Free Republic

It is true that I have been in Washington, mostly to attend the Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn trial. I will write up my thoughts on the trial (or at least, those portions I have seen) when I have time. But something else has been distracting me: leftists firebombed my office last Saturday night. At around 2 am, they broke into the building that houses Center of the American Experiment and two other conservative organizations with which we often collaborate, along with many other businesses. The arsonists set two fires: one was in the first floor corridor between American Experiment’s...

Did Joe Biden and the Democrats steal this year’s presidential election? Polls suggest that a great many Americans, including many Democrats, believe that they did. I don’t know whether the election was stolen or not. I will say this: the Democrats went to great lengths to commit, or enable, voter fraud. To cite just a couple of examples, in a number of states, including my own, they used corrupt, collusive litigation to eliminate the minimal safeguards that prevented fraudulent mail-in votes from being submitted, like the requirement that signatures be witnessed. Why would they do this? Obviously, they didn’t want...

Here’s the problem: the townships and precincts listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 of the affidavit are not in Michigan. They are in Minnesota. Monticello, Albertville, Lake Lillian, Houston, Brownsville, Runeberg, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, Kandiyohi–these are all towns in Minnesota. I haven’t checked them all, but I checked a lot of them, and all locations listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 that I looked up are in Minnesota, with no corresponding township in Michigan. This would have been obvious to someone from this state, Evidently a researcher, either Mr. Ramsland or someone working for him,...

Not all liberals are evil, but it is becoming increasingly clear that 21st-century liberalism is an evil ideology. It incites race hatred for political advantage. It tries to keep disadvantaged people down, so they will stay on the Democratic Party plantation. It lies about pretty much everything–for example, “police violence.” And liberals almost never debate public policy issues in time-honored fashion; rather, they try to destroy anyone who disagrees with them. The Covington Catholic media scandal has brought these issues into sharp focus. Liberals, mostly but not exclusively–i.e., the Associated Press–on Twitter, have lied about the trivial encounter between a...

Someone leaked to Breitbart an hour-long video of an “all hands” Google meeting that was held just after the 2016 election. The video features Google’s co-founder, Sergei Brin, its CEO, Sundar Pichai, and numerous other high-ranking “Googlers” speaking in turn about the election’s tragic outcome. It is stunning. All of the speakers express grief over Donald Trump’s election. All of the speakers assume that every Google employee is a Democrat and is stunned and horrified that Hillary Clinton–the worst and most corrupt presidential candidate in modern history–lost. There is much discussion about what Google can do to reverse the benighted...

On Thursday, the Washington Post published an article by Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin titled “The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.” The article’s first paragraph included this claim: The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David. The theme of the article was that the Keystone Pipeline is all about the Koch brothers; or, at least, that this is a plausible claim. The Post authors relied on a report...

Scott Rasmussen finds that an overwhelming 75% support photo ID requirements. The Democrats also hope to stir up their base by attacking state efforts to curb illegal immigration. Here, too, they are paddling the canoe uphill, as likely voters say, by a 52%/34% margin that they would like their state to enact an immigration law like Arizona’s. Gallup finds that growing and expanding the economy is given high priority by 82% of Americans and increasing equality of opportunity for people to get ahead if they want to is considered very important by 70%, while only 46% attribute high priority to...

On my radio show on Wednesday, January 19, Dick Morris flatly declared that Mitt Romney could not win the Republican nomination for president because of the health care plan Romney guided into law in Massachusetts in 2005. On the same day my friend and superb political analyst John Hinderaker of Powerline fame declared that it was over for Sarah Palin. “The time has come to put any thoughts of Sarah Palin running for President to rest,” John wrote.

Congress's approval rating is in the basement, at sixteen percent. Fifty-three percent rate the Democrat-controlled Congress as "poor." It's striking that even more independents (72%) than Republicans (64%) rate Congress's performance as poor. Michael Barone says that Democrats are losing the enthusiasm battle, too. No surprise there: what phenomena have liberals mustered that begin to approach the tea parties, townhalls, and the march on Washington of a couple of weeks ago? The Washington Post finds that the public's dwindling support for the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats is hitting them where it hurts, in the pocketbook. Contributions to the Democrats'...

If, like me, you haven't had time over the last few days to keep up with the story of Barack Obama's firing of Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General who has responsibility for the AmeriCorps program (Bruon York) will bring you up to speed. The story is an interesting one that sheds light on the lawless, bullying nature of the Obama administration. Walpin, who by statute is supposed to be independent of White House control, ran afoul of Obama because he investigated a charity operated by former pro basketball player Kevin Johnson, a prominent Obama supporter. The non-profit, St. Hope, received...

We noted here efforts by Barack Obama's campaign to shut down his critics' free speech. In particular, Obama obviously doesn't want the public to know about his long-term, cozy relationship with proud-to-be-a-terrorist Bill Ayers. Now, Obama himself has upped the ante by demanding that the conservative who funded the Ayers ad be criminally prosecuted: Obama general counsel Bob Bauer today sent a second, sharper letter to the Justice Department, directly attacking the Dallas billionaire funding a harsh attack ad, Harold Simmons. "We reiterate our request that the Department of Justice fulfill its commitment to take prompt action to investigate and...

That's how a great many people feel about the impromptu rebellion that House Republicans have staged against Nancy Pelosi's refusal to allow a vote to lower energy prices by increasing supply. Last Friday, Pelosi adjourned the House without having done anything to address the country's energy problems. Republicans voted against adjournment, and since then, an energetic band of Republican Congressmen has carried out a guerrilla campaign against the thoughtless arrogance that Pelosi embodies and that typifies the modern Democratic Party. Initially, Republicans refused to go on vacation and instead stayed in the House chamber, continuing to discuss and debate the...

Barack Obama's suggestion that we can't drill our way out of the current energy shortage, but we can solve the problem through tire inflation, has been the source of much hilarity. We did the math here, and found that it would take approximately 11,308 years of tire inflation to equal the energy we can obtain by developing our own petroleum resources. Now, remarkably, Time magazine has rushed to the defense of its candidate, arguing that "Obama is right." The author of the article, Michael Grunwald, mixes apple-and-orange statistics to try to create the false impression that there is more to...

McCain began by recalling the beginning of the surge: "Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed. We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the "surge" was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops -- which I had advocated since...

A horrific news story has slowly made its way into the headlines here in the Twin Cities. A local resident, his wife and three daughters spent the evening of the Fourth of July at Valleyfair, a local amusement park. They were leaving the park at midnight when a criminal began to molest his twelve-year-old daughter. The father intervened to defend his daughter, and the offender put out a call for his "homies." Eight "men" materialized and began to beat up the father. They knocked him to the ground and took turns stomping on his head. The man's wife and daughters...

The debate over Iraq and the war on terror rages, even amid signs we're winning. John Hinderaker of powerlineblog.com recently posted a blog entry answering the perennial question, "Are We Safer?" We rerun it here with his permission.On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, "and it hasn't made us safer." It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us. Empirically, however, it...

There are several stories in the news this morning that share a common theme. (The New York Times) headlines that the Democrats are "Newly Willing to Compromise on Iraq":"[S]enior Democrats now say they are willing to rethink their push to establish a withdrawal deadline of next spring if doing so will attract the 60 Senate votes needed to prevail."The Times attributes the Democrats' flexibility--grudgingly--to a stiffening of Republican resolve:"Democrats had been counting on more Republicans to make a clean break from the president after the summer recess, but the White House has managed, at least temporarily, to hold on to...

We noted (here) that the prosecution of some, at least, of the Marines accused of committing murder at Haditha appeared to be crumbling. Sure enough: today, Lt. Gen. Jim Mattis, head of Marine Corps Forces-Central Command, (dismissed all charges against two of the Marines), Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt and Capt. Randy Stone, a lawyer who was the infantry battalion’s staff judge advocate.As to these individuals, at least, the dismissal can be taken as proof that they were innocent. Lt. Gen. Mattis wrote eloquently about the conditions under which Marines in Iraq are required to make split-second decisions. I haven't seen...

Powerline Post by John Hinderaker (excerpts) "A couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom was that Rudy Giuliani would be a formidable Presidential candidate, but could never get the Republican nomination because of his liberal views on some social issues. I believe that we were among the first to question this assumption...At the Candidates' Forum, the Giuliani campaign has started a thread titled Social Conservatives Back Giuliani, which cites some of the recent poll data...UPDATE: Interesting--so far, the commenters on Giuliani's Forum site are pretty much unanimously OK with his position as laid out above. That could change as more...

ABC News finds that the U.S. re-deployment of troops to Baghdad, and their placement in large numbers in the most dangerous neighborhoods, appears to be working. Preliminary reports show a significance decrease in violence. Iraqi authorities say the number of violent attacks has gone down by 30 percent. The U.S., using different calculations, says such attacks have decreased by 22 percent. On the same note, the Washington Times quotes Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, who sees "life coming back to some normalcy" in Baghdad. "We are cautiously optimistic and encouraged by all the indicators that we are seeing," says General...