Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- On the occasion of my 50th anniversary of founding and editing The American Spectator, I feel moved to reflect on the parlous condition of the magazine business. We celebrated our anniversary this week, and naturally I composed my reflections before the event. What makes this column something more than an occasion for indulgence is that the sickly condition of magazines is, of a sudden, a hot news item. Major figures in the business are departing the scene. They are what the media is pleased to call celebrity editors. For instance, in the last three weeks, the editors of...

Seeing both sides of a problem could be seen as a no-no. WashingtonPresident Donald Trump is in trouble again with his Moral Superiors. His problem, of course, is that he cannot throttle his B.S. Detector. Trump it seems at some point in life acquired a B.S. Detector that has usually served him well. It certainly served him well during his long years in business and during his brief time in politics. Now, however, it is problematic. The Detector sounds an alarm when it perceives B.S., and during the Charlottesville disruptions it went wild. Every time the Mainstream Media or a...

WASHINGTON -- Last Friday, as guests of the Trump family, my wife, Jeanne, and I braved inclement weather to attend President Donald Trump's inauguration. By now you know it was a typical Trumpian ceremony. It was peaceful, elegant, momentous and frightening. At least the protesters were frightened. What they were frightened about is a bit unclear, but many of them were certainly alarmed. Last week, I wrote that today's protesters seem confused, disoriented, shabbily dressed and famished. My guess is that if the polizia had opened a soup kitchen, that would have distracted many of the demonstrators from their...

WASHINGTON -- On Friday, the BBC enlisted me to defend my support of Donald Trump for president. Though the ensuing television interview was conducted in English, I found it incomprehensible. I was speaking in my native tongue to two apparently intelligent English-speaking women, yet their responses to my clear, if amused, rejoinders amounted to gibberish. They sought to understand Trump's victory but did not have the most elementary understanding of the American democratic process or any grasp of rational thought. I detected no whiff of alcohol on their breath or any other sign of inebriation. They showed no sign of...

WASHINGTON -- Norman Podhoretz, the former longtime editor of Commentary Magazine, is no longer an Inadvertent Conservative for Hillary, or ICH. He is voting for Donald Trump for president. The prospect of Clinton in the White House is too grisly for Podhoretz. It probably also is for his wife, Midge Decter, the gifted essayist. Both are reasonable neoconservatives, which is to say erstwhile liberals who moved over to conservatism sometime in the 1970s. I have known them for years. In the late 1970s they made a similar calculation. They were two of only four neoconservatives to attend a dinner I...

WASHINGTON -- Race is what you make of it. For me I have made race a part of what social scientists once called the "melting pot," by which they meant that differences -- including ethnicity and race -- were all melted down into one great variegated country called America. There might be different heritages and different sub-cultures mixed into the American melting pot, but once mixed together we were all Americans. Of course, however, through the years that American melting pot has been increasingly difficult to maintain, because various leaders -- political leaders, education leaders, social leaders and simple charlatans...

WASHINGTON -- I see that CNN is calling upon the good offices of Mr. Potato Head to refute Donald Trump's evisceration of Hillary Clinton in his speech last Wednesday. Mr. Potato Head is very indignant that Peter Schweizer has written a book, "Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich," demonstrating that a pattern of corruption exists in the relationship between The Clinton Foundation and the Clinton State Department. He says that pattern of corruption does not establish the Clintons' guilt. Well, an author can only do so much....

Looking back through the years I have seen it all coming: the militant ignorance of students strutting across our college campuses today, the authoritarian style of the administrators, the mediocrity of the professors and the sheer goofiness of the students. It all came out of the late 1960s. Most of my fellow 1960s graduates went on to careers in the professions, commerce and industry. But some remained on campus, becoming professors, administrators and increasingly, as the years went on, swamis of identity politics. They established women's studies programs, black studies programs and gay studies programs. Now, I assume, there are...

A couple of weeks ago I heard the National Symphony Orchestra perform Dmitri Shostakovich's symphony commemorating war and revolution, his Symphony No. 11. There was not much lyricism to it, not even a dulcet tune one could whistle while leaving the symphony hall. It was ominous rumbling and groaning, the tympani madly thundering away. Nonetheless, it was very affecting. After all, the 1957 work commemorated Russia's events on the road to the Bolshevik Revolution. Rumble on. Rumble on. Last week, I saw a documentary of recent events and became overwhelmed with similar rumbling and groaning from the movie's soundtrack. It...

Washington -- Over the last few days, former President Bill Clinton displayed one of the salient weaknesses of our contemporary politicians. He did this even while reminding Americans of, some would say, his rare lapses in true leadership: his 1994 bipartisan legislation to lower crimes rates in cities. When confronted by low-information Black Lives Matter activists during his speech in Philadelphia last week, he wilted. It took him 24 hours, but eventually, after an eloquent defense of his 1994 leadership, he groveled, whimpering, "I almost want to apologize." Why apologize, Mr. President? The incarceration of criminals that followed that 1994...

In the many decades I have had the pleasure of covering the Clintons, I have developed several themes about them that have, over the years, been validated by fact. One theme is that there is a Clinton curse. It afflicts many who come into contact with the fabulous couple. In the early days, the curse brought down the McDougals, Webb Hubbell, Vince Foster and former Governor Jim Guy Tucker, all of whom by now are figures known only to history. More recently it was Jeffrey Epstein, sex offender and Bill Clinton's pal and fellow epicure. Now, quite possibly, Josh Earnest,...

WASHINGTON -- This week, three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Hillary Clinton spent valuable time during an appearance on "Face the Nation" swatting down stories that surfaced Friday. Early on Friday morning when most Americans are asleep, save second-story men, the State Department released thousands of Clinton's emails. In one she seemed to be asking her aide, Jake Sullivan, to send her classified information across a "nonsecure" line. That is to say, across her personal server. She was impatient to read the email's contents and could not wait for it to be sent on a secure line. That strikes a...

deral Bureau of Investigation will recommend that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton and various of her aides, and soon. The evidence consists of materials that the Bureau has gathered in the course of its months-long investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s personal server. The recommendations will come very soon. The charges will consist of some of the following:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation will recommend that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton and various of her aides, and soon. The evidence consists of materials that the Bureau has gathered in the course of its months-long investigation of Mrs. Clinton's personal server. The recommendations will come very soon. The charges will consist of some of the following: 1. Improper disclosure or retention of classified information. 2. Destruction of government records. 3. Lying to federal agents. 4. Lying under oath. 5. Obstruction of justice. All the counts are familiar to those of us who have followed the...

I was thumbing through an old magazine over the weekend. It was 47 years old to be exact, and I came across a surprisingly prescient piece entitled wittily, "The Arab, the Jew, and the Pickle." What particularly caught my eye was that the piece was written by me in what is now called The American Spectator. Imagine that. In it, I argued that Israel had no other choice but to resist its enemies. They were all around little Israel and they were hostile to the utmost. Any sign of weakness would put the state of Israel in mortal danger. That...

WASHINGTON -- We are told that our political system here in Washington is "broken." The left and the right do not get along, and usually it is because the right is obdurately partisan. Actually, it is not the political system that is broken. It is much wider than the political system. It is the political culture, that is to say: the politicians, the operatives, the financial supporters and the voters (left and right). It is also the commentators, the reporters, the editors; in a word the media (left and right). The left-wing press sees things one way and reports on...

WASHINGTON -- Here we are again with Hillary Rodham Clinton confronted by charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and general improbity. Such behavior has been going on with her for a long time. Some journalists who today chronicle the charges facing the Clintons were not even born when it all began. For those of us with unflagging memories and abundant experience, it goes back decades. I would date the first official charges of Hillary Clinton's crookedness and reckless disregard for the law to Watergate in 1974 when she improbably served on the Watergate impeachment staff. Her boss then was the...

It turns out that 17 years ago Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was lucky that, at the end of his long pursuit of President Bill Clinton, he could fasten upon a DNA sample left by the president on Monica Lewinsky’s dress to prove that Clinton was lying when he said “I did not have sexual relations with woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Otherwise Starr might still be pursuing the wily ex-president. Read more at http://spectator.org/articles/62626/clinton-cash-and-clinton-corruption

WASHINGTON -- Regarding last week's string of stories about Hillary Clinton conducting her State Department business between 2009 and 2013 exclusively on a private email account, the heat -- as we say here in Washington -- is on in the kitchen. Her account was completely controlled by her. Even the server was controlled by her. She apparently had no State Department account when she was secretary of state, and no one thought to ask about it until late in 2014 when a Congressional committee inquiring into the bloody assault on our complexes in Benghazi sought her emails. Yet now the...

WASHINGTON -- It is the end of the year 2014 and the beginning of 2015. Perhaps it is an appropriate time to think about what we are to be confronted with in the presidential year 2016. Ever since the autumn electoral rout of the Democrats, we have been confronted by news stories of the looming presidential prospects of Hillary Rodham Clinton and hints about the rise of the presidential prospects of Elizabeth Warren. Only rarely is there a news story about the presidential prospects of the Republicans, though I count more than 25 possible Republican candidates. On the Democrats side...