Free Republic

This week Jill Abramson, the estimable former executive editor of The New York Times, whom I’ve always admired and never criticized, contended that I had been “stoking” the idea that the NYT had a vendetta against Hillary Clinton. That is false. What I have argued, repeatedly during the campaign and most recently nine days ago in an item about Hillary Clinton’s new book, is that the Times very badly erred in its wild over-coverage of the Clinton email “issue,” and that this distorted coverage was, in turn, one of many factors leading to Donald Trump’s elevation to the presidency. Here’s...

Hillary Clinton weighed in on President Trump's controversial comments about NFL players kneeling for the national anthem. Clinton said it is "quite telling" that Trump is "willing to attack black athletes" but not white supremacists, the Klan, or Putin. "He attacks black athletes as he did starting with his rally in Alabama. Continued on Twitter. And he attacks them for protesting peacefully for equality, for standing up for what they believe. And he does it once again to dog whistle to his base and to try to detract attention from other things that are going on. But it's quite telling...

If you are upset about President Donald Trump's position on NFL players who kneel during the national anthem -- an opinion he colorfully expressed in a speech in Alabama and in a series of follow-up tweets -- take a deep breath and listen. There's good reason to believe that public opinion is on his side. Understanding this doesn't mean that you are wrong or that your feelings are not valid; it just means that the President has again found a winning cultural issue with which to solidify his standing in Middle America. Last September, Reuters conducted a survey in the...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) kneeled on the House floor Monday night to show solidarity with NFL players defying President Trump to protest police brutality. Jackson Lee, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, blasted Trump for attacking NFL players who kneel during the national anthem at games to draw attention to the treatment of African Americans by law enforcement. Then she took a knee herself. "I kneel in honor of them. I kneel in front of the flag and on this floor," Jackson Lee declared. "I kneel in honor of the First Amendment. I kneel because the flag is...

Weiner cannot be incarcerated for long enough to punish him for what he's done. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner (D – HELL), was sentenced to 21 months in prison for sexting an underage teen and asking her to perform sexual acts on Skype and Snapchat. The New York Daily News published a fairly arresting courtroom sketch of his sentencing: While “crying and grabbing tissue after tissue,” Weiner asked for probation for his crimes. From the NYDN: “I victimized a young person who deserved better,” Weiner said in court. “I am not asking that I be trusted … I ask you for...

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/09/unreal-nfl-players-stand-god-save-queen-kneel-us-national-anthem-london/

Sen. Thom Tillis will introduce his “conservative Dream Act” on Monday that would provide a pathway to citizenship for as many as 2.5 million young undocumented immigrants, but one that is long and involves “extreme vetting.” The North Carolina Republican and cosponsor James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, will pitch the plan as “merit-based” relief that must be earned — and, critically, not “amnesty,” according to Republican talking points obtained by McClatchy. But unlike other merit-based immigration proposals that limit new immigrants from entering the country based on their job skills, this proposal would limit who can remain in the country...

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Saturday declared that the Statue of Liberty will continue to stand as the nation's iconic symbol of American immigration, "not that damned wall." "We are going to continue to have the Statue of Liberty be our symbol, not that damned wall," the Democratic lawmaker said during the Global Citizen Festival in New York City, seemingly referring to President Trump's proposed border wall. During the event, Schumer stressed that the importance of protecting foreign aid funding after Trump proposed a 30 percent cut to the foreign assistance package in his fiscal year 2018 budget. "We welcome...

Hillary Clinton called out the Trump administration Sunday for its response to the devastation in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. "President Trump, Sec. Mattis, and DOD should send the Navy, including the USNS Comfort, to Puerto Rico now. These are American citizens," Clinton said in a Sunday morning tweet, referring to the Department of Defense, Secretary James Mattis and a US Navy ship that serves as a medical facility....

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Sunday said it helps President Trump politically when NFL players protest during the national anthem. "This may be unpopular but it is a political reality," Scarborough tweeted Sunday. "Every NFL player refusing to stand for the national anthem helps Trump politically." His comments come after President Trump on Friday attacked players who refuse to stand....

Malpractice cost Clinton the election, but her ambivalence on big issues was produced by big structural factors that affect all Democrats. Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen Penguin Hillary Clinton’s tragic 2016 campaign faced withering criticism in the press, social media, and now, in Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s inside account, Shattered. From my vantage point as lead pollster for the Democratic nominees in 1992 and 2000, part of the closing clutch of pollsters in 2004, and invited noodge in 2016, I have little quarrel with the harshest of these criticisms. Malpractice and arrogance contributed...

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) is calling for President Trump to preemptively strike North Korea. Hunter on Thursday warned that North Korea could have a nuclear missile aimed at naval bases in the U.S., including San Diego. “Why would they not aim here, at Hawaii, Guam, our major naval bases?” Hunter said, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “The question is, do you wait for one of those? Or two? Do you preemptively strike them? And that’s what the president has to wrestle with. I would preemptively strike them. You could call it declaring war, call it whatever you want.” Hunter...

Unemployment is down, wages are up and to many Americans, the financial crisis may feel like a memory. But for those in rural America and regions tied to industries on the decline, joblessness remains a huge problem. Hillary Clinton says there is one possible solution to joblessness — but it's a tough pill to swallow. In "What Happened," Clinton writes that the possible solution is one few people want to discuss. "As hard as it is," she writes, "people may have to leave their hometowns and look for work elsewhere in America." While she advocates for local governments, employers and...

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins all but said she would vote “no” on an Affordable Care Act repeal bill on Friday morning at an event in Portland. “I’m leaning against the bill,” the Maine Republican said after listing a series of serious deficiencies in the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill. “I’m just trying to do what I believe is the right thing for the people of Maine,” Collins said. She said Graham-Cassidy undermines pre-existing conditions, a major flaw in the bill. “I’m reading the fine print on Graham-Cassidy,” Collins said. She said insurers could charge sky-high rates to people with pre-existing conditions. “The...

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland will be the keynote speaker at an upcoming event organized by a group called Duty to Warn. Duty to Warn has called for President Trump’s removal from office under the 25th Amendment on the grounds that he is not psychologically fit to serve. From the Hill: Raskin is expected to discuss legislation he introduced earlier this year to establish an Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity that can determine if the president is incapacitated. His bill currently has 31 co-sponsors, all of whom are Democrats. Under the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, the vice president and a majority...

President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have continued to rise because of the president’s “leadership and compassion,” Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera said Friday on “Fox and Friends.” “It’s no accident that his approval rating across the board is ticking up,” Rivera said. “Why is that? It’s because he has shown leadership and compassion and understanding of suffering in terms of Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and now Hurricane Maria. He has really stepped up to the plate.” “The other reason the president’s popularity ticked up is this strength and reason and steadiness he is showing with the ‘Rocket Man,'” he added....

I've been haunted by a claim my KCRW colleague Rich Lowry made on our radio show a few weeks ago: Democrats keep coming up short in elections because they won't give any ground on "cultural issues" to win back the working-class voters they've alienated over the past decades. On one hand, it's obviously true that Democrats suffer from a cultural disconnect from non-college-educated voters who have abandoned the party in droves. Democrats believe their economic agenda should appeal to people with lower incomes, yet income has become a poor predictor of partisan alignment; Democrats' substantial inroads with upscale suburban voters...

Roy Moore, a Republican US Senate candidate in Alabama, said in a 2005 interview that he believes "homosexual conduct" should be illegal. Moore, a hardline conservative Christian and former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, made the comments in an interview with liberal commentator Bill Press on C-SPAN2's After Words. Moore appeared on the show to publicize a book he had just written about his expulsion from the court for refusing to take down a monument to the Ten Commandments. During the interview Press asked Moore if he believed homosexual conduct should still be illegal after the 2003 landmark...

Watching this, I keep thinking of that Hillary clip from 2014 that made the rounds a few weeks ago in which she said “Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay.” Conservatives pointed to that as proof that even the reigning Democratic nominee opposes a DREAM amnesty, but huffy lefties complained that Clinton was being taken out of context. She was referring to children who had *recently* crossed the border, they said, not to children who were brought here years ago and had built a life in America. Obviously Democrats don’t support...

Between now and the 2020 presidential elections in the United States, one thing is certain. No matter how and where things go in the world outside and inside the United States, Trump will be a more formidable candidate than any opponent when he is up for re-election in 2020. By walking out of the Paris accord on climate change, Donald Trump has consolidated his base, and has shown to them – and the future voters of 2020 in America – that he has the ability to fight for them. That he can fight against the bad boys and the forces...