Free Republic

A few hours ago Bloomberg broke a story, The Bloomberg story says that just one day before the fatal Lion Air accident, the very same airplane had suffered a similar pitch-control anomaly. But in this preceding case, an additional pilot, riding in the jump seat of the cockpit, recognized the problem and overrode part of the errant control system. The plane flew on to its destination. The Bloomberg story says: As the Lion Air crew fought to control their diving Boeing Co. 737 Max 8, they got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding...

Appearing as a guest on Sunday's Reliable Sources, CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley claimed that President Ronald Reagan "used to fabricate stories," and alluded to a story about the Holocaust as an example. After fellow guest James Fallows of The Atlantic recalled possible holes in stories told by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, lamenting that voters do not seem to care, Brinkley brought up false stories that circulated in 1972 about Ed Muskie, and then moved to Reagan as he added: So there are these fake kind of stories that come in, but I agree with James Fallows completely with...

As I see it the Sunni minority in Iraq and the Sunni majority in Syria are under siege by Shia. ISIS is the one successful Sunni group opposing the Shia. A very large portion of Arab Sunnis at least passively support ISIS, not because they support its extreme ideology but because they want the Sunnis to emerge victorious. A subset of the pro ISIS Sunnis actually support their extreme ideology. What we call the Iraqi military is seen by almost all Arab Sunnis as a Shia army under the influence, if not the control, of Iran. This explains why Turkey...

A group of anti-Israel activists and journalists are engaged in a coordinated campaign to stifle criticism of controversial secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel by attacking the former Republican senator’s critics, according to emails obtained by the Free Beacon. Fenton communications chief executive officer David Fenton, the Atlantic’s national correspondent James Fallows, former diplomat Charles ‘Chas’ Freeman, Just Foreign Policy director Robert Naiman, and American Conservative founding editor Scott McConnell participated in a recent email exchange dedicated to silencing Hagel’s critics, the emails reveal. The emailers targeted recent comments made by Elliott Abrams, a former Bush administration National Security Council...

Mitt Romney has turned into such a skilled debater that he could trounce President Barack Obama in their three head-to-head encounters in the run-up to the election, former Democratic Labor Secretary Robert Reich believes. Romney “is going to be debating somebody who is not nearly as good a debater as his reputation,” Reich tells Atlantic Magazine in its September issue. He says that under live questioning, Obama “can seem kind of wooden” and “at a loss for words.” “Even if Romney is scripted and not spontaneous, he will come across as ‘on his game,’ ” Reich tells the Atlantic. “The...

I won't be paying to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The premise is too absurd since (other than Liza Minelli's ex) Vampires don't exist. However, I would definitely watch Abraham Lincoln: Moonbat Hunter since there is a plethora of Moonbats out there. Many of the Moonbats are hidden until they break out of their protective covering as happened to James Fallows of Atlantic Magazine. You can read about Fallow's self-exposure as a Moonbat in NEWSBUSTERS. For years Fallows kept his inner Moonbat well hidden until he exposed himself with an article titled, "5 Signs the United States Is Undergoing...

James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic, usually presents an image of himself as a "reasonable" liberal. However yesterday he revealed his inner moonbat with an article title worthy of a thread name in the sanity challenged Democratic Underground: "5 Signs the United States is Undergoing a Coup." After a few hours of reflection, Fallows realized he allowed too much of his moonbat side to be displayed to the public so he altered the title with this explanation Midnight update: This item went up three hours ago with a more blunt-instrument headline than it should ever have had: "5 Signs...

The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge. The inside story of a historic failure On a Friday afternoon last November, I met Douglas Feith in his office at the Pentagon to discuss what has happened in Iraq. Feith's title is undersecretary of defense for policy, which places him, along with several other undersecretaries, just below Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon's hierarchy. Informally he is seen in Washington as...

o civics text has the stomach to describe Washington's "wait in line" industry. When a famous witness is to appear before a committee of Congress, or a famous case is to be argued at the Supreme Court, tourists imagine they can drop in to watch; but they discover that the line for admission formed well before dawn. Professionals in town—lawyers, lobbyists—can't afford to be left out, especially if clients' money is at stake. So they hire services to do the waiting for them. On the days of big events, lines resembling those outside soup kitchens or for-pay blood banks snake...

Over the past few months I interviewed several dozen people about what could be expected in Iraq after the United States dislodged Saddam Hussein. An assumption behind the question was that sooner or later the United States would go to war—and would go with at best a fraction of the support it enjoyed eleven years ago when fighting Iraq during the Gulf War. Most nations in the region and traditional U.S. allies would be neutral or hostile unless the Bush Administration could present new evidence of imminent danger from Iraq. A further assumption was that even alone, U.S. forces would...

The image of a boy shot dead in his helpless father's arms during an Israeli confrontation with Palestinians has become the Pietà of the Arab world. Now a number of Israeli researchers are presenting persuasive evidence that the fatal shots could not have come from the Israeli soldiers known to have been involved in the confrontation. The evidence will not change Arab minds—but the episode offers an object lesson in the incendiary power of an icon.The name Mohammed al-Dura is barely known in the United States. Yet to a billion people in the Muslim world it is an infamous symbol...

I used to watch a show called "Ethics in America" some time ago where they had 10-15 "experts" in their field in a horseshoe-shaped conference table and discussed issues of the day. One episode which has practical sigificance today was called,"Under Orders, Under Fire," and author/editor James Fallows discussed it in his infamous "Atlantic Monthly" article and heralded book, "Breaking the News". The moderator was Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School, who moved from panelist to panelist asking increasingly difficult questions in the law school's famous Socratic style. In the current conflict with Iraq, given the enormous number...