Free Republic

The CIA was created after World War II to prevent another Pearl Harbor attack, writes Charles S. Faddis, a former CIA operations officer and Middle East station chief. Faddis believes the agency “no longer works,” an easy case to make but not exactly news. Al Qaeda was well known but “we had not a single source inside that organization capable of warning us of the 9/11 attacks that would kill almost 3,000 Americans.” It took a decade to take out bin Laden, and one doubts it went down as portrayed in Zero Dark Thirty. As with 9/11 “we received no...

At a glittering fundraiser in downtown San Francisco Tuesday night, Biden began his speech by thanking Mayor Breed for “welcoming us to your city. It kind of sparkles right now.” A mixture of resentment that everyone underestimates him and cockiness about his prospects, Biden’s remarks foreshadowed his campaign pitch for 2024. He began by boasting about the “incredible night” Democrats had at the polls last week, “despite all the predictions, except ours.” “The American people voted to protect our fundamental freedoms like the right to choose, they voted to protect our democracy, they voted against extremism of our opponents, and...

IBM Corp. has abruptly pulled ads from X, formerly Twitter, amid a maelstrom of controversial comments from billionaire owner Elon Musk and the placement of IBM ads. “IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,” the company said in a statement emailed to MarketWatch. IBM suspended advertising following a report by the Financial Times on Thursday that IBM ads appeared next to posts supporting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. A Media Matters study also found ads from Apple Inc., Oracle Corp., and...

Seizing Mayor Adams’ phones and tablet on the street in public is the latest sign the feds aren’t simply investigating him: They’re out to inflict maximum embarrassment in a political vendetta, presumably in retribution for the noise he’s made about President Biden’s disastrous border policies. The mayor is easy to find, 24/7/365: What reason to ambush him publicly event except to humiliate him? And why else make sure his No. 1 press enemy, The New York Times, gets the story first? Mind you, this follows the opening raid in this investigation — which stormed the home of his top fund-raiser...

Two things have become apparent since the NCAA investigation into the Michigan football program became public knowledge nearly two weeks ago. The first is that Connor Stalions, a low-level staff member within the football program, pushed the boundaries of scouting future opponents and likely broke NCAA regulations in the process. The second is that, in a rush to capitalize on the gold mine that has become this ongoing saga in Ann Arbor, members of both the local and national media have exposed themselves as a group who place a higher value on analytics than they do on accuracy. The steady...

Adolf Hitler is back in vogue at the New York Times. I never thought I’d live to see the day. Until now, the very nice liberals who run the newspaper were probably quite relieved that the world had mostly forgotten about that time in the 1930s, when it had a Nazi-loving Berlin bureau chief called Guido Enderis. Among his many failings, Enderis wrote a puff piece about chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, calling him ‘an outstanding go-getter’. But the New York Times leadership kept him on, despite complaints from colleagues, because they considered his high-ranking sources in the Nazi Party...

The Tennessee Vols played about as badly as they ever have under Josh Heupel in the second half against Alabama on Saturday. And the coaching/playcalling decisions were probably the worst we've seen from Heupel since he arrived at UT in early 2021. But that shouldn't be the narrative after Tennessee's 34-20 loss in Tuscaloosa. The officiating on Saturday wasn't just bad, it was almost blatantly obvious that the officials were doing everything they could to make sure Alabama didn't lose. And look, I'm sure Bama fans are already rolling their eyes and yelling "excuses" to the top of their lungs....

In recent months Hamas refused to join the much smaller Islamic Jihad in launching rockets against Israel, which seems to have convinced Israeli leaders that, at long last, the leading terror group in Gaza had decided to prioritize the welfare of its subjects over more futile rocket attacks. Israel promptly reciprocated the de facto Hamas ceasefire by allowing thousands of Gazans to work in Israel—first 17,000, then 20,000, with the potential for many more. Their earnings were changing the lives of 100,000 family members with the possibility of even wider benefits. What was happening on the ground seemed to open...

Mortgage rates jumped again this week — remaining at a 23-year high and increasing the likelihood that rates could soon hit 8%. The rate on the average 30-year fixed mortgage increased to 7.49% from 7.31% the previous week, according to Freddie Mac, following the yield of the 10-year Treasury, which spiked to a 16-year high this week. Rates are at their highest point since December 2000 for a second week in a row, with few signs of softening. Steeper rates continue to smother homebuyer demand, forcing the price-conscious to the sidelines. Meanwhile, those still on the hunt leaned on lower-rate...

A Wall Street selloff intensified Tuesday as rising Treasury yields piled on pressure and investors got a reminder not to expect a Federal Reserve interest rate cut any time soon. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) dropped almost 1.1%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) tumbled about 1.1%, or more than 350 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) was down over 1.5% after closing with a gain on Monday. Hawkish comments by Fed policymakers reminded investors that resilience in the US economy likely means borrowing costs will stay higher for longer. Traders are now pricing in odds of 29% that policymakers...

The Biden re-election campaign's decision to brand the economy under the president's name (Bidenomics) is looking like an early blunder that misread the public's deep pessimism about how things are going on that front. Why it matters: Despite some encouraging economic trends — unemployment is low, inflation seems to be tamed — polling shows that Americans' overall perception of the economy is sour. Driving the news: Some prominent Democrats are now openly criticizing the Biden campaign's strategy, arguing that it appears to be in denial of Americans' economic reality. "We have to do a better job framing this not so...

… not any of the seven candidates on the stage. It wasn’t even one of the candidates who weren’t on the stage — Donald Trump, Asa Hutchinson, and an assortment of also rans. The biggest loser of the debate was Fox Business Channel, with the RNC that arranged it a close runner-up. We can put aside the bickering and bad behavior of the candidates on stage for this assessment. Yes, the ‘moderators’ let it get out of hand, but this is a debate, after all — and the candidates are the show. If they want to argue amongst themselves, the...

The same Clinton-campaign-connected researchers who helped generate an infamous fake news story were likely the U.S. government’s source for the initial announcement that Russians hacked the Demcratic National Committee, according to documents produced across years of Open Records requests and congressional letters. According to a letter recently sent to Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, work on attribution of the hack was done by a “Georgia tech team” who submitted a report on August 7, 2016, titled “Fancy Bear/APT28 Attribution analysis”: That Georgia Tech team was led by researchers David Dagon and Manos...

In a string of remarkable coincidences, President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice has taken a keen interest in all things Elon Musk. The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is reportedly pursuing criminal charges against Musk, scrutinizing whether the Tesla CEO failed to disclose personal benefits he received from his car company. The Wall Street Journal reports that the new inquiry centers around Tesla’s “Project 42,” an alleged plan for a weird glass home and structure that Musk talked about constructing in Texas but never built. It is quite the happenstance that only last month, the...

The Federal Reserve kept its benchmark lending rate unchanged at a two-decade high, but suggested at least one more increase is likely between now and the end of the year as inflation remains elevated and the economy continues to perform. The Fed's Open Markets Committee held its key policy rate at between 5.25% and 5.5%, the highest in 22 years, in a move that was widely expected from markets following a quarter point rate hike in July. The Fed's new Summary of Economic projections, known as the dot plots, now calls for GDP stronger growth of 2.1% this year, more...

“No man,” said Abraham Lincoln, “has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” Sadly, that excellent piece of indisputable presidential wisdom hasn’t filtered down to the current occupant of the White House. Joe Biden is a terrible liar in every sense; he lies on a terrible scale, and he’s terrible at lying. And as much as I’d like to be kind to an old man and put his constant untrue statements down to memory issues caused by his advanced age and cognitive decline, it’s not because of that at all. No, President Biden just likes to tell humongous...

A seemingly unrelenting wave of debt is piling onto America’s balance sheet. New data from the U.S. Treasury Department show the federal debt increased by over $296.524 billion from August 8th to September 8th, reaching a total of $32.940 trillion. The new numbers come as JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon issues a warning on America’s fiscal trajectory. At a conference hosted by Barclays, Dimon told reporters that America’s rapid rate of spending is bound to have a significant impact on households. “I just think people make a mistake to look at real-time numbers and not look at the future. And...

A TWA pilot who narrowly averted collisions with hijacked planes headed to attack the World Trade Center and the US Capitol on Sept. 11, 2001, is being remembered 22 years later as an unsung hero. The little-known incidents are buried in the history of 9/11 when 2,977 people were killed at the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and on the four planes commandeered by Islamic terrorists. The pilot on TWA Flight 3 took “evasive action” twice before safely landing — first to avoid colliding with United Flight 175, which struck the World Trade Center, and then Flight 93, which crashed in...

More than 1,600 scientists, including two Nobel laureates, have signed a declaration saying that "There is no climate emergency." The declaration is unlikely to get any attention from the mainstream media, unfortunately, but it is important for people to know about: the mass climate hysteria and the destruction of the US economy in the name of climate change need to stop. "Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific," states the declaration signed by the 1,609 scientists, including Nobel laureates John F. Clauser from the US and Ivar Giaever from Norway/US. "Climate policy relies on...

A Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Barcelona, Spain was diverted back to its original airport after a passenger experienced an "onboard medical issue," which was reportedly a case of "diarrhea all the way through the plane." The website FlightRadar24.com shows Delta Flight DL194 was about two hours into its eight-hour flight when it turned around over Virginia and headed back to Atlanta. A user on X, formerly known as Twitter, who appears to devote his page to flight material shared audio recorded from the Airbus A350 that was broadcast on LiveATC.com. On the recording, a pilot tells air...