Free Republic

The news of the week, possibly the news of the year, in a way, is that the United States House of Representatives has impeached President Donald Trump, sort of (at this writing, the House hasn’t forwarded the package to the US Senate, and it is rumored that it may never do so, making it unclear whether it counts as an impeachment at all). It doesn’t mean he’s leaving office, of course… Since there is zero chance of his conviction in the Senate, due to the unprecedented process violations by the House, President Trump is more likely than ever to enjoy...

PARIS -- What if U.S. President Donald Trump wins a second term? That's the unfathomable thought seeping into the minds of Democratic Party establishment members as they ponder the thoroughly underwhelming slate of candidates they're offering up to American voters. The current crop of Democratic presidential contenders is so unimpressive that there are now rumblings about 2016 loser Hillary Clinton potentially joining the race. How did America end up here? Democrats can't understand how Trump could conceivably still win in 2020 despite facing impeachment and continuing to make near-daily public displays of boorish behavior. Their main problem is that all...

First of two partsToxic partisanship in the United States is not a new problem. In 1796, President George Washington was so distressed by the way America was splitting into two political factions — the Democratic-Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson, and the Federalists of Alexander Hamilton — that he devoted much of his Farewell Address to warning his countrymen, "in the most solemn manner, against the baneful effects of the spirit of party." He acknowledged that it was natural for people with common interests to organize into competing groups. But passionate loyalty to political parties too often fueled "the most horrid...

Full title: New York Times bans reporters from CNN's Don Lemon, MSNBC's Maddow shows for being 'too partisan:' reportThe New York Times is cracking down on its own reporters, stopping them from appearing on certain primetime cable news shows seen as being "too partisan," according to a new report. Vanity Fair published the explosive report, which alleged MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell, as well as CNN anchor Don Lemon, made the newspaper's no-go list. The magazine began its report by alleging the Times' financial editor David Enrich had initially accepted an invitation to appear on "The Rachel Maddow Show"...

Andrew Gillum, Tallahassee mayor and Florida’s Democrat nominee for governor, accused President Donald Trump of putting “partisanship” over “leadership” as Hurricane Michael barrels toward the Florida Panhandle.

It was mid-May, about six weeks after Trump appointee Mari Stull began her new job as senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs. As senior adviser at the bureau, Stull was in charge of making sure President Trump’s agenda was represented at the many international organizations the U.S. participates in and mostly funds, such as the United Nations and its various agencies. Stull and her boss, Amb. Kevin Moley, had just left for a trip to Geneva for the World Health Assembly. Back at the State Department, Erin Barclay, a senior career diplomat at the IO...

From Rear Adm. Sidney W. Souers, who had the job for a few months in 1946, to the current CIA director, Gina Haspel, selected by President Trump, it's a long list of names that most Americans would not recognize. In other words, we don't see the CIA director in the headlines that much, unless there is something going on like September 11. We definitively have not seen former CIA directors doing politics on partisan cable news shows. Enter John Brennan, who just had his security clearance revoked. In the past, these clearances have been a courtesy to former officials, who...

When summing up the year now fading, the catchall phrases that generalize a common view don't work. It was neither the best of times nor the worst of times. In our fragmented politics, the center does not hold, and moving out to the edges of the frame doesn't hold us together. There's lots of e pluribus and not much unum. In her new book, "Braving the Wilderness," togetherness guru Brene Brown accurately describes paradoxes that afflict what she calls "common enemy intimacy." We hold on to ideological bunkers with echo chambers in which we can share a common bias flavored...

Alan Dershowitz criticized the Mueller investigation and argued that there’s no way Donald Trump could have obstructed justice... ....“What if I can prove to you, and I think I can, that President Obama was not motivated by what was good for America or what was good for world peace?” Dershowitz said. “He was motivated by anger, frustration, and pique at Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Observers of this week’s confirmation hearings for the post of U.S. attorney general might think it odd to see Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., rewind the clock to a single voter fraud case from the 1980s. Under persistent questioning, Sessions has had to defend his decision to prosecute a case of brazen voter fraud—something that was his job to do. The repeated references to this case by some senators represent just how far the civil rights industry has swerved from its honorable roots to derail a confirmation. Character assassination, false testimony, performance protests aimed at securing retweets instead of reconciliation, and...

The Left has no alternatives anymore. When you buy a bag of hammers, it's just that, a bag of hammers with an occasional sickle thrown in. The only reason chemotherapy is prescribed is because the oncologist still believes there is enough fight in the body to overcome the cancer. However, when the entire body has been taken over, there is little use for any further attempts in using the lethal medicine. It's over because there is more of the bad than the good. So when the Left summons up the phrase Alt-Right perhaps we should take it as a compliment....

The video basically shows a single mother videoing throwing her 6 (or 7) year old son out of the house for voting for Trump in a school mock election. As I understand it, she originally posted the video to her Facebook account but after the massive negative reaction (imagine that), she deleted her account. A cache of the FB posting is here. Fortunately, somebody cross-posted it to YouTube (at the link above).

Video ay link. President Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday morning that his inability to reduce polarization between the political parties in Washington "gnaws" on him as he settles into his final year in office. "The one thing that gnaws on me-- is the degree of-- continued polarization," he said during an interview broadcast on "CBS Sunday Morning." "It's gotten worse-- over the last several years," Obama continued. "And I think that in those early months my expectation was is that-- we could pull-- the parties together a little more effectively." Obama campaigned in 2008 on a platform of...

I've long marveled at President Obama's calls for bipartisanship right before viciously tearing into Republicans. It's creepy, because he is either too self-absorbed to know he's doing it or arrogant enough to assume we won't see through it. I'm referring not to the routine partisan rancor between politicians in the course of debating an issue but to those occasions when there is no time between Obama's demands for cooperation and his tongue-lashing of Republicans -- when he waxes eloquent about getting along and then immediately pummels his opponents. It's so strikingly inconsistent that I am surprised even conservative commentators don't...

Relations between Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama are not quite as bad as they have been made out to be - and things could yet improve in the coming months, according to former leading Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. Speaking at Haifa University Tuesday, Lieberman - who served as Senator from 1988-2012, during which time he was nominated as the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate - did acknowledge that the personal relationship between the two was far from perfect. Lieberman was the keynote speaker at the opening of the third session of the Ruderman Program for American Jewish Studies at the...

The following exchange set up by George Stephanopolous is a glaring example of hypocrisy. It is also an example of pure manipulation in the media. It is one of the provable moments in which network media is propagandizing the American people. In its own way, it is on a level with the Benghazi "Mohammed Video" propaganda effort -- also by Hillary Clinton surrogates -- to run an information campaign against the American people. STEPHANOPOLOUS: ...But I do want to ask a broader question. It's been reported that you -- you briefed several Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including...

Uh oh… The evil, hate filled, GOP now has control of the US Senate. Clearly the world will soon end. (Lucky for me, I have stocked up on guns and ammo… So I’m feeling better prepared than my Diana DeGette-loving neighbor.) Ben Adler, the former Newsweek.com editor, was among the more frantic examples of post-election meltdown. Appearing somewhat like Chris Matthews during a Republican victory, Ben scrambled to express his frustration at conservative gains with over-the-top rhetoric. He even went so far as to say that conservatives should not be mistaken for “rational human beings” or “patriotic Americans”.Super classy. Adler insisted...

In a recent op ed, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein points out that “partyism” – prejudice against supporters of the opposing political party – is on the rise in America: If you are a Democrat, would you marry a Republican? Would you be upset if your sister did? Researchers have long asked such questions about race, and have found that along important dimensions, racial prejudice is decreasing. At the same time, party prejudice in the U.S. has jumped, infecting not only politics but also decisions about dating, marriage and hiring. By some measures, “partyism” now exceeds racial prejudice — which...

Democrats routinely deride Republicans as extremists bent on coarsening the discourse. In January 2014, in the same interview in which he infamously claimed that ISIS was a “jayvee” team, President Obama blamed conservative media for polarizing the country: The issue has been the inability of my message to penetrate the Republican base so that they feel persuaded that I’m not the caricature that you see on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, but I’m somebody who is interested in solving problems and is pretty practical, and that, actually, a lot of the things we’ve put in place worked better than people...

“Politics are closely divided,” John Roberts told scholar Jeffrey Rosen after his first term as chief justice. “The same with the Congress. There ought to be some sense of some stability, if the government is not going to polarize completely. It’s a high priority to keep any kind of partisan divide out of the judiciary as well.” No one who observes the chief justice would doubt he was sincere in his wish for greater unanimity, greater judicial modesty, a widely respected Supreme Court quietly calling “balls and strikes.” But human beings are capable of wishing for mutually incompatible things—commitment and...