Free Republic

Once we have eliminated all the impossible scenarios, the least improbable outcome of the war in Ukraine is a Russian victory. Any conceivable Russian victory now will entail such a loss of blood and treasure that it will have to be judged Pyrrhic at best. But it will be a victory nonetheless — and we in the West had better come to grips with that hard truth. Let’s begin by eliminating the impossible. The first unrealistic endgame is the reduction of Ukraine to a vassal state of the Russian empire. The second impossible scenario is the total defeat of the...

A lot of the 9/11 anniversary coverage struck me as distastefully tasteful. On the morning of Sept. 12, I was pumping gas just off I-91 in Vermont and picked up the Valley News. Its lead headline covered the annual roll call of the dead -- or, as the alliterative editor put it, "Litany of the Lost." That would be a grand entry for Litany of the Lame, an anthology of all-time worst headlines. Sept. 11 wasn't a shipwreck: The dead weren't "lost," they were murdered. So I skipped that story. Underneath was something headlined "Half a Decade Gone By, A...