Free Republic

Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The milestone has emboldened White House critics of the probe to declare, as Vice President Mike Pence did on NBC News, that "it is time to wrap it up." Never mind that the Mueller investigation is, comparatively, in its infancy. The Whitewater probe of Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example, began in 1994 and ended more than six years later. Mueller's 12 months of work has turned up more clear wrongdoing than Kenneth Starr ever did: There have been 20 indictments and 5 guilty pleas,...

From the beginning of his campaign for president, Donald Trump portrayed illegal immigration as a forest fire that threatens to spread rapidly and engulf us all. Mexicans, he charged, are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” He thought Americans should be afraid. The president and his attorney general ignore the real dangers posed by most foreigners here illegally: They will fill jobs that Americans don’t want, learn English, pay taxes and stay out of trouble. Chilling, huh? The president relishes lurid tales of the criminal gang MS-13. Last year, he said: “They stomp on their victims. They beat them...

Fourteen climate researchers, including six from U.S. universities, have been selected for French President Emmanuel Macron’s “Make Our Planet Great Again” initiative. The scientists applied to move to France to carry out climate science projects in the country’s top research laboratories. The selected researchers include some of America’s brightest scientific talents: Alexey Fedorov, a Yale professor and Guggenheim fellow, and James Clark, a Duke University climate expert, according to a press release Wednesday from France’s Ministry of Higher Education and Research. The applicants’ projects, covering a range of topics including Arctic climate change and improving air quality, are expected to...

The 2018 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), reflects growing animosity towards journalists. Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies.The climate of hatred is steadily more visible in the Index, which evaluates the level of press freedom in 180 countries each year. Hostility towards the media from political leaders is no longer limited to authoritarian countries such as Turkey (down two at 157th) and Egypt (161st), where “media-phobia” is now so pronounced that journalists are routinely accused...

he Associated Press and other news organizations are asking a judge to unseal records in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. The media coalition argued in a court filing Wednesday that Mueller's probe is "one of the most consequential criminal investigations in our nation's history" and that there's overwhelming public interest in records from the case. The news organizations are specifically asking for transcripts of hearings in the ongoing prosecution of President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. They also want the judge to unseal law enforcement applications for search warrants, including on Manafort's home and a storage unit.

The Trump administration has removed mentions of climate change from federal government websites, yet the air and water continue to warm and sea levels keep rising. Data on climate change is buried on those sites where it used to be displayed prominently, and still glaciers melt and animals appear where they weren’t before. No, climate change doesn’t stop just because you ignore it — like tooth decay or that weird rattle in your car, it only gets worse, until you can’t possibly look the other way any longer. In this case, however, the stakes are much higher than a blown...

Chris Cuomo of CNN, commenting this morning on the disclosure that Sean Hannity has received some legal advice from Michael Cohen, pontificates: "If you are on television, and you have an audience, and you represent a news organization, you have a duty to disclose things that sniff of conflict. The conflict bar is very low . . . You're supposed to say things protectively, even if they're not necessary." Yet Cuomo very rarely mentions that his brother Andrew, Governor of New York, is a potential presidential candidate, ranked in the top ten contenders. Chris might assume that the whole world...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency violated the law when it approved a $43,000 soundproof phone booth last year for the office of embattled Administrator Scott Pruitt, a congressional watchdog unit said on Monday. The Government Accountability Office said the EPA violated the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act. The law prohibits an agency from obligating more than $5,000 in federal funds to furnish, redecorate or make improvements in the office of a presidential appointee without first notifying appropriations committees in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The EPA also violated the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from...

U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke took an unnecessary charter flight in June that cost taxpayers over $12,000, the Interior Department’s internal watchdog said on Monday - travel linked to his visit to a professional hockey team in Nevada. The report from the department’s Office of Inspector General came amid mounting pressure on Trump Cabinet officials over their ethics and spending habits while in office. “We determined that Zinke’s use of chartered flights in fiscal year (FY) 2017 generally followed relevant law, policy, rules, and regulations,” the report said.

Sources tell ABC News President Donald Trump spoke Friday with his personal attorney Michael Cohen who, according to court documents, has been under criminal investigation for months, largely centered on his business dealings. Sources say Cohen still remains Trump's attorney. The New York Times first reported the phone call between Trump and Cohen.

The cover for Time magazine's latest issue shows President Trump in a storm after the FBI raided the office of Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. The cover shows Trump sitting in a chair with waves of water and papers flying around the room. The cover has the word: "Stormy." It links to an article titled, "Donald Trump Relied on Michael Cohen to Weather the Storm. Now The President Is On His Own."

While we were working as a nation to cleanse the American body of the poison of racism against blacks — a long, painful endeavor that was finally finding considerable success in the latter half of the 20th century — a different poison was being introduced into the body: racism against whites. Full out, white people are inherently, genetically evil racism. That statement may have sounded extreme a few years ago. No more. It is mainstreaming now right under our noses and, like so many damaging ideas of recent years, it is flowering among the leftists that oppress our nation’s college...

Liberal journalists have spilled a whole lot of ink in the Trump era, boasting how they've suffered watching a week or so of Fox News programming to explore the strange informational terrain of the Trump voter. They pompously proclaim it's television for your crazy Uncle Frank, pushing conspiracy theories for dumb people while nurturing resentment toward the elites -- meaning, of course, them. That nasty cartoon is rebutted by the new Fox News program "Life Liberty & Levin," hosted by Mark Levin. It is more intellectual than anything produced on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN or MSNBC. Nothing they have on...

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is warning of a looming worldwide political threat. In her new book, "Fascism: A Warning," she argues contemporary world leaders are turning to the same tactics used by fascists like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini nearly a century ago. "We should be awake to the assault on democratic values that has gathered strength in many countries abroad and that is dividing America at home," she writes. Albright pointed to politics in countries like Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines, Poland and Venezuela. She also addresses President Trump in her book, writing: "If we think of fascism...

PANAMA CITY - President Donald Trump's company appealed directly to Panama's president to intervene in its fight over control of a luxury hotel, even invoking a treaty between the two countries, in what ethics experts say was a blatant mingling of Trump's business and government interests. That appeal in a letter last month from lawyers for the Trump Organization to Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela was apparently unsuccessful - an arbitrator declined to reinstate the Trump management team to the waterfront hotel in Panama City. But it provides hard proof of exactly the kind of conflict experts feared when Trump...

Several weeks after taking the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency, Administrator Scott Pruitt was running late and stuck in Washington, D.C., traffic. Sources tell CBS News that he wanted to use his vehicle's lights and sirens to get to his official appointment, but the lead agent in charge of his security detail advised him that sirens were to be used only in emergencies. Less than two weeks later that agent was removed from Pruitt's detail, reassigned to a new job within the EPA. Special Agent Eric Weese, a 16-year veteran of the EPA, was replaced by Pasquale "Nino" Perotta....

OP-ED: For reasons that I can’t possibly understand, the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) has a standing invitation to President Donald Trump to attend their annual dinner later on this month. This is the same Trump who just a few days ago resumed his irrational campaign against the “Fake Washington Post” and called for the publication to register as a lobbyist. On April 2, he defended Sinclair Broadcasting, which has been forcing local news outlets it controls to run de-facto propaganda segments decrying “fake news,” calling Sinclair “far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total...

Washington, a town loaded with lawyers, is talking about how President Donald Trump can’t seem to find even one. The Russia probe has put Trump in desperate need of a first-rate attorney. But one key reason he is unable to hire good counsel, Washington legal analysts say, is that he’s a terrible client. In lawyer lingo, this usually means that a client won’t do what his attorneys advise. Certainly, that’s what John Dowd, Trump’s former lead attorney on the Muller investigation, meant. After Dowd resigned, The Washington Post reported that he had been complaining about how Trump ignored his advice....

The Washington Post's executive editor, Martin Baron, is firing back at President Trump for linking -- and attacking -- the paper and online shopping and shipping titan Amazon. The Post was purchased by Amazon's founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos in 2013. "It's completely made up," Baron said in a phone interview with The New York Times, referring to Mr. Trump's attacks on the paper that have included claims that Amazon uses the Post as a "lobbyist." "I don't even know how to describe what goes through my mind," Baron said. Last week alone, the president alleged the e-commerce site...

How do you go from being a government hack to a progressive hero? It's easy: Get fired by Donald Trump. From FBI Director James Comey to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Veteran's Affairs chief David Shulkin, it turns out there's no surer route to redemption among liberals than a "You're fired!" from President Trump. Even better if it comes via tweet. This weekend, fired VA Secretary Shulkin got a sympathetic hearing from the media for his claims that he's the victim of a Trumpian purge: "Fired VA Secretary Says White House Muzzled Him" was the headline at NPR. The...