Free Republic

Acting as prosecutor, judge, and jury, the National Labor Relations Board is just the tip of the iceberg of government agencies wielding far too much power. “No jokes allowed. Ever.” Apparently, this is the new Twitter rule, as The Federalist national news publication faces a joint administrative and judicial broadside at the National Labor Relations Board. What the publication is going through constitutes just one of the many costly, silly, and arguably unconstitutional quasi-judicial proceedings underway throughout the federal bureaucracy.A recent case before the NLRB — in which the agency served as legislator, police, prosecutor, and judge — helps illustrate...

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The infamous Vietnam era quotation may or may not have been uttered by an anonymous US Army major. It may have been misquoted, revised, apocryphal or invented. But it quickly morphed into an anti-war mantra that reflected the frustrations many felt. For Virginians and others forced to travel the “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” energy path, it will redound in modern politics as “We had to destroy the environment in order to save it.” For example, weeks after Governor Ralph Northam signed a “Clean Economy Act” that had been rushed...

During Wednesday’s edition of The Lead, the panel found itself in a little bit of shock after learning that President Trump had revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, who has previously called President Trump treasonous in his new capacity as an NBC News analyst. Panelist Symone Sanders agreed that it was done to distract from any number of negative Trump storylines: “I think someone wants to muck up the news cycle.” She then described the revocation of Brennan’s security clearance as “ridiculous” and warned that “we should all be scared about the state of our democracy”...

CNN media reporter Brian Stelter was up in arms during Sunday’s Reliable Sources as he ranted about how the release of Nunes memo was a win for Fox News, more specifically Sean Hannity, and all the people in conservative media trying to create what he called an “alternative reality.” Stelter began the show with a twist on his usual lead-in loaded with hollow catchphrases: "This is Reliable Sources, our weekly look at the story behind the story, of how the media really works, how the news gets made. And this week, how misinformation gets made. The right unleashed its version...

Friday morning on Fox & Friends, Washington Post Writers Group columnist Ruben Navarrette, Jr. gave President Donald Trump only grudging and partial credit for the steep decline in illegal border crossings from Mexico into the U.S. so far this year. Navarrette's "logic," which went unchallenged by host Steve Doocy, ignored several policy-related Trump administration announcements which have had direct impact, and failed to recognize how the tone which has been set at the administration's highest levels has had an impact on how the law is enforced on the ground.Navarrette has been called "the most widely read Latino columnist in the...

On the left, there is obsessive talk of impeaching Donald Trump. Despite the fact that the press reports which supposedly form the foundation of such talk are almost always based on anonymous sources, and despite the fact that the Trump administration has successfully refuted most if not all of them, the obsession continues. On his Wednesday night show, after successfully swatting away pathetic pro-impeachment arguments made by guest Krystal Ball and her citations of weak-kneed Republicans who can't seem to resist bending with the Beltway wind, Tucker Carlson got fed up. The segment (posted in full here) opened with a...

Troubling news broke out of North Korea early Sunday morning after an American citizen was arrest by North Korean officials on Saturday. “It has been confirmed that another American has been arrested in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, which about 120 miles north from here from Seoul,” reported ABC’s Bob Woodruff during Good Morning America. It’s shocking news that hits just as tensions between the U.S. and communist regime are near a boiling point. Despite those facts, NBC’s Willie Geist failed to mention the development during his show, Sunday Today. “His name so far is not known,” noted Woodruff. “But the...

During Monday’s The 11th Hour on MSNBC, serial liar Brian Williams trotted of an expert panel of Trump critics and let them loose to smear the President’s actions against North Korea. “On the one hand, Brian, when you have a dangerous stand-off with a nuclear-armed adversary, of course, you would like to think that within our government we have stability, methodical planning, every step is very calculated,” declared Politico’s Michael Crowley, “And I'm not sure we can be certain that that’s happening in this administration right now.” Crowley began his comments by suggesting that Trump’s approach to foreign policy is...

The wagon-circling campaign to protect Obama administration and intelligence community officials who surveilled Donald Trump and his transition team during his presidential campaign and post-victory transition is moving into hyperdrive. On Monday, CNN's Don Lemon proclaimed that "there is no evidence whatsoever" supporting Donald Trump's claim about having been "spied on illegally" (note the inclusion of the word "illegally," which is crucial), and declared that he would not "aid and abet the people who are trying to misinform you." Lemon's stridency as he delivered his rant on CNN Tonight appeared to betray "he protests too much" behavior, while subsequent events...

ABC’s This Week went off the rails Sunday morning as fill-in host Martha Raddatz assaulted U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley with ridiculous questions about Russia, and at one point insinuated that she doesn’t speak for the U.S. “And you mentioned this. President Trump has said he respects Putin. But you say you don't trust him. You've said the U.S. needs to take hacking seriously. President Trump has been dismissive of it,” Raddatz prefaced before chided, “Which one of you should our allies and adversaries believe?” Raddatz’s dismissal of the Ambassador borderlines on contempt of her position, and was...

Things arguably got a little embarrassing for NBC moderator Chuck Todd during Sunday’s Meet the Press, after Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton had to explain to him that the claims of anonymous sources should be taken with a grain of salt. “Anonymous sources said Steve Bannon drove from the White House to the Department of Homeland Security to confront John Kelly, which we now know is not the truth,” Cotton reminded Todd, “That’s not like the tone of a conversation, that’s someone’s physical whereabouts.” Cotton’s schooling of Todd came as the NBC moderator pressed the Senator on when the media could...

I have a (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) rule for federal government departments, agencies, commissions and boards: Barring a constitutional amendment, if a bureaucracy was created after 1800 it shouldn't exist. The Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution were by 1800 thoroughly implementing it. If they didn't yet have the federal government doing something - the federal government wasn't to be doing it. So unless a subsequent amendment added an authority to the federal panoply - it's been an unconstitutional addition. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 -- WAY past our sell-by date. Our nation got along just fine for...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin referred to Madeline Albright's somewhat well-known saying, found on a Starbucks coffee cup, that "There's a special place in Hell for women who don't help other women." At the time, Albright, who served as Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, huffed: "Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics." She naturally followed that statement with an intense political attack on Palin and GOP presidential nominee John McCain. Now that Democrat Hillary...

Guess who's all of a sudden standing up for law and order? Why, it's radical environmentalists, who despite their general disdain for lawful behavior have felt compelled to speak out in support of the Bureau of Land Management's attempts to round up Cliven Bundy's cattle and ultimately force the Nevada rancher to abandon his family's century-old business. Martin Griffith at the Associated Press relayed the comments of one such group in a Sunday report in the aftermath of the BLM's abandonment of its roundup efforts, in Griffith's words, "after hundreds of states' rights protesters, some of them armed militia members,...

In a disptach early this evening, the Associated Press's Pete Yost, perhaps signaling his employer's intent to remain the journalistic lapdog known as the Administration's Press, accepted at face value Attorney General Eric Holder's claim, while defending his department's actions, to have played no role in its wide-ranging subpoena of two months of AP phone records involving 20 cellular, personal and business lines used by over 100 wire service reporters and editors. Yost also did not address whether DOJ received judicial approval for its fishing expedition, a question the AP's Mark Sherman identified last night as unresolved. It apparently hasn't...