Free Republic

However sophistated it may be, for those of us with open eyes, it's very difficult not to arrive at the conclusion that we are living through a coup d'etat. It's breathtaking to consider the full scope of it. Fixing the exact starting point may be somewhat difficult, but the infamous January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting is probably as good as any. It would literally take a hefty book to recount the whole thing subsequent from there (and will I'm sure, presuming said book could be published), but you all know the basic outlines: #NeverTrump fragging, false charges of treason...

I certainly don't want to be accused of giving any one "false hopes", but I don't think this election is over by a long shot. You can look at the arc of Trump's political career to date as as escalating series of battles, with the stakes rising significantly each time. The pattern has always been that Trump appears to be on the losing end, on the edge of ruin, and somehow manages to pull out of it, leaving his opponents in ruin. Let's review: Trump becomes the nation's leading questioner of the legitimacy of Obama's birth certificate, ends up "humiliated"...

We're way past "normal" times, but in any world that remotely resembles "normal", Bobulinski came with enough credibility, facts and receipts to bury Joe Biden's Presidential campaign six feet below the surface of the Earth. Dates, times, names, texts, emails, . . . The most explosive part to me was the revelation that Hunter Biden was acting as Ye Jianming's personal lawyer even as Ye, as chairman of the Chinese CCP-linked energy company "CEFC", was negotiating the purchase of a 14% state in Russia's state-owned energy company. If that's not somehow treasonous, I don't know what would be. But there's...

So Twitter's algorithm apparently considers calling Ana Navarro a "chickenhead" hate speech. I retweeted a tweet that showed screenshots of two tweets from her regarding Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta, each taking completely opposite positions. I added a comment to my retweet that if anyone needed further proof that Ms. Navarro is a chickenhead, there it is. Within moments I received a notice from Twitter stating that I would no longer be able to post in my account, until I both removed the tweet and did 12 hours in Twitter jail. Given how fast it happened, I obviously triggered an...

I'm feeling increasingly optimistic about the midterm elections, but I just wanted to toss out one particular data point for anyone who might not be making absolutely sure that they are going to get their vote recorded on November 6. I work for a nonprofit conservation organization based in San Francisco. As you might expect, the leadership and the employees (excluding yours truly of course!) are nearly all liberal. Last week, for the first time ever, we decided to close all of our offices on Election Day for a paid holiday so that our employees can not only vote, but...

“There’s one,” the police sergeant said as we drove through the Tenderloin. “There’s one of them there. That guy, see him?” And another. And another. Sgt. Kevin Healy was showing me known drug dealers, and they were everywhere — swarming the neighborhood, chatting and smiling. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world. That’s because they don’t. Not in San Francisco. “It’s almost impossible to get convicted in this city,” said Healy, who works in the Police Department’s narcotics division. “The message needs to be sent that it’s not OK to be selling drugs. It’s not allowed anywhere...

I have long been critical of Republicans who abandoned principles to stand with Trump and I am as critical of Republicans who abandon principles to oppose Trump. Principle should stay because people go. The Kavanaugh nomination has been clarifying in this regard. Seeing some conservatives willing to aid and abet character assassins because Trump nominated Kavanaugh is disgusting. I find myself in an odd position where, for the first time, I see myself, one of the original so-called “Never Trump conservatives,” voting for President Trump in 2020. I have inevitably concluded at times that Trump would do something to push...

An insurance agent claims he should qualify as a minority business owner, because a DNA test shows he’s 4 percent African — enough, he believes, to make him “a certified black man.” Ralph Taylor knows on the outside he looks like an average white guy, but he is trying using the results from his AncestryByDNA test to bolster his business in Lynnwood, Washington. “I’ve always known that I’m multiracial,” the 55-year-old declared to the Washington Post. The 2010 test showed that he’s 90 percent European, 6 percent indigenous American and 4 percent sub-Saharan African. This gizmo can turbocharge the DNA-identification...

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington-based non-profit promoting reduced immigration to the US, has been denied the opportunity to promote one of its tweets after it was flagged. CIS executive director Mark Krikorian tweeted Tuesday that the social networking service had rejected paid promotion of a tweet after it was inexplicably tagged as "Hateful Content." Later, the think tank put out a series of tweets criticizing the company's decision, and providing multiple examples showing that the phrase "illegal aliens" is a perfectly acceptable term in US legal practice.

One of the things I talk about in the book is what I call this “conundrum of privilege,” which is that these parents have a lot of resources economically as well as status as white people. They can then use those resources to set up their own child’s life in ways that give them the best education, the best health care, all the best things. And we have this collectively agreed-upon idea in our society that being a “good parent” means exactly that -- providing the best opportunities you can for your own child. But then some of these parents...

"It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected U.S. spies. But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle. How were the Chinese able to roll up the network? Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the...

As the war between #MAGA and the Deep State careens towards what appears to be at least a preliminary climax with the midterm elections, I've been reflecting a bit on what I consider to be a lack of understanding of some of those on "our side" of how much all of this turns on epistemology, i.e. "how do we know what we know". I heard Rush comparing Trump's circumstance with Nixon's during Watergate, and pointing out that during Nixon's time, what we know now as the "mainstream media" had complete epistemological control; they controlled what was and what wasn't. Nixon...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is increasingly venting frustration to his national security team about the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and showing renewed interest in a proposal by Blackwater founder Erik Prince to privatize the war, current and former senior administration officials said. Prince's idea, which first surfaced last year during the president's Afghanistan strategy review, envisions replacing troops with private military contractors who would work for a special U.S. envoy for the war who would report directly to the president. It has raised ethical and security concerns among senior military officials, key lawmakers and members of Trump's national security...

John James winning the GOP primary for one of Michigan's Senate seats could (hopefully) end up being one of the more significant political events of the year. If you haven't seen him speak, I'd invite you to go ahead and pull up some clips of his recent appearances. He's brand new to the political stage, so of course we'll have to reserve final judgement, but from all appearances, he seems to be right on point in terms of the MAGA movement, conservatism and the best of the Republican Party. He "gets it", and he's got the biography (West Point, Iraq...

No, I am not going to start this post with a disclaimer about how much I personally dislike Alex Jones and Infowars. No, I don't believe everything he says, anymore than I believe CNN or any other outlet, but I enjoy hearing a wide variety of perspectives. I also believe that a lot of important political activities happen behind closed doors, and I'm curious to find out as much as I can about the most important of them, and that apparently makes me a "conspiracy theorist". Further, having watched a fair amount of Alex Jones over the years, he has...

Jack Murphy has done the world a great service in publishing his book, Democrat to Deplorable: Why Nine Million Obama Voters Ditched the Democrats and Embraced Donald Trump, and I would highly recommend it to everyone here, especially those who might be thinking about how to bring liberal/leftist relatives and friends over from the "dark side". Murphy does three things in the book, each of which would separately be significant, but taken together, they add up to far more than the sum of their parts. First, he relays the searing personal story of how he went from being a pretty...

Facebook’s reticence to publicly weigh in on the Trump campaign’s use of its ad platform has rankled some within the former campaign. "I believe Facebook was a great platform for the president," Trump 2016 campaign digital director Brad Parscale, who is now serving as Trump's 2020 campaign manager, told BuzzFeed News. "I'm completely disappointed that Facebook won't step up and announce to the world how well we used the platform and that we changed the way Facebook advertising will work in the future." So far, any praise for the Trump campaign’s use of the platform has been made in private....

I'm just starting to hear the first inklings of the concern that Russians are going to "interfere" in the 2018 midterm elections on behalf of Republicans. They've accused those of us in the #WalkAway movement of being Russian bots. They've accused the NRA of being Russian agents. They're accusing the President of being a traitor. The former FBI Director and many others is urging all patriots to put aside "policies" and vote Democrat. We are rapidly approaching a point where the Deep State/Media/Democrat Party/etc. are defining Trump and the entire Republican Party as traitors. The logical extension of their position...

Brennan's post Putin summit tweet: "Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???" At what point can a person like this be arrested for sedition? Donald Trump is the duly-elected President of the United States, he campaigned on pursuing friendlier relations with Russia, and now he's following through on that promise, which to many of us who voted for him would be to the benefit...

Review the Clinton email scandal, the Steele dossier, the insertion of at least one FBI informant into the Trump campaign, the misleading of the FISA court by FBI and DOJ officials intent on monitoring U.S. citizens, and, now, the inspector general’s report. There emerges a common denominator: the surety by all involved that Hillary Clinton would be president, and the need to prepare for that fact. . . . Why would a seasoned careerist like Andrew McCabe allow his spouse to receive nearly $700,000 in campaign donations from Clinton-affiliated organizations, only later to become a chief investigator of the Clinton...