Free Republic

President Biden said the United States is “rallying the world to stand with Ukraine” and pledged to support the cause “as long as it takes.” U.S. officials have downplayed the (Russian} gains, calling them halting and incremental. The scrutiny is fueled by U.S. government assessments of other wars, notably in Afghanistan, where officials habitually glossed over widespread dysfunction and corruption and sidestepped questions of whether battlefield successes were not only achievable but sustainable. A Ukrainian lawmaker shared similar concerns. “We are losing the most valuable thing, our soldiers and officers.” Benjamin Friedman, a policy director at Defense Priorities, said that...

Each is a wannabe autocrat, each is working to undermine the rule of law and so-called elites in his respective country, each is seeking to crush what he calls a “deep state” of government professionals. Each is steering his nation away from its once universal aspiration to be a “light unto the nations” toward a narrow, brutish might-equals-right ethnonationalism that is ready to mainstream ethnic cleansing. Each treats his political opposition not as legitimate but as enemies within, and each has filled his cabinet with incompetent hacks, deliberately chosen for loyalty to him instead of the laws of their lands....

As Russian tanks rumble through Georgia, and Western pundits talk of the "new Cold War," one trope keeps reappearing in their discourse. Russia's newly aggressive stance, we are told, is partly our fault: After the fall of Communism, the West went out of its way to humiliate and trample Russia instead of treating it as a partner--and now, an oil-powered Russia is striking back. "Russia's litany of indignities dates to the early 1990s when the Soviet empire collapsed," Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former Barack Obama adviser, wrote in Time. "A bipolar universe gave...

In reflecting on Jimmy Carter’s death, my mind skipped to the Apple TV+ streaming series “For All Mankind,” an alternate-reality drama that imagines how the world might have been if it was the Soviets, not the Americans, who walked on the moon first during the Cold War space race. The alternate reality I’d like to write is in honor of Carter: How would the world have been different had President Ronald Reagan not removed the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House roof during his presidency with the aim of kick-starting the solar industry and inspiring Americans...

I asked Migrants in New York City who they're voting for.

What are the elements of the libertarian movement and how does one of its most illustrious proponents, Milton Friedman, apply its tenets to issues facing the United States today? Milton Friedman, Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences discusses how he balances the libertarians' desire for a small, less intrusive government with environmental, public safety, food and drug administration, and other issues.

Ever since President Biden’s Sunday announcement that he would not seek re-election, clearly because of age, I keep thinking about Donald Trump’s and JD Vance’s contemptuous reactions to one of the most difficult personal decisions a president has ever made, and what it says about their character.“The Democrats pick a candidate, Crooked Joe Biden, he loses the Debate badly, then panics, and makes mistake after mistake, is told he can’t win, and decide they will pick another candidate, probably Harris,” Trump wrote on social media on Monday. He later added: “It’s not over! Tomorrow Crooked Joe Biden’s going to wake...

New York Times columnist Thomas L. “Tom” Friedman, a close friend of President Joe Biden, has had enough. The seemingly tear-stricken writer used an opinion piece Friday to counsel the octogenarian to withdraw from the 2024 race after his “heartbreaking” showing in the debate. Friedman’s editorial offering got straight to the point. Under the headline Joe Biden Is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race, Friedman highlighted his own personal distress at what unfolded: I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep. I cannot remember...

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman said watching his friend President Biden’s disastrous debate performance made him “weep” — and urged the commander-in-chief to put the nation’s interests first by not seeking re-election. In an op-ed titled, “President Biden Is My Friend. He Must Bow Out of the Race,” Friedman wrote that he “cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime.”

Known for songs like "Sold American," the cigar-chomping character and buddy of Willie Nelson won acclaim as a journalist and novelist and once ran for Texas governorKinky Friedman, the eccentric country singer-songwriter whose musings, novels, one-liners and quixotic gubernatorial run made him a folk hero, died Wednesday at age 79 at his home in Texas.“Kinky Friedman stepped on a rainbow at his beloved Echo Hill surrounded by family & friends,” a statement on X read announcing his death. “Kinkster endured tremendous pain & unthinkable loss in recent years but he never lost his fighting spirit and quick wit. Kinky will...

New York Times columnist Thomas L. “Tom” Friedman, a close associate of President Joe Biden, writes in his latest column that the U.S should force Israel to give up the war against Hamas in Gaza and let the terror group claim “victory.” Friedman is a “conduit” for messages from the White House about Middle East policy, according to Politico, and therefore his column can be interpreted as a threat to Israel — an “ultimatum,” as Friedman puts it, on the war. The columnist, once respected for his reporting during the First Lebanon War, has become a Democratic Party mouthpiece, and...

I have not written much about the war in Ukraine lately because so little has changed strategically since the first few months of this conflict, when three overarching facts pretty much drove everything — and still do. Fact No. 1: As I wrote at the outset, when a war of this magnitude begins, the key question you ask yourself as a foreign affairs columnist is very simple: Where should I be? Should I be in Kyiv, the Donbas, Crimea, Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Brussels or Washington? And from the start of this war, there has been only one place to be...

MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin quoted Nobel winner Milton Friedman on the reasons for the shortage of goods in the markets, commenting on the Western idea to impose a price cap on Russian energy resources."In this regard, I would like to quote American economist, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman: ‘We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's...

Excellent interview about the Abraham Accords.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge is set to preside over an important hearing for John Hinckley, the man who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and is on the verge of being released from all remaining restrictive conditions. U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman said in September that he would free Hinckley from restrictions on June 15 as long as Hinckley continued to do well.

Nixon was worried about trade deficits and a deteriorating balance of payments. He rejected the advice of Volcker, then treasury undersecretary, and the Fed chairman at the time, Arthur Burns. Instead, Nixon closed the gold window, meaning foreign governments could no longer exchange dollars for gold. The value of the greenback fell like a stone. So as the value of our currency declined, prices denominated in dollars sky-rocketed. We printed bad money and too much of it, and that’s the definition of inflation. Excess money in relation to demand will do it every time. Lack of value will do it...

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said Monday night on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) are “standing up for our democracy” by opposing the notion former President Donald Trump didn’t lose the 2020 presidential election. Friedman said, “When people ask me how I feel, I give an answer that sounds like English is my second language. I say to them, country not right. Country not right. Our country is not right. What Liz Cheney is doing and Mitt Romney is doing is standing up for our democracy.”

Chinese state media are trumpeting New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's China-friendly comments, the latest example of the Gray Lady's ties to the Chinese propaganda apparatus. When Friedman, a longtime columnist for the Times, participated in a March 29 "fireside chat" with the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank with close ties to the regime, the state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN) broadcast the entire 90-minute interview. Once the interview was over, the network disseminated the interview as an example of a Western intellectual calling for improved relations between the two superpowers. "Friedman said 1979-2019 was a...

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman urged national Democrats to move to Georgia and vote in its upcoming Senate runoff elections—a clear violation of state law, should the voters leave after the races conclude. "I hope everybody moves to Georgia, you know, in the next month or two, registers to vote, and votes for these two Democratic senators," Friedman said during a Monday-night CNN appearance. Georgia election law does not include a length-of-residency requirement in order to vote in the state. It does, however, prohibit prospective voters from "residing in the state briefly with the intention just to vote and...

Had he stuck around Mr. Milton Friedman would have turned 108 years old yesterday. This week's episode of The Resistance Library podcast focuses squarely on the great libertarian economist and firece critic of Keynesian economics. Perfect to listen to if you've just paid taxes last month! You may also read our very own Sam Jacobs' article on Mr. Friedman here: ammo.com/articles/milton-friedman-forgotten-history-godfather-of-american-conservative-libertarianism