Free Republic

[WASHINGTON] Trump administration officials are examining what a potential spike in oil prices as high as US$200 a barrel would mean for the economy, according to sources familiar with the matter, a sign senior officials are studying the possible fallout from extreme scenarios for the Iran war.

A Democratic victory in a state special election in President Donald Trump’s backyard is the latest sign that Democrats are on track to take back the House of Representatives in November, according to CNN’s resident data guru. Donald Trump, Emily Gregory Democrat Emily Gregory beat Republican Jon Maples 51 percent to 49 percent to represent parts of West Palm Beach—including Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago estate—in the Florida state House.

During Operation Epic Fury (U.S.) / Roaring Lion (Israel), BBC America—anchored by Caitriona Perry—has systematically avoided showing any meaningful images of damage, injuries, or deaths inside Israel from Iranian missile and rocket barrages. Instead, it has aired daily, graphic footage from Lebanon of the aftermath of Israeli strikes, even though Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli civilians escalated from early March onward. Only today (3.19.26), for literally a split second, did the network flash any Israeli impact at all: amid weeks of massive Iranian barrages raining down on residential areas across the country—including the killing of four Arab Palestinian women yesterday by...

A US F-35 fighter jet made an emergency landing at US air base in the Middle East after it was struck by what is believed to be Iranian fire, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for US Central Command, said the fifth-generation stealth jet was “flying a combat mission over Iran” when it was forced to make an emergency landing. Hawkins said the aircraft landed safely and the incident is under investigation. “The aircraft landed safely, and the pilot is in stable condition,” Hawkins added. “This incident is under investigation.” The incident would...

Vice President JD Vance is projecting loyalty to Donald Trump as the president leads the United States into the type of war the Iraq veteran didn’t want — and as the new conflict complicates Vance’s political future. Vance allies have played down the impact the operation in Iran could have on his presidential ambitions, insisting that a mission involving the U.S. military only for a matter of weeks won’t stay in voters’ memories. People close to the vice president have also conceded to The Washington Post, however, that a months-long conflict will pose a problem for whoever is the next...

NBC News legal analyst Jill Wine-Banks is publicly floating the idea of indicting President Trump’s children if no way can be found to indict him. “I firmly believe the Constit[ution] permits indicting a sitting president, but if DOJ disagrees, indicting his children, the Trump Org & Foundation for their roles in wrongdoing is a great alternative–or addition[,]” she tweeted on Thursday: Wine-Banks is not only a frequent legal analyst for MSNBC; she was a Watergate prosecutor, served in the Carter administration as U.S. general counsel of the Army, and as the executive director of the American Bar Association. But here...

Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith once promoted a measure that praised a Confederate soldier's effort to "defend his homeland" and pushed a revisionist view of the Civil War. Hyde-Smith, a Republican, faces Mike Espy, a Democratic former congressman and agriculture secretary, in Tuesday's runoff in Mississippi -- the final Senate race to be decided in 2018. The measure, which was unearthed by CNN's KFile during a review of Hyde-Smith's legislative history, is the latest in a series of issues that have surfaced during her campaign, many of which have evoked Mississippi's dark history of racism and slavery. The concurrent resolution was...

Liberal cable news outlets evidently had their own fairy tale ending in mind when former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations: impeachment. On Wednesday, CNN and MSNBC reporters, anchors, and paid contributors used the word an absurd 222 times in 18 hours. MRC analysts examined all CNN and MSNBC coverage between 6:00 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. on August 22, counting every use of the word “impeach,” “impeachment,” or some permutation thereof. Analysts found 114 instances of the term on MSNBC and 108 on CNN, for a total of 222 total uses of the word. There were...

"Enemy of the people" is an incendiary phrase. It's been uttered by some of history's most vicious thugs — Robespierre, Goebbels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao — to vilify their opponents ... who were often murdered. President Trump must know that history by now when he calls the press "the enemy of the people." As he must also know the anti-Semitic and racist history of the America First slogan, by which the president describes many of his policies. But Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, pointedly declined the chance this week to say, as Ivanka Tump did, "I do not feel...

The new Supreme Court pick is very “controversial,” whoever he or she turned out to be. That was the consensus of ABC’s Nightline. About 90 minutes before Donald Trump announced the name of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Nightline’s Twitter page blasted: Again, they didn’t have a name (or any news outlet for that matter), but this mysterious person was “controversial.” Later in the evening, the Nightline account weeted out a “correction” to explain what the network journalists meant to say: As the MRC’s Rich Noyes noted on Monday, networks routinely label “conservative” judges and skimp on “liberal” labels for Democratic nominees.

Sharyl Attkisson’s The Smear gives insight to how news is made today. It goes a long way in convincing readers that they should believe only a small portion of what is released by the government and reported by the press. This leads to a very cynical view of the news and confirms Otto von Bismarck’s claim that "Nothing is proven until it is officially denied." Attkinsson gives an account of how massive the smear industry is. My only criticism of the book is her contention that, “the organized political smear entered the contemporary marketplace circe 1987.” Some of these smear...

Suspicions of Russian meddling in U.S. elections were confirmed Monday, when in the course of the Wisconsin recount Russian hackers succeeded in adding 131 more votes to Trump's victory. "The real winners in this recount were the Russian hackers," DNC spokesperson Shepard Smith said in a statement during his regular FNC broadcast. "It is now absolutely clear that American election results accurately reflect the will of Vladimir Putin, regardless of whether the ballots were counted by hand or by machine." In the meantime, president-elect Donald Trump continued his post-election thank-you tour throughout the country, expressing gratitude to Russian hackers everywhere...

In the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign, the leftwing cable news network CNN famously declared that the many sins of former-president Bill Clinton, spouse of then-Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton, were off limits. CNN even went so far as to cut the microphone of a guest who brought the former president up. Today, this very same CNN is targeting the wife of Alabama US senate candidate Judge Roy Moore. Some 15 years ago, the Republican Moore founded an organization called The Foundation for Moral Law. Nearly two years ago, on its Facebook page, the organization shared a video that suggested...

Journalism is in crisis. After some much-needed self-examination, however, reporters are finally beginning to figure out why many Americans are souring on their industry: They’ve been too critical of the Democratic Party. The trend was evident in 2016, when media outlets decided to focus on Hillary Clinton’s corruption, favor trading, and subsequent cover-up attempts. As any journalism professor could tell you, the purpose of reporting is to answer basic questions, like Who? What? When? Where? Why? And does this story help bolster the chances of the Democratic Party’s candidate or not? New York Times reporter Amy Chozick, who covered Clinton...

Well, it looks like Hillary Clinton is moving onto the latest offensive in her rampage against those who she feels contributed to her defeat in the 2016 election: the media. At Recode in May, a tech conference in California, she said that the media covered her emails like it was Pearl Harbor. She also says that the press didn’t do their jobs last year, and that they “can’t bear to face their own role in helping elect Trump, from providing him free airtime to giving my emails three times more coverage that all the issues affecting people’s lives combined.”Seriously, lady—weren’t...

New York Times reporter Amy Chozick said on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday that Hillary Clinton’s new book talked like “it was our job to get Hillary Clinton elected.” The segment discussed Clinton attacking the media for perceived bias in reporting on her email scandal. WATCH: CNN’s Brian Stelter asked Chozick if there has been enough “soul searching about the press’s responsibility” for the 2016 election. Chozick responded, “I agree with Hillary Clinton that for an industry that thrives on investigation we’re bad at scrutinizing ourselves, and there could be more soul searching about our role in 2016. But the way...

In a plot Tom Clancy might have dreamed up, an IT staffer who’d worked for Democrats in Congress was arrested by federal officials and charged with bank fraud. Fox News has reported that officers and agents from the U.S. Capitol Police, the FBI and Customs and Border Protection, were involved in the arrest of Imran Awan at Dulles International Airport not far from Washington, D.C., as he tried to fly away to Pakistan. Awan has pleaded not guilty to bank fraud, but his strange case has all the feeling of the opening scene of a movie that might soon include...

A week has passed since the arrest of former House staffer Imran Awan, and the establishment media have given the event only superficial coverage. Awan, a Pakistani immigrant, was formerly employed by more than 30 House Democrats as an IT technician. Most members fired him following the announcement in February of an FBI probe into his potentially criminal behavior during his tenure as a Hill staffer. However, he remained an employee of Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s D.C. office until he was arrested last Monday while attempting to flee to Pakistan. News of Awan’s arrest first broke on Fox News the morning...

Watching news outlets go out of their way to hide a potentially huge Democratic scandal is almost funny. So-called journalists are too busy covering presidential tweets to report on a topic that might embarrass their friends. Welcome to the Imran Awan-Debbie Wasserman Schultz scandal or Compugrab, as I like to call it. Awan was the top IT aide to Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The FBI reportedly “seized smashed computer hard drives” from his home. He was “arrested trying to flee to Pakistan after wiring almost $300,000 to the country,” according to The Daily Caller, which has owned the story...

Major cable news networks have given no coverage to the burgeoning scandal involving IT staffers to former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis. Reporting by the Daily Caller News Foundation has revealed that Wasserman Schultz's top information technology staffer Iman Awan was arrested Monday after trying to flee the country amidst investigations into Awan concerning banking fraud and a criminal cybersecurity probe. Awan wired over $280,000 to Pakistan after the FBI recently recovered multiple smashed hard drives from Awan's home. Despite being blocked from the House computer network since February amid allegations of "committing...