Free Republic

If we want to solve climate change, there's no other option. Germany was supposed to be a model for solving global warming. In 2007, the country’s government announced that it would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by the year 2020. This was the kind of bold, aggressive climate goal scientists said was needed in all developed countries. If Germany could do it, it would prove the target possible. But with a little over a year left to go, despite dedicating $580 billion toward a low-carbon energy system, the country “is likely to fall short of its goals,”...

If the "Trump is doomed" narrative sounds familiar, it is because we have been hearing some version of this on an almost daily basis from the mainstream media since even before President Donald Trump entered the White House.  It is one thing to hear criticism of this type of anticipatory journalism from conservatives but in this case it is the New Republic's Jeet Heer, hardly a Trump supporter, who wrote the critique about the MSM  living in a fantasy world in which Trump is constantly on the verge of leaving office. We Are (Probably) Not in the “End Stages” of...

Libertarians hate coercion. To the extent that the anarcho-capitalist right justifies its worldview in moral terms, it is through an appeal to the obscenity of brute force. The problem with the welfare state, according to many libertarians, is not that it redistributes resources from rich to poor but that it accomplishes this by threatening wealthy tax dodgers with imprisonment. Individual liberty is sacrosanct, and just social policies are those that do not violate a person’s will through a threat of state aggression. The logical flaws of this “nonaggression principle” are myriad. But most spring from the libertarian’s insistence on applying...

Hamilton Fish, the president and publisher of The New Republic, is taking a leave of absence pending an investigation into complaints by female employees at the magazine, according to a letter sent to its staff on Sunday night. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/business/media/new-republic-hamilton-fish.html

Democrats win the House of Representatives in 2018 and have the necessary votes for impeachment. But even in that best-case scenario, in which Democrats win every toss-up race for the Senate, they would still be well short of the votes they need in the Senate. Which means that kicking Trump out of the White House by necessity has to be a bipartisan effort with significant Republican buy-in. The most promising route for stopping Trump, then, is through the ballot box. Democrats need a convincing platform and effective organization to win elections at every level. If the party can win back...

Leon Wieseltier, a prominent editor at The New Republic for three decades who was preparing to unveil a new magazine next week, apologized on Tuesday for “offenses against some of my colleagues in the past” after several women accused him of sexual harassment and inappropriate advances. As those allegations came to light, Laurene Powell Jobs, a leading philanthropist whose for-profit organization, Emerson Collective, was backing Mr. Wieseltier’s endeavor, decided to pull the plug on it. “Upon receiving information related to past inappropriate workplace conduct, Emerson Collective ended its business relationship with Leon Wieseltier, including a journal planned for publication under...

<p>Yes, the press secretary is better at her job. But that is bad news for the rest of us.</p> <p>The face of the White House press operation has already undergone several iterations, with each embodying the administration in their own special way. First was Sean Spicer, who exemplified the administration’s comfort with telling bald lies and being openly hostile toward the news media. Then came Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, who was Donald Trump’s vulgarity incarnate. Now we have Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose style as press secretary is less shrill than Spicer, and less pelvic-thrusting bravado a la The Mooch. But that’s what makes her the most insidious of them all.</p>

With his phone calls to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley last week, Barack Obama seems to have defused the furor over his comment that Crowley had acted "stupidly" in handcuffing Gates on his own front porch. (I agree with Obama' final verdict, which is that Crowley did overreact, even if it appears that Gates got hysterical.) It may be that Obama was admirably taking advantage of what he calls "a teachable moment," and showing America that racial disputes can lead to dialogue and not just name-calling. But Obama was also mindful of what has...

Bernie Sanders is starting to get the “everybody hates Ted Cruz” treatment. The ongoing battle between Sanders and the Democratic National Committee has revealed not only the extent of Sanders’s contempt for Democratic officials, but that the feeling is mutual. His refusal to take a harder line against supporters who have issued violent, sexist threats against Nevada Democratic Chair Roberta Lange, along with his suggestion that they were justified in their anger, has brought condemnation from prominent Democrats and emboldened them to make harsher criticisms of Sanders and his brand of populist, anti-establishment politics. Barney Frank has gone so far...

In a Facebook post, Bush announced that he could not in good conscience vote for Donald Trump, saying Trump has not demonstrated the “temperament or strength of character” needed to lead the United States. In doing so, Bush became the latest member of his family to publicly refuse to back the real estate magnate. He also is the second former presidential candidate, along with Lindsey Graham, to break the pledge all the candidates made,

Monday on MSNBC’s “Hardball” while discussing his New York Magazine article about Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump entitled “America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny,” the former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan said Trump was a “reality television asshole,” to which host Chis Matthews apologized to his audience for at the end of the segment.

Too much information. Way tooooo much information. Now that the New Republic is in the interregnum between its sale and its final takeover by the new owner, ultra liberal banking heir Winthrop McCormack, and incoming publisher, blueblood bolshevik Hamilton Fish V (not to be confused with the third or fourth), I guess the staff feels free for awhile to tread where none dare go before. And where the New Republic senior editor Jeet Heer went is just under the presidential zipper to the private parts. The supposed reasoning for this is to promote the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. See, by...

The Wall Street Journal announced today that Chris Hughes who ran his toy magazine, the New Republic, into the ground has sold it to Winthrop McCormack of Oregon. Of course, the first question that came to mind was did it sell for a buck as happened to Newsweek a few years ago. Unfortunately, the sales price was not disclosed. However anything above a buck for that periodical would be overpriced since Winthrop will have to drop a bundle of cash on the magazine on the heels of severe mismanagement by Hughes who caused a mass walkout of his entire staff.

Donald Trump's landslide victory in South Carolina is a waking nightmare for the Republican Party. By winning the South Carolina primary, Donald Trump demonstrated he can win anywhere. By coming in second place, well behind Trump and barely (about 1,000 votes with 99 percent reporting) ahead of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio demonstrated he will have a hard time winning anywhere. Rubio, and basically the entire Republican Party establishment, marched into South Carolina determined to play up an expected third-place finish as a kind of triumph and a second-place finish as outright victory. Before any networks had called second place, Rubio...

One dollar! One dollar! Do I hear a bid for a dollar to buy the New Republic magazine? For the price it cost to buy Newsweek you can also own the New Republic as your personal liberal magazine toy. Ah! I see a bid out there but, sorry Stephen Glass, that fake play money you are waving is not acceptable. I see serial fabulist Scott Thomas Beauchamp is making a bid which we also can't accept because we already know he is lying.  Yes, the New Republic is now being put up for sale by comedy of errors owner Chris Hughes so, just like...

ON THE AFTERNOON of September 26, George W. Bush gathered 15 prominent Muslim- and Arab-Americans at the White House. With cameras rolling, the president proclaimed that “the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good.” (SNIP) And he has done so to their mutual political benefit. During the 2000 campaign, Norquist urged Karl Rove to focus on the Muslim vote—pointing to, among other things, the thousands of Muslims in the key state of Michigan. By all appearances, the Bush campaign heeded Norquist’s advice. In an admirable departure from the usual Republican script, Bush frequently integrated mosques into his platitudes...

New Republic senior editor Brian Beutler has high praise for criticisms made by Donald Trump. Beutler claims Trump's criticisms are effective because they are true or at least contain a kernel of truth. Of course, Beutler feels free to lavish praise upon Trump because all of the targets he lists are Republicans. He very conveniently skips what Trump has said about Democrats.First let us watch Beutler enjoy himself as he catalogs Trump's critiques of Republicans and only Republicans:

Even though New Republic senior editor Elspeth Reeve is a liberal she seems to be wildly, madly in love with Donald Trump. In fact, she appears to be so crazy in love with Trump that by her own admission she can't stop staring at pictures of him. Reeve, sounding like a love struck groupie, confesses her obsession with Trump's face. She even has thoughts about porn when staring at Trump's face which gives you an idea of how bizarrely captivated she is about The Donald. ...he is very good to look at. Because unlike most of the other candidates, Trump shows real emotion. He’s not afraid to make...

Nowadays it seems as if the Left is politicizing everything with a plethora of new taboos. The latest item on their taboo list is your Fourth of July picnic, specifically hot dogs and hamburgers. As you gather with family and friends to munch on those treats fresh off the grill, little did you know that you are destroying the planet according to leftist political orthodoxy. Here is Rebecca Leber of The New Republic as she tries to guilt trip you over hot dog and hamburger carbon emissions:

Hillary Clinton will attend a fundraiser in New York on Tuesday hosted by Facebook millionaire and vertically integrated media company caretaker Chris Hughes, who recently described himself in a Vanity Fair profile as “the Antichrist, or something pretty close to it.” Hughes is best known for being Mark Zuckerberg’s roommate at Harvard and for pioneering the “poke” button feature on the popular social media website Facebook. His husband, Brown graduate Sean Eldridge, was the worst candidate of the 2014 election cycle. Eldridge ran for Congress in New York’s 19th Congressional district after Hughes bought him a mansion there. He ended...