Free Republic

As President Trump fights for confirmation of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the stakes go beyond the fate of this particular conservative nominee. At risk for Mr. Trump is his ability to install any more conservatives on the court at all. If Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination falls apart in the face of sexual misconduct accusations, Mr. Trump faces the very real possibility that he could lose his chance to put even his second choice in this seat, which holds the balance between conservative and liberal wings on the nation’s most important court. Democrats need to pick up only...

MORNING JOE: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) discusses NYT reporting on Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein as well as the latest details involving misconduct allegations against President Trump's Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh. SENATOR BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): We're talking about a lifetime appointment to the nation's highest court that will make a real difference in real people's lives for generations, literally generations to come with this appointment. And so we have a constitutional duty to get to the bottom of these allegations. They are serious, and credible, and now the person with the most knowledge about them, namely Judge Brett Kavanaugh has a...

The woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of a decades-old sexual assault has accepted a Senate committee's request to tell her side next week but Christine Blasey Ford wants to resume negotiations over the exact terms of her appearance, her lawyers said Saturday. It was not immediately clear whether the Republican-run Senate Judiciary Committee would agree to more talks with Ford's team. Also unclear was when she might come to Capitol Hill and she was offering to speak in a public session or a private one. The committee wanted her to appear Wednesday, but she prefers her earlier request...

A fair number of people who voted for President Donald Trump—just about half—think that women who complain about harassment often create more problems instead of solving anything, according to a new poll released this week. The survey from YouGov/The Economist asked respondents whether they agreed with this statement: “Women who complain about harassment often cause more problems than they solve.” Among Trump voters, 14 percent said they strongly agreed, while 34 percent agreed somewhat—meaning that overall, 48 percent agreed with the statement to some degree. Forty percent of Trump voters disagreed, to some degree, that “women who complain about harassment...

Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas took a verbal swing at his Republican rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, and his ties with President Donald Trump, during a debate on Friday, in the final weeks of a heated and closely watched midterm election in the state. Speaking at an auditorium at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, O'Rourke contrasted Cruz's recent conciliatory statements about Trump, and the harsh criticism Cruz had for Trump when they were both candidates in the 2016 Republican primary....

(snip) The Kavanaugh confirmation vote could make the difference in determining who will control the Senate after the November elections. And it might be that red-state Democrats find themselves in a lose-lose situation. A vote for Kavanaugh would have been an easy way for Democrats such as Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to remind voters back home that they are not intimidated by — or tools of — the angry left. But now it is hard to see how any Democratic senator will get a pass from party leadership. Depending on...

Sen. Susan Collins said she is "appalled" by a tweet from President Donald Trump disparaging the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. The Maine Republican called the statement from the President "inappropriate and wrong." "I was appalled by the President's tweet," Collins said Friday, according to audio obtained by CNN of an event where she spoke with local reporters. RELATED: Senate Judiciary Committee likely proposing Wednesday hearing with Ford testifying first The senator, who is a crucial swing vote on Kavanaugh's nomination, was responding to a question on what she thought of a tweet...

First lady Melania Trump has apparently had enough. In a fundraising memo to GOP supporters, the soft spoken Trump has ripped the media and Democrats for lying about her husband and his supporters. “Democrats and the opposition media are doing everything they possibly can to discredit Donald with false accusations by spreading their fake news and making it appear that he does not have the support of America’s voters,” she penned....

Link only due to copyright issues: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/09/21/mandela-barnes-calls-trump-policies-race-create-superior-race/1382272002/

President Donald Trump has done “irreparable” damage to the United States and is “impeachable,” regardless of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, a House Democrat said Thursday. Texas Representative Al Green, who has forced two failed votes to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, renewed his call in an interview with Hill.TV. "What he has done to this society is harmful and in some cases it may be irreparable,” Green said on the media outlet’s Rising show. He gave the example of Trump telling “police officers that you don’t have to be nice, when you’re arresting someone.” "These are the kinds of...

DONALD TRUMP will be left without his secret campaign weapon in the 2020 presidential election, as Facebook has announced it will not offer the same support to US President as it did in 2016. The tech-giant declared its change in policy claiming that it will focus on providing support and information to all politicians and campaigns on its website politics.fb.com rather than visiting campaign headquarters. The company’s decision comes after more than a year of controversy over its role in the Trump campaign, with many alleging Facebook gave the American firebrand preferential treatment. In an interview with CBS News' 60...

Two politicians not known for brevity will face off at 6 p.m on statewide television. When Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and his Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke, face off in their first debate Friday, watch as two long-winded politicians struggle for brevity. This past weekend, a reporter asked Cruz a simple question about Hurricane Harvey. His answer lasted 3 minutes, 57 seconds—which is forever on television. O’Rourke recently used 3 minutes, 38 seconds to give his defense of National Football League players taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence against blacks. The abridged version of...

A House Democrat called on his colleagues Wednesday to "rise up" if Republican senators push forward with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation without hearing from his sexual assault accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. "For the men and women of the House of Representatives, we must rise up in disgust and anger and make certain that our voice is clear," Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., said during an interview with CNN. "Get the facts out. Give this woman the benefit of the doubt. Don't treat her as so many women have been treated time after time in courtroom after courtroom." Only the...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., questioned embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's attitude toward his behavior in high school on Tuesday after a clip of him addressing his time at Georgetown Preparatory School circulated on social media. "I can't imagine any parent accepting this view," Warren tweeted. "Is this really what America wants in its next Supreme Court Justice?" During a 2015 speech at Columbus Law School at the Catholic University of America, Kavanaugh joked about his high school experience, saying, “What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.” In the snippet, first unearthed by MSNBC, Kavanaugh was referring to...

Senator Mazie Hirono thinks Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is not telling the truth about the sexual assault he allegedly committed as a teenager. She thinks he wasn’t telling the truth to the Judiciary Committee when he claimed not to remember any sexual misconduct by a judge he clerked for who was forced to resign last year after allegations from more than a dozen women. And the Hawaii Democrat says that if she gets to question Kavanaugh in another hearing, she’s going to tell him that the revelations over the weekend—when Christine Blasey Ford came forward to accuse Kavanaugh of...

Hillary Clinton has unleashed a blazing attack on Donald Trump, accusing the man who beat her in 2016 in the race for the White House of cruelty, negligence, corruption, dishonesty, racism and malevolence that have combined to put democracy in America into crisis. In an afterword to the new paperback edition of her book on her 2016 presidential election defeat, What Happened, Clinton makes her most excoriating takedown yet of Trump’s character and actions since he took office. The essay, published on Monday by the Atlantic, accuses the sitting president of undermining basic democratic values and positioning himself as a...

The “Fahrenheit 11/9” director also said Americans should expect the “evil genius” to be re-elected in 2020. Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore said he believes President Donald Trump either wrote or directed one of his staffers to write the anonymous Op-Ed in The New York Times that described an alleged “resistance” effort within his administration. “Trump or one of his minions wrote it,” Moore told CNN in an interview published Sunday. “He’s the master distractor. He’s the king of the misdirect. If we have learned anything by now, it’s that he does things to get people to turn away.” He continued:...

Brett Kavanaugh stands accused of sexually assaulting a high school classmate. And Feinstein seems to have concluded that the public didn’t need to know this. First of all, what in blazes was Dianne Feinstein thinking? It was late July when she got that letter from a female constituent alleging that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school. And only this week did she bother to share it with her Democratic Judiciary Committee colleagues? And not only that. According to Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer’s explosive New Yorker piece posted Friday morning, those colleagues got wind of...

The Senate Judiciary Committee completed four days of hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of D.C. Judge Brett Kavanaugh and a vote reportedly will come in about two weeks. The hearings were marred with protests and demonstrations against Kavanaugh as more than 227 demonstrators were arrested between the Sept. 4 start of the proceedings and the end of testimony Friday, according to Capitol authorities. On Day 2, California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris grilled Kavanaugh on whether he had discussed special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election with anyone at the law firm of Kasowitz Benson...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren may be one of President Donald Trump's most vocal critics. But she does not want to boot him out of office, yet. Ahead of November's critical midterm elections, billionaire former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer has piled more than $20 million into his campaign to impeach the president. Asked Thursday evening if she agreed with the mega-donor's effort, Warren answered, "Nope." The Massachusetts Democrat said she wanted to see special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation come to a close before she draws a conclusion. The former FBI director is looking into Russian efforts to influence the 2016...