Free Republic

I’ve got a piece up over at the Washington Post about the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. It was a safe choice — and an opportunity lost. There was a choice out there that fired the conservative imagination, the kind of choice that arguably only a Donald Trump would have the guts to make: There was a moment, in the early afternoon of July 9, when conservatives contemplated the delightful possibility that they might witness the best possible version of President Trump — the man with the will (and flair for the dramatic) that would allow him to be bolder than the...

'He missed a critical opportunity': Walmart CEO slams Trump for failing to 'unequivocally' reject white supremacists McMillon has criticized President Trump for failing to "unequivocally" reject white supremacists in aftermath of their violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. "As we watched events and response from President Trump over weekend, we felt he missed critical opportunity to help bring our country together by unequivocally rejecting appalling actions of white supremacists," McMillon wrote in statement posted to Walmart's website. snip McMillon's full statement: Respect for the individual is one of our core beliefs at Walmart. And the role we play in communities around...

The day before the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, former President Bill Clinton told a group of businessmen in Australia that he "could have killed" the man behind those attacks, Osama bin Laden, in 1998, but he decided against launching a strike out of concern for civilian casualties. It's a startling and tragic bit of irony that remained hidden until Wednesday, when Michael Kroger, the former head of the Liberal Party in Australia, released the audio during an interview on Sky News. Mr. Clinton knew he was being recorded, but the audio was never released because Kroger said he'd...

In his stunning 2003 book Dereliction of Duty, Air Force Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson, a presidential aide and carrier of the “nuclear football,” describes President Clinton’s gross irresponsibility toward national security. Patterson tells how, in the fall of 1998, the watch officer in the White House Situation Room notified the president’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, that they had located bin Laden and had “a two-hour window to strike.” Here is Patterson’s chilling account: On Sept. 13, 1996, “Pilots were in the cockpits, waiting to launch, targets were identified, everything was in place, all [Berger] needed was the go-ahead.”...

Another week gone, another opportunity lost for Donald Trump to pick up Republican National Convention delegates. Nebraska is tailor-made for Ted Cruz, and when the state holds its winner-take-all primary on May 10, party leaders say Trump is an all-but certain loser. Facing those dim prospects, Trump’s best hope in the state may have been to get a few of his supporters on the list of people who will fill those delegate slots — supporters who, in later rounds of voting at a contested convention, would be inclined to abandon Cruz and help Trump. But that’s where the billionaire appears...

Hours before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, former President Bill Clinton told an audience in Australia about his missed chance to kill attack mastermind Osama bin Laden, according to audio released this week. Clinton was speaking at a business meeting in Melbourne when the topic turned to terrorism. “I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden ... He’s a very smart guy. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” Clinton said in the audio, which was recorded by former Liberal Party head Michael Kroger and aired by Sky News. “I...

Just hours before the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, former president Bill Clinton was in Australia telling businessmen that he “could have killed” Osama Bin Laden during his presidency, but chose not to, MSNBC reports. “I nearly got him,” he says on newly-released recordings of the September 10 meeting. “And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.” Michael Kroger, one...

George Bush had much bigger plans for Iraq than simply killing Saddam Hussein, securing his WMDs and handing over control of the oil rich nation to whatever remained of the Ba’ath Party once hostilities ended. Some might consider him naive, but Bush believed that a modern Iraq, one that respected minority and woman’s rights, one ruled by the rule of law rather than the rule of the mullahs, could act as a catalyst in the Muslim world bringing Judeo-Christian values and justice to hundreds of millions who lived their lives in Islamist chains. It was an audacious goal, one that...

WASHINGTON — On the most deadly day here since Sept. 11, 2001, with the capital reeling over the sadly familiar scene of a mass shooting by a madman, the chief executive stepped to the microphones and captured the heartbreak. It wasn’t the chief executive of the nation. It was Dr. Janis Orlowski, the chief operating officer of MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where three of those injured were being treated. “There’s something evil in our society that we as Americans have to work to try and eradicate,” she said, her voice stoic but laced with emotion. President Obama also gave a...

One neighbor says a naked woman was seen crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard of the house a few years ago. Another heard pounding on the home's doors and noticed plastic bags over the windows. Both times, police showed up but never went inside, neighbors say. Police also paid a visit to the house in 2004, but no one answered the door. Now, after three women who vanished a decade ago were found captive Monday at the peeling, rundown house, Cleveland police are facing questions for the second time in four years about their handling of missing-person...

BOMBSHELL: Saudi Arabia warned USA IN WRITING about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012, and rejected his application for an entry visa to visit Mecca in 2011... Developing...

Updated 4 p.m. Friday related to arrest versus conviction issue: One of the Chechen terrorists who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings could have been deported years ago after a criminal arrest and/or conviction and the other was granted American citizenship on the 11th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who nevertheless could have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence arrest and conviction, according to a Judicial Watch source. That means the Obama administration missed an opportunity...

JUST IN: FBI amends earlier assertion to Bob Orr that they had no prior contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the bomb suspect killed in standoffFBI now acknowledges they interviewed Tsarnaev 2 years ago at the request of a foreign country about possible extremist tiesThey maintain that they did not find any derogatory information about him and closed the file. FBI expected to issue a statement shortly

Michael Scheuer was the razor sharp, burly Buffalo native who the Central Intelligence Agency chose toBusinessrun the bin Laden squad in 1995. According to a recently released book, "The Finish," written by "Black Hawk Down" author Mark Bowden, Scheuer oversaw what he believed to be the first ever inter-CIA unit completely dedicated to locating a single individual. The unit, called "ALEC Station" after Scheuer's son, employed 27 people, most of them women. I've personally heard of the unit called, "Scheuer's Harem," and in Bowden's book, some agents around Langley (home of the CIA) started calling it "The Manson Family," because...

Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets:(Proverbs 1:20)What a privilege and opportunity for any nation to be able to host an Olympics. The opening ceremony is a unique opportunity to display the glories of the host country. But that would presuppose that the presenters actually believe in the validity of their own national story. IÂ’ve been told that an unprecedented one billion people around the world witnessed this yearÂ’s London opening ceremony. I also was eager to see how the narrative of the nation of Shakespeare, Donne, Churchill, the Puritans, Wilberforce and countless other of the remarkable...

As someone who supported a Libyan no-fly zone from the earliest days of what once seemed like a revolution but now looks like a civil war, I have to admit that Operation Odyssey Dawn may be a perfect example of being careful about what you wish for. To use a metaphor suitable for March Madness, Obama blew the fast break. The president, an avid hoopster, should understand the reference. In basketball, a fast break is when the offense brings the ball down the court as quickly as possible so the defense doesn't have time to set up. It's all about...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says the Senate race in Delaware was "a missed opportunity" for his fellow Republicans to pick up the seat long held by Democrat Joe Biden.

President Larry Laycock and his wife, Sister Lisa Laycock head the Santiago Chile East Mission and had spent the two weeks prior to the 8.8 earthquake visiting each missionary apartment and preparing them for an earthquake. Here's why. "Nearly two-and-one-half weeks ago, I was awakened at around 4:00 AM by just such a prompting. I did not hear a voice, but the thought was as clear as if it had been in the form of spoken words: "There is going to be an earthquake. Prepare your missionaries." I sat up in bed and immediately remembered Elder Scott's counsel. That morning...

Barack Obama once again proved he has a tin ear for politics when he did NOT visit Rush Limbaugh in the hospital. With his low approval ratings, Obama could have done himself a lot of good by visiting Rush who was nearby in the Hawaiian hospital. Too late now. Obama missed a great opportunity to help himself. This just demonstrates his poor ability at politics at even a personal level.

Obama’s policy is a lose/lose proposition that will please neither side Last month, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest a rigged presidential election. Our president was extremely cautious in his initial criticism of the Iranian government’s fierce crackdown against the protestors. At first, President Obama said that the United States — given our history in Iran — should not be “meddling” in the country’s internal affairs. Obama suggested that the leading opposition candidate, the reformer Mir-Hossein Mousavi, might not be that different from the entrenched theocracy’s choice, the incumbent (and declared winner of the...