Free Republic

Happy Recession Day, everybody! Over the past several days, we’ve watched with great interest to see just how the media would find a way to downplay our ongoing economic downturn under President Joe Biden. We’ve seen plenty of hackery already, but we new that the real spectacle wouldn’t get underway until the numbers officially came out. Well, the numbers officially came out, and the GDP shrank by 0.9% in the second quarter. That’s a recession, folks. Earlier this week, Erick Erickson made an observation about the media’s treatment of the Biden administration’s shameless attempts to redefine “recession”: We're about to...

Prosecutors obtained the warrant as part of an investigation into whether Mr. Giuliani broke lobbying laws as President Trump’s personal lawyer. Federal investigators in Manhattan executed a search warrant on Wednesday at the Upper East Side apartment of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, stepping up a criminal investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine, three people with knowledge of the matter said. One of the people said the investigators had seized Mr. Giuliani’s electronic devices. Executing a search warrant is an extraordinary move for prosecutors to take against...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released new guidelines for employees dealing with reporters, and some journalists are none too pleased about it. The new media policy requires all HHS employees to notify the agency’s office of public affairs about contact with the media and coordinate any interview requests with the office. It also discourages off-the-record conversations without prior approval. Jim Dickinson, editor of FDA Webview and FDA Review, issued a scathing critique of the new guidelines.

Last week, the Obama administration’s Department of Energy announced it is extending an $852 million loan guarantee to something called the Genesis Solar Project in California. Genesis, according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, will be built on federal land and ultimately employ perhaps 800 people during its construction and 47 people once it is up and running. This would seem to be a lot of money to generate very few jobs at a time when the nation is on the verge of bankruptcy, but the project really isn’t about jobs. It’s the latest in the administration’s attempt to turn us...

Cab driver Abraham Habteab says around 2 p.m., he picked up a well-dressed passenger at Union Station who wanted to ride to a hotel in Southwest D.C. "He wanted me to drop him off and put his luggage inside the hotel and he wanted me to take him to a different location," said Habteab. He did not realize his passenger was Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York until other cab drivers told him. It was just a typical cab ride according to Habteab.

President Vladimir Putin is now viewed as an enigma by most Americans. Oh, what a difference a few years can make in this rapidly changing geopolitical landscape! When President Bush first met with Russian President Putin in 2001, Bush was tremendously impressed with him - Bush stated: "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul", which certainly conveyed hopeful expectations of a Vladimir Putin as democratic reformer and ally of the US. President Bush quickly dubbed the Russian President "Pootie Poot", and thought that he had found a man with whom...