Free Republic

Can Ukraine Really Defeat Russia? – Over the past few days, a flurry of senior leaders in both Ukraine and Washington have issued defiant claims of not merely resisting Russian aggression, but pushing towards outright victory. While such aspirations are entirely understandable, it is unwise to set policy seeking a preferred outcome if there does not exist a rational path by which Ukraine could accomplish that objective. At present, most indicators, fundamentals of war, and current battlefield trendlines support the prospect of a Ukrainian defeat. At a speech on Monday on Ukraine’s “Victory Day,” commemorating the World War II defeat...

A U.S. Department of Justice lawyer argued Monday that the United States can kill its own citizens without judicial review when litigation would reveal state secrets. The argument drew alarm among judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Courthouse News Service reports. Judge Patricia Millett characterized the DOJ’s argument as giving the government the ability to “unilaterally decide to kill U.S. citizens,” according to coverage of the argument by Courthouse News Service. “Do you appreciate how extraordinary that proposition is?” The government’s brief in the case supplies details of the lawsuit. The plaintiff, Bilal...

Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” host Brian Stelter took aim at three Alabama newspapers for highlighting former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s reaction to a report from The Washington Post last week that accused Moore of engaging in inappropriate conduct with four teenage girls decades ago. Stelter suggested that instead of Moore’s reaction, which Moore offered in his first public appearance in Vestavia Hills, AL a day earlier, The Gadsden Times, the Montgomery Advertiser and The Tuscaloosa News should have focused instead on what the women who accused Moore were “now saying.” {..snip..}

CNN is kicking off a new series to discuss “challenges facing the media,” and Brian Stelter is leading the way. The series, called “Free Press, What’s At Stake,” is meant to focus “on the challenges facing the media, under attack from critics, governments and changing technology.” It was kicked off by CNN’s Brian Stelter, who penned a column published Sunday titled, “Whose freedom is it?” Stelter wrote, “Press freedom is YOUR freedom. That’s the way I recommend thinking about ‘freedom of the press,'” adding, “it’s about MORE than just journalists. Turn it around. Recognize how protections for the press benefit...

The Washington Post lied about a lawmaker's biblical reference, refused to quote what he actually said, then mocked Breitbart for shoddy journalism. After the presidential election last November, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet gave an interview to NPR in which he admitted that his journalists simply don’t understand religion. “We don’t get religion,” Baquet said. “We don’t get the role of religion in people’s lives.” Baquet was correct: Acela corridor political reporters don’t understand religion, especially Christianity. Though he was specifically speaking about New York Times reporters, Baquet’s comments clearly also apply to the Washington Post, which on...

Failure of the mainstream mediaÂ’s comparing the Comey Firing to NixonÂ’s Saturday Night Massacre is another downfall of them. The Washington Post seems to have this problem of blatantly lying to push a narrative. I donÂ’t get it. Well, I do, but I donÂ’t get how people can be so easily fooled in this day and age. It also doesnÂ’t help people are not taught a proper history lesson in schools. This quote is a good starting point from them. For more than 40 years, virtually every major scandal in American politics has been likened to Watergate. But no presidential...

In an article that rises to the level of self-parody, a Washington Post journalist with the Dickensian name Simon Denyer turns a touching moment of triumph into a bit of an ordeal.  As most readers know, President Trump's granddaughter Arabella Kushner wowed an audience and the Chinese internet by singing three songs and reciting classical Chinese poetry.  Although shot with low production values (a home video, see?), the performance was expertly scripted to pull Chinese heartstrings, addressing the Chinese leader and his wife as "Uncle" and "Auntie," as is often done in Chinese culture when families are close.(I should note that young...

A number of news articles published by CNN cited groups accused of ties to terror groups, even promoting donations to one group on two occasions.CNN.com published two separate articles promoting donations to a group called Islamic Relief USA.One article from 2015 titled, “Help victims of the Nepal earthquake,” promotes donations to a number of charities that CNN claims to have “vetted.”Among them is Islamic Relief USA, a group that is a sister organization of Islamic Relief Worldwide. As reported by The Daily Caller, Islamic Relief Worldwide has been banned from Israel and the United Arab Emirates for allegedly financially supporting...

In the aftermath of Sunday’s deadly mass shooting at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Morning Joe’s panel spent much of the broadcast repeatedly calling for gun control and trying to delegitimize the concept of gun ownership for the purpose of self-defense. At one point in the show, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens insisted that there wasn’t a “single instance” that conservatives could point to of anyone “us[ing] their guns to protect their liberties.” Bizarrely, Stephens had already forgotten that it was a citizen armed with a gun who stopped yesterday’s massacre from becoming even more horrendous.For the...

In a staggering example of the press lacking any self-awareness, on Monday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie fretted over “a recent poll that said nearly half of people think the media make up stories” and unbelievably turned to disgraced former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather to suggest ways in which the news media could “enhance its own credibility.”Citing a Politico poll from October that found 46 percent of voters “believe the news media fabricate news stories about President Donald Trump and his administration,” Guthrie asked Rather: “The media itself is under fire. And what do you think the media...

When liberal journalists lecture us about how much more they revere quality reporting than we do,  just observe how they treat disgraced Dan Rather. On Friday night's All Things Considered, NPR anchor Ari Shapiro treated Rather as the closest thing we have to the Cronkite Myth, the national anchor of our patriotism. It's like he never used easily debunked forgeries of National Guard memos in an attempt to tar George W. Bush and elect John Kerry.Liberal journalists don't revere journalism as much as they revere the notion of helping elect Democrats. "Poor Dan. His heart was in the right place." Online, the headline...

In an interview with Arizona Senator John McCain for Thursday’s NBC Today, Senior Correspondent Tom Brokaw invited the Republican lawmaker to attack President Trump and painted the liberal media as the victim: “In the course of your political career, especially as a presidential candidate – as I learned first hand – you had some mixed relations with the press. The President has no use for the press, he has turned the country against us, in many ways.”McCain was quick to agree with Brokaw’s whining: “Yeah, I think the role of the press is more important than ever before. I hate...

While those of us who once admired CNN’s Jake Tapper as a rarity in the mainstream media — an honest and objective journalist, have been shocked by his transformation into a dishonest, sanctimonious, left-wing virtue-signaler, we assumed his lying and peacocking was in pursuit of the applause and fame he so transparently craves. His laughably bad ratings, though, appear to show that like most people who sell their soul, Tapper was tricked by the Devil. To be fair to Tapper, CNN’s transition into a hard-left social justice network, something Breitbart News was the first to document and warn about nearly...

“America’s national security was sold out. It was compromised” by the Obama Administration’s Uranium One deal involving Hillary Clinton, but liberal media like MSNBC won’t cover the story, Fox News Host Sean Hannity said Wednesday.In his show’s opening monologue, Hannity blasted MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for refusing to ask a key player in the scandal, Eric Holder, even a single question about it when she interviewed him on Monday: “Here’s a perfect example. Rachael Maddow and her cult of viewers over at MSNBC Conspiracy TV, they had former Attorney General Eric Holder on the show on Monday. She didn’t ask him...

Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell is leading a team of a dozen conservative leaders demanding the major broadcast networks fulfill their “duty to the American public” and end the censorship of the Obama-Clinton-Russia (“Uranium One”) uranium deal.In similar letters sent Thursday to the presidents of ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News, the conservative leaders noted MRC research documenting how the networks have virtually ignored the Uranium One scandal involving the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton: “The Uranium One scandal is an instance of actual collusion between the Obama administration and the Russian government.”“The Hill also reported that...

The liberal press’s contempt for the intelligence of the American people was on full display on Friday’s Morning Joe as columnists and reporters from The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and USA Today all joined in a united chorus to insult the public as being too stupid to parse the difference between truth and propaganda. Moreover, once again, the show’s panelists also used their platform to call for government regulation of social media to stop “election meddling.”Morning Joe’s latest call for censorship of news that they don’t like came in response to a short clip that they played of Deputy...

Twitter users mocked CNN for a new advertisement campaign, where the Atlanta-based news network insisted it is a “facts first” outlet with an awkward fruit metaphor. WATCH: " “Some people might try to tell you that it’s a banana.” #FactsFirstpic.twitter.com/LbmRKiGJe9 " — CNN (@CNN) October 23, 2017 AND WATCH DC’S VERSION (MUCH MORE ACCURATE):

The broadcast network morning and evening shows have so far failed to provide even a single second of coverage to an October 17 report from The Hill which revealed new details in the Clinton/Russia/Uranium scandal, including how the FBI had been investigating a Russian bribery plot months before the Obama administration approved a controversial uranium deal. In fact, the only broadcast coverage has been a paltry 69 seconds of discussion on CBS's Face the Nation on October 22. The networks' blackout is all the more striking given the airtime those shows have already devoted this year to wacky conspiracy theories...

Considering the numerous mistakes and misleading stories CNN has produced over the past several years, you’d think that they’d be a tad less sanctimonious. The first ad in CNN’s “Facts First” initiative features nothing but an apple with a voiceover lecturing you about the need to embrace facts. “This is an apple,” an amiable man tells us. “Some people might try to tell you that it’s a banana. They might scream banana, banana, banana, over and over and over again. They might put BANANA in all caps. You might even start to believe that this is a banana. But it’s...

George W. Bush ascended the podium at a forum hosted by his think tank last week and violated his family’s prime directive: Never speak ill of a successor. He said, “We've seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty.” Ahhh, casual cruelty. The ol’ combination of noun with unlikely adjective spoken in coy alliteration. Like “compassionate conservative.” A one hit wonder returning to the rhyme scheme that carried him to the top of the charts. Except now it sounds old and derivative. And, given evolving tastes and sensibilities, it is impossible to hear without also hearing Trump’s voice in the back...