Free Republic

Saw this in the Comments section at American Spectator ... is it really this simple? "SPECTATOR2017 disqusisass • a day ago There's an easy way to get rid of Sessions now... 1) Appoint Matt Gaetz as #3 at DOJ. (That position is available because Rachel Brand, an associate of Mueller, resigned months ago). 2) Fire Rosenstein for filing a perjured FISA affidavit and other crimes. 3) Sessions said he will resign if Rosey is fired. 4) Gaetz then become head of DOJ, replacing Rosenstein. He also becomes Mueller's boss."

The second comes from The Atlantic’s Emma Green. Detailing the findings of a survey conducted by her magazine and the Public Religion Research Institute, she notes that 61 percent of white working-class men view college as a “risky gamble.” Green’s report contained this explanation: “The enduring narrative of the American dream is that if you study and get a college education and work hard, you can get ahead,” said Robert P. Jones, the CEO of PRRI. “The survey shows that many white working-class Amer­icans, especially men, no longer see that path available to them. . . . It is this sense of economic fatalism,...

Private apologies are not enough for a defender of torture, the architect of America’s drone program and the most talented liar in Washington. The nation’s top spy needs to go Plus: CIA admits to spying on Senate staffers

Speaker Newt Gingrich was fond of saying “The Democrats are our adversaries. The Senate is our enemy.” The Senate has long been a frustration to the impatient warriors for change. Its rules and culture are intentionally designed to be slow and deliberative, in contrast to the quick-moving partisan House. Today, Republicans have control over all the levers of power. The White House, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the state legislatures, and the governors -- they are all dominated by Republicans. The conservative grassroots is rightfully expecting big things after years of promises. And big things are happening. The...

One telling detail keeps escaping the men and women of words who would end school shootings by one expedient or another: gun control, better security, the arming of teachers, more careful vetting of potential gunmen and so forth. The detail of which I speak: We didn't use to endure this horror. It didn't happen. The urgent question that flows from this detail: Why not? Well, to start with, because things were different, prior to the shooting fests, which break so many hearts and generate so much despair. Right, yes -- but different in what way? I will take a crack...

If aficionados of writing and writers wonder how what was once an audacious breakthrough for journalism became the standard which dominates the writing trade, they need look no further than the rise of one preternaturally talented journalist. In his time he became the very embodiment of that curious mix of news, gossip, literature, whimsy and other flavors called journalism. It takes a dedication above and beyond the call of duty to write the way Tom Wolfe did. Was there anything Mr. Wolfe could not transform from brass into gold? It is hard to think of a precedent for his dizzying...

There was so much hope in January 2009 when Barack Obama took office. Here was the first black president of the United States, promising to be a leader for all Americans, to halt the rise of the oceans and to be the most transparent administration ever. Even black Americans were saying the Civil War was finally over. Unfortunately for America, it didn’t turn out that way. As more and more evidence is revealed daily on the evening news, it is now very clear the Obama administration was the most corrupt presidency in the history of the republic. As Mr. Obama’s...

Two days after the news broke that over 100 conservative leaders had signed an open letter to principled limited government constitutional conservative Rep. Jim Jordan urging him – some might say demanding – that he run for Speaker of the House, Matt Drudge blared the headline “PAUL RYAN LOSING SPEAKERSHIP GRIP.” The headline linked to a POLITICO article detailing how top House Republicans are privately questioning Ryan losing gripwhether retiring Speaker Paul Ryan can make it through Election Day. Click this link to add your name to the distinguished list of conservative leaders urging Jim Jordan to run for Speaker...

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he could not have foreseen today's Republican Party. A bill authored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that would require the federal government to balance the budget each year was soundly defeated last week in the Senate. Even Paul admitted he thought the bill had no chance, but he told the Washington Post his purpose was to point out Republican hypocrisy. Paul accused his Republican colleagues of engaging in an "unholy alliance" with Democrats to keep increasing spending, thereby adding to the deficit and...

Donald Trump is now deep into trade negotiations with China and NAFTA 2.0 negotiations with Canada and Mexico. We are strong free traders, but we believe that Trump's plans to negotiate better trade agreements that reduce trade barriers abroad are right on the mark. He also has to make sure those deals fully protect U.S. intellectual property, or what is commonly called know-how. American investments, ingenuity and entrepreneurship have made intellectual property one of our nation's most important assets. IP-intensive industries, including software, biotechnology and entertainment, now support nearly one-third of all U.S. jobs. But too often, our foreign trading...

Rarely in my life have I read a more hostile or vicious takedown of a public figure than last week’s New York Times profile of Canadian author and psychologist Jordan Peterson. Rarely have I witnessed a more bizarre and bad-faith interview of a public figure than journalist Cathy Newman’s January interrogation of Peterson on Britain’s Channel 4 News. Few public figures inspire more vitriol and mockery on Twitter than, you guessed it, Jordan Peterson. And never before have I seen vitriol so out of proportion to the “threat” of the man’s underlying message.I don’t claim to be an expert on...

Long before fake news became a hot topic, liberals in the mainstream media were practicing their own special brand of fake news. They weren't misleading the public for malicious reasons; it was quite the opposite. They were simply showing off their humanity. The best examples of this fake news-for-a-good-cause go back to the 1980s, when two of the biggest stories in America involved the rise in homelessness (in the age of Reagan) and the national scare over a new disease called AIDS. I was a correspondent at CBS News at the time and I witnessed firsthand how -- and why...

The latest school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas brings out the same tired rhetoric from the left. They’re blaming guns, the NRA, and President Trump. What the left isn’t doing, however, is offering new and pragmatic solutions. Legislators can’t pass up opportunities to score political points in the aftermath of tragedies, especially mass shootings. They flaunt their sensitivity, a little thing called virtue signaling. The public already knows how terrible they feel about the tragedy – something we all share. Unfortunately, it’s become a ritual: demand action against guns, propose useless legislation, and create a media frenzy. The initial shock...

Donald Trump won the White House by flouting political norms and is determined to break the mold of the presidency. But his escalating battle with his own Justice Department and his refusal to accept the historic boundaries of executive power are leading the nation onto the most treacherous constitutional ground so far of his term. Trump on Monday delivered his order for an inquiry into claims that the FBI infiltrated a "spy" into his campaign -- first touted in conservative media -- to the bureau's director, Christopher Wray, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in an Oval Office meeting. In...

On Sunday a justifiably outraged President Trump called for the former Obama administration to be investigated for its unprecedented and profoundly un-American spying and sabotage operation against the 2016 Trump campaign. “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the [Federal Bureau of Investigation/Department of Justice] infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!” Trump tweeted Sunday at 1:37 p.m. Just the day before, President Trump had written on Twitter, “If...

Former CIA chief faces the legal consequences of his dirty deeds. John Brennan, director of the CIA during the Obama administration, is running for cover. He could be facing criminal charges for his role in the Deep State cabal that sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and then to undermine the legitimacy of the duly elected president of the United States, Donald Trump. Acting in desperation as the noose tightens around him, Brennan tweeted a warning to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, claiming they will "bear the majority of the responsibility of the harm done...

If you want to understand the moral sickness at the heart of leftism, read the first paragraph of the most recent column by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne: "It's never right to call other human beings 'animals.' It's not something we should even have to debate. No matter how debased the behavior of a given individual or group, no matter how much legitimate anger that genuinely evil actions might inspire, dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path." Let's begin with the first sentence: "It's never right to call other human beings 'animals.'" This is so self-evident to...

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald on the influence the FBI has on the media, a spy in the Trump campaign and why intel agencies say it is dangerous to talk about these people as it would "jeopardize" their life but then tell us there is nothing going on. Greenwald said Stefan Halper, reportedly an informant for the FBI within Donald Trump's presidential campaign, is a good example of this because he was already well-known as an intel asset. Greenwald said we know now intel agencies were "painting a fairy tale" since we know who the informant is and he's unhurt. "We...

RUSH: So Hillary got some kind of a human rights, civil rights, plug-it-up rights, I don’t know what it was, at Yale, and she donned an old Soviet hat. She can’t get over it. She’s still whining and crying, and yet here’s Obama saying, “If you start whining before the game’s even over, if things are going badly, you start blaming somebody else, you don’t have what it takes to be in this job.” Hello, Hillary Clinton. Well, she doesn’t have what it takes to be in the job. She never has had what it takes to be in the...

RUSH: Grab sound bite 5. We’re gonna go back to James Clapper. Now, this was Obama’s Director of National Intelligence. And after the New York Times and Washington Post ran their stories late last week outing a spy, outing an informant in the Trump campaign, Clapper went on CNN to say it was a good thing, that it was a very valuable thing. And he’s back again! He did it again today. He’s on with Fredo Cuomo, who says, “The president doesn’t like it, has ordered the DOJ to investigate. Are you okay with that?” CLAPPER: No, I’m not. I...