Free Republic

So what do we make of Jesse Kelly? I’m probably no different to many in that I’ve searched for something, anything to replace a mere portion of Rush Limbaugh and his program. There are many pretenders, few contenders. I’ve addressed the ‘officially designated heirs’ of Clay Travis & Buck Sexton in another post. Their biggest problem is attempting to be nice guys while getting into the dirty business of politics. They simply won’t attack the Marxists & statists directly. They’ll criticize, they’ll complain but that’s about all. They have fallen into a rut of Chicken Little shrieking about all the...

After some uncertain initial steps and shaky first few months, Clay Travis & Buck Sexton have developed an on-air rapport and rhythm and usually deliver a show (or podcast – more on that later) worthy of a daily listen (at least most of it). Both tend to play up and play into their stereotypes – Buck the history nerd who doesn’t watch the Super Bowl, Clay the rabid Southern sports fan. They also frequently invoke their previous professional lives, Buck at CIA and Clay Travis as a lawyer and later a sports blogger. They have been designated as the official...

It’s difficult to deny that the implementation of leftist ideology is less a series of four-way intersections with stop signs or traffic lights at which people are forced to stop and possibly consider the ramifications of such implementation...and more a series of on-ramps onto an already-busy and flowing highway. Far too many people are intellectually lazy and believe that, to extend the metaphor, if they don’t have to slow below 70 mph then more cars entering the highway isn’t a problem for them. It’s only after they’ve passed dozens of such ramps that they wonder how and why their child...

The default, knee-jerk response to any political or cultural disagreement these days is to declare the situation analogous to WWII Germany and to liken one’s antagonist to Nazi figures of varying rank from brownshirted street thugs up to and including Hitler himself. It’s lazy because it’s common and common because it’s lazy. In most cases it reflects the shallow, minimum-effort, will-this-be-on-the-test approach of the so-called educational system in which a Rachel Carson and her fatuous book will receive a semester’s worth of attention and strange, cult-like worship while Mozart, Newton, van Leeuwenhoek, Pasteur, Watt, and Bohr may never be mentioned,...

The Anger of the Blinded Cyclops By now, knowledge of the persons and timeline involved in the Russia Hoax (to choose Gregg Jarrett’s phrase among many others) has seeped into the public’s admittedly shallow consciousness. Although they are at opposite poles of seriousness, the Russia Hoax is similar in some ways to the cast and events of The Bachelor. We don’t necessarily want or care to know who the Bachelor is and who he’s chosen but the PR engine, aided and abetted by a bored, cynical media, blasts the news far and wide until it’s nearly impossible not to know....

Video Killed The Radio Star. Another one. We're six months or so into the podcast-only era of the erstwhile Laura Ingraham Show. For many she was our favorite red-in-tooth-and-claw conservative female who would laugh and sputter, as appropriate, at the lefty Journolist/NYT/WaPo mendacious gambit of the day as well as their constant gaslighting efforts. As a single mother of three, she often noted her lack of sleep and grueling schedule and that was BEFORE the Fox primetime show began. The handwriting was on the wall for months before she announced the retirement of her daily 3-hour radio show which required...

Preamble/disclaimer: FR is an oasis of strong, sovereign women who often have a better grip on principles and facts and history than the males do. There are many of them and I'm grateful for their presence/contributions and the example they set. And then there are the sensible female media figures, politicians and (all too rare) prominent figures in business and entertainment. That said... Feminist dogma states that women are intelligent, rational beings unswayed by emotional appeals. In fact, feminist dogma has largely been converted wholesale into law and corporate policy. Anyone suggesting that women are too easily swayed by emotional...

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Plain Dealer on Monday laid off 14 newsroom employees as part of a staff reduction first announced in December. The 14, most of them reporters and all members of Local 1 of the News Guild of the Communication Workers of America, account for about a third of the unionized news-gathering staff. One additional journalist will depart later this month. The company had earlier announced plans to eliminate 29 other jobs in May by shifting its page-production work to a centralized outside system. Three of those production staffers will move to the newsroom, however, reducing the net...

Susan Bucher, the long-time supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, was suspended Friday by Gov. Ron DeSantis following a series of post-election controversies. At a news conference at The Historical Museum of Palm Beach, DeSantis said he would follow Secretary of State Mike Ertel’s recommendation to suspend Bucher in order “to right the ship” in Palm Beach County. “Palm Beach County stands alone in their level of ineptitude” in the election reporting process, DeSantis said.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham is transitioning her nationally-syndicated radio show that launched more than 17 years ago into a podcast, according to a Wednesday announcement. Ingraham, who was also awarded a prime-time program on Fox News in Oct. 2017, will launch "The Laura Ingraham Show" in January on PodcastOne, which dubs itself the nation’s leading advertiser-supported podcast network. “Due to her HUGE success on the Fox News channel, daily podcasts are a much better fit for Laura’s hectic schedule and provides her listeners in all markets access at any time to the new Laura Ingraham Show podcast," says PodcastOne...

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Publisher and Editor-in-Chief John Robinson Block has announced the appointment of Steve Kelley as the Post-Gazette's new editorial cartoonist. Mr. Kelley was formerly the editorial cartoonist for the San Diego Union-Tribune and the New Orleans Times- Picayune. A National Cartoonists Society Ruben Award winner, as well as National Headline Award winner, his cartoons are syndicated by Creator's Syndicate worldwide.

It doesn’t take a pithy aphorism from Sun-Tzu to know that understanding the enemy is crucial to engaging in battle and ultimately achieving victory. Even the most cynical and experienced political participant or observer must, in the quiet moments, still marvel at the absolute mendacity and childishness from Democrats in general, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and especially Dianne Feinstein – already a very old fool who now looks even more foolish. But while their tactics and ludicrous statements and actions – as always, amplified to deafening levels by a high-tech propaganda organ posing as a free press -...

So now we know what ‘the resistance’ really is. It’s the establishment. It’s the old political order. It’s that late 20th-century political set, those out-of-touch managerial elites, who still cannot believe the electorate rejected them. That is the take-home message of the bizarre political spectacle that was the burial of John McCain, where this neocon in life has been transformed into a resistance leader in death: that while the anti-Trump movement might doll itself up as rebellious, and even borrow its name from those who resisted fascism in Europe in the mid 20th-century, in truth it is primarily about restoring...

After numerous days away from the radio in April due to Lent and Easter holidays, Laura Ingraham has missed her show Thu 11 May and Fri 12 May. She has been the subject of endless speculation and matchmaking - including remarks by Ingraham herself - about a role in Trump's White House staff. In the immediate aftermath of the Inauguration it was an open secret that she was a possible choice for White House Press Secretary (ie Sean Spicer's job). But she returned to the radio fold and has been giving support and advice as she did before the election....

Despite the grim, fatalistic title make no mistake: this is a hagiography. These authors, after all, produced ‘HRC: State Secrets And The Rebirth Of Hillary Clinton’ in 2014. That book, of course, was an unabashed hagiography featuring information gleaned from the so-called inner circle. The authors employ the same method here, guaranteeing interviewees that they will be ‘on background’ and not identified by name. Had Allen & Parnes been Atlanta-based sportswriters covering Super Bowl LI, they would have provided painstaking detail of every aspect of the Falcons’ game preparation and playcalling – and the New England Patriots would simply be...

Yesterday afternoon Disney announced its quarterly earnings and something I've been predicting for several years now was at the forefront of most of those stories -- ESPN's income declined 11% compared to last year. The drag on earnings and revenue from ESPN led to a quarterly miss of estimates for ESPN's parent company, Disney. Fortunately for Disney the company has made smart strategic moves in other arenas -- buying Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel among others -- that have helped to defray the coming collapse of ESPN. So while Disney may not suffer terrible consequences thanks to the success of...

As we breathe a collective sigh of relief that would rival the wind speed of a Cat 5 hurricane and exult in the long-awaited political exile of the Clintons (and the Obamas), we must also countenance the long-term liabilities, in the literal and figurative senses, that are California and New York, with Illinois also blotting our copy book. No one expects another 49-state sweep or anything approaching it, but California + New York is a punishing cover charge of 84 electoral votes before the music at any GOP victory party can begin. Illinois last went red in 1988 for George...

-Juan Williams appears to be in physical pain -Hume, Perino and Rove are obviously in two minds about the result. Perino looks like she wants to slink off the set. -Some of the Big 3 network types have been around since B&W TV - literally. They are newsreaders, not historians. Why they are brought back year after year is a mystery. -Trump is of their generation but not their mindset. He is off to the sunrise, they to the sunset. -I don't think I'll be able to stay awake til the threshold is crossed.

THE EMPTY PLINTH Clint Eastwood’s empty chair monologue at the 2012 RNC convention was a bit of a head-scratcher in theory and in execution but Clint is no fool and his metaphor was as close to outright mockery was the cowed-by-consultants GOP Establishment were likely to get, with only Eastwood’s demigod status keeping the nervous nellies from quashing the whole thing. Literally, a chair is a seat at a table. Figuratively, it means participation if not outright leadership and responsibility for a group, usually of decision-makers. An empty chair, obviously, represents a vacuum of power despite the very real and...

Today, I’m happy to announce the release of our user blocking feature. As one of the most requested features from commenters over the years, user blocking provides you with the ability to manage who you interact with on Disqus. Blocking someone removes their activity from your experience across the network. This means that you’ll no longer get notifications from them via email or in your Disqus Inbox, nor will you see discussions or comments by them in your Home feed or on discussion threads.