Free Republic

It's very humbling to lose and I hope he learns from it," McCain, whose late husband, Sen. John McCain, sparred regularly with Trump, told CBS News. She said she hopes the midterm results will take Trump "back to basics." "I hope he learns from it and realizes that our country needs a strong leader and not a negative Nancy, if I can put it in such a basic term," she said. "We need our president. We need a White House that's strong, we need a White House that's not sparring with each other. And right now I think we're --...

A draft of the new Title IX rules from the Department of Education was circulated a couple of months ago and they predictably had progressive groups setting their hair on fire. The final version has now been rolled out and, while there were some minor (but troubling) changes made, those same groups aren’t going to be any happier. The days of kangaroo courts hearing questions of criminal law at schools where cases of sexual assault or harassment are concerned won’t be ending entirely, but they will be decidedly more fair to all parties concerned. (Reason) This guidance will replace an...

My op-ed on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the US Marine Beirut Barracks Bombing had generated a number of questions on the US Navy’s disastrous follow-on strike on 4 December, 1983 against two Syrian surface-to-air missile sites (SA-7) who were firing on our reconnaissance aircraft.  To set the record straight, here are the facts, but before I do, I want to express thanks to my many readers for the condolences sent on the untimely passing of my wife, Renee.  It was greatly appreciated.  Now to set the record straight. The term “Fog of War” normally applies to a military operation that did...

Two more raging infernos in California have burned an area nearly ten times the size of Washington, D.C. Wildlife and habitats have been torched. Over 8,000 homes and businesses, and nearly the entire town of Paradise, are now ashes and rubble. Cars were partly charred and melted as they escaped the flames, others completely incinerated - sometimes with occupants still inside. Well over 60 people have perished. Over 50,000 are homeless. Hundreds remain missing.President Trump expressed deep support for the thousands of courageous firefighters battling the conflagrations, urged residents to evacuate quickly and expedited disaster assistance to the ravaged communities....

Don’t get me wrong, amigos. The Fake News Media does not term the recent UN vote in the same manner as does this column. Instead they reported (gloated) that: “UN voted overwhelmingly to condemn US embargo of Cuba….In a slap to the United States, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution Thursday condemning the American economic embargo of Cuba and rejected proposed U.S. amendments strongly criticizing the lack of human rights in the island country.”The occasion was the annual and ritual UN vote against the U.S. “embargo” of mass-murdering, mass-torturing, terror-sponsoring and kleptocratic Cuba, which sits prominently on the...

I realize the Democrats took over the House, which is not new news. But I'm tired of hearing Nancy Pelosi and other liberals in Congress say that now we need to start working together. Now we need bipartisanship. Really? Where have they been for the last umpteen years? Since at least 2016, I haven't noticed the Democrats clamoring for compromise and cooperation in Washington or on CNN. Suddenly Nancy Pelosi wants to practice bipartisanship? Yeah, right. I agree with President Trump. Now that Democrats are in charge of the House and looking under every bed for excuses to impeach Donald...

What does it take to get a U.S. House member to...very publicly threaten to nuke American citizens who want to defend their constitutional rights under the Second Amendment? Nothing more than pushing back on Twitter against that congressman, Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.)'s proposal from earlier this year to fully ban and buy back every one of what he wants to designate as "assault weapons" with the added bonus of "criminally prosecut[ing] any who choose to defy it." Rep. Swalwell, willing to make sure the war against any possible American citizen resistance over gun confiscation doesn't fall into the endless quagmire of...

Elections have a way of blowing up partisan conceits—see what happened to the Democratic Party’s Electoral College “lock” in 2016. This year Democrats busted one of their own cherished myths by proving that Republican gerrymanders weren’t preventing them from retaking the House of Representatives. There’s a lesson here for voters and judges. State legislatures have been drawing congressional boundaries to favor one party or another since America’s founding. During the 40 years of sustained Democratic control of the House in the late 20th century, this worked in the Democrats’ favor. As political scientist Matt Grossmann has shown, Democrats sometimes enjoyed...

Like many New Yorkers, I want Amazon to come to our state and its job creation to benefit our residents. You'd be hard pressed to find a city or state in America that would not welcome the economic activity created by capitalism. But the announcement by Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio that Amazon will receive $3 billion in our tax dollars in exchange for making Long Island City its new headquarters left fiscal policy wonks scratching their heads and taxpayers holding the bag. Despite some unfriendly policies adopted by Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo over the years placing...

The idea of the United States directly intervening in Venezuela via military force has been off the table from the beginning. (The Trump administration did send someone to take a meeting with some coup plotters at one point, but nothing came of it.) But might there be some other way we could help knock their dictator Nicolas Maduro off his perch and give the people of that nation an opening to take back their government? Maybe. Hitting their oil sales market through sanctions would be ineffective for two reasons. First, too many other nations would refuse to participate, particularly Russia...

President Trump has hundreds of unfilled presidentially-appointed positions because Democrats have stalled the nominations process out as much as their diminished power in the post-nuclear Senate has allowed. But it is the Republican majority that has placed a total blockade on the usual safety valve for temporary appointments - the recess appointment power - by refusing to go on recess for the last two years. And with Democrats set to take the House and be in position to deny the Senate consent to recess starting January 3, there is a real possibility that President Trump will go an entire presidential...

Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress, is a new kind of politician. She's telegenic, ideologically progressive, widely celebrated by a media that's obsessed with identity politics. She's the kind of politician who can openly side with Hamas against Israel or spread "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"-style conspiracies on Twitter, claiming that Jews possess the supernatural ability to hypnotize the world as they unfurl their "evil." It's not surprising, then, that Omar also supports the "boycott, divestment and sanctions" movement. In a statement to the website Muslim Girl, someone on Omar's staff...

A cat has nine lives. A woman sometimes has more than that. The feline species keeps coming up with surprises, and you can see them most dramatically in politics. Hillary Clinton, for example, has been reincarnated more times than Shirley MacLaine, and she may be about to see whether the third time really is the charm. When the former first lady, former senator, former secretary of state, former candidate for president -- former just about everything -- was asked a couple of weeks ago if she wants to run for the highest office in the land again, she said no...

Last week, the White House revoked the press pass of CNN's chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, and denied him access to the building. CNN responded by filing suit in federal court against the president. Acosta's First and Fifth Amendment rights had been violated, said CNN. The demand: Acosta's press pass must be returned immediately and his White House press privileges restored. "If left unchallenged," CNN warned, "the actions of the White House would create a dangerous chilling effect for any journalist who covers our elected officials." A dozen news organizations, including The New York Times and The Washington Post,...

Editor's Note: This piece was co-authored by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.But it has just been announced that Gov. Tom Ridge, the former head of Homeland Security and Pennsylvania Governor is one of the founders of an apparently conservative lawyers organization called Checks and Balances which they say will "expose President Trump's abuse of the Rule of Law." That’s not the shocking part - lawyers, conservative or otherwise, are of course entitled to organize and protest the president. However what is shocking that one of the founding members of Checks and Balances is the Tom Ridge who when he was...

The Department of Education has issued its long-awaited proposed regulations reforming sexual-assault adjudications on college campus. Not only will these rules restore basic due process and fairness to college tribunals, but they also — given how basic the changes are — highlight just how ridiculous university kangaroo courts have become. First and perhaps most important, the rules will not only require colleges to permit cross-examination of witnesses (including the accuser), but will also prohibit universities from relying on the statements of any witness who refuses to submit to cross-examination. Cross-examination is so fundamental to adversary proceedings that it’s is simply...

Stan Lee, the reinventor of the comic book, died Monday at the ripe old age of 95. Comic books get a bad rap, although not nearly as bad as they used to. There was a time when comic books were the cause of an all-out moral panic. After the release of psychiatrist Fred Wertham's book "The Seduction of the Innocent," the Senate held hearings to grapple with the alleged moral rot of comics, which were supposedly fueling juvenile delinquency and moral degeneracy. Batman and Robin, you see, were secretly gay. Superman was an un-American ersatz fascist. "Superman (with the big...

It's very easy for media elites in Manhattan to decide that one tweet can prove small towns in Wisconsin are stuffed with racists and anti-Semites. On Nov. 12, ABC, CBS and NBC all leaped on a tweet from a contributor of the left-wing talk show "The Young Turks." It showed a months-old prom photo of a collection of teenage boys from Baraboo High School in Wisconsin who are positioned on the front steps of the Sauk County Courthouse and appear to be giving a "Nazi salute." The town of about 12,000 -- best known before now as the original headquarters...

"It's the worst of times." The words are Charles Dickens', from the opening paragraph of a novel set in the 1790s, but the sentiment is familiar today. Americans are divided as never before, we are frequently told, angrily at odds with one another, polarized politically, economically, culturally and in our entertainment preferences. Family elders fret about getting through Thanksgiving and the holidays without violent arguments, and more parents than ever say they'd be upset if their children were to marry across political lines. But are things really so bad? Last week's ceremonies commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the end of...

Thanks to the current imbroglio over Brexit, Britain could soon be Venezuela without the oil or the warm weather. The stunning incompetence of the last two Tory prime ministers, David Cameron and Theresa May, might result in a Labour government, one led by Jeremy Corbyn, a man who has long admired Hugo Chavez for having reminded him—though not the people of Venezuela—what governments can do for the poor and the achievement of social justice. Corbyn’s second in command, John McDonnell, would, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, be in charge of the economy. Only five years ago, he said that the...