Free Republic

The economy is booming but did you know that these are the final days of Donald Trump's presidency? That is the absurd premise put forward on MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Brian Williams on Wednesday by that master of hyperbole, Jon Meacham, the man at the helm of Newsweek as it sank like the Titanic. Meacham expressed optimism about America's future because "there is increasing evidence, there's facts in a post-truth world, facts are coming into play." There is Manafort's verdict and Bob Woodward's new book and the anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, representing  "a genuine reckoning, because there...

Reflections on the anniversary of the death of General Washington... On December 12, 1799, General George Washington, at 67 years of age, was still a busy and healthy man. Despite the snow and ice that day, he rode around his holdings at Mount Vernon, as was customary, checking on the ongoing projects, such as improvements to the main building and consideration of improvements to outbuildings, along with everything else that a busy plantation must do in the winter. Even when the land shuts down for the season, there’s still work to do, when you make your own clothes for your...

I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus. Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes,...

MILTON, Mass. Renowned columnist Art Buchwald has refused dialysis, and it's only a matter of time, maybe a short time, before he dies. For a man awaiting The Reaper, he's in unusually fine fettle. I spent two days by his side to find Buchwald doesn't see himself as courageous, nor does he feel shored up by supernatural spiritual strength. To fade away naturally is the decision he made when faced with the alternative of being hooked up to a dialysis machine three times a week, for five hours at a stretch for the rest of his life. He said, "I...

At long last, what the media wouldn't tell you about...BILL AND HILLARY'S 11TH-HOUR CRIME SPREE Final Days by Olson, Barbara "Disgraceful." That was former president Jimmy Carter's word for the final days of the Clinton administration. But as the late Barbara Olson shows in this riveting book, it was worse than disgraceful; it was well-nigh criminal. Here's the whole shocking story of a manic Clinton White House consumed with self-enrichment, gifts, pardons, federal land grabs, and an orgy of spending and regulating. If the Clinton administration was the most corrupt in American history, here was its most obscenely corrupt moment....

What We Will See in the Final Days of 2004 Election The trend was all Bush. But in a few national polls like Reuters and AP, Kerry has shown some movement. This is disconcerting to some people "on the outside" whose moods depend on the latest poll numbers. So we spoke to a veteran GOP consultant who has been around the block a few times to see if this is something we should be worried about. “Probably not,” he said. “Voters are going to take one last look at John Kerry. Then they will swing hard back to President Bush.”...

Books on NRO Weekend Major Barbara Reviewing Barbara Olson’s Final Days. By Noemie Emery, a writer on American politics and history. November 3-4, 2001   The Final Days: A Behind the Scenes Look at the Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House, by Barbara Olson (Regnery, 258 pp., $27.95). he 1990s, as a political era, began on September 10, 1991, with the hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, and ended abruptly ten years and one day later, with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A key figure in both of these events ...