Free Republic

Washington -- I hate Russian President Vladimir Putin! I would put him in a category with Fidel Castro, Adolf Hitler, and his countryman, J.V. Stalin. It took Castro, Hitler and Stalin years to achieve their distinction, at least with me. KGB Col. Putin moved more rapidly, but now he has arrived. He is a full-blooded tyrant. People throw the term "hate" around very cavalierly, at least in politics. I recall former President Donald Trump introducing me to one of his acquaintances thus: "You know how I hate the Clintons. Well, let me introduce you to a guy who hates the...

He is alive! Norman Podhoretz is alive, and he agreed to an interview with The Wall Street Journal's very perceptive Barton Swaim this weekend. He says that many of his peers are now deceased but not him, and he certainly did not sound deceased. Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol have given up the ghost, and American political commentary is the poorer for their passing, but Norman is still with us, and at 91 -- almost 92 -- he is full of fire. He went on for almost a full page of the Journal, and I agreed with every word. In...

Washington -- I was shot last week. No, I was not shot by any of the roving bands of white supremacists who, I am told by the media, ply their hate so freely here in Northern Virginia. Nor was I shot by the Ku Kluxers who inhabit these parts and whom the present governor, Ralph Northam, has done so little to oppose -- has Northam been concealing his Confederate heritage? I am certain that the governor-elect will improve on Northam's pathetic record of inaction against the Klan and the other extremist hoodlums here in Virginia. I was actually shot by...

Washington -- How could a comic figure from the world of politics such as President Joe Biden suddenly become such a tragic figure on the American scene? One minute he is bringing all civilized observers to laughter by telling Katie Couric that former President Franklin Roosevelt dealt with the 1929 stock market crash by getting "on television" and reassuring his fellow Americans as only FDR could do. (For the "woke folks" in my audience, Roosevelt was not president of the United States in 1929, and the television had yet to be popularized. Go ahead, look it up.) So, one minute...

Washington -- I could not reach my colleague Wlady Pleszczynski for most of the day on Saturday. He was mysteriously missing. On Saturdays, we talk for at least an hour on the telephone about the past week's events, but not this Saturday. His telephone rang and rang, all for naught. The same was true for two more of my weekend confidants. I had important news to convey to them, but no one was answering the telephone. At the end of the day, I finally roused Wlady. Where had he been? He had been engrossed in the British Broadcasting Corporation's coverage...

Washington -- In predicting what we can expect to be the achievements of President Joe Biden, let us consider what his modern Democratic predecessors have achieved. There is a pattern in the president's predecessors' achievements that is revelatory. Briefly consider what they did. President John F. Kennedy entered the White House as a war hero, and he pursued the Cold War with courage and growing astuteness. He had plans for the domestic front but was not given the time to implement them. Suffice to say, he was a successful Cold Warrior. President Lyndon Baines Johnson was no war hero, but...

Washington -- I was right. I have been right for over 50 years. Through those at times lonely years, I have been patronized by affluent magazines and newspapers for setting up The American Spectator as an organ of opinion that eschewed making a profit. I would cover our expenses in other ways. I did not ignore making a profit, but I had studied the plight of intellectual reviews and recognized that an intellectual review -- like a symphony orchestra, like a museum, like a think tank -- rarely makes a profit. There simply is not a large enough audience to...

Washington -- We are all supposed to be against conspiracies. Yet what about a conspiracy to silence free speech? What about a conspiracy to shut down people who utter thoughts we disagree with? What about silencing communists? What about silencing Nazis? What about a conspiracy to silence Democrats or Republicans? What about silencing those who spout Trumpism? There are a lot of positions that I disagree with. There are a lot of positions that I agree with. I say, let them all be heard -- but this is an old-fashioned belief, and I am increasingly out of step with the...

Washington -- The fabulists who are covering President Joe Biden for the mainstream media have spoken. He has gotten off to a flawless start. His first week was unsurpassed even by Warren Gamaliel Harding back in the 1920s. Warren spent a considerable amount of time in bed during his first week and playing cards with his buddies at other times. Joe was more industrious. He signed executive orders, more than any president in recent years, though he also spent a lot of time in bed. You know, a guy gets fatigued. Pore over the newspapers. Sit down before the evening...

Washington -- Saturday was a good day for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. The First Amendment has been validated once again, this time by the United States Senate. Simply by speaking his mind, Citizen Donald Trump committed no crime on Jan. 6. That was when he addressed a large crowd telling them they should march "peacefully" and "patriotically." He told them they should "fight like hell." Those are words frequently employed by politicians, and Trump's defense team gave us plenty of blood-curdling examples of Democrats uttering precisely those words in an angry montage Friday....

Linda Greenhouse was once The New York Times' reporter for the Supreme Court. Now, I take it, she is in retirement, though she apparently comes out of retirement from time to time to heave bouquets to President-elect Joe Biden. Last weekend, she heaved several of her floral encomiums his way when she told "My Joe Biden Story" to the Times' gullible readers. The result was warm, effusive and mostly claptrap. She wrote that, in 1987, when Joe was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "Mr. Biden presided with confidence and grace (over the hearings for Judge Robert Bork's Supreme Court...

Washington -- Well, I won again! For the second presidential election in a row, I beat out the mainstream media and the pollsters. They all said President Donald Trump would be beaten by staggering margins in battleground state after battleground state. They predicted a blue wave, which would sweep into office a filibuster-proof Senate. Sen. Chuck Schumer would replace Sen. Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader, and we would have Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico as states plus as many justices packed into the Supreme Court as the Democrats think is fair. Why not expand the court to 50 justices?...

Washington -- I do not like being wrong. Looking back on the journalism of the last few years, I have concluded this makes me one weird journalist. Most journalists -- in fact, most commentators -- seem to prefer to be wrong. Spectacularly, melodramatically wrong. In 2013, when I met Donald Trump for the first time, I concluded that he could be a successful politician. More than that, I concluded that if he ran for president, he would win. He was not like any other politician I have known. He was smart, aggressive and he knew enough about the issues to...

I have, for most of my adult life, been a practicing hypochondriac. So, it will come as no surprise to you to hear that I am a zealous reader of the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA. I find something of interest in practically every issue. Recently, I found myself engrossed in the thoughts of Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is also, if I am not mistaken, a noted bird watcher. I, of course, know very little about the birds. Yet, thanks to Redfield and the JAMA, I am now...

Washington -- One of the most alarming aspects of the present fevers is the utterance of total untruths by notables in high places. Do they not know what the truth is? Or do they not care about the truth? Do they believe their notoriety will overcome a totally erroneous statement? For instance, consider Gen. James Mattis' statement in The Atlantic, which is highly misleading. History is clear. Past presidents have used the military repeatedly in states with or without a governor's invitation. To deny it is an example of what President Donald Trump has called "fake news." Has Mattis never...

WASHINGTON -- It has taken a long time, but finally the Justice Department is training its guns on what heretofore was unthinkable, unless you're a career civil libertarian. For years, the civil libertarians have been warning us that the Intelligence Community posed a threat to democracy as we know it in the United States. Every so often, they would point to some excess of the FBI or the CIA and tell us that the lights were going out in democratic America. Does not The Washington Post run atop its front page the maudlin line, "Democracy Dies in Darkness"? Well, the...

WASHINGTON --Have you noticed the sudden popularity of books about fascism? It is amazing. I would say such books are even more popular than books about rock 'n' roll, though they are not as well-written. I have in mind "How Fascism Works," "Fascism: A Warning," "The Road to Unfreedom" and "Can It Happen Here?" Doubtless many more are coming. All are inspired by our president, Donald J. Trump, and they probably scare the hell out of his wife, Melania Trump. She actually grew up on the continent where fascism was a dominant force for years, and communism for many more....

WASHINGTON -- As the Democrats grow increasingly ravenous to have a shot at the presidency of Donald Trump, they are beginning to train their guns on the frontrunners for the nomination. That means they are contemplating finishing off Sen. Elizabeth Warren long before 2020. They are taking aim at her claim to being a Native American maiden, though Trump has the best line on her. He calls her "Pocahontas." If she ever gets to debate him, that ought to be the end of our modern-day Sitting Bull. Poof. By then, the president ought to be able to calculate how much...

WASHINGTON -- "It's the economy, stupid," as we used to say back in the good old days -- the good old days being the 1990s, when the president of the United States could have molested women in the White House during business hours with impunity. In fact, if memory serves, that president, William J. Clinton, saw his popularity soar after accusations of his molestations were made public, or at least after some of them were made public. If all of them were made public, according to wisdom of the time, he might have been elected President for Life. Those...

WASHINGTON -- After over two decades of writing about Bill and Hillary Clinton, it is pretty dispiriting to see how my friends the Democrats have ignored my findings of the rapacious couple. I rather like the two-party system. Yet ever since the Clintons came to national attention -- and to the attention of various law enforcement officials -- they have done little for the Democratic Party except enrich themselves, a matter about which I have actually written several books. Well, all I can say is that I tried, but it's all for naught. Even by the last presidential election, the...