Free Republic

On paper, the US constitution is a thing of beauty. But the would-be emperor in Washington has revealed its great weaknessAmerica’s big birthday has come at a bad time. On Saturday it will be a divided nation that marks 250 years since 13 North American colonies declared their independence from the Great Britain of George III. Many will be anxious that the republic they established that day is fragile – not least because of the would-be emperor in the White House.Some will console themselves that hope and angst have always been intertwined in the American story. From the very start,...

"Former US president Donald Trump said that many American Jews don’t love Israel, otherwise, they would have voted for him and charged that Israel used to have “absolute power over Congress.” Trump’s comments from an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid in July were broadcast Thursday on the Unholy Podcast, hosted by Yonit Levi of Israel’s Channel 12 news and Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian." "“There are people in this country that are Jewish, no longer love Israel. I’ll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than Jews in this country,” Trump said."

New York Times reporter Dan Bilefsky devoted a long review-interview in Saturday Arts to left-wing British journalist Jonathan Freedland’s "trenchant satire" novel about the assassinating of a president, “Trump Is Stranger Than Fiction.” He dutifully passed along the suggestion that such assassination porn was inevitable “when the top guy in the White House appears to be recklessly lurching toward global destruction....” Bilefsky, a foreign reporter for the paper, has previously blamed Brexit for hate crimes, but betrays no concern that this novel may provoke in similar fashion, and registers nothing objectionable about the epidemic of imagined presidential assassinations among liberal...

Making it to the White House will shift prejudices not only in America, but far beyond. Hillary Clinton was on my mind even before word came of the death of Mario Cuomo. The former governor of New York will be remembered by those who have long forgotten, or never knew, his record running that state chiefly for his oratory and his knack for an enduring phrase. Eight minutes spent on YouTube watching his 1984 rebuttal of Ronald Reagan’s depiction of the US as a “shining city on a hill” will not be wasted. It was Cuomo who memorably told us:...

The feeling is familiar. I had it four years ago and four years before that: a sinking feeling in the stomach. It's a kind of physical pessimism which says: "It's happening again. The Democrats are about to lose an election they should win - and it could not matter more." * * * Look at yesterday's opinion polls, which have John McCain either in a dead heat with Obama or narrowly ahead. Given the well-documented tendency of African-American candidates to perform better in polls than in elections - thanks to people who say they will vote for a black man...

The good news is that Tam Dalyell's outburst to Vanity Fair — in which he suggested Tony Blair was unduly influenced by a Jewish cabal — has not been ignored. His remarks made all the papers, proof that anti-semitism is no longer an uncontroversial part of public conversation. That's welcome. If there is bad news it's that Dalyell has been treated as a naughty boy — "incorrigible," said Peter Mandelson — rather than as a man who has uttered a racist slur. Bad news, too, that so far much of the condemnation has come from Jews rather than Dalyell's comrades...

That is a Racist Slur By Jonathan FreedlandGuardian | May 12, 2003 The good news is that Tam Dalyell's outburst to Vanity Fair - in which he suggested Tony Blair was unduly influenced by a Jewish cabal - has not been ignored. His remarks made all the papers, proof that anti-semitism is no longer an uncontroversial part of public conversation. That's welcome. If there is bad news it's that Dalyell has been treated as a naughty boy - "incorrigible," said Peter Mandelson - rather than as a man who has uttered a racist slur. Bad news, too, that so far...