Free Republic

The first thing that needs to be said about President Trump's decision to sign a measure re-opening part of the federal government without getting money for the wall he demanded is that his experience as a New York businessman was no help. Perhaps he failed to recognize that Democrats are the party of government and no one guards the power, cost and perks of government better than they do. As long as Democrats stuck together -- and they did (Republicans should learn a lesson) -- he was bound to lose. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were...

Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan is acting like a very badly disguised editorial writer again. On the front of Friday's Style section, she attacked Trump's fashions in Texas under the headline "Fashion crisis at the border." The headline after the article jumped inside to page C2 was "Trump's choice of attire was a disaster." Liberals love pretending that Obama's only scandal was he once wore a tan suit. But criticizing how this president dresses is easy, low-hanging fruit. It's a yawn. So Givhan has to dress up the fashion chatter with screeds about Trump's fact-mangling and fear-mongering.

The "independent fact checkers" at PolitiFact displayed their liberal stripes again this week by hailing the liberal student activists of Parkland High School as the victimized heroes of their 2018 "Lie of the Year." The "online smear machine" that tried to "take down Parkland students" was singled out as the very worst. The PolitiFact online ballot for their liberal audience consisted of five Trump statements, one by Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, the Parkland "smear machine"....and then one each by socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The discrepancy in the reaction to Dinesh D’Souza’s new film and companion book “Death of a Nation” between establishment media and audiences couldn’t be sharper. The movie-review aggregating site Rotten Tomatoes gives the film, which opened in theaters Friday night, a zero score from critics and 86 percent approval from audiences, while the independent polling group CinemaScore found audiences grade it an A. Most establishment media outlets have ignored the film, but reviews by Variety (D’Souza is “no longer preaching to the choir; he’s preaching to the mentally unsound”) and by a Washington Post reporter typify those who have paid...

PEMBROKE, N.H., Dec. 22 — Howard Dean came under criticism from an Iowa newspaper last weekend for an answer to a questionnaire in which he implied that his brother was serving in the military when he disappeared in Laos 29 years ago. His brother had been traveling in Southeast Asia as a tourist. Asked by The Quad-City Times, which is based in Davenport, Iowa, to complete the sentence "My closest living relative in the armed services is," Dr. Dean wrote in August, "My brother is a POW/MIA in Laos, but is almost certainly dead." The brother, 23-year-old Charles Dean, whose...