Free Republic

"When Will Trump Take Office? On MLK Day, Unfortunately," The Intelligencer's senior editor Margaret Hartmann lamented in a new piece. Hartmann noted the "depressing" news that President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn in to his second, non-consecutive term in office on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The presidential inauguration sometimes falls on the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., which takes place on the third Monday of January each year, close to King’s birthday on January 15. "If you’re not a big fan of Donald Trump, you’ve probably gotten used to hearing a lot of stupid and/or depressing political...

Donald Trump is facing an extreme sliding-doors scenario on Election Day. If he wins, he would have the power to single-handedly scuttle the federal criminal cases against him, be immune from prosecution while in office, and, thanks to the Supreme Court, have broad immunity from prosecution once — if — he leaves. If he loses, though, he will face criminal penalties that could leave him in command of a 70-square-foot prison cell for most of the rest of his life. “He will be facing serious legal jeopardy if he loses. He knows that,” says Bennett Gershman, a professor of constitutional...

The establishment media bloodbath continues this week with the news the far-left New York Magazine laid off five percent of its staff. According to various reports, New York Magazine laid off 32 staffers. Half were full-time, the other half were freelancers or part timers. The idea, apparently, is to “restructure,” whatever that means. What we have here is more proof that the so-called Trump Media Boom is just more fake news. One of the many ways our hideous media taunt President Trump is with the claim his political ascent has created flush times for the very same fake news industry...

A new study seems to confirm what we'll call the “Kit Harington Effect," which holds that a man's hunkiness may in fact prove an obstacle to his career. Research from the University of Maryland suggests that good-looking men sometimes have difficulty getting jobs in competitive environments, like sales, because they are subconsciously perceived as a threat to those in charge of hiring. Considering previous research has suggested that handsome men make more money, are perceived as more competent (attractive women, on the other hand, are often seen as less competent), and are more successful in closing big deals, that threat...

The president’s failure to demand a reckoning from the moneyed interests who brought the economy down has cursed his first term, and could prevent a second. fter 9/11, Rudy Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live to give New Yorkers permission to laugh again. But Mayor Bloomberg never did tell us when we could resume conspicuous consumption after the crash of 2008. And so, as we stumble through the second year of the official “recovery,” it’s been an improvisational return to high-end carousing in Manhattan. A case in point was the late-May celebration of the centennial rededication of the New York...

Sarah Palin sure has some fair-weather friends. In Alaska, when Joe Miller was still a nobody, Palin's endorsement put him on the map and pushed him to a primary victory over incumbent senator Lisa Murkowski. Now it's the general election, and Miller has to appeal to a broader audience than the GOP diehards who vote in primaries. So when he was asked point-blank this week whether Palin is qualified to be president, he merely acknowledged that she's constitutionally eligible. In Delaware, Palin endorsed Christine O'Donnell five days before her primary bid against well-respected Mike Castle, who was widely seen as...