Free Republic

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is the type of "progressive sex symbol" modern women want, a liberal Washington Post columnist argued in her column published Friday. "Move over, Ryan Gosling. The modern female fantasy is embodied by the man who might soon become our first First Gentleman,"Catherine Rampell wrote. Since Gov. Tim Walz joined the 2024 Democratic ticket, media figures and Harris supporters have argued that Walz and Emhoff embrace a more modern version of masculinity that men should aspire to. In leaving his prestigious law career to support Vice President Harris after the 2020 presidential race, Emhoff showed he was...

MILWAUKEE — When the Republicans put the final gavel to the wreckage of their convention in Cleveland eight years ago, they were in a state of nuclear meltdown.Yes, they had a nominee in reality television star Donald Trump. But the party itself was a collection of warring factions that agreed on little by way of principles, beyond their collective desire to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House. Strategist David Urban, who helped organize the 2016 convention for Trump, recalls that the floor of Quicken Loans Arena felt like “enemy territory.” Tensions were thick between Trump’s campaign and the...

PHOENIX — Arizona delegates to the Republican National Convention gathered this month in a Phoenix suburb, showing up to get to know each other and learn about their duties.Part of the presentation included a secret plan to throw the party’s nomination of Donald Trump for president into chaos.The instructions did not come from “Never Trumpers” hoping to stop the party from nominating a felon when delegates gather in Milwaukee next month. They instead came from avowed “America First” believers hatching a challenge from the far right — a plot to release the delegates from their pledge to support Trump, according...

Already facing scandal, the Washington Post's new-ish CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, has announced that the newspaper will be pivoting to artificial intelligence to turn around its dismal financial situation. As Semafor media industry editor Max Tani tweeted, Lewis told Post staffers today that the newspaper will be looking for ways to use AI in its reporting as it seeks to recoup some of the $77 million it lost last year.

One of the preposterous charges made against Israel by the Palestinians is that the Jewish state “harvests the organs” from dead Palestinians. This is a variant on the medieval blood libel that accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in making matzos. Think of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, and William of Norwich — two children whose deaths were falsely attributed to Jews wanting to use their blood, which led to pogroms being unleashed against local Jewry in medieval England. But the Palestinian charge was apparently not preposterous enough for the Washington Post, which reported the charge as...

One of the preposterous charges made against Israel by the Palestinians is that the Jewish state “harvests the organs” from dead Palestinians. This is a variant on the medieval blood libel that accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in making matzos. Think of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, and William of Norwich — two children whose deaths were falsely attributed to Jews wanting to use their blood, which led to pogroms being unleashed against local Jewry in medieval England. But the Palestinian charge was apparently not preposterous enough for the Washington Post, which reported the charge as...

The Washington Post is reportedly cutting 240 employees in the 'hopes of averting more difficult actions such as layoffs — a situation we are united in trying to avoid." An email obtained by New York Times reporter Ben Mullin states that employees will be attending a 10 am meeting on October 11 to discuss the action. "Following this meeting, all eligible employees will be notified by email if their position is included in the program, and they are welcome to consider the package. Senior leaders will then share department specific information in meetings to follow throughout the day," the email...

The United States for several months has been sending private communications to Moscow warning Russia’s leadership of the grave consequences that would follow the use of a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. officials, who said the messages underscore what President Biden and his aides have articulated publicly. The Biden administration generally has decided to keep warnings about the consequences of a nuclear strike deliberately vague, so the Kremlin worries about how Washington might respond, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive deliberations. The attempt by the White House to cultivate what’s known in the nuclear...

It takes a lot of money to become a board member of Twitter, but not a lot else apparently. With a large stock purchase, an abuser of the service — Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the world’s richest man — has now essentially bought himself a warm welcome from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. For those of us who care about equity and accountability, Musk’s appointment to such a prominent role at a platform that serves hundreds of millions of users daily is highly disconcerting — a slap in the face, even. Musk has been open about his preference...

Former Alabama judge Roy Moore, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, once said publicly that he did not take a “regular salary” from the small charity he founded to promote Christian values because he did not want to be a financial burden. But privately, Moore had arranged to receive a salary of $180,000 a year for part-time work at the Foundation for Moral Law, internal charity documents show. He collected more than $1 million as president from 2007 to 2012, compensation that far surpassed what the group disclosed in its public tax filings most of those years. When the charity...

Washington Post employee Itai Ozderman, 35, was arrested after his Gaithersburg, MD home was raided by Montgomery County Police on February 22nd at around 6 a.m, according to court documents. Ozderman is charged with impersonating an ICE officer on several occasions throughout Falls Church, VA. When the warrant was served on Feb. 22 at Ozderman's home in the 100 block of Elmira Lane, court documents say 10 weapons, including handguns, assault rifles, and a shotgun, were recovered. Sources tell ABC7's Kevin Lewis that Ozderman impersonated an ICE officer throughout Falls Church, Va. on more than one occasion. According to sources,...

The furor over Trump’s assaults on the impartiality of a Latino judge had just begun to subside when he lobbed two tweets Friday morning responding to Warren, who had lambasted him as a "thin-skinned, racist bully" in a speech the previous evening. "Pocahontas is at it again!" Trump wrote in one. "Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one of the least productive U.S. Senators, has a nasty mouth." [Snip] The response to the Pocahontas remarks have been mixed and in many cases muted - a sign of how jittery GOP leaders are still trying to find their comfort level with his rhetoric. [Snip]...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry failed to submit enough valid signatures to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot, state GOP officials said Friday evening. Perry’s campaign told state election officials it had submitted 11,911 signatures, but a Virginia Republican familiar with the situation said that the Texas governor did not submit the required 10,000. Earlier Friday, the Republican Party of Virginia certified former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) to appear in the March ballot. Four candidates — Romney, Perry, Paul and former House speaker Newt Gingrich — turned in thousands of signatures by the deadline. State...

(To be clear, that is a relatively low bar. Republicans went into the political wilderness in a major way following Bush's re-election as he grew increasingly less popular and it became increasingly more clear that the party was either unable or unwilling to break with the chief executive in any major way. Polls suggest that the Republican brand remains badly damaged in the eyes of the American public with most people still trusting Obama far more than Republicans in Congress to solve the major issues of the day.) With 2010 right around the corner, there is significant movement in this...

Off-year elections can be notoriously unreliable as predictors of the future, but as a window on how the political landscape may have changed in the year since President Obama won the White House, Tuesday's Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey delivered clear warnings for the Democrats. Neither gubernatorial election amounted to a referendum on the president, but the changing shape of the electorates in both states and the shifts among key constituencies revealed cracks in the Obama 2008 coalition and demonstrated that, at this point, Republicans have the more energized constituency heading into next year's midterm elections. The most...