Free Republic

One day President Trump wants to dial down hostilities with Iran. ‘We’re low-keying’ the conflict, he said on Sunday. A day later, though, he was keyed up. After Tehran demanded reparations from Washington as part of its attempt to resurrect June’s Memorandum of Understanding, Trump said on Truth Social that it was the Iranians who should: “Compensate America for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous, as led initially by General Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole, and thousands...

Donald Trump was for the Iran war before he was against it. His latest post on social media about the conflict indicated that he is once more calling off a sweeping military action, this time at the behest of his Gulf allies who are apparently quaking at the thought of a renewed conflict. Trump’s initial sentence was quite a mouthful: I have been asked by the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, and the President of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to hold...

On Sunday Joe Biden bowed to the inevitable in withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. Only now has the presidential race become interesting as the fifty-nine-year-old Harris, more than likely to receive the Democratic nomination, prepares to face off against Donald Trump. Suddenly the Republican candidate has become the old codger in the race while the Democratic one represents generational change. Trump, you could even say, has become yesterday’s news. https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1815087772216303933"My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder...

Elbridge “Bridge” Colby is, as Donald Trump might say, straight out of central casting for a member of D.C.’s foreign policy elite. He has degrees from Harvard and Yale, a membership to Washington’s Metropolitan Club and the kind of coiffed hair and clipped accent that you’d expect from an American blue-blood. So pristine is his pedigree — his grandfather was head of the CIA — that a lightly fictionalized version of him appears in the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s memoir of his undergraduate years at Harvard, titled Privilege. But Colby, far from being a deep state darling, is...

I’ve been dismissive of Jim Webb’s prospects for winning the Democratic presidential nomination. But Jacob Heilbrunn’s column on Webb, and Steve’s commentary on that column, made me take another look. On second look, I still don’t see Webb getting very far. Will female Democrats favor Webb — currently in his third marriage and the author of what some might consider a sexist novel — over Hillary Clinton? Not likely. Will African-Americans favor Webb — so proud of his Scotch-Irish heritage — over the wife of “our first black president”? Not likely. Will white southern Democrats favor Webb? Arguably. But he’s...

Sarah Palin knows what's wrong with President Obama's approach to Ukraine. In a Facebook post, she said that she had predicted that after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Obama's "moral indecision" would prompt Vladimir Putin to tackle Ukraine next: "Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I’m usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did." The Washington Post editorial page also knows what's wrong. "Mr. Obama," it says, "has been vague about the consequences of continued Russian aggression." An aggression that is taking place, we are told, in "the center of Europe." It suggests that the most forceful measure...

Part I:     How Important is the Left's Influence on American Politics? May 6, 2005Part II:    How Left is the Left, and How Important? May 9, 2005 Part III:   How Significant is the Left? What is Legitimate Dissent? May 10, 2005   How Important is the Left's Influence on American Politics?This is the first of a series of exchanges between Jacob Heilbrunn, an LA Times editorial writer and author of a forthcoming book on neoconservatism, and David Horowitz to discuss the themes of Horowitz’s book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left and DiscoverTheNetworks.org. -- The Editors. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17974 Jacob Heilbrunn:Dear...