Free Republic

Germany has long called itself a country that upholds democracy in a “defensive form”—a concept propagated by an establishment that claims the right to decide who and what voters should be allowed to vote for. This principle is now being wielded most aggressively in the fight against the right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). This week, a court of appeals confirmed the exclusion of the AfD candidate from the upcoming mayoral election in Ludwigshafen, a western German industrial city of 122,000 residents. When citizens go to the polls on September 21, they will no longer have the option of voting for...

Anheuser-Busch’s former chief creative officer — whose iconic ads included the “I Love You, Man” commercials and the talking frogs — blasted the company’s Belgian parent InBev over Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney fiasco. “It took us 20 years to take Bud Light beer to the No. 1 beer in the country, and it took them one week to dismantle it,” Robert Lachky told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this week. Anheuser-Busch has suffered from “a complete lack of corporate oversight, and it’s been that way since (InBev) took the company over,” he added in the Monday interview.