Free Republic

---SNIP--- It’s decline began some 20 years ago, when the company made multiple acquisitions, many of which were in telecommunications and wireless technology. In concept, that made great sense. But acquiring businesses is a skill of its own, and David Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor who was on Intel’s board of directors at the time, told Fortune “100% of those acquisitions failed. We spent $12 billion, and the return was zero or negative.” Intel also tried unsuccessfully to grasp the mammoth cell phone opportunity. The company understood the opportunity and was supplying chips for the highly popular BlackBerry phone....

One of the internet’s most famous fact-checkers, former Washington Post writer Glenn Kessler, was grilled by author and podcaster Mark Halperin on Friday over media bias. The man behind The Washington Post's "Pinocchios" announced in late July he would be leaving the paper without anyone to fill his shoes. Kessler, who reportedly edited more than 3,000 fact checks as editor and chief writer of The Fact Checker, announced that week he had taken a buyout deal, ending his lengthy career at the Post. "After more than 27 years at The Washington Post, including almost 15 as The Fact Checker, I...

As “Madame Web” star Sydney Sweeney remains mum on allegations of promoting eugenics via her American Eagle advertisement, she has seemingly stirred up even more support from far-right figures after recently gaining the favor of President Trump. A black-and-yellow banner covering a billboard on the 91 Freeway in Corona boldly states: “Proud Boys Love Sydney Sweeney,” according to a photo that one Corona resident shared with ABC7.

The Associated Press just made it clear where it stands on the terrorists’ war on Israel: With the terrorists. How else to read its bizarre puff piece Wednesday sympathizing with the poor, suffering Hezbollah goons injured in Israel’s pager attack last year? The Babylon Bee couldn’t have come up with a better parody than the 2,100-word feature, “Survivors of Israel’s pager attack on Hezbollah struggle to recover” — though that’s not how AP’s Bassem Mroue and Sarah El Deeb meant it. The two recount their interviews with six people wounded in the attack, all “Hezbollah officials or fighters or members...

Academia’s self-image is crumbling. Beneath the slogans lies a fragile empire that can’t survive the sunlight of basic public scrutiny. It’s good to be back in the Advocate — the self-described “world’s leading source of LGBTQ+ news and information.” The last time it covered me, it involved a spat with a group of criminal, gay furry hackers. It never published the follow-up when one of those hackers was arrested, just as I promised. This time, I’ve committed an even greater sin in the Advocate's eyes: I asked a woke, gay professor at a public university to share his syllabus. That...

NEW DELHI, Aug 8 (Reuters) - New Delhi has put on hold its plans to procure new U.S. weapons and aircraft, according to three Indian officials familiar with the matter, in India's first concrete sign of discontent after tariffs imposed on its exports by President Donald Trump dragged ties to their lowest level in decades. India had been planning to send Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to Washington in the coming weeks for an announcement on some of the purchases, but that trip has been cancelled, two of the people said. Trump on Aug. 6 imposed an additional 25% tariff on...

Public sours on Washington, loses hope for quick NATO accession LONDON — Most Ukrainians now favor ending the war with Russia through negotiations, as support for fighting until victory has dropped sharply since the early days of the conflict. Although their hopes for joining NATO and the European Union have faded and approval of U.S. leadership has plummeted, Ukrainians still see the EU, U.K. and U.S. as key to ending the war. Yet, most doubt that will happen anytime soon.More than three years into the war, Ukrainians’ support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In...

Los Angeles County is struggling with a massive budget crunch. Sales taxes are rising to over 10% in some areas and many departments are being cut down the line over what Fesia Davenport, the county’s first black female CEO, has described as “unprecedented financial challenges” and “extraordinary budgetary pressures.” But those challenges are not coming so much from the massive wildfires that devastated Los Angeles over the winter, but from the even more massive tide of sexual abuse complaints. Los Angeles County is dealing with $2 billion in costs from the wildfires, after the city’s first black female mayor and...

DEI is collapsing under its own contradictions—no longer able to define who qualifies, who deserves preference, or why identity should outweigh merit. Donald Trump’s executive orders banning Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI)-related racial and gender preferencing have ostensibly doomed the DEI industry. But DEI was already on its last legs. Half of all Americans no longer approve of racial, ethnic, or gender preferences. DEI had enjoyed a surge following the death of George Floyd and the subsequent 120 days of nonstop rioting, arson, assaults, killings, and attacks on law enforcement during the summer of 2020. In those chaotic years, DEI was...

Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon, and former deputy IDF chief Matan Vilnai on Sunday announced they had sent a letter to US President Donald Trump requesting that he compel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the current war. This information was provided to The Jerusalem Post ahead of other media. These top officials, along with top former police and foreign ministry officials, lead the Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS) group – which now makes up over 600 former senior security officials – in making that call on Trump to intervene. 'Stop the Gaza War'...

White House envoy Steve Witkoff told hostage families on Saturday that President Trump wants to "shift" the Gaza policy from trying to get a partial and phased Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal to reaching a comprehensive deal that ends the war and returns all remaining hostages at once, according to a statement by the families and recordings from the meeting. Behind the scenes: Two members of the hostage families who were in the room said Witkoff listened for a long time to every family member who wanted to speak. "We never have these meetings with senior Israeli government officials," one...

Redistricting reform could die as it becomes another polarizing and partisan blood sport.David Daley is author of “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and “Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections.”The 2026 midterms might not be decided by tariffs, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings or even Sydney Sweeney’s divisive American Eagle ad — but by gerrymandering. Just a handful of seats separate the two parties, and first Republicans and now Democrats are angling for more before votes are cast.Texas Republicans stand ready to adopt a new map that could award them as many as five additional...

Former President Obama on Tuesday blasted the Texas GOP’s attempts to redraw the Lone Star State’s congressional lines as “a power grab” that threatens democracy. “We can’t lose focus on what matters – right now, Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year’s midterm elections. This is a power grab that undermines our democracy,” Obama said in a post on the social platform X. The former president shared a post from All On The Line, a campaign affiliated with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), promoting a virtual event on redistricting.

Vladimir Putin started it. Joe Biden didn’t stop it. But, no matter his efforts to the contrary, this is the week in which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine becomes US President Donald Trump’s war. The most powerful office in the world doesn’t always invite choices. Trump is mandated to address the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II because the United States was involved, under his predecessor, as Ukraine’s key ally and sponsor. Trump could have dropped the war entirely. But instead, he chose to impose the force of his personality, initially through the idea he could end it in...

Republican Nate Morris had deftly warmed up a crowd of party faithful, gushing about President Donald Trump and recounting his own life’s journey — from hardscrabble childhood to wealthy entrepreneur — when he turned his attention to the man he wants to replace, Sen. Mitch McConnell. That’s when things got feisty. While bashing Kentucky’s longest-serving senator at a GOP dinner on the eve of Saturday’s Fancy Farm picnic, a tradition-laden stop on the state’s political circuit, Morris was cut off in midsentence by a party activist in the crowd, who noted that McConnell isn’t seeking reelection and pointedly asked Morris:...

Both the General Assembly and the Security Council are broken because the alliances upon which they were founded no longer exist.The world is insane, but that’s its normal state. We now have al-Qaida leaders who are about to be released from prison, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada are about to recognize a Palestinian “state,” and a hostage held by Hamas was photographed digging his own grave. In Inside the Asylum I specifically warned that the UN was employing terrorists, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. There is famine in the Gaza...

India on Monday denounced as unfair the mounting pressure from the United States and European Union over its continued purchases of Russian oil. Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said the country would safeguard its economic interests amid threats of steep tariffs from President Donald Trump. What did New Delhi say about trade with Russia? "The targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable," said Jaiswal, asserting the country's sovereign right to secure energy supplies in line with its needs. "Like any major economy, India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security," he added. Jaiswal also...

‘How many people do you employ this month?” might sound like the kind of question an employer can easily answer, but it’s not. Especially for large businesses, the exact number of employees in a given month is hard to pin down. The media report layoffs and hires in round numbers, but for calculating total employment in the country, it really matters whether “500” means 478 or 523, because those discrepancies multiplied across millions of businesses make a huge difference. Within government, Donald Trump’s appointee as BLS commissioner, William Beach, has been a leader in calling for modernizing the surveys that...

Trump is rewriting the rules of politics, economics, and culture—and no one, not even the experts, knows what happens when the old orthodoxy finally breaks. Donald Trump’s far-ranging counter-revolution, to quote the old Star Trek mission statement, seeks “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” Because no conservative president has dared to question the last 70 years of progressive cultural, social, economic, and political dominance, all traditional wisdom, all our renowned “experts,” and all the self-described “authorities” have no real credibility in their mostly flawed analyses and wrong prognoses. Read what our legacy media predicted in March for...

When President Trump announced the terms of the pending US-EU trade deal, the world was shocked. Not only is it the biggest trade deal in history—it unequivocally puts America first. In fact, when asked what concessions America gave, EU President Ursula Von Der Leyen could not come up with a single item. Europeans went ballistic. They described this as the death-knell for the EU. Europe has been described as a collection of American vassal states (which is fundamentally accurate). Even America’s liberals went nuts—the deal was too good for America. They argued that it would undermine America’s political relationship with...