Free Republic

This is pretty extraordinary, as the startled reaction from Chris Wallace demonstrates. In an interview aired Sunday morning on Fox, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson draws a sharp distinction between the values of the American people and the American government on one hand, and the values expressed by his boss, President Trump, on the other hand. *** “This administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities,” Cohn said, acknowledging the difficulty it has caused for him and others at top...

On Wednesday, a few hours after President Donald Trump announced, via Twitter, that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military, U.S. Naval Academy midshipman Regan Kibby drove to a nearby gym. In the locker room, he opened his bag and pulled out a T-shirt emblazoned with the word "Navy" and the academy's mascot, Bill the Goat. Then he started to cry. "I might not be able to say that anymore," Kibby, 19, says. "I might not be able to claim 'Navy.' "

We have not heard much from Jon Ossoff since last month, when the results in the Sixth District contest put an end to that noisy campaign. But last week, the Democrat attended a Georgia Voice fete to pick up a “best politician” award, bestowed by the newspaper’s LGBT audience. As noted at the Project Q website, Ossoff kind of implied that me might not be done with politics: “The LGBT community will be able to count on me as an ally every day – whether as a candidate for office or as a private citizen,” Ossoff told a crowd of...

Democrat Jon Ossoff wound up raising nearly $30 million for his unsuccessful campaign to represent Georgia’s 6th District – by far the most ever raised in a U.S. House contest – and spent almost every last dime of it. Campaign filing reports released this week show Ossoff raised about $6.3 million in the final three weeks of the vote and pumped in another $300,000 of his own money – $50,000 from a contribution and $250,000 in loans – in the last stretch. All told, he raised $29,959,740 and had about $13,000 left. Republican Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of...

The crosswalks are going in permanently at Piedmont and 10th, a hub for the Atlanta LGBTQ community. LGBT Pride Month ended Friday, but Atlanta crews are working this weekend on a project that will symbolize support for the local LGBTQ community year-round. The intersection of Piedmont Avenue and 10th Street is closed for the installation of permanent rainbow crosswalks, Channel 2 Action News reported.

On Nov. 9, Americans awakened to a startling reality: In the absence of broad, enduring citizen engagement, the door is left open for darkness to creep in and gain a foothold in our democracy. Amid that awakening, I launched my improbable campaign for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. It grew into something bigger than I could have imagined. *** We paired this economic platform with an unwavering support for a woman’s right to choose, Americans with preexisting conditions, criminal-justice reform, Medicare and Medicaid, voting rights, immigration reform, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, anti-corruption efforts and U.S. leadership to fight climate...

On the other hand, a Handel win is not anywhere near the victory/mandate/endorsement the Trump team will claim it to be. This is a Republican district. The only reason it was close: A lot of Republicans voted for a Democrat. So, the GOP victory on the merits is pretty limited. Spending enough money to scald a wet mule (to borrow a phrase from Haley Barbour) to hold on to a district that Tom Price (Trump’s HHS secretary) and Newt Gingrich held is not a sign of Republican health.

Two-thirds of voters in Georgia’s 6th District are very concerned or extremely concerned about climate change, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll conducted after Donald Trump’s decision to pull out from the Paris climate agreement. The poll was conducted after President Donald Trump’s decision to abandon the 2015 pollution-cutting pact, a move that has sharply divided Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel ahead of the June 20 runoff to represent the suburban Atlanta district. Handel has praised Trump’s decision to abandon the pollution-cutting agreement aimed at slowing climate change, calling it a “very bad deal for America and Americans.”...

Just a minute. I've got to get a lozenge. Thank you. I told the trustees I was sitting with after hearing Paula's speech I didn't think I could get through it. So we'll blame allergy instead of emotion.

Following news that a white supremacist has been accused of stabbing and killing several men who attempted to stop him from harassing Muslim women on a train, many have called for President Donald Trump to do something about the violence, with the implication being that the suspect is obviously one of his supporters. *** The Council on American-Islamic Relations also joined in on the fun, demanding that Trump denounce “rising bigotry” against Muslims. “President Trump must speak out personally against the rising tide of Islamophobia and other forms of bigotry and racism in our nation that he has provoked through...

One year for Father's Day, Mike Cabotaje bought a picture frame for his daughter to give his partner. It read "Greatest Dad Ever," which was odd he says, "because it suggests I'm second best at most." *** And the other holiday can take on a melancholy tinge when a child doesn't have a mother or father to fete. "Father's Day gets harder as the kids get older," says Danielle Ramo-Larios, an assistant professor at University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and mother of three with her wife, Sandy. "We get a lot more questions now that they hear...

The British, gay provocateur and former Breitbart editor is everything that traditionalists hate: bold, politically incorrect, unapologetic, and often offensive. He uses his unconventional style to spread conservatism, offend “snowflakes” and promote free speech. Milo is so controversial, many mainstream conservatives have completely written him off, for fear of tarnishing the GOP brand. While it may be tempting to disassociate with Milo, the Republican Party must listen up and learn a few lessons from the controversial Brit — especially if it wants to expand its base among young voters, who now make up the nation’s largest voting bloc. *** The...

The one millennial-focused panel on the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) main-stage Thursday was titled "FREE stuff vs FREE-dom: Millennials' Love Affair with Bernie Sanders?" It got worse from there. *** Asked what might bring Bernie-loving millennials around to Republicans or capitalism, the panelists continued to bash Democratic policies such as the Affordable Care Act and the socialist policies that wrecked Venezuela. But they still failed to offer any positive visions of their own. It served as a stark reminder why the Republican Party does so dismally with young folks—in polls, just around 20 percent of millennials tend to identify...

Gov. Nathan Deal was unequivocal in his opposition to a revived “religious liberty” measure on Thursday, signaling he would veto the measure if it made it to his desk. “I didn’t want there to be any confusion about where I stand on the RFRA bill: I have no desire or appetite to entertain that legislation,” Deal said. He was referring to a one-page proposal introduced this week by state Sen. Marty Harbin that brought the debate over the legislation back to the forefront. His measure would require the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 to apply in Georgia. ***...

First, post-1960s social conservatism — the bigger-than-the-religious-right tent that once included a lot of moderately religious fellow travelers — has collapsed back to its zealous core. On practically every issue save abortion, liberals won the culture war decisively, and religious conservatives awoke to find themselves strangers in their own country, dismissed as bigots from liberalism’s pulpits and stuck on the wrong side of 40-60 or 30-70 public-opinion splits. But social liberalism’s sweeping victory produced new forms of backlash — less traditionalist and more populist, less religious and more rowdy, not sacred but profane. These forms of resistance take aim at...

If you halved Donald Trump’s age, changed his sexual orientation, gave him a British accent and fussed with his hair only a little, you’d end up with a creature much like Milo Yiannopoulos. He could be Trump’s lost gay child. In fact, Yiannopoulos, 33, has a habit of referring to Trump, 70, as “Daddy.” Trump the father and Yiannopoulos the son are both provocateurs who realize that in this day and age especially, the currency of celebrity isn’t demeaned by the outrageousness and offensiveness through which a person achieves it. Both are con men, wrapping themselves in higher causes, though...

The strangest part of yesterday was seeing Milo Yiannopoulous's increasingly sincere Facebook posts, as the awful realisation dawned on him - as it dawned on Nigel Farage during the referendum - that the sweet shelter of the mainstream right was being withdrawn from him. When he had attacked his female peers in the London tech scene, when he attacked transgender people for being "mentally ill", when he attacked an actor for the temerity to be black, female and funny in a jumpsuit, he was given licence. He was provocative, starting a debate, exercising his free speech. But yesterday he found...

Viewers who watched it themselves saw a rambling, misleading performance. But those who relied on conservative cable newscasts or talk radio hosts got a very different impression.On Thursday, Donald Trump gave a press conference that was rife with untruths and evasions. Let’s begin with specific examples of demonstrable falsehoods, so that readers who are favorable to the president won’t have to trust my characterization: [Blather, Blather] *** Perhaps the divergent coverage of Thursday’s press conference helps to illustrate that a great many of those people aren’t seeing the same information as those who oppose Trump—they are being fed lies and...

President Donald Trump's press conference Thursday morning was planned to announce his new pick for secretary of labor. But that's certainly not what anyone is talking after Trump took us along for an hour-long wild ride. [A slideshow offers a selection of tweets, more than half referencing SNL and almost all mocking the President.]

Let it never be said that Gov. Nathan Deal’s friendship with Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is faltering in the final days of their two political terms. The governor has appointed Reed’s wife Sarah-Elizabeth Reed to the powerful Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s higher education system, passing over many GOP donors and other allies who have long sought that seat. *** Where Deal once looked to Reed for help with the Obama administration, Hizzoner must turn to Deal for some pull with Trump’s White House. And the GOP governor has signaled he’s more than willing to help. His top...