Free Republic

Alex Jones — conspiracy peddler, provocateur, Texan — lost easy access to millions upon millions of followers this week when Facebook, YouTube, Apple and Spotify banned much, if not all, of his content. Thinking of Jones’ empire — built on provably false theories and predictably wrong predictions — I wondered about those followers. Who are they? What brings them to his pages? Why do they seem willing to accept fantasy and conjecture over fact? Do they, as Jones’ lawyers have suggested, think the whole thing is a bit for entertainment? Would they tell me — a longtime member of the...

Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin tore into White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Sunday, saying she should be shunned from her next job for her false and misleading claims. “Sarah Huckabee Sanders is so concerned that people aren’t nice to her,” Rubin told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on "AM Joy." “And people like me think that — not that she should be harassed — but that she should be shunned. The reason is that she lies.” “She attacks our free press and no respectable employer should hire her after this term,” Rubin continued. “Also, no university and no...

It’s not often you hear Ted Cruz support keeping a government research program alive when the administration wants to defund it and turn it over to the private sector, but that is what is happening with the International Space Station. And Cruz has a solid case.The administration announced earlier this year it wants to end direct funding to the space station by 2025 – three years ahead of schedule. Jim Bridenstine, the former congressman from Oklahoma who is now NASA administrator, said he is talking to companies about forming a consortium to operate the space station after the government funding...

Conservative columnist George Will is making the argument to vote against Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. In a piece published Friday in the Washington Post, Will says that President Trump's "zero tolerance" policy at the border was "the most telegenic example of misrule" and it provided “fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which” independents and moderate Republicans should vote. That principle he says is that the number of Republicans in office must be “substantially reduced.” "The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of...

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become AmericaÂ’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of todayÂ’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this yearÂ’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing. Last June, a Trump Cabinet meeting featured testimonials offered to Dear Leader by his forelock-tugging colleagues. His chief of staff, Reince Priebus, caught the spirit of the worship service...

If you didn't know better, you’d think House Republicans were trying to sink President Trump. We had the fake “unmasking” scandal, including a clandestine visit to the White House by Rep. Devin Nunes. It turned out to be a dud, revealing that Nunes was a dull-witted cohort of the president. Then came the Nunes memos. Hey, we’ll create a scandal by pretending that the Justice Department and the FBI lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about the origins of the Steele dossier! Then the dopiest idea of all — threaten to subpoena the James B. Comey memos and then...

(CNN)New documents obtained by CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" on Wednesday suggest a deeper link than previously known between the Trump Organization and the company that Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, established in 2016 to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for silence about her alleged affair with Trump. The documents also offer the first evidence of an individual employed by the Trump Organization -- other than Cohen -- being involved in an ongoing legal battle regarding Daniels' alleged affair with Trump

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday that he believes bump fire stocks can be effectively banned through regulation, teasing that an announcement from the Justice Department would be coming soon. "We've had to deal with previous (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) legal opinions but our top people in the Department of Justice have believed for some time that we can, through the regulatory process, not allow the bump stock to convert a weapon from semi automatic to fully automatic," Sessions said at a gathering of state attorneys general in Washington. "We've been working on that for some time....

... Liberals roll their eyes at the claim that President Obama violated democratic norms or abused his power. But putting aside the specific arguments, conservatives saw plenty of abuses and violations, from the IRS scandals and Benghazi to the Iran deal. Obama said many times he couldn’t unilaterally implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program because he wasn’t a “king.” Then he did it anyway. And the process repeats itself, getting worse and more egregious each time. When I criticize Trump, the first response from countless Republicans is, “Oh yeah, why was it okay for Obama!?” If I point...

The Resurgent’s Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator who has been a Fox News contributor since 2013, is leaving the network, according to Politico’s Jake Sherman. Erickson, whose commentary has been both fiercely critical of President Donald Trump and his opponents, said he is leaving the network because his views don’t fit into any typical box. “After five years at Fox News, I am leaving the network,” he said, per Sherman. “I am neither needed nor useful to the network and they know it too. I neither fit solidly as a Republican Trump supporter nor as an anti-Trump Democrat.”

It’s astounding how many defenses of the state’s position in Masterpiece Cakeshop depend on misrepresentation and misconceptions. Last week I wrote about the most common misrepresentation — that Jack Phillips discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation when he refused to design a custom cake for a same-sex-wedding celebration. After all, he served all customers — regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation. He just consistently refused to design cakes that advanced messages he disagreed with. No person of any identity has the legal authority to compel an artist to use his talents to advance a cause the artist...

Do I smoke too much pot? It’s a question I’ve asked myself over the years, and it raised its uncomfortable head this week as I absorbed the results of the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The first thing to note about the report is the good news. One of the major and legitimate fears of those who have opposed legalization is that teen use would increase. Weed is genuinely harmful to the developing adolescent brain and those of us who passionately advocated legalization argued that making it legal would actually make it harder for teens to get...

The radical transformation of cable news continues. According to a report by Yashar Ali in New York Magazine, conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt is in talks with MSNBC about the creation of a new television show Hewitt would host. According to New York Magazine’s sources, the show would air on weekend evenings. Initially, Hewitt had been offered a show for weekend mornings, but Hewitt turned the offer down because he reportedly wants an evening show. Hewitt is a longtime conservative radio host who is broadcast through the popular Salem Radio Network. He is also currently a contributor for...

David Cameron has reinvented himself as a Brexiteer — saying he never “liked” the EU and is glad he called the referendum. The former Prime Minister, whose political career was brought to a shuddering close when he lost the historic vote last year, made the comments as he addressed an event in Ukraine. It is not known whether he was paid for the speech at the National University in Kiev — although he has racked up hundreds of thousands of pounds in earnings since leaving Downing Street last July. […] Despite masterminding the desperate Project Fear campaign with George Osborne...

The same people who just voted no on Paul Ryan's bill because it wasn't "conservative" enough, are the same people who voted to make Paul Ryan speaker of the House. Why? Was Ryan more conservative back then, then he is today? Did Ryan promise them something, in order to get their vote. Or is the FC just a bunch of hypocrites. I think honest people know the answer.

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SNIP to the meat: The President routinely describes reporting he dislikes as FAKE NEWS. The Administration calls the press “the opposition party,” ridicules news organizations it doesn’t like as business failures, and calls for journalists to be fired. Mr. Trump has called for rewriting libel laws in order to more easily sue the press. This isn’t unprecedented in U.S. history, though you might have to go back to the Administration of John Adams to see something quite like it. And so far the rhetorical salvos haven’t been matched by legal or regulatory action. Maybe they never will be. But the...

On Monday, the hosts of Morning Joe mocked and berated White House adviser Stephen Miller for his recent comments regarding the court ruling against President Trump's immigration order. Tuesday morning was no different, as the show came back from a commercial break by airing a distorted, grainy black-and-white video of Miller. The video contained the statement he gave on the network Sunday shows concerning the President’s executive powers and spliced Miller’s quotes attempting to make him look sinister and menacing. After the video concluded, host Joe Scarborough declared, “Wow,” and journalist Willie Geist agreed, “That’s terrifying.” Co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed...

Flogging the straw man. I cannot offer enough praise of Jonah Goldberg as a writer, nor can I recommend his weekly G-File report highly enough. Like most at National Review these days, Goldberg is strident in his opposition to Donald Trump, and he makes some of the most compelling arguments against Trump on a consistent basis. Where Goldberg and I disagree, of course, is not on our candidate of choice (as far as I can tell we’re both for Ted Cruz), but on the question of what to do if Trump does indeed win the nomination. I’ve said, and I’ll...

Not sure who is more delusional now. Cruz or Kasich.