Free Republic

Any halfway informed person knows we are entering a new legal environment. Thanks, Joe. The erudite and insightful Roger Kimball, who is well known to the readers at American Thinker, discusses in his essay the disappearance of the American respect for and application of the rule of law: Instead of proper rule of law we are living with that Orwellian alternative, Our Rule of Law — an arbitrary enforcement of the laws and use of the coercive power of the state. Mr. Kimball opens with a recall of the Hemingway novel The Sun Also Rises, which describes what is playing...

Top Democrats and former Republicans met at a Washington, D.C. think tank in early June 2023 to discuss election interference strategies to block former President Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, according to a report in the Washington Post. The meeting is said to have included recent Biden White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Democratic National Committee senior advisor Cedric L. Richmond, as well as Stephanie Cutter, a former campaign adviser to Barack Obama who has also worked with Biden. “They were joined by former senators Doug Jones (D-Ala.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), along...

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the Biden administration should declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. Graham said, “Number one, there are 30 United States senators in Munich along with a big House delegation. Senator McConnell and Schumer both came. Virtually unanimous belief that we should be training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 today so they can get the jets as soon as possible. The British are training Ukrainian pilots. I believe a decision will be imminent here when we get back to Washington that the administration will start training Ukrainian pilots on the...

In contrast to the uplifting statements of the top Ukrainian leadership and Yermak's publications about the "task to reach the borders of 1991 by military means", the Ukrainian military personnel stationed in Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) are sounding a real alarm. The statement of the former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and now an officer of the 72nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Igor Lutsenko is published on the network. This statement attracts special attention, since it (as Lutsenko himself writes) is firsthand, from Ukrainian soldiers stationed in Bakhmut:"The 30th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near...

American officials estimate that nearly 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Moscow’s nearly yearlong conflict with Ukraine, The New York Times reported. The rising number of casualties is driven in part by heavy fighting in Bakhmut and Soledar in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is increasingly sending poorly trained recruits and convicts to the front lines in an effort to deplete Ukrainian artillery, according to the Times. However, officials have warned that the casualty numbers — which are based on satellite imagery, intercepted communications, social media, on-the-ground reporting and official government numbers — are difficult to estimate and...

This isn't Russia's latest tank (that would be the T14 Armata)The T90M appears to be the latest that they can actually put out in the field in numbers, as of now. It includes many of the Armata features. But the kicker is this. About six or seven months ago HoHo MOD Ichabod Zapoopski (or whatever his name was) stated that he needed an entire new army including around 300 - 400 main battle tanks. Russian MOD Shoigu OTOH has just announced that Russian forces will shortly be receiving around 400 BRAND NEW military vehicles including some large number of these...

In a statement, the SVR said U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers, air defence systems and artillery ammunition had been delivered to the Rivne nuclear power station in the northwest of Ukraine."The Ukrainian armed forces are storing weapons and ammunition provided by the West on the territory of nuclear power plants," it said, adding that an arms shipment to the Rivne power station had taken place in the last week of December.

Paris (AFP) – Germany is ready to authorise Poland to send German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine to help Kyiv fight the Russian invasion if Warsaw makes such a request, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Sunday. "If we are asked the question, then we will not stand in the way," Baerbock told LCI television after a Franco-German summit meeting in Paris. "We know how important these tanks are and this is why we are discussing this now with our partners. We need to make sure people's lives are saved and Ukraine's territory liberated." Baerbock, who represents the Greens in Social Democrat...

Russia’s “nuclear war” rhetoric appears every few months, on a kind of cycle. Whenever the West and Ukraine appear to be winning and Ukraine is being strengthened, then Russia will roll out this talk. It will also mobilize other voices to make it seem that Ukraine isn’t interested in “peace” and that Ukraine is “escalating.” This terminology is misplaced because it is Russia that escalated and invaded Ukraine. However, Moscow wants to shift focus to what the West is doing...

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) urged the west to send tanks to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after he traveled to Ukraine over the weekend. Graham visited Ukraine along with Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). While in Ukraine, the seniors held a press conference in Kyiv where Graham called on Germany and the United States to send tanks to help Zelensky fight back against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine. “All three of us, one Republican and two Democrats, share the same goal — for Ukraine to drive the Russians out of Ukraine. To achieve that...

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian army to increase the number of service members to 1.5 million from 2023 to 2026, according to a briefing of Russia's defense ministry. Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu last mentioned the goal of expanding the army from 1 million to 1.5 million, including 695,000 contracted soldiers, during a Dec. 21 meeting with Putin and his defense chiefs.According to the Russian defense ministry's Telegram channel, there are plans to create additional divisions, corps and military districts, as well as strengthen existing ones.

Disgraced former FBI official Andrew McCabe said the DOJ should obstruct the House GOP’s investigation into the Biden document scandal. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) launched the first congressional investigation into classified documents stored at Joe Biden’s private office and home. It was revealed this week that Joe Biden improperly stored stolen classified documents at his private office and in his garage next to his Corvette. Joe Biden STOLE the classified documents. US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as the special counsel to investigate the Biden document scandal. McCabe said it’s time for the DOJ to play...

Many new streets and monuments have been erected since a new government took over in 2014 This list is part of an ongoing investigative project the Forward first published in January 2021 documenting hundreds of monuments around the world to people involved in the Holocaust. We are continuing to update each country’s list; if you know of any not included here, or of statues that have been removed or streets renamed, please email editorial@forward.com, subject line: Nazi monument project. Note: In the years since the Maidan uprising brought a new government to Ukraine in 2014, numerous monuments to Nazi collaborators...

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "scrambling" to find more troops to fight in Ukraine despite Moscow recently claiming that its forces captured the city of Soledar. Stavridis weighed in on reports that Russia is resorting to prisoners, the Wagner Group, reservists, and others to fight in Ukraine. "Putin is really scrambling...to gain the manpower, he's going to the prisons, he's going to the homeless shelters, [and] he's taking people in their 50s and 60s," he said. "I'm in my early 60s, I don't think the U.S. Army is searching for...

The FBI revealed how the bureau uses the CIA and National Security Agency to probe the private lives of Americans without a warrant in its updated rulebook, which is the first version made public since the Obama administration. The handbook, rewritten in 2021, confirms a decade-old leak showcasing the bureau’s collaboration with the CIA and NSA for FBI probes that may involve surveillance without court orders against people not accused of any crimes. Such probes are known as “assessments” at the FBI. The revelations will fuel critics who have long accused the FBI of abusing its national security surveillance powers.

The acting head of the Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushlin, said the republic's cities of Soledar and Artemovsk were about to be liberated MOSCOW, January 11./TASS/.The city of Soledar, the scene of intense fighting in the past few days, has been under the control by units of Russia's Wagner private military company, the company's Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was quoted as saying by his press service on Tuesday night. "Units of the Wagner private military company have taken the entire territory of Soledar under their control. The city center has been surrounded, and urban warfare is underway. The number of captives...

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine, Jan 8 (Reuters) - A Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk missed its targets and there were no obvious signs of casualties, a Reuters reporter said on Sunday, after Moscow claimed the strike killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers. A Reuters team visited two college dormitories that Moscow said had been temporarily housing Ukrainian personnel and which it had targeted as revenge for a New Year's attack that killed scores of Russian soldiers and caused outcry in Russia. But neither dormitory in the eastern city of Kramatorsk appeared to have been directly hit or seriously damaged. There...

As the new House Republican majority gets sworn in this week, they have no choice but to use the only mechanism at their disposal to highlight the emergency unfolding at the border: impeaching Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. His acts of nonfeasance include acting on the president’s orders and presiding over a situation in which the border is, for all intents and purposes, being erased. GOP moderates — many of whom are members in good standing of the Washington uniparty — think they are obligated to pursue “governance.” This sets up a conflict in which anything the new...

ll sides’ strategic incentives in the Ukraine War point toward continued conflict in 2023. The war’s settlement will emerge from the battlefield, not primarily from negotiations. Russia, meanwhile, is planning another offensive to solidify its territorial position and prepare for another year of war. Every weapon that the West refrains from sending to Ukraine in the next two months will be regretted in the next six. In addition, the notion of Russia’s absolute incompetence must be eliminated. No military is perfect, and Russian forces have their problems — but Western analysts are far too optimistic about Russia’s initial failures.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is starting the new year making very clear whose side he is on–and it is not Republican voters. After betraying the incoming GOP House majority by negotiating a $1.7 trillion omnibus funding bill in the lame duck Congress last month to deny House Republicans the chance to control federal spending this year, McConnell is set to host Joe Biden in Kentucky on Wednesday at a “bipartisan” celebration of Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed in 2021 with help from McConnell. NBC News was first to report on the McConnell-Biden event which will...