Free Republic

Before she was the second woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court and the “Notorious RBG,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a wife, mother, and frustrated lawyer who dreamed of leaving her mark on the world. On the Basis of Sex, a suitably inspiring biopic despite its narrative unevenness and occasional reliance on schmaltz, seeks to show audiences the origin story of a cultural icon. The story follows Ginsburg (a quietly ferocious Felicity Jones) from her days as a first-year student at Harvard Law School to her graduation at the top of her class at Columbia to her time as a...

I received my Academy screener of "Vice" -- Adam McKay's intermittently black comic biopic of Dick Cheney --- just a few days before its Christmas opening and watched it almost immediately, even though I knew I would hate it. I did. It had exactly the retrograde, conformist Hollywood politics I expected. What I didn't expect was that it would be an aesthetic jumble and quite boring. Nevertheless, "Vice" led the pack of Golden Globe nominations with six and is an early favorite for the Best Picture Oscar. So unfortunately, due to the biased state of our educational system, this could...

1. WaPo Blames Border Patrol For Death of 7-Year-Old Migrant 2. CNN And The Hill Spread Retracted Sexual Assault Claim Against Kavanaugh 3. Boston Globe Corrects Liz Warren Story — Makes Her Less Native American 4. NYT Accuses Nikki Haley Of Purchasing Expensive Curtains 5. Media Still Blaming Republicans For Steele Dossier 6. CNN Analyst Publishes Dubious Report On Additional Kavanaugh Allegations 7. CNN Accuses Ted Cruz Of Being Afraid To Appear On Their Network 8. CNN Spreads False Statistic On School Shooting 9. NBC Sat On Information That Contradicted Kavanaugh Allegations 10. McClatchy Claims Mueller Has Evidence That Corroborates...

While the debate rages on over how much Russia really influenced the results of the 2016 presidential elections, one detail put the entire controversy in perspective: Democratic operatives spent an identical amount of money on their project to create a Russian bot “false flag” campaign during the Alabama 2017 special election. Multiple reports detailed the Russian government-backed Internet Research Agency spent up to $100,000 on Facebook advertisements throughout their entire disinformation operation. As The Daily Caller News Foundation reported Wednesday, billionaire-backed Democrats “created more than a thousand Russian-language accounts that followed [Roy] Moore’s Twitter account overnight.” The group of Democrats...

Kaywin Feldman Becomes the First Woman to Direct the National Gallery of Art in Washington Feldman is the fifth director to lead the venerable 77-year old institution. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has named Kaywin Feldman as its new director. She will be the fifth director—and the first ever female director—of the venerable 77-year-old institution. Feldman, who has been director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) since 2008, will take up the new position in March 2019. The seasoned museum administrator takes the helm from longtime director Earl “Rusty” Powell III, who has led the National...

As Russia’s online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results... One participant in the Alabama project, Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee. An internal report on the Alabama effort, obtained by The New York Times,...

On Saturday's AM Joy, during a discussion on now disputed reports that a seven-year-old girl was suffering from dehydration when she died recently in Border Patrol custody, host Reid brought up the issue of Border agents disposing of water. Here's Reid: "One of the issues was dehydration. We're going to show you some video ... but there is video of Border Patrol agents dumping water on the ground -- water that was meant to be left for migrants. This is from a Tucson-based aid group." Speaking with Democratic Senators Mazie Hirono and Jeff Merkley, Reid posed: "What do you know...

The Times reported late Tuesday that it obtained internal Facebook (FB) documents that show how the social media arranged to share data with more than 150 companies. The deals helped Facebook gain more users, according to the report, and its partners were able to add new features to their products while effectively avoiding Facebook’s usual privacy rules. Many of the partnerships ended years ago, but the details reported by the Times are striking. Amazon (AMZN) got access Facebook users’ names and contact information through their friends on the social network, according to the report, while Microsoft’s (MSFT) search engine Bing...

A specially appointed federal panel of judges has dismissed all 83 ethics complaints brought against Justice Brett Kavanaugh regarding his conduct at his confirmation hearings. The judges concluded that while the complaints "are serious," there is no existing authority that allows lower court judges to investigate or discipline Supreme Court justices. The complaints against Kavanaugh ranged from allegations that he had misled the Senate about some of his activities in the George W. Bush White House to his angry, partisan statements in denying charges of sexual assault in high school.

HuffPost, a liberal news site, was lampooned after saying Christmas classic “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was “seriously problematic” over claims that it features sexism and bullying. “Viewers are noticing the tale may not be so jolly after all,” the outlet’s video said. “And they’re sharing their observations online.” Among those observations was the suggestion that the TV classic was a story about racism and homophobia, while calling Santa Claus abusive and bigoted. “Yearly reminder that #Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a parable on racism & homophobia w/Santa as a bigoted exploitative prick,” read one comment shared by HuffPost. “Santa’s operation...

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something filled with the coagulating blood of one’s enemies. The Trump household apparently wasn’t content turning the White House into a dark alternate dimension where all hope dies for just one year—this house of horrors has now become an annual holiday tradition. The White House has shared an official look at First Lady Melania Trump’s latest holiday decor at the White House. Last year, Mrs. “Be Best” turned the hallways of the presidential residence into a living nightmare straight out of Get Out or Voldemort’s bathroom. Shadowy branches crept over the walls, reaching forth...

The Trump administration is, it goes without saying, deeply anti-science. In fact, it’s anti-objective reality. But its control of the government remains limited; it didn’t extend far enough to prevent the release of the latest National Climate Assessment, which details current and expected future impacts of global warming on the United States. True, the report was released on Black Friday, clearly in the hope that it would get lost in the shuffle. The good news is that the ploy didn’t work. The assessment basically confirms, with a great deal of additional detail, what anyone following climate science already knew: Climate...

Full title: The Dick Cheney Dossier: Inside Adam McKay’s Searing Exposé of D.C.'s "Ultimate Gamesman" in 'Vice' It's the eve of the midterm elections, and Adam McKay is feeling optimistic about the Democrats' prospects of taking back the house. Still, the SNL writer turned Oscar-winning filmmaker insists he is not throwing a results-viewing party with his Hollywood friends, even as I spot an assistant carrying supplies from Whole Foods into his West Hollywood offices. Instead, McKay, looking like a college professor with a corduroy jacket and scarf, says he is planning to hang out at his house with his wife,...

A disruption at a Baltimore performance of "Fiddler on the Roof" made national news today. A man stood up before the act break of the seminal Jewish musical and shouted, "Heil Hitler, Heil Trump," holding his arm out in a Nazi salute. The story ran like wildfire, with national outlets and reporters picking up the Baltimore Sun's story of the "pro-Nazi and pro-Trump" salute. There's just one problem: The police report investigating the incident clearly states that the man loathes President Trump. In the police report obtained by the Washington Examiner, the reporting officer, Jake Aumack, says: "During my interview...

Anyone get the holiday toy catalog in the mail yet from Target? Not one white boy in 80 some pages....maybe one or two white girls. A complete purge. This crap is getting way past out of hand everywhere. When did 15 percent of the population become 95 percent?

A new app wants to help get the word out to vote in the upcoming midterm elections — but there's one feature that could feel a little invasive. The app, called Vote With Me, provides helpful information about the elections taking place in your district, lets you know whether a race is tight, and shows you how to prepare for Election Day. But the app also pulls your voter registration and voting record, and that same information from anyone in your phone's contacts, ---SNIP--- Vote With Me is providing a window into your friends', family's, and coworkers' voting habits,

BREAKING: Radical Code Pink Activist Democrat Kyrsten Sinema Wins AZ Senate Race After Thousands of Votes Appear Post Election Radical code pink activist Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won the Arizona Senate race against Martha McSally several days after the polls closed. Republican Martha McSally was ahead Tuesday evening when the polls closed, but the Democrats produced tens of thousands of ballots out of no where post election. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema got 1,071,947 votes vs. Martha McSally who got 1,039,778 with 99.8% of the precincts reporting, according to Politico.

Michelle Obama shared with "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts some key advice she'd give her pre-White House self, if she had the chance, as the two sat down to discuss her memoir, "Becoming." "You know the hard parts were the things that I expected," Michelle Obama told Roberts in the exclusive interview. "That it was gonna be hard, you know? Being the first black anything is gonna be hard." "So much of this country lives in isolation and we just don't know each other. ... There were people who didn't know what a black woman was and sounded like....

FULL TITLE: Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher Threatens To Jail Media For Filming "Ballot Counting" Two kinds of people hate being filmed while going about their business in public: celebrities and criminals. Breaking from normal practice, the Palm Beach County elections supervisor banned media from filming and photographing the high-profile midterm election ballot review process amid allegations of “incompetence” by Gov. Rick Scott. The camera ban prompted an attorney for NBC Universal to interrupt the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board and object to the meeting, calling it “illegal.” Tensions flared Friday morning when Bucher threatened to have camera...

The number of flights being taken by the average person is increasing dramatically and the arrival of LCCs mean flying is more affordable for more people. Between 2005 and 2018 global passenger numbers more than doubled from around two billion to four billion and forecasts suggest that it could double again over the next 20 years. Is this growth manageable? One Norwegian politician believes that a cap should be placed on travellers, a seemingly impractical suggestion, but one that is sure to have support. Summary: As global air travel demand continues to rise, one Norwegian politician recommends a cap of...