Free Republic

Yesterday an intrepid reporter asked the insufferable Jen Psaki about U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s assertion that America’s founding documents are white supremacist. Doesn’t that echo Chinese Communist propaganda, as in the recent diplomatic debacle in Anchorage? Does Joe Biden intend to fire Thomas-Greenfield? And, the most salient question: does Biden share her contempt for America’s founding documents, i.e., the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence? It takes some doing, but the answer to that last question is Yes: The White House is now supporting the Chinese Communist Party line that our founding documents are racist. It cannot be overstated how...

For quite a while, I have only been able to buy ammunition through the range where I am a member. The limit was one 50-round box, barely enough for a range session. But a couple of weeks ago that quota was raised to three boxes. Then, yesterday, I got an email from the range saying that this morning, members would be able to buy a 1,000-round case of 9 mm.

Everyone is against him, including his own police department. The three officers who were with Chauvin on May 25, and who also have been charged, presumably won’t testify. Their lawyers will insist that they take the 5th–as, by the way, Floyd’s drug dealer did yesterday. The dealer was with Floyd on May 25 and pled the 5th on the ground that he may be prosecuted for supplying Floyd with the overdose of fentanyl that killed him. But the jury won’t see that. The trial so far as been the world vs. Derek Chauvin and Eric Nelson. While the “dream team”...

Maybe the only good thing about covid hysteria is that it has, for a while, drowned out global warming hysteria. Still, many people have the impression that global temperatures have warmed alarmingly in recent decades. Unfortunately, there is no reliable record of surface temperatures for a number of reasons, including the fact that the activists who are in charge of the records keep changing them to promote the alarmist position. But that is all right, since warming due to carbon dioxide doesn’t occur at the surface, it occurs in the atmosphere. The only reliable, unfudged record we have of global...

Predictably, the Biden administration is committed to returning to a “peace” policy that consists mostly of trying to force Israel to make ever-greater concessions to the Palestinians in hopes of getting Mahmoud Abbas’s signature on a document. As part of this policy reversal, the administration has resumed aid to the Palestinians: The Biden administration is quietly ramping up assistance to the Palestinians after former President Donald Trump cut off nearly all aid. Since taking office with a pledge to reverse many of Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian decisions, the administration has allocated nearly $100 million for the Palestinians, only a small portion of...

You have to be pretty stupid to opine publicly about the race/ethnicity of a mass shooter before his race/ethnicity is known. You have to be very stupid to base such an opinion on the obviously false claim that mass shooters are “always” of a particular race/ethnicity. And you have to be world-class stupid to risk your professional career on such an assertion. But that’s what Hemal Jhaveri, then the “diversity and inclusion editor at USA Today Sports,” did following last week’s mass shooting in Colorado. She tweeted, “It’s always an angry white man [who does this]. Always.” Unfortunately for Jhaveri’s...

Critical Race Theory, which is just an updated form of racism, is the most destructive force of the 21st century. If you had told me 50 years ago that a half-century hence, there would be a successful social movement, dominating academia, politics and even the business world, holding that the most important thing about a person is his skin color, I wouldn’t have believed it. But that is where we are now. At the Epoch Times, my friend Roger Simon writes eloquently about the curse of CRT: Something called Critical Race Theory intervened to turn our society around, head it...

But maybe so. David Goldman foresees China vastly outstripping America because it is a merciless meritocracy whereas America increasingly is at war with that very idea (the NFL and other sports leagues excepted). America will no longer offer, as an alternative to China, “a democratic meritocracy that rewards achievement while honoring the rights of the individual.” And since “meritocracy will win, because it always does, and all the more so in a high-tech, winner-take-all world,” the Chinese version of it — “a merciless meritocracy that treats the losers like so much detritus” — will prevail in the absence of a...

At the end of the day we had two more jurors and word that the Minnesota Supreme Court had denied review of the Court of Appeals decision ordering Judge Cahill to consider reinstatement of the third-degree murder charge under the Noor case. When the lawyers appear before him this morning at 8:00, they will take up the question of how to proceed on the third-degree charge with Judge Cahill. My understanding (partial guess) is that the third-degree charge is coming back into the case when the Court of Appeals decision becomes final and the trial court reacquires jurisdiction over the...

The Texas blackout is over, and water has also been restored. It didn’t get as much press as the loss of electricity, but water pipes froze and broke across a wide swath of the state, causing inconvenience that for many was greater than the power outage. The ultimate source of both problems was the same: the relevant authorities failed to anticipate record-breaking cold. One question that I have not seen asked is this: why didn’t the relevant authorities–the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and whatever municipal governments and private contractors have been responsible for water pipes–anticipate a “worst case” cold...

Vernon Jordan has died. He was 85. Jordan was a partner and an institution at the law firm where I worked. He had an office on the same floor I did. I never really got to know Jordan, but did have the opportunity to observe him. Jordan didn’t just care about young people. My observation was that he cared about everyone he worked with. When working long hours, I would set myself up in a conference room near the elevators on our floor. If Jordan popped by the office at night or on weekends and saw me on a regular...

Uncle Joe, as I think of him in this context, is all but the inventor and distributor of the vaccine. His unnamed predecessor has been “disappeared” from the history. He not only didn’t have anything to do with the vaccine, he was an obstacle to it. Uncle Joe — he’s the “vaccinator” in chief (emphasis on the last syllable or you will be eliminated). John called out the thoroughgoing gracelessness of Biden’s performance here yesterday. Watching Biden speak, one sees something beyond the gracelessness. Staring blankly at the teleprompter, easily confused, struggling to read and articulate, Biden appears to be...

Sen. Ted Cruz is under attack for flying to Mexico while Texas is facing severe winter weather and power outages. Cruz explained why he went there: With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon. My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas.If true (and I’m unaware of any reason to believe it isn’t), this is a complete defense to...

Is it merely a coincidence that the Annual Trump Impeachment nearly coincided with Groundhog Day? This really is becoming as regular and tedious as Tom Brady in the Super Bowl. What’s that? Oh. Well, at least he’s a Trump supporter, which makes sense doesn’t it? Doesn’t everyone who has a supermodel trophy wife support Trump? I think I read that in Trophy Wife Aficionado magazine. (Or is that “MAGA-zine”?)

At American Experiment.org, my colleague Isaac Orr demolishes the Green New Deal fantasy. One basic problem is that wind turbines don’t work when the weather gets cold, which can be fatal in the North, especially when we are experiencing a brutal cold snap: Temperatures are below zero in many parts of the state, but wind energy is missing in action. According to data from the regional grid operator, the wind is providing just 1 percent of the current electricity on the grid, and solar is providing just 0.31 percent. Coal currently accounts for 55 percent of generation, natural gas accounts...

• Second of all, happy Groundhog Day. • Okay, enough with the jokes. Serious question: Who shot Ashli Babbitt? Usually after a law enforcement involved fatal shooting, we know the name of the officer within a day or two. But the officer who fired the fatal shot at Ashli Babbitt on January 6 has still not been publicly identified, even though news is out that the officer will likely not face any charges in the matter. Seems rather fast to have reached this conclusion before a full investigation of the confusing scene of January 6 is complete. This little detail...

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham has released 11 transcripts of interviews conducted during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s inquiry into the origins and aftermath of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation — i.e., its indispensable to the Russia hoax perpetrated by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Graham’s press release is posted here. The transcripts have all been posted online and made accessible here. John Solomon extracts the highlights for Just the News in “FBI, State officials aware early on Steele made major mistake in Russia reporting.” No one who has followed the revelation of the hoax over the...

Like pretty much all conservatives, I have consistently criticized riots and other forms of political violence for many years. That includes yesterday’s Washington, D.C. riot. You can’t say the same about liberals, however. Until yesterday, one might have thought that liberals consider rioting and other forms of political violence to be as American as apple pie. You could write a book in support of that proposition, but for now let’s cite just a few examples. Do you remember when President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017? Leftist Democrats rioted in Washington that day. That riot was arguably worse, more...

It has been widely noted that many of our government leaders seem to like the air of crisis and the exertion of emergency power that the COVID pandemic has enabled. And there has been open support among the climatistas applying the kinds of strictures used to battle COVID to climate change as well. The superficiality of this parallel will be lost on lots of people—after all, how well are the lockdowns and mark-wearing mandates working? Thus we are starting to hear calls for proto-President Biden to declare climate change to be a national emergency when he takes office: Now, if...

Rush Limbaugh opened his final show of 2020 “by reflecting on what’s important.” Occasioned by the dire prognosis and related treatment he has lived with since early this year, Rush remembered and avowed: There’s something about Christmas, my childhood memories of it, the families getting together and the children making it what it was. My feelings of thankfulness always surface. My feelings of great gratitude always surface at the Christmas time of year, and it’s no different this year. Now, in January of this year, toward the end of the month, I received a — you all know, but there’s...