Free Republic

The Trump administration deliberately undermined the nation's coronavirus response for political purposes, including by weakening testing guidance and championing widespread "herd immunity," according to a new report from the House panel investigating the pandemic response. The staff report released Friday was a summation of the year's work investigating political interference in the pandemic response from Trump officials and the former president himself.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that he was “beat on every day” by former President Donald Trump and his allies to try to change the rules in the Senate.

Judicial Watch has made public 90 pages of heavily redacted U.S. Department of State documents showing Obama State Department officials’ efforts to disseminate classified information to multiple U.S. Senators immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The information, which included raw intelligence, purported to show “malign” Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Among the senators receiving the classified documents were Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN). We obtained the documents through our June 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department after it failed to respond to a...

Peace Now’s latest ad features Yigal Amir and Yona Avrushmi, who assassinated other Jews on political grounds, and several other Jews who attacked Arabs over the years. The Left’s claim is that the violence always comes from the Right, while its people don’t use violence - certainly not that which is extreme and murderous. The simple response to this claim is: Correct! Why should the Left use violence? After all, the war here is between Muslim Arabs and Jews. All that the Left has to do in order for Jews to be harmed is to weaken Jewish defenses. To give...

Although I believe that a shadow government with ambitions of overturning President Trump does exist, I have complete faith in him. Mr. Trump overcame insurmountable odds during the election even when all of the so-called experts claimed that he did not stand a chance. If establishments, the mainstream media, and Hillary Clinton combined could not beat Mr. Trump, then neither can a shadow government. The President is smart and experienced. He is surrounded with capable advisors who have his best interests at heart. Although he may face great opposition from his enemies, I wholeheartedly trust that Mr. Trump will have...

The White House accused Republicans Monday of trying to undermine President Obama with their call for an up-or-down vote on any nuclear deal finalized with Iran. "It's Republicans who have been most forceful in denouncing this agreement and those are the people I'm referring to when I say they're trying to use this vote as cover to just try to undermine the agreement," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. Last week, Obama hailed an "understanding" with Iran that would lift sanctions on Tehran in exchange for the Middle Eastern nation curbing its nuclear capabilities. However, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.,...

According to Edwin Black on The Daily Caller today, the New Israel Fund received more than $1 Million dollars in funding from the State Department. As Black noted, “Vocal critics in both the U.S. and Israel charge that the New Israel Fund has knowingly financed groups that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and worked to get Israeli soldiers prosecuted for so-called ‘war crimes.” Benny Yanay of an Israeli military organization called Consensus, representing some 3,000 members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), stated, “The New Israel Fund acts against Israel — against the soldiers of our country....

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday slammed Israel's plans to increase construction in Judea and Samaria, saying they were undermining hopes of ending the Middle East conflict by setting up a Palestinian state. "The secretary general is deeply concerned by the continuing expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank in violation of international law," said UN spokesman Martin Nesirky, according to the AFP news agency. Ban was "particularly troubled" at Israel moving forward with plans for more than 1,000 new homes in two communities Judea and Samaria, the spokesman said. He was referring to plans to build...

President Shimon Peres's comments that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is a partner for peace hurt Israel's public diplomacy efforts, Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein (Likud) said on Monday. Edelstein told Arutz Sheva that it is now clear that the Oslo Accords were a nightmare, adding that the focus of the storm around Peres's comments should not be whether the president should express a personal opinion during an election period but rather how his remarks affect Israel's public diplomacy. "We spit blood while the Palestinians - sometimes successfully - try to convince leaders in Europe and North America that...

To uphold the Affordable Care Act, Chief Justice Roberts adopted a “saving construction” in which he deleted the “requirement” that all non-exempt Americans buy health insurance, leaving only the “penalty,” which he then recharacterized as a tax. The next day, in my Washington Examiner essay, Roberts decision didn’t open floodgates for ‘compulsion through taxation’, I contended that it was a serious misreading of the opinion to say that the individual insurance mandate had been upheld under the Tax power. Instead, the law had been rewritten to eliminate the mandate, leaving only the penalty. Some questioned the meaningfulness of this distinction....

........But his greatest presidential stumbling block may be right under his nose. At home, Newt's second wife, Marianne Ginther Gingrich, tells me she doesn't see herself in the First Lady's job. "Watching Hillary has just been a horrible experience," commiserates Marianne. "Hillary sticking her neck out is not working." What happens if Newt runs?, I ask. "He can't do it without me," she replies. "I told him if I'm not in agreement, fine, it's easy" --she giggles at her naughtiness. "I just go on the air the next day, and I undermine everything...I don't want him to be president and...

LONDON (Reuters) – A leak of thousands of classified U.S. military documents has damaged the ability of foreign forces to gain the support of Afghans against the Taliban, a British military spokesman said on Thursday. Major-General Gordon Messenger told reporters the leak last month by whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks had not given Taliban insurgents a tactical advantage, but the documents' disclosure of Afghan contacts could deter further cooperation. "I think the damage that I would highlight is to the Afghans that were named. We rely upon very, very many Afghans who are prepared to nail their colors to the legitimate Afghanistan,...

Israel on Friday rejected a United Nations General Assembly resolution urging an investigation into a report saying war crimes were committed in Gaza, and condemned the world body vote as "completely detached from realities". In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said in response to Thursday's vote that Israel "maintains the right to self-defense", and would "continue to act to protect the lives of its citizens from the threat of international terrorism". The resolution, endorsing a report on the Gaza war commissioned by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, was nonbinding and seen as unlikely to force either Israel or Islamist...

Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell arrived in Israel for his second visit. Whereas Mitchell's last visit - which took place in the last days of the electoral campaign -- was touted as a "listening tour," Mitchell made clear that during his current stay, he intends to begin calling shots. His first order of business, we are told, is to pressure the outgoing government to destroy the so-called outpost communities in Judea and Samaria and expel the hundreds of Israeli families who live in them. To defend this call for intra-Israeli instability and violence, Mitchell notes that Prime Minister...

WASHINGTON - Democrats are considering cutting President Bush's budget $142 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year by $20 billion, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (news, bio, voting record) said Thursday. The war funding cut would affect the budget year beginning Oct. 1 and is separate from the ongoing debate over Bush's $100 billion request for immediate supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. The North Dakota Democrat said he likely will use Congressional Budget Office estimates — instead of the administration's February budget request — as the basis for estimating Iraq and Afghanistan war costs....

[Paragraph 1] REP. JOHN MURTHA (D-Pa.) has a message for anyone who spent the week following the House of Representatives' marathon debate on Iraq: You've been distracted by a sideshow. "We have to be careful that people don't think this is the vote," the 74-year-old congressman said of the House's 246-182 decision in favor of a resolution disapproving of President Bush's troop surge. "The real vote will come on the legislation we're putting together." That would be Mr. Murtha's plan to "stop the surge" and "force a redeployment" of U.S. forces from Iraq while ducking the responsibility that should come...

(Washington, DC) – “Nancy Pelosi should make sure that Pat Toomey is on her Christmas card list. Once again, Toomey and the folks at the Club for Growth are doing Pelosi’s work for her by undermining the GOP majority,” said Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, head of the RMSP PAC. “The Club for Growth’s vicious and deceptive campaign against Congressman Joe Schwarz shows just how far the Club will go to destroy our party. Congressman Schwarz’s loss tonight is a loss for Reagan Republicans everywhere.” “During the campaign, Tim Walberg and his backers at the Club for Growth worked hard to hide...

Solzhenitsyn accuses the West of plotting to surround and undermine Russia By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow (Filed: 29/04/2006) Alexander Solzhenitsyn has accused the United States of launching a military campaign to encircle Russia and turn it into a Nato chattel. The Nobel laureate also delivered his strongest endorsement yet of President Vladimir Putin, surprising Kremlin critics who argue that the country is growing more authoritarian. Replying in writing to questions from the weekly Moscow News, the 87-year-old former Soviet dissident said military action by the United States in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan underlined the menace to Russian sovereignty. "Though...

"In a new century, the alliance of America and Europe is the main pillar of our security," - President George W. Bush, Brussels, February 21, 2005 Seeing our graceful new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dancing her diplomatic minuet in Paris reminds me of a Woody Allen story about Sigmund Freud’s most neurotic patient. After years of wrestling with this man’s demented soul, Freud finally decided to call an end to the therapy. So he declared his patient to be cured and sane. Except for one little thing --- Freud would never turn his back to him. Europe is like...

Gingrich just ripped into Kerry. Said he undermined the US, Vietnam (troops, nations, leaders) 30 years ago. Said he is doing the same now. Said it is WHAT Kerry Does!