Free Republic

National Park Service acting director P. Daniel Smith faces plenty of looming priorities this summer, from an $11 billion backlog in maintenance needs to natural disasters like the recent wildfire damage to Big Bend Park. But in recent days, another issue has competed for Smith’s attention: how to satisfy President Trump’s request to station tanks or other armored military vehicles on the Mall for his planned Fourth of July address to the nation. The ongoing negotiations over whether to use massive military hardware, such as Abrams tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles , as a prop for Trump’s “Salute to America”...

The tight relationship between The Washington Post and the Democratic National Committee was borne out in emails discovered in the 20,000-deep email trove from the DNC posted on WikiLeaks. In an April 26 email to Mark Paustenbach, the DNC’s deputy communications director, the paper’s White House Bureau Chief Juliet Eilperin wrote: Subject: just FYI, the story is running on A1 tomorrow Dear Mark, I think you all will be totally fine with it. Thanks again for all your help. Best, Juliet

Brian Sandoval, the centrist Republican governor of Nevada, is being vetted by the White House for a possible nomination to the Supreme Court, according to two people familiar with the process. Sandoval is increasingly viewed by some key Democrats as perhaps the only nominee President Obama could select who would be able to break a Republican blockade in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday pledged "no action" on any Supreme Court nomination before November's election, saying the decision ought to be left to the next president. The White House declined to comment Wednesday for this story....

President Obama will make the first visit during his presidency to a U.S. mosque next week, the White House announced Saturday, as the administration tries to promote religious tolerance at a time when rhetoric linking Islam with terrorism is becoming more voluminous. On Wednesday the president will visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a sprawling community center in the the city’s western suburbs, that serves thousands of people with a place of worship, a housing complex and schools, (according to its website). It is one of the Mid-Atlantic region’s largest Muslim centers and describes itself as aspiring “to be the...

This is what occurs in a slow-news environment at The Washington Post: they lament the lack of honors for Barack Obama. The front page of Saturday’s paper carried the headline “Hawaii wipes out in Obama honors.” With nothing better to do in Honolulu, White House reporters Greg Jaffe and Juliet Eilperin spent 1,286 words unspooling  the “embarrassing record” of Hawaii’s failure to name more than a snowcone after the current president. The story began at Sandy Beach, where former Honolulu city councilman Stanley Chang wanted to name a favorite Obama hangout for the president: “It was almost a prose poem,”...

President Obama on Monday commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders in federal prisons, as part of his administration's effort to reform the criminal justice system. Obama’s clemency to non-violent drug offenders comes as the administration is working to reduce operating costs and overcrowding in federal prisons, as well as to provide relief to inmates who were sent to prison under the harsh sentencing guidelines put in place in the late 1980s as the country was grappling with the crime and violence associated with crack cocaine.

President Obama on Monday commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders in federal prisons, as part of his administration's effort to reform the criminal justice system. Obama’s clemency to non-violent drug offenders comes as the administration is working to reduce operating costs and overcrowding in federal prisons, as well as to provide relief to inmates who were sent to prison under the harsh sentencing guidelines put in place in the late 1980s as the country was grappling with the crime and violence associated with crack cocaine. Since the Obama administation announced last year that it would grant clemency to nonviolent...

A major development occurred today in the scandal surrounding the Washington Post’s attempt to advance Democratic Party talking points by falsely linking Koch Industries to the Keystone Pipeline. In the unlikely event that you are not already familiar with the story, you should begin by reading this post and this one, as well as the one from last October where I dismantled the International Forum on Globalization report that was the basis for the Washington Post’s story of March 20. The facts, very briefly, are these: Koch Industries has no interest in the Keystone Pipeline; it has not lobbied in...

On Thursday, the Washington Post published an article by Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin titled “The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.” The article’s first paragraph included this claim: The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David. The theme of the article was that the Keystone Pipeline is all about the Koch brothers; or, at least, that this is a plausible claim. The Post authors relied on a report...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Video: Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has concluded that the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional and he will no longer defend it in federal lawsuits.Public opinion on same-sex marriage has shifted so dramatically in recent years that Democratic groups now see the issue as a critical way to mobilize voters in a slew of races up and down the ballot. Just a decade ago, widespread opposition to gay marriage did just the opposite, allowing Karl Rove to mobilize conservatives in 13 states and help reelect George W. Bush as president. The changing political dynamics were on full display...

For the second day in a row, The Washington Post showed it was bored by the IRS scandal by putting the hearings story inside the paper. Instead, the top of Wednesday's post seized on the favorite liberal scandal du jour: "Military chiefs lament sex assaults but reject Senate bill." Their Post Express tabloid screamed this front-page headline: "CAN THE MILITARY CURE ITS 'CANCER'?" This is also the second day in a row that the Post has saved room on the front page to attack the ethics of Virginia's Republican governor, Robert McDonnell. The IRS hearings were on A-2, and below...

James E. Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who sparked an uproar last month by accusing the Bush administration of keeping scientific information from reaching the public, said Friday that officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are also muzzling researchers who study global warming. Hansen, speaking in a panel discussion about science and the environment before a packed audience at the New School university, said that while he hopes his own agency will soon adopt a more open policy, NOAA insists on having "a minder" monitor its scientists when they discuss their findings with journalists. "It seems more like...