Free Republic

Former President Trump on Tuesday declined to say whether he will stick by House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) as his bid to become Speaker appeared to hit a wall. “We’ll see what happens,” Trump told NBC News in a phone conversation when asked if he stands by his endorsement of McCarthy. “I got everybody calling me wanting my support,” Trump told NBC. “But let’s see what happens and we’ll go — I got everybody calling, wanting my support. That’s all I can say. But we’ll see what happens. We’ll see how it all works out.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Dusting off old musical instruments, appreciating the outdoors more meaningfully, dumping the hair dye and letting the gray fly forever. The pandemic disrupted our traditions, practices and pursuits, how we mark milestones, what we do with our time, what’s important in routines. It replaced old with new, a kind of new that just might stick. Nearly three years after the World Health Organization declared the deadly spread of COVID-19 a pandemic, there’s plenty of old life mixed with the new. And, yes, the latter includes a whole lot of Zooming still going on among families, colleagues...

Barack Obama tried to convince Univision last night that the US has an exit strategy from the Libya conflict, and that strategy is to, er, stick around and fight. Jake Tapper calls it a Lewis Carroll moment, while others might consider it more Orwellian: In an interview with Univision Tuesday, President Obama re-defined the term “exit strategy,” and said our exit strategy in Libya would begin this week. “The exit strategy will be executed this week,” President Obama said, “in the sense that we will be pulling back from our much more active efforts to shape the environment. We will...

"I can wage a better war on terror than George Bush has." So speaks Senator Kerry in the U.S. presidential campaign's final days, again reminding voters that the key issue in this race remains as it was a year earlier - deciding which candidate will better protect Americans from terrorism.As with so many topics, the basic difference between Kerry and President Bush is one of character, with the challenger repeatedly changing his mind and the president sticking with one position.On occasion, Mr. Kerry adopts Bush-like terminology. For example, in September 2004 he talked about the war on terror being "as...