Free Republic

You can almost smell the sweat. The Democrats and their media handmaidens are starting to panic about Joe Biden’s prospects. The proof comes in their efforts to wish away the wave of crime and violence engulfing many American cities. Their argument can be boiled down to two false claims. First, it’s President Trump’s fault. Second, it’s not that big of a wave. The first is patently absurd on its face. Democratic mayors running nearly all those cities are pulling back cops and rejecting federal help. The blood is on their hands. The second claim is outrageously cold-hearted. It means the...

For the first time in three days, the biggest political news of the day didn’t come out of the Republican convention. It came out of a basement in Delaware. Joe Biden finally raised an objection to the riots, arson, murder and looting tearing apart American cities. To be sure, his wasn’t a strong voice, but at least he finally broke his silence. “The needless violence won’t heal us,” the Democrat’s nominee said in a statement focused mostly on the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. It’s very little, and very late, maybe even too late to save his...

The effort showcased an impressive list of black speakers in prominent roles vouching for President Trump and slamming Joe Biden and the Dems. Kim Klacik, a dynamic young Republican woman running for the late Elijah Cummings’ seat in Baltimore, set the tone by declaring: “The Democrats have controlled my city, Charm City, for over 50 years and they have run this beautiful place into the ground. “Abandoned buildings, liquor stores on every corner, drug addicts and guns on the street — that is now the norm in many neighborhoods.” Herschel Walker, the football great, added his personal experience after what...

Who needs conventions, who needs crowded arenas? Democrats used the magic of technology and clever casting to give their party a passable first night. Forced by the coronavirus to create a make-believe gathering, planners employed all of Silicon Valley’s bells and whistles to present a simulated intimacy involving both ordinary people and party stars. Minus a few glitches, the flow was seamless, sometimes too smooth to be credible. We saw more of Joe Biden via taped videos than we have in the last four months of the campaign. In the real world, he’s been hiding in his basement. Monday night,...

It’s far worse than I thought. In addition to the many links between the family that owns The New York Times and the Civil War Confederacy, new evidence shows that members of the extended family were slaveholders. Last Sunday, I recounted that Bertha Levy Ochs, the mother of Times patriarch Adolph S. Ochs, supported the South and slavery. She was caught smuggling medicine to Confederates in a baby carriage and her brother Oscar joined the rebel army. I have since learned that, according to a family history, Oscar Levy fought alongside two Mississippi cousins, meaning at least three members of...

In a recent article about Mount Rushmore, The New York Times said of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt that “each of these titans of American history has a complicated legacy.” Reporters Bryan Pietsch and Jacey Fortin casually summarized the woke herd’s litany of grievances: Washington and Jefferson owned slaves, Lincoln was “reluctant and late” to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and Roosevelt “actively sought to Christianize and uproot Native Americans.” Rushmore’s sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, didn’t escape unscathed. “Borglum had been involved with another project: an enormous bas-relief at Stone Mountain in Georgia that memorialized Confederate leaders,” the...

In “Here is New York,” a 1949 love letter to his adopted home, author E.B. White declared it a miracle that the city managed to exist at all. “The whole thing is implausible,” he wrote. “Every time the residents brush their teeth, millions of gallons of water must be drawn from the Catskills and the hills of Westchester.”

Hat tip to my friend Leo for this. This is an excerpt. Click on the link for the complete article. Republicans need a new mission. It seems to me Republicans are somewhat lost. And that may be, in part, because they are not exactly sure where they want to go. They do not think clearly enough about their purpose or mission. My proposal for a mission is this: To “preserve the American way of life.” The party’s platform and rhetoric should serve this mission. To “preserve the American way of life” is not simply a bumper sticker or a talking...

, New York’s WAMC public radio did manage to get one serious question in about the nursing home scandal during their otherwise equally softballish-interview Thursday with New York’s so-called “Luv Guv.” His answer was as despicable as it was tone deaf: “Do you ever change your mind, governor, about anything based on what these reporters are saying?” host Alan Chartock asked Cuomo. “I think about the nursing home situation, you got a lot of criticism from them, they asked one question after another. Is there anything you could point to in which you say ‘Ok, they really sort of have...

For most of Donald Trump’s brief political career, chaos has been his friend. He draws energy from an endless storm of difficulties and controversies that would send most presidents into the fetal position. Critics and supporters alike compare his presidency to a reality television show, one that always ends with the leading man getting the last word. From Russia, Russia, Russia to Ukraine and impeachment, Trump’s time in the White House has been a continuing roller-coaster ride between danger on one side and disaster on the other. A political Houdini, he has always escaped and emerged stronger in victory, but...

The best way to understand the dismissal of the phony prosecution case against Gen. Michael Flynn and the release of secret congressional testimonies is to imagine a giant jigsaw puzzle. We know the final picture will show a broad conspiracy by law enforcement and intelligence agencies under Barack Obama to undermine Donald Trump’s campaign and help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election. When that failed, many of those same people turned their efforts to sabotaging Trump’s presidency. Some are still at it. That’s the big picture, and last week two more significant pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

Big and bold, optimistic and compassionate. President Trump’s Oval Office address was exactly what America needed to hear This is what it looks like when a president rises up to meet a crisis head-on. With fear and panic spreading across the land and threatening to take down the economy, Trump is facing the greatest test of his presidency. Although battle-hardened by brutal fights with Democrats, the biased media and foreign adversaries, he is presented with problems of a different magnitude with the coronavirus. It is a global menace that has declared war on America. Truth be told, sometimes in recent...

For a few days, the band was back together. Following President Trump’s decision to target Qassem Soleimani, the media’s favorite go-to critics featured members of Barack Obama’s administration who crafted and sold the failed nuclear deal with Iran. John Kerry, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Wendy Sherman and Leon Panetta gave interviews or popped up on social media to defend their tenure and declare that Trump was a reckless fool for poking the mullahs’ nest. Naturally, the Obama alums were in perfect sync with the dominant media narrative in the four days between the Soleimani strike and Iran’s feeble retaliation. They...

If you went to bed early Tuesday, you were surprised to wake up Wednesday and learn that World War III has been delayed. No doubt you were also shocked that Iran blinked, oil prices were tumbling and the stock market was soaring. Once again, the Chicken Little chorus got everything all wrong. The sky isn’t falling and Donald Trump pulled off a huge victory. Oh, and he’s still president. Iran’s decision to pretend it was retaliating for the death of Qassem Soleimani by lobbing ineffective missiles is terrific news for America and freedom-loving people everywhere. So was Trump’s Wednesday offer...

When it comes to Iran, the Democrats who want to be president are full of sound and fury. They are certain President Trump has brought us to the brink of war and demand answers about the imminent threat of attack the administration cited. But if you ignore the noise and focus on their actual words, you notice a giant hole in the criticism. The leading Dems are not arguing that Trump was wrong to drone Qassem Soleimani, nor have they said flatly they would not have approved the mission. Their sound and fury, then, amounts to empty screeching and nothing...

When it comes to Iran, the Democrats who want to be president are full of sound and fury. They are certain President Trump has brought us to the brink of war and demand answers about the imminent threat of attack the administration cited. But if you ignore the noise and focus on their actual words, you notice a giant hole in the criticism. The leading Dems are not arguing that Trump was wrong to drone Qassem Soleimani, nor have they said flatly they would not have approved the mission. Their sound and fury, then, amounts to empty screeching and nothing...

Ever since Watergate and the fall of Richard Nixon, a not-so-secret appeal of journalism has been the possibility that you, too, could bring down a president. Get a press pass and, presto, you’re another Woodward and Bernstein. Donald Trump just spoiled the fantasy. If, as expected, the Democrats’ impeachment dies a quick death in the Senate, it’s not just Speaker Nancy Pelosi who will have been thwarted. Presidential scalp-hunting by a biased media will be another Washington game disrupted by Trump. Backed by a press corps eager to get Trump, Pelosi felt confident to authorize the flimsy effort to remove...

As I watched Speaker Nancy ­Pelosi surround herself with large American flags and wrap her impeachment putsch in the language of the Founders, a Mark Twain line came to mind. “Don’t try and teach a pig to sing,” he warned. “It’s a waste of your time, and it annoys the pig.” Yet that’s exactly what Pelosi is doing. No matter how she dresses it up, her impeachment is a pig. Does Pelosi hate Donald Trump? Of course she does. She hates that he’s president, that he’s building an economy that is the envy of the world and that he appeals...

It’s now official: Russia, Russia, Russia really was fake news from the start. There was no factual basis for the FBI to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign. That means there was no need for the appointment of a special counsel and that Robert Mueller should have stayed in retirement. It means the two years of rumors and accusations and the giant cloud of suspicions over the White House produced by Mueller’s headhunters were unfair and unjustified. It also means J. Edgar Hoover can finally rest in peace. James Comey is now revealed to be the dirtiest cop ever to run...

Say this for Rep. Adam Schiff: His imagination is vivid and he has a flair for the dramatic. If only he had more respect for facts and a tighter tether to reality. The California attack dog is, in real life, a frustrated writer of rejected screenplays, and he’s produced another dud in the Democrats’ impeachment report. Released Tuesday, it offers nothing new of significance, but that didn’t stop Schiff from hyping the contents as something akin to the second coming of Richard Nixon.