Free Republic

With One Tweet, Chuck Todd Reveals The Truth About the Mainstream Media It’s always the people inside a bubble who think they’re the ones with an outsider’s perspective on things. The mainstream media fits this profile perfectly. The big name press continue to deny there is anything wrong with the way they do things, or the things they choose to do. NBC’s Chuck Todd, for example, is happy to blame Donald Trump for his profession’s problems and abdicate any responsibility. They all are.Todd sent out this tweet when President Trump was going after the media during his press conference...

Mark Zuckerberg gave new insights about how he sees Facebook’s role in informing the world today during a Live video one-on-one year-end chat with COO Sheryl Sandberg. Facebook’s CEO also lent support to employees trying to fight fake news today, though reports indicated some employees were dissatisfied by his initially tepid response to the issue. “Facebook is a new kind of platform. It’s not a traditional technology company,” he said today, mirroring his exact words from last week when Facebook launched product updates and partnerships with outside fact-checkers to fight fake news. But then he went a step further,...

....Clinton is so far ahead of Donald Trump in the race for the presidency that she no longer even feels the need to pay attention to the Republican nominee. Buoyed by a double digit lead in some national polls, Mrs Clinton has said she is now looking past Mr Trump entirely, and will no longer counter allegations made by her rival. "I don’t even think about responding to him anymore,” Mrs Clinton said when asked about Mr Trump’s charge that American media outlets are in cahoots with her presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton's campaign ignored pleas from staff members for the candidate to boost her efforts in Michigan and Wisconsin, two unexpected battleground states, The Huffington Post reported Wednesday. The two states, considered safely Democratic by virtually all pollsters ahead of the election, swung for Donald Trump on Election Day, securing the Republican his shocking victory. One senior operative told The Huffington Post that in Michigan, which Clinton is on track to lose by about 12,000 votes, her campaign's canvassing operation was one-tenth the size of Democratic candidate John Kerry's in 2004. In Wisconsin, local campaign officials were forced to raise...

CNN's Chris Cuomo lectured his viewers on Sunday that he and other journalists have the right to possess the stolen WikiLeaks emails, but you regular folks can't. Of course, he's wrong. There's something called the First Amendment. WikiLeaks called out the anchor's untrue assertion on Twitter. CNN falsely states that it unlawful for the public--but not for CNN--to search WikiLeaks #PodestaEmails pic.twitter.com/sZMoM9iT2i— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 16, 2016 Social media users are rightfully annoyed by Cuomo's assertion, suspecting he's trying to ensure Americans listen to CNN's interpretation of the hacked emails instead of letting them read the messages for themselves.On Sunday, WikiLeaks released the ninth batch...

Throughout this questioning by Ted Cruz, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson maintains that how the enemy is identified is unimportant, and that he and other intelligence and law enforcement top dogs know full well who the enemy is, and are busy foiling his plots. Cruz, in response, shreds Johnson, pointing to numerous ways in which the Obama administration’s politically correct willful ignorance led to danger signs being disregarded numerous times — danger signs that, if they had been heeded, might have prevented the Fort Hood, Boston, and Orlando jihad massacres. Johnson’s irritable arrogance here, and refusal to address the facts Cruz...

I got a phone call from my old friend “Jane” this week. Jane and I went to high school together. We’ve kept in touch over the years as our lives took radically different directions. She became a city mouse: got married, moved to Seattle and became very involved in the sustainable movement. I became a country mouse: got married, moved to a small farm in Idaho and helped start a woodcraft business. Jane’s burning ambition is to get me to live as sustainable a life as she does. She can’t understand why I don’t embrace her vastly superior green lifestyle.

The newspapers’ editors say they are “fed up with Gov. Chris Christie’s arrogance . . . his opportunism . . . his hypocrisy.” They’re also “disgusted” with Christie’s recent endorsement of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump after he spent months “trashing” the former reality TV star on the campaign trail.

Obama to designate the Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which authorizes presidents to create national monuments on federal land to protect "objects of historic and scientific interest." With his second term winding down, Obama has now protected more than 265 million acres of land and water, more than any other administration. A year ago, Obama designated much of the Angeles National Forest as the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. The designations, which do not include funding, were supported by groups including the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn., the Sierra Club, Defenders...

"Americans are working," President Obama proudly declared at a White House press conference Friday morning. He was referring to the new jobs report that revealed unemployment has dropped to 4.9 percent - the first time it's fallen below 5 percent in 8 years. The president also remarked on how his administration has added 14 million new jobs over his tenure and that over the past 6 months wages have risen at an impressive rate. He couldn't help pointing to falling gas prices as well. After gleefully sharing these new numbers, Obama quipped that the supposedly successful economy is "inconvenient" for...

First it was Internet outrage over the Reese peanut butter Christmas trees that didn't look like Christmas trees. Now it's cheese-less cheese sticks. Dozens of McDonald's customers on social media are complaining that the restaurant's mozzarella sticks are missing the cheese. The new menu item was recently launched at McDonald's as part of its "McPick 2" menu. But customers have been tweeting photos of their orders and displeasure at the lack of cheese. McDonald's issued a statement on Thursday: "We are aware of a low volume of guest concerns about our Mozzarella Cheese Sticks," spokeswoman Lisa McComb said in an...

A YouTube video that went viral — showing a Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 911 GT3 tearing through residential streets of Beverly Hills; flying though stop signs while pedestrians waited to cross, narrowly avoiding other motorists — has caused outrage, with neighbors pleading with police to take action before someone gets hurt. According to NBC4, the owner of said vehicles is claiming “diplomatic immunity,” telling a video journalist who asked for comment, “I could have you killed and get away with it.” The name of the car’s owner has not been released, but he is rumored to be part of the...

**SNIP** The talks have featured a high-profile negotiation over whether the goal should remain 2 degrees, or lowered to 1.5 degrees - the target favored by a string of island nations afraid of being swallowed whole by rising seas. It's looking increasingly likely that the final deal will have at least a nod to a 1.5 degree ceiling. The latest draft accord circulating in Paris late Thursday calls for "holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C, recognizing that this would significantly...

On Friday, CNN/ORC released new poll data showing Donald Trump with his biggest lead in their 2016 polling -- which also gave him his highest polling average since he joined the race. One big reason for that is that Trump has a massive advantage among those who don't have a college degree, as we noted in a graph We can look at this as a microcosm of the 2016 election on the whole. Trump has consolidated a base of support; the establishment is fractured in its support for someone to stand up to him. This isn't a clean analogy, but...

Employees in District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of Community Affairs are apparently required to stand every time the mayor enters the room. Staff members in the office were ordered to stand up and greet Bowser when she entered the room for a meeting, according to an email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation via the D.C. government’s Freedom of Information Act online reading room. In the email dated Feb. 5, Bowser’s director of community affairs, Charon P.W. Hines directs Bernedia Long, an employee of the agency, to make sure all staff members stood up when they saw...

"Although I’ll always love you guys, I?have had to quit — for my own sanity and for the sake of our relationships — attempting to engage in intelligent conversation about politics and social issues with most of you."

[BIG SNIP]The Quakers’[new penitentiary system using isolation]experiment revealed that the consultation of one’s inner self without outside reference or constraints, with nothing to measure one’s self against, could produce distorted human beings who became certifiably mad. Self-proclaimed gods can turn out to be a Caligula or a Jim Jones.Just as bad as the fact consulting the inner light can result in the exhibition of mad or corrupt behavior is the fact that the newly minted gods believe themselves to be entitled to demand obeisance from us mere mortals.We mere everyday humans must bow down and worship the deities among us....

Americans ‘overreacted’ to the 9/11 attacks, according to the newly appointed first female vice-chancellor of Oxford University. Terrorism expert Professor Louise Richardson said the 2001 atrocity provoked such a response because violent extremism was a ‘new experience’ in the US. Widespread panic ensued in America after al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger airliners and flew them into buildings, causing almost 3,000 deaths. In contrast, British citizens have shown themselves to be more ‘resilient’ in the face of terror when dealing with violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, she said.

....Obama paid a surprise visit yesterday to a Miami religious shrine popular with Cuban exiles.... "The president is visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity in Miami to pay his respects to the Cuban-American diaspora that worships there," said Bernadette Meehan, National Security Council spokeswoman. "He will honour the sacrifices that Cuban-Americans have made in their pursuit of liberty and opportunity, as well as their extraordinary contributions to our country." ...Cuba is due to be taken off the US list of state sponsors of terrorism

These are not good times for the Republic (and if you laughed or scratched your head at me calling America a republic, I rest my case). But they are amusing times, at least for those of us capable of extracting some measure of mirth and schadenfreude from the president’s predicament. With the sand running out on the Obama presidency, it’s finally dawning on the president’s friends and fans that he can be a real jerk. Consider the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank. For the last six years, he’s spent much of his time rolling his eyes and sneering at Republicans. His...