Free Republic

If you expect former President Donald Trump to fulfill even one campaign promise he is making for 2024, you would have to explain why he is openly mocking the idea that he could fulfill the promise that defined his entire candidacy in 2016. The core promise of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was that he would build a wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. This is what defined his tough-on-illegal-immigration approach, and he even mocked detractors who said that he would not or could not possibly do it. As late as October 2020, less than one...

Greece's cultural gems have become the focus of renewed protest on the streets of Athens following the cash-strapped government's announcement of plans to include prime properties around the Acropolis, and other landmark buildings, in its privatisation programme. Furious opponents marched through the city centre at the weekend to denounce the "illegal sale" of the country's heritage. More than four years into debt-stricken Greece's prolonged economic crisis, many described the step as the height of humiliation for a nation already hit by excoriating austerity and record levels of poverty and unemployment.... Greece's privatization programme has been problem-plagued from the day bankrupt...

I respectfully dissent from National Review’s Wednesday-evening editorial, which derided Newt Gingrich as not merely flawed but unfit for consideration as the GOP presidential nominee. The Editors further gave the back of the hand to the bids of two other prominent conservatives, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann — a judgment that is simply inexplicable in light of the frivolousness of its reasoning and of the Editors’ embrace of Jon Huntsman, a moderate former Obama-administration official, as a serious contender. The editorial surprised me, as it did many readers. I am now advised that the timing was driven by the editorial’s...