Free Republic

Police and military officers swooped down on a Moscow business center this past week unannounced. They were looking for men to fight in Ukraine — and they seized nearly every one they saw. Some musicians, rehearsing. A courier there to deliver a parcel. A man from a Moscow service agency, very drunk, in his mid-50s, with a walking disability. “I have no idea why they took him,” said Alexei, who, like dozens of others in the office complex, was rounded up and taken to the nearest military enlistment office, part of a harsh new phase in the Russian drive. In...

The Washington Post created the false impression that President Donald Trump ordered Lafayette Square cleared with “tear gas” to remove “peaceful protesters” for a “photo-op” last June 1. Those claims have been definitively debunked by an inspector general’s report from the Department of Interior, which confirmed the Trump administration’s story: that U.S. Park Police had already planned to enlarge the perimeter around the White House after violent attacks by rioters on law enforcement, and cleared the park using pepper balls, not tear gas. The report also confirms that it was the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, under the control of Democrat...

ST. PETERSBURG —Less than two weeks from a first face-to-face with President Biden in Geneva, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday criticized the U.S. prosecution of rioters who took part in the January attack on the Capitol, calling it an example of American "double standards."...That differed from Biden’s preview of the summit last week, when he said he would press Putin on human rights abuses such as Russia’s treatment of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In response, the Kremlin has attempted to draw an equivalency to the U.S. treatment of the Capitol rioters. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called it...

U.S. prosecutors this week put a price tag on damage to the U.S. Capitol from the Jan. 6 breach — $1.5 million so far — and for the first time are asking defendants to cover some of the bill in plea offers, prosecutors and defense lawyers said. The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington cited the damage estimate Wednesday in court and in plea papers filed in the case of Paul Hodgkins, 38. The Tampa crane operator pleaded guilty to one felony count of obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and faces sentencing July 19 in Washington. “Your client acknowledges that...

The mainstream media goons who shrieked and moaned about a “free press” during the Trump administration are pretty mum after the Biden admin announced that they will be charging reporters for their COVID tests every time they enter the building. Without taking the $170 test, reporters will not be allowed to enter the building to go to press briefings. The Washington Post reported on Friday that the White House is seeking to put the new charges in place on Monday. Charges this high would make it much harder for smaller and independent outlets to get into the briefings, which would...

MILWAUKEE — Gerry Winkleman points across the Milwaukee River at the former tannery where he worked for almost two decades as a union welder, repairing blow pipes and net machines that produced thousands of leather shoes and handbags every year. Follow the latest on Election 2020 Winkleman, 74, drives through a stretch of downtown Milwaukee that once served as a hub of U.S. manufacturing, pausing occasionally to note the factories that have either shuttered or moved their production to China over the past three decades: the Pabst and Schlitz breweries; the Allis-Chalmers manufacturing giant; several different tanneries; the Briggs &...

President-elect Joe Biden is planning to quickly sign a series of executive orders after being sworn into office on Jan. 20, immediately forecasting that the country's politics have shifted and that his presidency will be guided by radically different priorities. He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on immigration from many Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing "dreamers," who were brought to the United...

Ain't memory lane a real KITA sometimes. Sixteen years ago, almost to the day, I was engaging in a running duel with the Managing Editor of the Washington Post, and one of his imbecile reporters whose name I have mercifully forgot. The ugly story is contained in my "j'accuse" letter that was hand delivered, subsequently posted on the Swift Vets site. Free Republic picked it up there. It's long but (I think) immensely relevant (spooky, almost) to current events in re: Trump v. Biden election. I hope you may agree. Meanwhile, I am gloating that my "hex" on the Post...

The Virginia Military Institute’s Board of Visitors has unanimously voted to remove the school’s Stonewall Jackson statue from campus. The move comes after Kaleb Tucker and other black alumni started a campaign for the statue’s removal, citing racism at the institute experienced by black cadets. The board concurred on forming a diversity office and diversity and inclusion panel, The Washington Post reported.Tucker co-created a petition five months ago which urges the school to “acknowledge racism” and remove the statue. It has received over 1,000 signatures, according to Change.org. (RELATED: Virginia Military Institute Superintendent Resigns After School Faces Racism Allegations)“If something or someone is in place that does...

A Washington Post story wrongly claimed the Trump administration accused Billie Eilish of “destroying our country” — then spread like wildfire among the entertainment industry. The article on Thursday — in part about hundreds of celebrities being vetted for a Trump administration coronavirus ad campaign — included a misattributed quote from the White House about Eilish. SNIP The flub was picked up by Vice editor Jill Krajewski, who noted that “an embarrassing number of music outlets” including Complex, NME, Consequence of Sound and The Fader aggregated the misreported Washington Post story.

DONALD J. TRUMP, until now a Republican problem, this week became a challenge the nation must confront and overcome. The real estate tycoon is uniquely unqualified to serve as president, in experience and temperament. He is mounting a campaign of snarl and sneer, not substance. To the extent he has views, they are wrong in their diagnosis of America’s problems and dangerous in their proposed solutions. Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together. His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to...

Mr. Leonard Downie, Executive Editor Mr. Michael Getler, Ombudsman The Washington Post On October 27, 2004 Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. penned an op-ed entitled, “A Strict Separation”. Therein Mr. Downie, the self-described “ultimate gatekeeper” (Post, “Live Online” 10/6/04) for everything printed in the newspaper, reassures readers that there is what amounts to a Chinese wall between the editorial and news reporting departments at the Post. Mr. Downie’s op-ed has a pedantic, just-for-the-record, ‘let’s get this straight’ flavor. The purpose for the article is to stipulate that the home-stretch flurry of political endorsements by the Post has nothing...