Free Republic

So what's Ben Rhodes been up to these days? His unmaskings and leaks are over, he doesn't have Seb Gorka to lie about, and his failures as a national security official have pretty well been exposed. I kid you not: he hasn't been idle. His latest scheme is launching a "shadow" National Security Council, called "National Security Action," co-chairing the operation with Jake Sullivan. Showing that he was always the one running things in the Obama White House, despite his creative writing major, his past career as a failed novelist, and his lack of national security experience, he's herded a...

The New York Times columnist David Brooks writes in a “memo” to Democratic Party leaders that their support for abortion on demand up until birth is hurting their party. Pointing out the failure of the Senate to muster 60 votes to protect unborn babies from abortion past the fifth month of pregnancy, Brooks notes, “I kept wondering: How much is our position on late-term abortions hurting us?” Taking his readers back through time before Roe v. Wade, when the Supreme Court created a right to abortion – though, as Alan Dershowitz has noted, none ever existed in the Constitution –...

New York Times columnist David Brooks tells his friends that the costs imposed by cheap-labor immigration don’t exist because, really, Americans are just inferior to immigrants in every way. Over all, America is suffering from a loss of dynamism. New business formation is down. Interstate mobility is down. Americans switch jobs less frequently and more Americans go through the day without ever leaving the house. But these trends are largely within the native population. Immigrants provide the antidote. They start new businesses at twice the rate of nonimmigrants. Roughly 70 percent of immigrants express confidence in the American dream, compared...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used a holiday season press conference Friday to deliver a lump of coal to Steve Bannon, mocking the former White House adviser’s “political genius” for costing Republicans an Alabama Senate seat. McConnell, R-Ky., made the remark 10 days after the Bannon-backed Roy Moore lost a special election to Doug Jones, giving Democrats their first victory in an Alabama Senate race in a quarter century. Moore faced multiple allegations of improper conduct with teenagers decades ago and touted extremist views that repelled many women and minorities. “The political genius on display, throwing away a seat in...

A new poll shows former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore with a commanding lead over Luther Strange, the Washington establishment backed candidate, heading into the GOP primary runoff for the Alabama U.S. Senate seat left open this year. The poll from JMC Analytics provided to Breitbart News ahead of its public release shows Moore with 51 percent, a majority, supporting him, while Strange trails nearly 20 points behind with just 32 percent—and 17 percent are undecided. Moore’s commanding lead comes after he outperformed polls to finish around 39 percent in a multi-way primary this past Tuesday. Strange finished...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Republican voters here put a bitter Senate campaign into overtime, forcing Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) into a runoff with conservative jurist Roy Moore for the right to represent Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s old seat. Strange was endorsed by President Trump, the National Rifle Association and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s super PAC, which spent $2.5 million on TV ads to boost him in Tuesday’s primary. That helped push him past Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), saving national Republicans from an embarrassment in a unique mid-summer election marked by low turnout. Democrats, who have not won a Senate race...

Race Preview After weeks of ads, mostly on behalf of incumbent Senator Luther Strange, the votes start rolling in tonight after 8pm EDT. Strange faces strong competition from former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who has led him in the polling average by about 5-6 points, and from Huntsville Congressman Mo Brooks, who has trailed Strange in the average by a little over the same margin. If polling is correct, Strange and Moore will advance to the September 26th runoff. We anticipate the first results will roll in within thirty minutes of polls closing. We’ll have comparison charts...

As Twitter exploded over the news about Donald Trump Jr.'s emails on Tuesday morning, another controversy has been making the viral rounds: a strange tale about a sandwich.In a New York Times op-ed titled "How We Are Ruining America", columnist David Brooks wrote about income inequality in the U.S. and the inherent advantage that upper-middle-class citizens have in our society. While he began the piece with some concrete statistics about class structure, his point got derailed when he told the story of a meal he had with a friend with a lower level of education than himself."Recently I took a...

The handwritten list was found in a van belonging to James Hodgkinson by the FBI, and the lawmakers named on the list are known to be conservative members associated with the Freedom Caucus: Reps. Scot DesJarlais (R-TN) (pronounced day-zharr-LAY), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Morgan Griffith (R-VA).

The first important part of James Comey’s testimony was that he cast some doubt on reports that there was widespread communication between the Russians and the Trump campaign. That was the suspicion that set off this whole chain of events and the possibility that could have quickly brought about impeachment proceedings. The second important implication of the hearings is that as far as we know, Donald Trump has not performed any criminal act that would merit removing him from office. -------- The third important lesson of the hearing is that Donald Trump is characterologically at war with the norms and...

Legislation can be crafted bottom up or top down. In bottom up you ask, What problems do voters have and how can they be addressed. In top down, you ask, What problems do elite politicians have and how can they be addressed? The House Republican health care bill is a pure top-down document. It was not molded to the actual health care needs of regular voters. It does not have support from actual American voters or much interest in those voters. It was written by elites to serve the needs of elites. Donald Trump vowed to drain the swamp, but...

In a blog post for Foreign Policy magazine, Rosa Brooks, a former Obama administration official, outlined four ways to “get rid” of President Trump, including declaring him mentally unfit for command or carrying out a military coup. Brooks is a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation, which is funded by billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. She served from 2009-2011 as Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and served as a senior adviser at Obama’s State Department. Her posting is titled “3 Ways to Get Rid of President Trump Before 2020,” although the piece actually...

After initially indicating that he’d be open to the idea of performing at Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration ceremony this week, Garth Brooks is now explaining why he won’t be on hand for the swearing in of the 45th President of the United States.

This old video seemed quite appropriate to dust off with the resurgence of "free college" demands from the Left. Back in 1985, a young David Brooks, now a New York Times columnist, sat across from economist Milton Friedman and was schooled on why government-subsidized higher education is a bad idea. The video is courtesy of Liberty Pen. Friedman set the stage for the debate involving Brooks and the other panelists: The question I want to raise is whether those higher education expenditures are a justifiable activity of government and what there consequences are and whether they really are a desirable...

The cofounders of the popular Ben and Jerry’s ice cream company were arrested Monday afternoon as part of a sit-in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol protesting big money in politics. Jerry Greenfield, 66, and Ben Cohen, 65, were arrested with about 300 others for “unlawful demonstration activities,” according to a statement from U.S. Capitol Police Monday. All demonstrators were processed and released the same day.

HAMILTON -- An influx of Garth Brooks fans to Hamilton is temporarily pushing some Syrian refugee families out. Various local media reports say more than 200 Syrian refugees were bumped from their accommodations at downtown Hamilton hotels to make way for thousands of Brooks fans who already booked rooms. The country music legend is playing a series of concerts in the city Thursday through Sunday night. Reports say the refugees were shuttled to St. Catharines -- about 55 kilometres away -- to stay at another hotel for the duration of the shows. Wesley Urban Ministries handles the reception of some...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is firing back after conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks called for the GOP to reject Trump. “While I have never met @nytdavidbrooks of the NY Times, I consider him one of the dumbest of all pundits- he has no sense of the real world!” Trump tweeted early Saturday morning. “Reading @nytdavidbrooks of the NY Times is a total waste of time, he is a clown with no awareness of the world around him- dummy!” he added.

We live in a big, diverse society. There are essentially two ways to maintain order and get things done in such a society — politics or some form of dictatorship. Either through compromise or brute force. Our founding fathers chose politics.

If you give Obama a pass when he is dishonest or breaks the rules, because he seems like a good man, or is at least better than those guys; if you argue he had to change the law himself because Congress is dysfunctional and Republicans are unreasonable; if you lambast Bush for starting a war, but give Hillary a pass for both Iraq and Libya; then you are adopting one set of rules for your tribe and another set of rules for everyone else. That shows a lack of respect for people who disagree with you. They notice. They resent...

Hillary Clinton is constantly having to hold these defensive press conferences when she's trying to explain away some vaguely shady shortcut she's taken, or decision she has made, but Obama has not had to do that. He and his wife have not only displayed superior integrity themselves, they have mostly attracted and hired people with high personal standards. ~snip~ He's exuded this basic care and respect for the dignity of others time and time again. Let's put it this way: Imagine if Barack and Michelle Obama joined the board of a charity you're involved in. You'd be happy to have...