Free Republic

Kleenex sales may have shattered records in the DC metropolitan area this weekend thanks to The Washington Post’s nearly 5,000-word pity party for Hunter Biden. The Post revealed that “Hunter’s relationship with his own last name has . . . invited burdens and scrutiny.”

But to believe some of the claims from Trump and Republicans one would have to imagine that President Barack Obama in 2014 helped seed money into bat research, which within several years would result in a global virus that escaped from a lab — either as a bioweapon or by accident — and spread around the globe. One would have to come to the firm conclusion that not only was the virus developed in a lab — something experts have said is nearly impossible given the virus's features — but that Americans helped cover that up, and that President Biden...

Joe Biden is looking at building 500 million solar panels, slashing U.S. carbon emissions within 15 years, and rapidly expanding a government-sponsored health care plan. He wants to overhaul the way policing is conducted on American streets and the way success is measured in primary schools. Over the past week, the presumptive Democratic nominee has offered the biggest burst of policy proposals since he effectively won the nomination, including a plan to spend $700 billion on American products and research. It marks a significant move to the left from where Biden and his party were only recently - on everything...

As Democrats descend on Iowa to kick off a six-month sprint to the first primary vote, party activists are increasingly anxious that former vice president Joe Biden, the consistent polling leader, has not disposed of persistent questions about whether he is well-equipped to take on President Trump. Adding to the Democrats’ nervousness is that a clear alternative has yet to emerge. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) is rising in the polls and has a high-quality campaign organization, but doubts linger in some quarters about the appeal of her left-leaning policies in a general election. Sens. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Bernie...

Senator Elizabeth Warren made a surprise appearance at the National Congress of American Indians Wednesday morning, forcefully responding to President Trump’s derisively calling her "Pocahontas" and addressing her claims of Native American heritage more directly - and far more expansively - than she ever has before. [Snip] She did not apologize for her claims that her mother’s family had Cherokee blood — instead, reaffirming: "My mother's family was part Native American. And my daddy's parents were bitterly opposed to their relationship. So, in 1932, when Mother was 19 and Daddy had just turned 20, they eloped." "The story they lived...

John Kerry has colluded with the Iranian regime to preserve the Iran deal from its prospective undoing by the president of the United States. Matt Viser calls it “shadow diplomacy” in his Boston Globe article breaking the story. Isn’t this the kind of thing for which then Acting Attorney Sally Yates sicced the FBI on Michael Flynn? Because it allegedly violated the Logan Act? Why, yes, it is. (I requested a comment from Yates this morning via email.) Yates won’t be talking to me, I’m pretty sure, but we can to turn to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on...

Complete Headline: Breaking the Kennedy code of silence: Patrick goes on national TV to expose his family's secrets as he launches book describing how 'disabling alcoholism' killed his father Ted, his mom and his sister Patrick Kennedy has broken the political dynasty's 'code of silence' by describing how he turned to drink at 13 to deal with the multitude of his family's problems. The former Congressman told CBS' 60 Minutes how his alcoholic mother Joan would walk around in a bathrobe 'inebriated' during the day while his father, Senator Ted Kennedy, would self-medicate by drinking. The 48-year-old politician said the...

Kennedy, in a book scheduled to be released Monday, provides an intimate picture of a dysfunctional family and some of its well-publicized struggles with alcoholism and mental health issues — and what he describes as a blanket of secrecy that papered over their problems...The book, which Kennedy will discuss on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night, is bound to rile other members of the famous family. “I know how some of them are going to react,” Kennedy says in a brief excerpt from the show released by CBS. “They’re angry.” He describes a drunken sailing trip in 2000 that turned out...