they won the Cup; to score 13 goals in a group-stage match against Thailand, without apology....

A staffer for 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders reportedly departed last week over anti-Semitic and homophobic tweets. Darius Khalil Gordon, who joined the Vermont senator’s campaign in November, announced Wednesday his new position as deputy director of constituency organizing for the campaign, the Washington Free Beacon reported. A Sanders campaign spokesman told CNN the campaign no longer employed Gordon following the Thursday Free Beacon report that examined a variety of Gordon’s tweets. “He is no longer with the campaign and we wish him the best,” the spokesman, Mike Casca, told CNN Friday. “I got a black mans body, white...

Vatican Bishop: ‘China Trusts Pope Francis’ ROME — A top Vatican bishop has confirmed Pope Francis’ wish to visit Beijing and establish formal diplomatic ties with the country, as reported Monday in China’s state-run Global Times. “Pope Francis has love and confidence in China and China trusts Pope Francis,” said Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, speaking at an organ donation and transplantation conference this weekend in Kunming, Southwest China.“In this dynamic, the next step is to reach [an agreement on establishing] diplomatic relations,” said Sanchez, while also underscoring the pope’s wish to visit...

Attorney General William P. Barr issued the following statement: "Nothing is more important than the credibility and integrity of the FBI and the Department of Justice. That is why we must hold our investigators and prosecutors to the highest ethical and professional standards. The Inspector General’s investigation has provided critical transparency and accountability, and his work is a credit to the Department of Justice. I would like to thank the Inspector General and his team. The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that,...

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Monday that the bureau is implementing more than 40 "corrective steps" in response to a Department of Justice inspector general report on the investigation into the Trump campaign and 2016 election interference. The report found the FBI's decision to launch and carry out the investigation targeting four Trump campaign officials was not affected by political bias, a conclusion Wray highlighted while also noting the bureau fully cooperated with the nearly two-year internal review by Inspector General Michael Horowitz. The report was, however, critical of certain aspects of the FBI’s handling of the investigation "Accordingly, the...

For two years, the president of the United States and his followers have loudly declared that the FBI acted unlawfully in conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. They repeatedly told the American people that the FBI had done all sorts of bad things, such as tapping Donald Trump’s wires during the campaign, opening an investigation without adequate cause, with the intent to damage Trump, and inserting secret informants into the Trump campaign. The president said the FBI’s actions were “treason.” The current attorney general even slimed his own organization by supporting Trump’s claims, asserting...

At this point - after reading so many Freeper opinions that the IG report is NOTHING, and listening to Hannity's broadcast saying that the report vindicates everything Hannity has been saying for years . . . I gotta say that right now I trust Hannity's preliminary analysis more than the opinion of so many gloom and doom Freepers. I think it's definitely time to break out the popcorn!! (But that's just ME).

RUSH: There is another story — actually, I don’t know how this one got past Bloomberg. Bloomberg News said that they are going to not cover the Democrats anymore because their boss and founder is in the race, Michael Bloomberg. They were only gonna cover Trump. Remember that? They’re not gonna cover the Democrats because they don’t want to be accused of bias. They don’t think they could go in there and be critical of any Democrat because Doomberg’s their boss. But no such problem exists covering Trump, so I’m kind of surprised this one made the cut. Before I...

It's one of the brightest annual displays. Stargazers are in for a treat this December as one of the brightest annual displays is expected to light up the sky. The Geminid meteor shower can be seen between the 4th and the 17th of December, peaking on Saturday 14th when around 120 meteors will be expected to be visible per hour. Thanks to the brightness of the individual meteors, it's considered to be one of the best to observe. "In December every year, the Earth crosses the orbital path of the Apollo asteroid 3200 Phaethon. As the asteroid’s orbit takes it...

Whale Fossils Confirm Post-Flood Boundary WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2019 Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D., and Tim Clarey, Ph.D. In 2018, as a complement to ICR’s ongoing megasequence research, ICR scientists Drs. Jeffrey Tomkins and Tim Clarey described the beginning of a research project to document fossils formed late in the Genesis Flood.1 Earlier, our study of global oil well data and rock outcrops demonstrated that the Genesis Flood deposits range from near the base of the Cambrian System up through Neogene strata in the upper Cenozoic.2-4 Study of global fossils and geological data confirms the end of the Flood is late...

Exasperation is in the air. Liberal journalists are convinced the only way to save the Republic is to impeach Donald Trump and yet increasingly hosts, reporters and pundits are clearly worried they and the Democrats might have missed their shot. NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd compared the President to O.J. Simpson when he worried Trump would evade justice: “I’m having a quick flashback to the O.J. trial.” Todd feared Trump was “going to get acquitted” even though “everybody knew” he was “guilty.” His MSNBC colleague Donny Deutsch yelled at his fellow Democrats for being too weak: “We can’t...

RUSH: I want to give you the examples from the hearings today that I cited for you in the first half hour of the program. Both of these went uncommented on. Both of these went unrefuted. They were allowed to stand there and thus penetrate the minds of people watching. Both have been exposed as bogus. But the point is, every one of these examples is false. These are edits and misinterpretations of Trump statements. They are filled with misdirection, editing, and basically they are lies. Now, if they are willing to do this, what does it say about the...

Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz’s report on alleged FBI misconduct in surveilling the Trump campaign found that the FBI “altered” evidence that falsely cast former Trump presidential campaign adviser Carter Page as a Russian spy. The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis and Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway wrote that the report “found that the FBI falsely claimed to the FISA Court not only that Carter Page was a Russian agent, but also falsely claimed that an unnamed intelligence agency had told the FBI that Page was ‘not a source’ in their efforts to surveil and curtail Russian intelligence...

FULL TITLE: IG Report: FBI Official Higher Up Than Peter Strzok Involved in Opening “Crossfire Hurricane” to Spy on Trump ============================================================= The DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz finally released his report on FISA abuses on Monday. The report revealed what we knew to be true all along — the FBI defrauded the FISA court and purposely omitted exculpatory information from the FISA judges in order to obtain FOUR FISA warrants on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. According to Horowitz’s report, former FBI counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok wasn’t the sole or even highest-level decision maker in opening the CI investigation into...

RUSH: Yeah, I know it’s hard to watch. It’s very hard to watch. You know why this is hard to watch? I’ll tell you why it’s hard to watch. It’s hard to watch this because all of this is bogus. And yet it’s being given the imprimatur of legitimacy by virtue of the way it’s being dealt with even by friendly media and by some of the Republicans on the committee. Now, I know they’re trying to expose Nadler as not knowing what he’s doing and how to run a committee, and they’re doing a good job of that, but...