Free Republic

On July 7, 1846, a contingent of Marines raised the American flag over Monterey, California, to mark a proclamation by U.S. consul Thomas Larkin that the territory was being annexed as a consequence of the war with Mexico. Much of the future state had already been taken from Mexico's nominal control by an uprising of American settlers under the Bear Flag. Victory in the Mexican War meant that the country gained Texas, California, and everything in between, comprising most of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Next to the War of Independence and the Civil...

Failed CNN boss Jeff Zucker still wants to stay in the media game. To that end he is leading an offer to buy the bankrupt British publishing group behind the Daily Telegraph newspaper and Spectator magazine. The New York Post reports Zucker, the chief executive of Abu Dhabi-backed investment group RedBird IMI, is ready to pitch $750 million to the Barclay family that would allow them to repay their nearly $1.4 billion debt to Lloyds Banking Group. RedBird, a venture capital firm that has $1 billion in capital, would then have an option to convert the loan secured against the...

The false narrative of Operation Trump-Russia is the latest in a long train of episodes wherein Democrats have actively defended the indefensible. Emerging in the 1820s to counter the Whigs in favor of Andrew Jackson in 1828, the Democratic Party has had an age-old tradition of fighting to advance every bad idea in American history. To their limited credit, Old Hickory's political team have had brief spurts of decency. In their early days, the Jacksonians opposed centralized government, particularly as related to economics. A late 19th-century faction called the Bourbon Democrats, among whom was President Grover Cleveland, championed fiscal responsibility....