Free Republic

It was 2014, and in a building in St Petersburg, the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) was already hard at work building its arsenal to take on US politics. According to US prosecutors, the IRA had gathered stolen identities of real Americans, and a formidable encyclopaedia of what "works" on social media when it comes to riling up Americans talking about politics. Two members of the agency were said to have travelled to the US to gather more intelligence, a fact-finding tour taking in nine states, according to investigators. Back on Russian soil, the IRA began posing online as US...

For Donald Trump, politics and entertainment are intertwined and often synonymous. His remarkable success at both makes his latest missteps especially puzzling because Trump is committing the cardinal sin of both: He’s become boring. The ultimate shock jock is now predictable. Wind him up and watch him throw a garbage can full of insults at anyone who won’t kiss the ring. Ho-hum. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin are getting the Trump treatment now. Both are rising Republican stars, so naturally the former president trashes and demeans them. Can’t be competition for top dog. Long gone is...

. t was early 2021, and Sen. Rick Scott wanted to go big. The new chair of the Senate Republican campaign arm had a mind to modernize the place. .A year later, some of that braggadocio has vanished — along with most of the money. . By the end of July, the committee had collected a record $181.5 million — but had already spent more than 95% of what it had brought in. The Republican group entered August with just $23.2 million on hand, . . Now top Republicans are beginning to ask: Where did all the money go? .

T. rex’s incredible biting force came from its stiff lower jawA small bone in the mandible helped brace an otherwise flexible jointThe fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex could generate tremendous bone-crushing bite forces thanks to a stiff lower jaw. That stiffness stemmed from a boomerang-shaped bit of bone that braced what would have been an otherwise flexible jawbone, a new analysis suggests.Unlike mammals, reptiles and their close kin have a joint dubbed the intramandibular joint within their lower jawbone, or mandible. New computer simulations show that with a bone spanning the IMJ, T. Rex could have generated bite forces of more than...

Twitter recently suspended the account of the Team Trump On Tour group, which is traveling across the country in support of President Trump ahead of the Republican National Convention. The company has reinstated the account, blaming the suspension on a mistake. Recently, supporters of President Trump began a bus tour across America ahead of the Republican National Convention. The tour features two buses driving across the country to multiple events to show support for the president with one bus started its tour in Kissimmee, Florida, while the other set off from Salfordsville, Pennsylvania. The tour has featured speakers such as...

CPAC 2019, the Conservative Political Action Conference hosted near Washington DC this year, welcomed Americans and friends of America from all backgrounds, colors, and countries. In what would come as a surprise to the mainstream media and their relentless campaign of painting conservatives as haters, a significant fraction of CPAC’s attendees were religious Jewish men in kippahs. In fact, CPAC hosted a kosher dinner and a kosher lunch for its Jewish guests.In high contrast to the liberal dogma that Jews are victims of the MAGA movement, CPAC revealed the truth - that conservatives are people from all religions and countries...

In a chilly, high-ceilinged room in a Sussex preparatory school in the winter of 1959, I work intently on my model of the destroyer HMS Cossack. Such models come in lurid cardboard boxes illustrated with pictures of aircraft, tanks and warships, amid scenes of fiery melodrama, guns emitting orange streaks of flame, and the smoke of battle. With these and our imaginations, we seek to recreate the thrill of the war we have just missed, in which our fathers fought and our mothers endured privations. This is a war just over the horizon of time in which we wish we...

In an article about police shootings in last Sunday's New York Times (8/31), Michael Wines disputes the conventional wisdom about a disproportionate number of African-Americans being shot by police, saying there are no data one way or another. But Wines revives the canard about blacks being disproportionately targeted in traffic stops. There actually is a study for that. Throughout the 1990s, the nation was fixated on tales of jack-booted New Jersey state troopers who were stopping speeders on the turnpike just because they were black! In a 2000 primary debate, Vice President Al Gore sneered at then-New Jersey Sen. Bill...

President Obama told congressional leaders tonight that he is prepared to make the tough decisions on entitlement spending to reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling and cutting the deficit, a Democrat familiar with the negotiating process told ABC News. But if Republicans are not willing to do the same regarding taxes, the president asked them during a meeting at the White House, what is their alternative? After meeting for 75 minutes, congressional leaders will be back at the White House Monday afternoon to continue negotiations. Monday morning the president will hold a news conference on the matter, making...

President Obama met with Congressional leaders at the White House on Sunday night to try to revive chances for a $4 trillion deal to reduce the deficit and avert a default on the national debt, a day after Speaker John A. Boehner appeared to dash hopes for any far-reaching agreement that would repair the nation’s perilous finances. -snip- In the end, several officials briefed on the talks said, ideological differences over a tax overhaul bogged down the bigger deal. Mr. Boehner, they said, signaled a willingness to raise $1 trillion in revenue — much of which would have come from...

So in the end, it was bit of a Ronald Reagan moment for John Boehner on Saturday. Just as the U.S. president walked away from a bad arms control agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986, the House speaker passed on President Barack Obama’s mega-debt reduction deal in Washington. In both case, the asking price was just too high. For Reagan, it was lethal limitations on his Strategic Defense Initiative. For Boehner, it was a trillion-dollar tax distraction from America’s true fiscal threat: spending run amok: “Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House...

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has issued a stern warning to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as Boehner sits down with President Obama Sunday night to negotiate a raising of the debt ceiling: don't do it. Palin, in an interview appearing in Newsweek, “made it clear that she’s against any deal that raises the debt ceiling and would hold House Speaker John Boehner’s feet to the fire if he agreed to one” according to the magazine. “No, we have to cut spending. It is imperative, and I will be very, very disappointed if Boehner and the leaders of the Republican...

Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ce92636-ab1a-11e0-b4d8-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1Rk3Rq0vt Amid disturbing signs that the US recovery has stalled, President Barack Obama took a huge gamble in his approach to the debt-ceiling talks last week. Believing he had an understanding with John Boehner, leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, he declared he wanted a $4,000bn “grand bargain” on the budget. Barely a day later, Mr Boehner said the deal...

Top House leaders offered markedly different views on the future of the debt talks after Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner said he would no longer pursue a $4 trillion deficit-reduction deal proposed by the White House. Republicans now want a smaller deal, which would reduce the deficit by between $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion over 10 years, and consists largely of spending cuts. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the larger deal broke down because Democrats had insisted on including tax increases as part of any package, which is...

DES MOINES — The decision by House Speaker John A. Boehner to scale back budget talks with President Obama unfolded as Republican presidential candidates were campaigning against any outcome that smacks of compromise, underscoring divisions in the party over whether to raise the federal debt limit.

Well, at least we now know what Barack Obama meant by going big, and so does John Boehner. After Obama insisted on a trillion dollars in tax hikes to accompany the $4 trillion in cuts over the next decade that even Obama has insisted is necessary to solve the debt and deficit crisis, Boehner walked away from the deal. James Pethokoukis published an e-mail he received from Capitol Hill describing the offer as “beyond bizarre”: Their fierce insistence on higher taxes is beyond bizarre. After months of demanding ‘clean’ increase to avert economic calamity (default), WH threatens economic calamity (default)...

WASHINGTON, DC - House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released the following statement today regarding ongoing debt limit discussions with the White House: "Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase."Conflicting stories from Reuters and the New York Times suggests that the sides are at least still...

Statement by Speaker Boehner on Debt Limit DiscussionsHouse Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released the following statement today regarding ongoing debt limit discussions with the White House: "Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase." Zero Hedge translation: in two weeks we get news of no...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republican budget negotiators have abandoned plans to pursue a massive $4 trillion, 10-year deficit reduction package in the face of stiff GOP opposition to any plan that would increase taxes as part of the deal. House Speaker John Boehner informed President Barack Obama Saturday that a smaller agreement of about $2 trillion was more realistic.</p>

5. The Professor of Political Law shall deliver Lectures on Natural and National Law, Political Economy, Metaphysics, Government and History. The Text Book on Natural and National Law shall be Vattel, with reference to Rutherforth's Institutes.