Free Republic

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal and theater critic for the New Criterion. Hs ia also a regular contributor to the Journal’s Free Expression site, which is accessible to nonsubscribers. His most recent Free Expression column is “You May Have Israel Derangement Syndrome.” This is how it opens: * * * * * The Israel Defense Forces may be the smartest and the most resourceful military on the face of the earth. Yet its most implacable foe is increasingly elusive, even as it spreads everywhere. It has already captured a gigantic prize: the minds of...

Nikole Hannah-Jones recently wrote the following in the New York Times:Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-schools-black-students-segregation.htmlArchive: https://archive.ph/yXJHfIn Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.By Nikole Hannah-JonesSeptember 20, 2026“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” she asked.My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I worked to keep my face neutral, buying a few moments to gather my thoughts.By dismissal time,...

Greenland, the Arctic, and the Case for Outsourcing by John F. Di Leo Why do we use investment advisors? Why do people who are perfectly competent in their own specialties – as doctors or dentists, architects or Customs brokers, chefs or entrepreneurs – still hire someone else to manage their retirement funds and other investments? Because no matter how talented and intelligent we may be in our own professions, most of us are amateurs at the complicated world of stocks, bonds, commodities, and other investment vehicles. And our retirement funds and other investments are too important to us to entrust...

... If I were to write a song about journalism, I would have to title it Feces. The reaction to Trump’s announcement that he reached an agreement with Denmark to control Greenland is a classic example of people spinning gold into, well, you know what. Rather than admit the pundits were wrong and Trump once again made a great deal, the press immediately began spinning gold into, well, feces. The New York Times said, “U.S. Has Reached Security Deal on Greenland, Trump Says — The full contours of the deal were unclear, but Denmark and Greenland both indicated they expected...

A conservative comedian perfectly exposed the shallowness of the support for admitted child killer Lindsay Clancy earlier this month with a simple, yet provocative question. As TGP readers know, a mistrial was declared in the Clancy murder trial after one male juror held the line. Clancy killed her three children and admitted to the crime, but the defense argues she is not guilty by reason of insanity. This set off Clancy’s legion of crazed fans, who have become infamous for their public behavior and wild conspiracy theories. They and the liberal media immediately sought to destroy the brave juror who...

Geologists have discovered that the African continent will split apart sooner than we thought. An active rift has reached a "critical threshold" and will soon break apart, forming a new ocean. That said, 'soon' is a relative term – it'll still take a few million years more, but that's a blink of an eye on a geological scale. "We found that rifting in this zone is more advanced, and the crust is thinner, than anyone had recognized," says Christian Rowan, a geoscientist at Columbia University. "Eastern Africa has progressed further in the rifting process than previously thought." The most intriguing...

Any of you ‘ gavones ’ miss Rush? At the noon hour, for decades, I would tune in on my Walkman, just to find some sanity. I literally choose my train runs to give a few minutes to listen in. How I miss those moments when that fuzzy little fuzzball would keep meon the straight and narrow. May the good Lord keep and protect his kind soul.

On the cover of its latest edition, The Economist promises to uncover “the truth and the lies” about “Islam in Europe.” The story it presents is, for the magazine’s readership, a reassuring one: a crisis of two extreme fringes fighting across a sensible middle. But this is a false framing that betrays the complexity of Islam in Europe it promises to untangle, just when honest understanding is urgently needed. Allow me to explain why. The editors offer a soothing symmetry: on one side, a small minority of Islamist extremists; on the other, a small minority of far-right extremists. “Islam poses...

Over their hiatus, it was announced that The View co-host Sunny Hostin has sold her likeness and the rights to smut books to be produced into a series of movies by a film company that utilizes A.I. On Friday’s episode, the ABC News co-host defended her actions by claiming Hollywood was “gatekeeping” her because they were racist, and suggested that black and brown people were not being hired for projects. However, her co-hosts pointed out the hypocrisy that by using fake people in her adaptations, she was keeping those same black and brown people from getting work. “I've written a...

“the five stores will cost about $167M over ten years, and the discounted baskets will reach roughly 12,000 households. Spent in other, simpler ways, the same money could deliver discounted food to between 70,000 and 180,000 households”Source: https://gizmowarehouse.org/gizmo/nyc-public-grocery-new-math

Who are really the actual Nazis? While visiting Dachau concentration camp, a leftist made the following remark as she stood, smiling, in front of the crematorium ovens. North Carolina Democrat state legislative candidate Shelly Headen posted a Facebook story from a vacation showing her in front of ovens in a German concentration camp memorial, saying, “Visiting Dauchau [sic] Concentration Camp in Germany… This is where Trump supporters belong.” … In social media photos, Headen is seen smiling as she stands in front of what appears to be crematorium ovens, which were used by the Nazi SS to burn the bodies...

The 25th anniversary of 9/11, and the ongoing controversy over the Lindsay Clancy mistrial, do not offer much direct humor, but mordant commentary is still deserving. Let’s start with 9/11, or better yet 9/12. What would you have thought on the day after if someone predicted that the next president would bear the middle name “Hussein,” and that on the 25th anniversary the mayor of NY City would be a radical muslim, and that the Taliban would hold a military parade in Aghanistan featuring billions worth of U.S. military equipment? You’d think the person making such predictions should be handed...

The fantasy-fed denialism of George Bush’s Freedom Agenda has metastasized into a dangerous suppression of our most basic survival instincts in the face of a foe we can no longer name, but who is sure to attack us againTwenty-five years later, the legacy of 9/11 is that there was no 9/11. Commemorations this week hold that the deadliest attack on the U.S. mainland forever changed the way we live. And that’s true if we mean that for the past 25 years Americans have lived in a collective fugue state from which there seems no exit. The issue isn’t that nearly...

I think that most people who read Hot Air are appalled by the subset of the population that has embraced Lindsay Clancy as a cultural hero. For most of us, the fact that Clancy clearly was having trouble with her mental health may help explain how she decided to kill her children, but for nobody I know does that excuse the fact that she chose to respond to her despair by killing her own children. I can understand, at some level, the feeling of empathy for Clancy's struggles; I cannot and will never understand turning her into a hero. There...

The Trump administration has gotten its fair share of "threats" from TDS-afflicted "entertainers" who say they are going to leave the country because of who is president. As the old saying goes, don't threaten us with a good time. The latest is Art Garfunkel, who will always be remembered as 'the guy who used to sing sometimes with Paul Simon.' “I don’t like America’s position at all,” the singer told the Guardian after being asked about issues “global heating” and “those in power.” He said about the former topic, "It's real that the planet is getting warmer, that the water’s...

“I hope that guy can sleep well at night.” Those words from Kevin Reddington on the steps of the Plymouth, Massachusetts Courthouse were part of a diatribe against the “guy” who was reportedly the sole holdout in the Lindsay Clancy trial. The scene was a fitting end to a visceral trial, but it added a vindictive element that should prompt Judge William Sullivan to call out the seasoned defense attorney. After declaring that the 11-1 mistrial was “no time to gloat,” Reddington bragged repeatedly about “crushing” District Attorney Tim Cruz, whom he also attacked. He insisted that, in the trial,...

Suffering from an acute, and possibly terminal, case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, the Democrats have been assiduous in shredding their credibility since the 2024 election.So how is it going? In the Republic, I mean. Pretty well, I’d say. President Trump just announced the Mother of All Oil Deals with Venezuela, the country he liberated from its narco Chinese puppet Nicolás Maduro at the beginning of 2026. (Was it only at the beginning of January 2026 that President Trump extracted Maduro and his wife from their heavily guarded palace? Yes. Time flies when you are having a good time.) “BREAKING NEWS,”...

A Girl for LuigiI guess the Lindsay Clancy trial has put an end to that whole thing about a woman being president. Clancy has become a feminist hero for slaughtering her three children, whose names, in case anyone cares, were Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. For that brave response to “postpartum depression,” she’s attracted hundreds of female admirers, who stand petulantly outside the courthouse in pink T-shirts, demanding her acquittal. When Muslims pull this crap, blaming their gang rapes on the trauma of being asylum seekers, we’re not as understanding. But when women claim mental anguish from...