Free Republic

I would oppose Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson because of her judicial philosophy, for the reasons outlined by Ed Whelan last week. I address that in a separate post. For now, I want to discuss the claim by Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) that Judge Jackson is appallingly soft on child-pornography offenders. The allegation appears meritless to the point of demagoguery. Senator Hawley is a bright guy, but if he ever handled a child-pornography case in the brief time he spent as a practicing lawyer before he sought public office, that is not apparent. Nor does it appear, from the admittedly...

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat opened the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, brushing away attacks from Republicans who claimed she had been too lenient on “child porn offenders.” Committee chair Dick Durbin referred to the allegation in his opening remarks, rebutting it as he cited an unlikely source: Andrew McCarthy, a conservative former prosecutor and National Review columnist. In a series of tweets last week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he had discovered an “alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children.” "In every single child porn...

Former high-ranking U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy discusses charges against the parents of Ethan Crumbley. McCarthy made these comments yesterday appearing with Neil Cavuto. Andrew McCarthy — “I really think it’s outrageous, I mean I understand it because people are very hot, emotions are very raw, this was a heinous heinous act.” “And the state of Michigan has considered a number of times enacting a law, this child access prevention law that many states have adopted which would make criminal what happened here which was the that the parents allowed the child to get access to the weapon. But the state...

TUCKER CARLSON: Why did you leave National Review? VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Because there were certain issues that would pop up occasionally, and I could predict what the answer was going to be. The Covington kids. I just sensed that before we knew anything, people would come and condemn them. TUCKER CARLSON: People at NR condemned the Covington kids? VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: I think there were certain people in the Republican movement, or establishment, who felt it is their duty to internally police their own, and that's kind of a virtue signal to the left. We are just part of your...

Remember Never Trump? For four years, an influential clique of think tankers, Republican operatives and talking heads claimed that any conservative who supported ­Donald Trump was complicit with a uniquely malevolent presidency. But if Trumpian conservatives are ­responsible for everything the 45th president was faulted for, then Never Trump should likewise own the evils of the new Biden administration. Never Trumpers spoke of the Trump GOP almost as if it were Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, a dictator’s discredited political organ, badly in need of a purge. “President Donald Trump leaves office with a crimson-stained legacy,” thundered Peter Wehner, vice president...

I took a beating on Twitter Thursday night for making what I thought was a commonsense observation that President Trump should be negotiating favorable terms for resignation "if there are 20 GOP senators who’d vote to impeach." In our current climate, this was taken as a call for Trump’s impeachment. But it wasn’t a value judgment. It was a mathematical calculation. As it happens, I do think the president has committed an impeachable offense, making a reckless speech that incited a throng on the mall, which foreseeably included an insurrectionist mob. These rioters ended up overwhelming security forces and storming...

These are dark days in the history of the United States, and no one is feeling them more intensely than Mike Pence. On Wednesday, the vice president admirably turned aside the president’s high-intensity demands that he shred the Constitution. Trump was pushing Pence to usurp the states’ power over the disposition of their electoral votes — in effect, to claim dictatorial power to reverse President-elect Biden’s victory. Pence’s fidelity to his constitutional oath so enraged Trump that the president publicly rebuked him even as an insurrectionist mob was descending on the Capitol. Press reports indicate that the rioters, upon overwhelming...

The first thing to notice about Texas’s desperation lawsuit, which seeks to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, is what does not appear on the front page: the name of the state’s solicitor general, Kyle Hawkins. The lawsuit is brought against four other states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin — that have certified Joe Biden as the winner of their electoral votes. Thus, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton invokes the original jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court to hear disputes between states. Yet the brief is not signed by the lawyer who typically represents Texas before...

So, what crime would you charge, Mr. President? The closing weeks of the campaign find President Trump berating William Barr, the attorney general who has served him and the country well. Trump’s increasingly strident complaints relate to the probe of his 2016 campaign, launched by the Obama administration. At Barr’s direction, the genesis and conduct of that probe have been under investigation since early 2019 by Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham, a well-regarded career prosecutor.

As regular readers of my column know, I’m no fan of Donald Trump. And that’s putting it mildly. I don’t like his chronic dishonesty. I don’t like narcissism. I don’t like his nastiness and his silly name-calling. I detest his need to constantly cause chaos, as he did with a recent tweet suggesting we should postpone the 2020 presidential election. There’s nothing about this man’s character that I like. And I hope he wins re-election in a landslide. Actually what I mean is that I hope the Republican candidate beats the Democratic candidate. And I wish the Republican candidate were...

How does Watergate differ from Obamagate? Journalists led the charge to uncover the first. But now? Now journalists are leading the coverup of the second. J. Peder Zane has illustrated the media coverup exactly: “This week’s news that at least 39 Obama officials had unmasked Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s private conversations during the last month of their administration seemed a little shocking. Today, major media outlets are telling readers and viewers that the practice is “routine.” A CNN headline told readers, “Trump pushes 'Obamagate' conspiracy based on routine intel activity.” Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, now a CNN...

Now, a California man has put a painstakingly amount of effort into creating the world’s clearest image of the moon’s craters. Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy is the genius behind this masterpiece, which took two weeks to create. So, how did he do it? Here’s McCarthy describing the process: “This moon might look a little funny to you, and that’s because it is an impossible scene. From two weeks of images of the waxing moon, I took the section of the picture that has the most contrast (right before the lunar terminator where shadows are the longest), aligned and blended them to...

Thanks to Senators Rand Paul (R., Ken.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah), as well as an amen chorus of Trump loyalists in the House, the president seems poised to fulfill one of the fondest dreams of Clinton and Obama Democrats: Government policy that regards international terrorism as a mere crime, a law-enforcement issue to be managed by federal judges rather than a national-security threat from which the officials Americans elect must safeguard our country. I doubt the president realizes these ramifications of declining to reauthorize three PATRIOT Act security measures that are set to expire. Successfully camouflaging themselves as “FISA...

Two things happened simultaneously on Wednesday: (a) The House of Representatives transmitted to the Senate two articles of impeachment approved on straight partisan lines a month ago, and (b) the House’s impeachment inquiry - yes, it’s still very much alive - highlighted new, relevant evidence it has turned up about the activities in Ukraine of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Giuliani’s associates. The Democrats’ strategy is coming clear. The House provided the Senate with two half-baked impeachment articles. House Democrats rushed through the investigation, forgoing salient witnesses and evidence, because of the political calendar. The charges are weak...

In the wake of the strike ordered by President Trump that killed General Qasem Soleimani, many on the left have rushed to criticize Trump for retaliating against the attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. 2020 Democrats, in particular, piled on Trump with condemnations. "President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox," said Biden. Cory Booker, who apparently is still in the race, claimed, "We have a president who has failed to show any larger strategic plan." Elizabeth Warren acknowledged that Soleimani was an evil terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, but also said,...

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy asserted on Tuesday that former FBI agent Peter Strzok will not succeed in suing the government for violating his rights, saying “he is going to strike out.” McCarthy made the statement on “Fox & Friends” one day after Strzok filed the lawsuit in Washington, D.C., federal district court arguing that his politically charged anti-Trump messages were protected by the First Amendment — even though he sent them from bureau-issued phones while playing leading roles in the probes into both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. McCarthy, a Fox News contributor, said Strzok, who is suing the...

In Tuesday morning’s impeachment inquiry hearing, in the questioning of Lt.-Col. Alexander Vindman of the White House National Security Council and Jennifer Williams of Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, Democrats are pressing three misleading themes. First, Chairman Adam Schiff and the Democrats’ counsel, Daniel Goldman, have attempted to frame a dichotomy between President Trump and what they call “official” US foreign policy. It’s a false framework. Official policy is not, as they suggest, made by the so-called policy community (comprised mainly of the NSC, the State Department and government agents from the intelligence community and the armed services). The president...

McCabe has indicated that, if charged, he would claim the Justice Department was under pressure from the White House. Federal prosecutors in Washington have recommended that criminal charges be filed against Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director, and the Justice Department has rejected a last-ditch appeal by McCabe’s lawyers, according to a report on Thursday by Fox News. This clears the way for what appears to be McCabe’s imminent indictment.

People living in Palestinian territory are being denied rights and Tlaib was similarly denied the ability to visit her grandmother, Rivera claimed Monday on "The Story." "I also think it is absolutely outrageous that two sitting members of the Congress of the United States of America... were denied entry into the country. I'm shocked that the ambassador did not mention 52 years of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories." Prior to Rivera's remarks, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon discussed the situation with host Martha MacCallum. In his interview, Rivera explained why he found it wrong for Israel...

The most effective way to spot The Indecent is to watch for those who incessantly peacock their own decency … which perfectly describes the increasingly reprehensible Never Trump publication National Review. Granted, there are still a couple of interesting contributors over there, chiefly Victory Davis Hanson and Andrew McCarthy, but this in no way mitigates National Review’s indecency anymore than a couple of innocent men wrongfully convicted turn a state prison into a Boy Scout camp. National Review’s fall has been breathtaking. What was once the premiere source of conservative thought has become one of the most hypocritical, anti-intellectual, feelings-first,...