Free Republic

Reviewing the presidential election results, many commentators note that Donald Trump — like several previous Republican presidential candidates — prevailed in the electoral college without winning the popular vote. This is true, but it’s also irrelevant. It’s irrelevant legally, of course, because the Constitution provides for the election of a president through the electoral college. But it’s also irrelevant in terms of the democratic legitimacy of the result. In the election concluded Tuesday, Hillary Clinton received more popular votes than Trump. This does not mean, however, that Clinton would necessarily have prevailed in an election that was determined solely by...

Like Poe’s purloined letter, the Republican plan to heist the 2012 presidential election sits before us in plain view. And going Poe one better, it is perfectly legal. The first part of the strategy has been unfolding for months. Since the 2010 elections brought Republicans to power in numerous swing states, officials in many of those states have made it harder for minority, poor and young voters to cast their ballots. GOP governments have been curtailing early voting (in Ohio and Florida) and requiring voters to produce official photo-identification cards (in Wisconsin). In South Carolina, the poll tax lives again:...

BASRA, Iraq, April 7 (UPI) -- The rule of Saddam Hussein is over. Iraq's capital of Baghdad awoke Monday to find American tanks in the grounds of the presidential palace and the second city of Basra thrilled to their first full day of freedom from Saddam's Ba'athist regime.This double triumph of American and British military machines could hardly have been better timed, as U.S. President George W. Bush and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair prepared for their summit in Belfast, Northern Ireland.Their war plan vindicated, their critics at least briefly silenced, the two English-speaking leaders who had defied so much...