Free Republic

The New York Times on Memorial Day weekend blamed American citizens for record-high gas prices, instead of President Biden’s war on American energy. As gas prices reached another record on Saturday of $4.60 per gallon, up 45 cents from one month ago, according to AAA, many Americans are looking to enjoy their holiday weekend by getting out of town using a gas-powered vehicle. Yet the Times on Friday slammed American drivers for over-consuming gasoline.

Henry Kissinger, the 99-year old former secretary of state, suggested that Ukraine would likely have to give up some territory in a negotiated settlement, though he added that “ideally the dividing line should be a return to the status quo” before the invasion, which included the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the seizure of parts of the Donbas. “Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,’’ Mr. Kissinger concluded. Almost immediately, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine accused Mr. Kissinger of appeasement, retorting angrily that “I...

WASHINGTON — Leading senators of both parties have struck a deal over a draft bill that would expand a 1996 war crimes law to give American courts jurisdiction over cases involving atrocities committed abroad even if neither party is a U.S. citizen, in the latest response to Russia’s apparent targeting of civilians in Ukraine. The idea behind the draft, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, is that if someone who committed war crimes abroad later comes to the United States and is discovered, that person could be prosecuted for those actions by the Justice Department.Killings...

When he shoots down a Russian jet, “I am happy that this plane will no longer bomb my peaceful towns. And as we see in practice, that is exactly what Russian jets do.” “I had situations when I was approaching a Russian plane to a close enough distance to target and fire,” he said. “I could already detect it but was waiting for my missile to lock on while at the same time from the ground they tell me that a missile was fired at me already.” He said he maneuvered his jet through a series of extreme banks, dives...

Military losses have mounted, progress has slowed, and a blame game has begun among some Russian supporters of the war. In January, the head of a group of serving and retired Russian military officers declared that invading Ukraine would be “pointless and extremely dangerous.” It would kill thousands, he said, make Russians and Ukrainians enemies for life, risk a war with NATO and threaten “the existence of Russia itself as a state.” To many Russians, that seemed like a far-fetched scenario, since few imagined that an invasion of Ukraine was really possible. But two months later, as Russia’s advance stalls...

It is hardly vindication of The Post’s flawless reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop that 17 months late, the New York Times has admitted the laptop is real. It is an indictment of the Times and a betrayal of their readers who were kept in the dark about the true nature of Joe Biden before the 2020 election. But now that we are all on the same page, there are some serious questions the administration needs to answer, which go to America’s national security at a time of international peril. Question 1 President Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, refused to...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the White House on Jan. 6 and said lawmakers would ask Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove then-President Trump from office if he did not do more to condemn the rioters at the Capitol, according to a new book by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns. “This Will Not Pass” says that Graham furiously called White House counsel Pat Cipollone while the riot was happening on Jan. 6, 2021, Axios reported. "We’ll be asking you for the 25th Amendment" if Trump does not do more to condemn the rioters,...

The lawyers and First Amendment scholars who have made it their life’s work to defend the well-established but newly threatened constitutional protections for journalists don’t usually root for the media to lose in court. But that’s what is happening with a series of recent defamation lawsuits against right-wing outlets that legal experts say could be the most significant libel litigation in recent memory. The suits, which are being argued in several state and federal courts, accuse Project Veritas, Fox News, The Gateway Pundit, One America News and others of intentionally promoting and profiting from false claims of voter fraud during...

American officials are examining the ownership of a $700 million superyacht currently in a dry dock at an Italian seacoast town, and believe it could be associated with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, according to multiple people briefed on the information. United States intelligence agencies have made no final conclusions about the ownership of the superyacht — called the Scheherazade — but American officials said they had found initial indications that it was linked to Mr. Putin. The information from the U.S. officials came after The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Italian authorities were looking into the...

At a synagogue.. Israeli social worker.. had a flash of historic vertigo.. ancestors had lived in Chisinau more than a century ago, surviving a devastating pogrom in 1903 before emigrating to what became Israel. Now their descendant had returned .. this time not as a victim, but as a rescuer. “It’s like a closure for me,” .. from Jerusalem who had come to help evacuate thousands of Jewish refugees from Ukraine to Israel. “At the time, it was almost a shame to be Jewish.. Now people want to show they are Jewish so they can be evacuated.” Today.. the context...

On Feb. 23, Razil Malikov, a tank driver in the Russian Army, called his family and said he would be home soon; his unit’s military drills in Crimea were just about wrapping up. The next morning, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Mr. Malikov hasn’t been heard from since. On Monday, Ukraine published a video of a captured soldier in his unit, apologizing for taking part in the invasion. “He had no idea they could send him to Ukraine,” Mr. Malikov’s brother, Rashid Allaberganov, said in a phone interview from the south-central Russian region of Bashkortostan. “Everyone is in a state of...

NEW YORK, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Former U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin asked a U.S. court on Monday for a new trial after losing her defamation case against the New York Times (NYT.N) earlier this month, and requested that the judge overseeing the case be disqualified. Palin's attorneys said last week they would take those steps because several jurors received push notifications on their cellphones before deliberations were over about U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff's decision to dismiss the case regardless of their verdict.

NEW YORK, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate, plans to seek a new trial and have the judge disqualified after losing her defamation case against the New York Times. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan discussed Palin's plan at a hearing on Wednesday, and said he will issue a written opinion by March 1 explaining why he dismissed her case while jurors were deliberating. He said he would speed up the opinion because of the "fracas" surrounding the dismissal. The unusual hearing came eight days after jurors rejected...

On an episode of Joe Rogan’s popular podcast last year, he turned to a topic that has gripped right-wing communities and other Americans who feel skeptical about the pandemic: search engines. “If I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to DuckDuckGo,” Mr. Rogan said, referring to the small privacy-focused search engine. “I wasn’t finding them on Google.” Praise for DuckDuckGo has become a popular refrain during the pandemic among right-wing social media influencers and conspiracy theorists who question Covid-19 vaccines and push discredited coronavirus treatments. Some have posted screenshots showing...

Establishment media on Tuesday panned Special Counsel John Durham’s court filings that alleged Hillary Clinton’s campaign associates spied on Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency. After more than 48 hours since Durham’s court filing revelations were reported, the New York Times and Washington Post finally wrote articles on the subject, but they cast doubt on the filings’ significance. The outlets framed their articles around criticizing “right-leaning media” for “carefully” scrutinizing “off track” narratives that are “often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation.” The Times headlined its Monday story, “Court Filing Started a Furor in Right-Wing Outlets,...