Free Republic

Welcome to the weekend the new lockdowns announced in places like France and Germany in recent days keep Big Business open with big factories and Big Government open with schools while many suffer from it... In this Corporatist world Stalinist purging of the "undesirable" elements and the challenge to remember Pastor Niemoller's words: "first they came for" And they're going after all kinds of people like Piers Corbyn brother of Jeremy Corbyn arrested for organizing a rally opposing the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK and now of course the former Labor Party leader getting suspended from his party for saying...

“Top Obama-linked lawyer (Gregory B. Craig) on Mueller chopping block, could be first Dem indicted under probe." (BizPac Review, March 19)“Oh well, ho hum,” say many bemused Cuba-watchers, “better late than never.”Because you see, amigos: Gregory Craig’s shenanigans with Manafort and Yanukoych seem like mild mischief compared to his shenanigans on behalf of Bill Clinton, Dan Rather and  Fidel Castro. At the time of these later-named shenanigans, the aforementioned president of the U.S. (Clinton) and the megastar of the U.S. media (Rather) were dutifully and cravenly fulfilling the express wishes of the mass-murdering, terror-sponsoring dictator whose lifelong craving was to nuke...

In “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey,” which hit book store shelves Tuesday, April 7, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller revealed in the final chapter that she now believes that she was induced by then-Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald to give false testimony in the 2007 trial of I. “Lewis” Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Given that Fitzgerald’s three-and-a-half year-long investigation and prosecution of Libby riveted the nation’s capital and generated vast news coverage implying, when not outright declaring, that the Bush administration lied the nation into war, one might think that recantation...

Tim Russert interviewing @realDonaldTrump in 1999 about launching a pre-emptive strike against North Korea. Could be key to his thinking.

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO While Donald Trump cynically maintains that he has no clue what Ted Cruz's phrase "New York values" means -- and while he scurrilously implies that Cruz has some sort of malicious, nasty feeling about New Yorkers over 9/11 -- video has now emerged of a nationally televised 1999 interview in which Trump seems completely familiar with the "New York values" to which Cruz referred.Trump appeared on Meet The Press on October 24, 1999, where he had several exchanges with Tim Russert: RUSSERT: Do you think gays should be allowed to be married?TRUMP: It's something...

GOP presidential candidate former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is defending GOP frontrunner Donald Trump against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)'s (R-TX) criticism. The Cruz campaign is pointing to Trump's interview with Tim Russert from 1999, in which, according to the Cruz campaign, "Donald Trump asserts that New York 'views' and 'attitudes' are different than other places in the country, such as Iowa." Huckabee was asked if he thinks Trump is now sincere in what he says. "I have no reason to doubt him. He's pretty outspoken, you got to give him credit for that." Huckabee went on to criticize Cruz, although...

Trump Says Being From New York Drives His Views on Gay Marriage, Partial-Birth AbortionHOUSTON, Texas – In an interview with Tim Russert, Donald Trump asserts that New York “views” and “attitudes” are different than other places in the country, such as Iowa.View the video here:Donald Trump on New York Values - In His Own Words (Video)Trump on Meet the Press:“I live in New York City. There is a tremendous movement on to have and allow gay marriage.”“Hey, I lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life so my views are a little bit different than if I lived...

Below is the interview of Donald Trump with Tim Russert that Ted Cruz referenced in the Thursday night debate. In it, Donald Trump says he is very pro-choice and supports even partial birth abortions because he is from New York and has New York values.Donald Trump: "I'm Very Pro Choice," Partial Birth Abortion is OK (Video)To deflect Cruz’s point last night, Donald Trump had to resort to political correctness. He had to insist that the American values on display on 9/11 were somehow uniquely New York values. Second, he had to make the case that those New Yorkers were victims...

<p>January 28, 2004 -- Al Franken is a big fat blabbermouth, and now he thinks he's Hulk Hogan. OK, maybe not that fat.</p> <p>But a blabbermouth for sure - and now he's unleashed a new weapon: the body slam.</p> <p>At a Howard Dean campaign stop in New Hampshire Monday, Franken lost control of himself when lunatic-fringe acolytes of Lyndon LaRouche began heckling the former Vermont governor.</p>

The Democratic Party's official talk radio host got violent yesterday, in an altercation he described as an effort to protect free speech. Attending a Howard Dean rally in New Hampshire, unfunny funnyman Al Franken physically assaulted a heckler in the crowd, wrestling him to the ground in a bid to silence him. "I got down low and took his legs out," Franken boasted to the New York Post afterwards. The altercation was witnessed by NBC Washington Bureau chief Tim Russert, who called Franken's antics "unbelievable." "One of the Lyndon LaRouche guys got up and started screaming and yelling," Russert...

<p>Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean. The tussle left Franken's trademark thick-rim glasses broken, but he said he was not injured.</p> <p>Franken - who seemed in a state of shock and out of breath after the incident - was helped back to his feet by several people who watched the tussle. Police arrived soon after.</p>

The waters have been choppy for NBC News in recent years, with its “Today” franchise having ceded ground to ABC’s “Good Morning America” and its Sunday-morning mainstay “Meet the Press” struggling to find a new identity after the death of longtime host Tim Russert. Amidst that chaos, Brian Williams was supposed to be the anchor – in both senses of the word. Now Williams, whose “NBC Nightly News” is the most watched evening newscast in the United States, has added to the challenges facing the NBCUniversal news division. [Snip] What makes Williams’ admission worse, according to one person familiar with...

Shield your eyes! Read no further!  The Washingtonian magazine has revealed some really ugly behind the scenes turmoil and backstabbings that accompained the departure of David Gregory from Meet The Press last summer. The revelations could be too much of a shock for some of you to endure. If the shock doesn't terminate you, suffocation from uncontrollable laughing at NBC's absurd antics could finish you off. If you dare to read on, you will find out that Chuck Todd was hardly a modest shrinking violet when it came to replacing David Gregory. In fact, he had been clawing for that...

The New York Post’s Page Six reports today that David Gregory could be replaced as moderator of Meet the Press shortly after the November election. Rumors have been swirling for months about Gregory’s future at Meet the Press, as the ratings have sunk by 45 percent since he took over from the late Tim Russert in 2008. Gregory has turned Russert’s decade-long run at number one into a perennial third-place finish among Sunday morning talk shows. The Post reported that while NBC News President Deborah Turness is publicly supportive of Gregory, she is seriously concerned about the ratings problems. The...

I've always thought entrenched left-wing journalists in Washington needed their heads examined. Much to my satisfaction, it appears the corporate media bosses of at least one Beltway anchor now agree. According to The Washington Post this week, NBC News hired a "psychological consultant" to examine why flailing "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory has been bombing in the ratings. The overpriced shrinks (NBC prefers the euphemism "brand consultants") came from the New York-based brand fixer-upper Elastic Strategy. They interviewed Gregory's wife. They interrogated his friends. They crunched their numbers. They compiled their reports. And after all that, the "experts"...

*snip* Memory can be unreliable, and misstatements can happen despite pure intentions. It's only fair game to point this out. So say Valerie Plame Wilson, former CIA case manager and Vanity Fair cover girl, and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, former ambassador to Gabon and extravagant self-promoter. Too bad the Wilsons, a power-mad federal prosecutor, an officious federal judge, a confused jury and a badly misled president wouldn't apply those same common-sense considerations to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, wrongly convicted of perjury in the case stemming from State Department official Richard Armitage's public identification of Mrs. Wilson as a...

CONGRESSMAN RANGEL: What are you talking about? You're just trying to make copy? What job? The one I got? RUSSERT: Yeah. I mean, these are really serious violations. CONGRESSMAN RANGEL: I mean, how do you think I got my job? I was elected. How do you think I lose it? RUSSERT: Well, there's two ways. You could lose it if your colleagues voted you out of here because of ethics violations or if your constituents do not find you upstanding. CONGRESSMAN RANGEL: What station are you with? Well, you're young; I guess you do need to make a name for...

After a week of traveling, I finally finished "The Clinton Tapes," Taylor Branch's book of interviews with Bill Clinton. So better late than never, I hope, I'm going to wrap up my experiment with the blog-review. Tell me if it worked in comments, below. I had a nagging question about whether I should write about the book again, though, and it wasn't laziness; it's that most everything I found remarkable in the second half of the book closely matched my first two blog posts. But that's a story in itself. "The Clinton Tapes" makes clear that from start to finish,...

Politics: The senator who called the president a liar and never apologized may have worn out his welcome in his home state. Harry Reid may be riding the liberal agenda into political oblivion.In 2004, Republicans defeated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle largely on the theme that he neglected his home state in favor of national party interests. The GOP is hoping that in 2010 lightning will strike a second time, and Nevada polls indicate it may be more than wishful thinking. In 1998, Reid beat John Ensign by a hair-thin 428 votes. Ensign would go on to win Nevada's other...