Free Republic

Today is the anniversary of the birth of America’s great or greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal. In 1858 Lincoln attained national prominence in the Republican Party as the result of the contest for the Senate seat held by Stephen Douglas. It was Lincoln’s losing...

Because leftists cannot win in the war of ideas, they will inevitably choose violence over reasoned debate. In 2004, when I got curious about what blogs were, I started investigating blogs on both the left and the right. I quickly realized that leftists dealt with obscenity, invective, and America hatred, and that I preferred the polite, reasoned debate on the right. One of my favorite sites was Power Line, started by a cadre of four Minneapolis-based attorneys. I still check in with Power Line on a regular basis, which is how I learned that leftists firebombed the offices of the...

An ATF spokesperson confirmed the investigation is moving forward as an "arson investigation.".. Ashlee Sherrill, public information officer for the St. Paul Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), did not provide details or indicate who, or if anyone, was targeted but confirmed the investigation is moving forward as an “arson investigation.” John Hinderaker, president of the Center of the American Experiment (CAE), said based on the location of the fires in the building, it appears that someone targeted conservative groups. “The fires were obviously set by someone. They targeted conservative organizations. They didn’t firebomb the...

It is true that I have been in Washington, mostly to attend the Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn trial. I will write up my thoughts on the trial (or at least, those portions I have seen) when I have time. But something else has been distracting me: leftists firebombed my office last Saturday night. At around 2 am, they broke into the building that houses Center of the American Experiment and two other conservative organizations with which we often collaborate, along with many other businesses. The arsonists set two fires: one was in the first floor corridor between American Experiment’s...

The Biden administration is demanding that Israel take even more extraordinary measures to avoid harming “innocent civilians” as it tries to eradicate Hamas. Around the world, politicians and others express dismay at the alleged number of innocent civilians who have been killed by Israeli bombardments, even while admitting that Hamas’s casualty numbers include its own terrorists, people killed by terrorists’ awol missiles, and so on.But my complaint is more fundamental. Watching videos of Israeli captives being paraded through Gaza, and seeing “civilians” spitting on them, hitting them, joyously celebrating their capture, I have asked: where are these innocent civilians we...

I know, that isn’t exactly a news flash. But has there ever been more definitive proof than the silence of most feminists in the face of Gaza’s brutal assault on Israeli women? Caroline McCaughey writes in the New York Sun: One of the first videos uploaded to social media of the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 showed the kidnapping of a 26-year-old Israeli, Noa Argamani, on the back of a motorcycle as she reaches out and screams, “Don’t kill me!” Another was of 23-year-old German national, Shani Louk, whose partially clothed, contorted body in the back of a pickup...

I have praised the Trump administration’s accomplishments many times, but there is one huge blot on Trump’s record: his administration’s response to the covid epidemic. Via InstaPundit, Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute comments on Megyn Kelly’s interview of Trump. Kelly, to her credit, began the process of asking Trump the tough questions about covid: We need to know why the churches, schools, and businesses were closed at the urging of the White House. We need to know why we faced travel restrictions, why government printed and spent multiple trillions that produced crushing inflation, why the hospitals were shut to...

Several weeks ago we offered our first installment of Power Line’s Lexicon of Leftist Terms, and it is time for an update that includes several worthy suggestions from readers. Taking it from the top: Populism: When the wrong person or cause wins a free election, like Brexit or Trump. Racism: Any kind of resistance, conscious or unconscious, to the political program of the left. Democracy: Any institutional design or voting system that enables the left to get what it wants. Updated version: “Our” democracy—the version of “democracy as the left defines it.” “Threat to democracy”: When Republicans win an election....

<p>In 2020, Nancy Pelosi, sitting behind Donald Trump at his State of the Union Address, showed her contempt for the speech by ripping it up. It was a nauseating display by the Speaker — one that said more about her poor character than about Trump or his address.</p>

For a long time, I sympathized with Dr. Anthony Fauci. There he was, trying to deal with a pandemic caused by a virus no one knew much about. Sure, he was often wrong about pandemic-related matters, but so were plenty of others, on both sides of the political spectrum and in between, who opined on these subjects. Everyone was shooting in the dark.But at some point — possibly because of all the attacks on him, some of which were over-the-top, possibly because of a personality flaw or maybe old age — Fauci decided to cast himself as Mr. Science. Criticize...

Did Joe Biden and the Democrats steal this year’s presidential election? Polls suggest that a great many Americans, including many Democrats, believe that they did. I don’t know whether the election was stolen or not. I will say this: the Democrats went to great lengths to commit, or enable, voter fraud. To cite just a couple of examples, in a number of states, including my own, they used corrupt, collusive litigation to eliminate the minimal safeguards that prevented fraudulent mail-in votes from being submitted, like the requirement that signatures be witnessed. Why would they do this? Obviously, they didn’t want...

Here’s the problem: the townships and precincts listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 of the affidavit are not in Michigan. They are in Minnesota. Monticello, Albertville, Lake Lillian, Houston, Brownsville, Runeberg, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, Kandiyohi–these are all towns in Minnesota. I haven’t checked them all, but I checked a lot of them, and all locations listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 that I looked up are in Minnesota, with no corresponding township in Michigan. This would have been obvious to someone from this state, Evidently a researcher, either Mr. Ramsland or someone working for him,...

You can almost feel it: more and more Americans are saying “nuts!” to the shutdown, and the politicians are starting to “adjust” their reopening schedules, supposedly linked to “new information,” but the relevant new information is that civil disobedience is spreading. Meanwhile: Slow Joe keeps handing out gifts seven months before Christmas.

Giant murder hornets? As Joe Biden might say, c’mon man! Meanwhile, this, from The Week cheers my heart: “California highway police say that while overall traffic levels are down 35 percent this year because of a stay-at-home order, the number of speeding tickets for driving more than 100 mph has increased by 87 percent, with one motorist caught doing 165 mph. Commissioner Warren Stanley warned that higher speeds can ‘significantly increase the chance of death should a crash occur.” Rest easy Power Line readers: They haven’t caught me yet. Also, let us give a nod to the astrological signs aligning...

When you hear the phrase, “investigation into ties with a natural gas producer,” are we talking about Hunter Biden and Burisma, or are we talking about Rep. Eric Swalwell on MSNBC? It is hard to tell them apart. Democrats and their media toadies really ought to be more careful about throwing around the term “bombshell” in connection with their Ahab-like “investigation.”

The indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was announced today did not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Israeli politics have become less workable and less democratic over time. What we are seeing here is an attempted coup by the Israeli version of the Deep State. I wrote about Caroline Glick’s presentation on the pending charges against Netanyahu at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend here. Caroline wrote last month at Mosaic Magazine: “The Real Threat to Israel’s Democracy Comes from the Office of Its Attorney General.” The key question—indeed, just about the only question—that has...

Elizabeth Warren Will Never Be President In 2016, I was one of a small number of pundits who predicted that Donald Trump would win the presidential election. This was not because I fully appreciated Trump’s appeal to voters; rather, because I had been saying for years that Hillary Clinton would never be president. She was an appallingly bad candidate, which her party inexplicably failed to understand.I am now ready to say the same about Elizabeth Warren: she will never be president. She, too, is a terrible candidate, incorporating most of Hillary’s flaws and none of her modest virtues. If I...

Joe Biden is being portrayed as the Democrats’ safest potential presidential nominee, despite his obvious flaws as a candidate. But one wonders how Biden’s history of swamp corruption will play if he actually faces the scrutiny of a national run. Biden’s family has gotten wealthy, like those of so many low-paid “public servants”–Tom Daschle and Harry Reid are obvious examples. How does that happen? Politico headlines: “Biden Inc. Over his decades in office, ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.” It begins:

At the time, I puzzled over why this happened. I think the most likely explanation is that in the middle of a presidential term, when pollsters ask voters whether they approve or disapprove of a president, respondents are comparing the president to a theoretical alternative. If it is easy to imagine how a president might be better, or more in accord with a voter’s own views, the respondent is likely to tell the pollster that he disapproves. This changes once the president is running against a specific opponent. Now, a voter who is asked whether he approves or disapproves of...

Lots of deserved recollections on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing over the last few weeks and months. There’s not much need to repeat the main themes of the scientific marvel or adventurous spirit of that glorious enterprise. Some political aspects of Apollo, however, have not received sufficient attention. Specifically, the liberal attitude toward the moon landing is emblematic of how American liberalism had lost confidence in itself and sunk into its guilt phase from which it has never emerged. As befits our woeful woke era, there has been a lot of comment about the lack of “diversity”...