Free Republic

Everyone knows that Hunter Biden left his infamous laptop at a computer repair shop in Delaware. The store owner even contacted Hunter to get him to pick it up, but he never returned for it, effectively forfeiting the device per the store’s policy — which Hunter Biden agreed to. But on Sunday, the New York Times bizarrely claimed the laptop had been “stolen” in a report about the release of the “Twitter files” by Elon Musk. “Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi framed the exchanges as evidence of rank censorship and pernicious influence by liberals,” Michael M. Grynbaum, a media correspondent...

The next presidential debate fell into serious jeopardy on Thursday after President Trump said he would refuse to participate in a virtual matchup and Joseph R. Biden Jr. pledged to hold an alternative town hall with voters on the night of the scheduled event. The extraordinary developments came after Mr. Trump rejected plans by the Commission on Presidential Debates to have the candidates square off remotely from separate locations on Oct. 15, rather than onstage in Miami, citing health concerns about the coronavirus.

In recent weeks, Tucker Carlson, the conservative Fox News host, has challenged the Black Lives Matter movement, dismissed demonstrators as “criminal mobs,” accused a Texas police chief of “sounding more like a therapist than a cop” and mocked a CNN children’s special about racism that featured Elmo, the “Sesame Street” puppet. His comments have generated a harsh backlash. Critics have called Mr. Carlson’s on-air monologues incendiary and accused him of making racist remarks. Major advertisers, including the Walt Disney Company and Sandals, the vacation resorts, have fled, requesting that Fox News remove their ads from Mr. Carlson’s 8 p.m. hour....

Mayor Bill de Blasio, confronting the gravest crisis of his young administration, has been by turns composed and defiant, empathetic and indignant, urging calm in one moment and lashing out in frustration the next. In other words, he has acted like himself: a confident but mercurial leader whose singular political style has not wavered, even in the face of a potentially career-defining flash point over the police and race. In a sharp turn from his predecessors — the pugnacious, prosecutorial Rudolph W. Giuliani and the business-minded Michael R. Bloomberg — Mr. de Blasio, a political professional who promised a warmer,...