Free Republic

When Scarborough was a Republican congressman for Florida, his intern, Lori Klausutis, was found dead in his Florida district office. There is no proof that Scarborough had anything to do with it. Klausutis, 28, was found behind a desk by two people visiting the congressman’s district office in July of 2001. An autopsy report found that she had been feeling unwell, and heart problems caused her to fall on her desk and hit her head. The medical examiner did not find signs of foul play. Scarborough announced his resignation months prior to her death, just five months into his fourth...

Senate Democrats accepted an offer Thursday from Senate Republicans to confirm 15 lifetime federal judges in exchange for the ability to go into recess through the midterms, allowing endangered Democrats to campaign. Some liberal activists are urging Democrats to show more fight after Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court; Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos even said that Democrats “need a new Senate leader” after the agreement was struck.

Here is the Founder of the “Netroots Nation” gathering – Markos Moulitsas – telling Chuck Todd that in the 2020 Presidential Campaign, Democrats must embrace “Socialism” or be “irrelevant.” He even said “Donald Trump doesn’t want his taxes to go up – but everyone else kinda does.” Moulitsas also said of Republicans, “They will be calling us Communists before it’s over with.” Well, yeah! Socialism? Tax increases on everyone? So this will be the message of the Democrats in 2020? The 2020 Democrat Presidential Nomination Battle is going to be a thing to behold! Bring it on!

The New York Times is what Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg considers “good, trustworthy” journalism. During an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, Zuckerberg spoke about attempts by Facebook to crack down on what is deemed “fake news.” Zuckerberg laid out three kinds of fake news: spammers, state actors, and legitimate news sources that are “speaking their truth” although they may have “varying levels of accuracy or trustworthiness.” In his conversation, Zuckerberg referenced the January 2018 News Feed changes. In that announcement, Facebook claimed it would be changing the news people see in their feeds to prioritize news that is...

An article at Vox has gained attention for illustrating America’s “unique gun violence problem” in 17 maps and charts. Below, we will respond to the individual graphs below on Vox’s terms. But there are a lot of assumptions behind Vox’s graphs. Often, just one or two public health studies are cited to make a particular point, without discussing any of the known weaknesses with these studies. It would also be valuable for Vox to acknowledge and critique research that reaches the opposite conclusions. Economists focus on the notion of substitution. If you take away guns, people might commit suicides or...

Liberals are getting crushed by the right’s agitprop, and Verrit will not save them. Democrats, and the center-left more broadly, are obsessed with numbers games. They are animated more than anything by facts, by a consensus reached among themselves that they possess an exclusive monopoly on empirical reason. They blurt out facts and stats among one another, devoid of any context but the conviction that if God is not on their side, then reason is, and so long as that’s the case they’re bound to win. It is no surprise, then, that when the world’s most thankless Clinton hype man,...

This July 4, let's not mince words: American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it. Of course, evaluating the wisdom of the American Revolution means dealing with counterfactuals. As any historian would tell you, this is a messy business. We obviously can't be entirely sure how America would have fared if it had stayed in the British Empire longer, perhaps gaining independence a century or so later, along with Canada. But I'm reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better...

The nearly 50-year-old union reached no level of stabilization over the weekend and on Monday, the Express reported “the foreign ministers of France and Germany” were revealing “a blueprint to effectively do away with individual member states.” The report said, “Under the radical proposals E.U. countries will lose the right to have their own army, criminal law, taxation system or central bank, with all those powers being transferred to Brussels.” The report said the plot “has sparked fury and panic in Poland … after being leaked to Polish news channel TVP Info.” The report said Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski...

You are not worthy!!! That pretty much sums up the brutal assessment of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro by Dylan Matthews of Vox. He was listing the pros and cons of various possible running mates for Hillary Clinton. Most of them seemed weighted on the pro side but when it came to Castro, the cons screamed off the page in a most cruel way that overwhelmed whatever pros he has according to Matthews:

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler and Colleen McCain Nelson broke the news that Hillary Clinton is vetting Elizabeth Warren for the vice presidency — but not vetting Bernie Sanders. In the process, they provided a shortlist of candidates that Clinton is considering: Beyond the Massachusetts senator, other prospective candidates include Labor Secretary Tom Perez; Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro; Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Cory Booker of New Jersey; Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, and Reps. Xavier Becerra of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio, several Democrats said. Now, this...

Nihonium, named after Japan (Nippon is a Japanese word for Japan), with an atomic number of 113. Its symbol is Nh. Moscovium (Mc), element 115, named after the Russian capital city. Tennessine (Ts), 117, named after — you guessed it — the state of Tennessee. ("Tennessine is in recognition of the contribution of the Tennessee region, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, to superheavy element research," the IUPAC states.) And finally, 118 is oganesson (Og), which bears the name of Russian physicist Yuri Oganessian, who led several elemental discoveries. Nature reports this...

Protesters assaulted Trump supporters outside a rally in San Jose. Here's why this keeps happening. ___ [More blaming Trump .. posting this as a record of their lies]

Many publications are falsely claiming Trump is totally ignorant and blank on whether Britain should leave the EU or not ("Brexit"). The logic is that Trump saying "huh"? to a single word verbal question (that might not have been enunciated well or heard clearly with Trump's 69 year old hearing) is proof of ignorance on the subject, showing a lack of foreign policy concern and awareness. Yet a 10 second google search reveals that Trump has commented on "Brexit" several times in the recent past. It seems a 10 second net search is too high of a journalism standard when...

After an entire day of getting abused on Social Media by angry Trump supporters and having nearly nobody come to his defense, the Idiot mayor attempted to backtrack a bit. However he could not help but throw in one more jab at Trump which infuriated the majority even more. Here are the top comments on Sam Liccardo’s Facebook page as of right now: snip, read at source

San Jose mayor @sliccardo unlawfully ordered police to allow Trump rally attendee to be attacked. This is a federal civil rights violation.— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 3, 2016 Fantasy? This actually happened. The dishonest media continues to lie, blames us for what RIOTERS did. pic.twitter.com/GSl2RtLBX4— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 3, 2016

Last night in CA an angry mob attacked gay Latino Trump supporter & Log Cabin Republicans member Juan Hernandez pic.twitter.com/r1zCsuVZwR— LogCabinRepublicans (@LogCabinGOP) June 3, 2016

Mark Levin came out firing in response to the disgusting street riots in San Jose last night outside a Donald Trump rally. The protesters were carrying Mexican flags, burning American flags, and assaulting Trump supporters as well as police officers. Levin said, at this point, its not only an attack on the right, or on Trump, but "an attack on America." Levin spent the first 10 minutes of his radio program absolutely eviscerating the rioters: Listen here:

Esquire magazine writer Charles Pierce must be in a state of panic after the events following yesterday's Donald Trump rally in San Jose, California when anti-Trump protesters violently attacked Trump supporters. Last week Pierce wrote that such attacks only help Trump and that has him extremely worried. Unfortunately for him, even some his fellow liberal journalists such as Emmett Rensin, who was today suspended from Vox, still haven't got a clue on just how incredibly counter-productive such riots are. 

Many voices are calling for calm in the wake of yesterday's mob violence at a Trump rally in San Jose, California. John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, has come out and condemned the actions of left-wing agitators. The New York Times reports that Pedestal has stated that "Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election." However, not everyone all voices are calling for cooler heads to prevail. Emmett Rensin, an editor at left-wing Vox.com, is one such voice. Rensin has not only failed to condemn the violence, he is explicitly calling for more of it.

“On Thursday night, Emmett Rensin, the deputy editor of Vox’s first person section, sent a series of tweets that, among other things, urged people to riot if Donald Trump comes to their town,” wrote Ezra Klein, Vox’s editor in chief, in a statement posted this afternoon. “We at Vox do not take institutional positions on most questions, and we encourage our writers to debate and disagree. But direct encouragement of riots crosses a line between expressing a contrary opinion and directly encouraging dangerous, illegal activity. We welcome a variety of viewpoints, but we do not condone writing that could put...