Free Republic

I happened onto a piece by Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard, wherein he links to "a short, powerful piece in National Review" by Rick Brookhiser, who "concludes that 'the conservative movement is no more. Its destroyers are Donald Trump and his admirers.'" I somewhat get the sentiment -- or at least I used to -- because during the GOP primaries, I fleetingly entertained a similar concern that Trump, whom I didn't consider a conservative, might undermine the conservative movement in the long run if elected. Presumably trying to console Brookhiser, Kristol writes: "Movements grow old. They eventually die....

Now that a consensus is beginning to emerge that special counsel Robert Mueller has the evidence to make a compelling case of obstruction of justice against President Trump, the president's defenders have trotted out a new defense: that obstruction on its own is a mere "procedural crime" that doesn't really count unless coupled with proof of guilt on an underlying crime. In other words, defenders view the Mueller probe as akin to the Watergate investigation without the break-in. But this view is wholly untenable. The legal version of the argument is, as explained by Rich Lowry in National Review, "if...

... Liberals roll their eyes at the claim that President Obama violated democratic norms or abused his power. But putting aside the specific arguments, conservatives saw plenty of abuses and violations, from the IRS scandals and Benghazi to the Iran deal. Obama said many times he couldn’t unilaterally implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program because he wasn’t a “king.” Then he did it anyway. And the process repeats itself, getting worse and more egregious each time. When I criticize Trump, the first response from countless Republicans is, “Oh yeah, why was it okay for Obama!?” If I point...

Many questions remain, but Democrats, including Obama, are probably not going to look good when we get the answers.

New FBI texts highlight a motive to conceal the president’s involvement. From the first, these columns have argued that the whitewash of the Hillary Clinton emails caper was President Barack Obama’s call - not the FBI’s, and not the Justice Department’s. The decision was inevitable. Obama, using a pseudonymous email account, had repeatedly communicated with Secretary Clinton over her private, non-secure email account. If Clinton had been charged, Obama’s culpable involvement would have been patent. In any prosecution of Clinton, the Clinton–Obama emails would have been in the spotlight. For the prosecution, they would be more proof of willful (or,...

They should hand out awards for hypocrisy, preening, and lack of self-awareness. On Golden Globes night, Hollywood preened in front of its black mirror as usual, but the degree to which it was blind to what was obvious to all observers was stranger than ever. It was like that time the pear-shaped Homer Simpson looked at his reflection and saw a torso rippling with musculature. What was the most crystalline moment of self-unawareness?

<p>A household appliance will be the next stepping stone on America’s path to restored greatness. The government is poised to punish many Americans, in the name of protecting a few of them, because, in the government’s opinion, too many of them are choosing to buy foreign-made washing machines for no better reason than that the buyers think they are better. If you are wondering why the government is squandering its dwindling prestige by having opinions about such things, you have not been paying attention to Whirlpool’s demonstration that it is more adept at manipulating Washington than it is at making washing machines.</p>

Late last night, while reading a stream of apocalyptic rhetoric about the repeal of net neutrality and the “end of the internet as we know it,” I reached the shattering conclusion that one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies was wrong. The movie is the 2004 Brad Bird masterpiece, The Incredibles. The line comes from the villain, Syndrome, who outlines his plan to make “everyone super,” because when “everyone is super [he chuckles maliciously] no one will be.” It’s a great line, and it seems to convey an important truth. When you make everyone or everything...

My podcast interview with Andrew Sullivan is now up, and it’s a doozy. We get into just about everything, from why he thinks Donald Trump should be removed from office, to his criticism of the #MeToo movement, to a rather heated conversation about his view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No matter your ideology, I suspect there are points you will be nodding in agreement with Sullivan and points where you will be screaming at the podcast in rage at him. Sullivan says, for example, that though he wants President Trump removed from office, he is fine with Mike Pence taking...

RUSH: I also have Nikki Haley, a couple of bites of Nikki Haley just ripping it at the United Nations earlier. Here’s take one… HALEY: It could be that Russia is knowingly allowing chemical weapons to remain in Syria. It could be that Russia has been incompetent in its efforts to remove the chemical weapons. Or it could be that the Assad Regime is playing the Russians for fools, telling them there are no chemical weapons, all the while stockpiling them on their bases. The world is waiting for the Russian government to act responsibly in Syria. The world is...

: A senior Justice Department official demoted last week for concealing his meetings with the men behind the anti-Trump “dossier” had even closer ties to Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for the incendiary document, than has been disclosed, Fox News has confirmed: The official’s wife worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.

The rationale for Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel is that Russia conducted a cyberespionage attack — hacking — to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign, and that the Trump campaign may somehow have “colluded” in this offense. Mueller has been at this for six months, and the FBI for a year before that. So isn’t it about time we asked: Could Mueller prove that Russia did it? Forget Trump. What about Russia? We have paid too much attention to the so-called collusion component of the probe — speculation about Trump-campaign coordination in Russia’s perfidy. There appears to be no proof...

The fact that an FBI agent involved in the Clinton emails investigation was reportedly a partisan Democrat is not in itself damning. I’m taking a “wait and see” attitude on FBI agent Peter Strzok, who is now enmeshed in a political storm involving both the Clinton and the Trump investigations. You know why? Well . . . it’s because I can’t stand the Clintons. What difference does that make? Well, because I didn’t like them any better in 2001. That was when I used to run the satellite U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York — the office based in White...

In today’s big media news, gonzo video journalist James O’Keefe had yet another of his undercover sting operations blow up in his face. The Washington Post caught O’Keefe and his Veritas Project trying to scam the paper into running a false sexual abuse allegation against Roy Moore:

Our Constitution carefully separates the legislative, executive, and judicial powers into three separate branches of government: Congress enacts laws, which the president enforces and the courts review. However, when all of these powers are accumulated “in the same hands,” James Madison warned in Federalist No. 47, the government “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” The rise of the administrative state over the last century has pushed us closer and closer to the brink. Today, Congress enacts vague laws, the executive branch aggrandizes unbounded discretion, and the courts defer to those dictates. For decades, presidents of both parties...

Roy Moore is the Steve Bannon project in a nutshell. For the former Trump operative, the Alabama Senate candidate’s tattered credibility is a feature, not a bug. If Moore had well-considered political and legal views, good judgment and a sterling reputation, he’d almost by definition be part of the establishment that Bannon so loathes. Since Moore has none of those things, he’s nearly an ideal representative of the Bannon insurgency. Events in Alabama make it clear that Bannon’s dime-store Leninism — burn everything down, including perhaps the Republican Senate majority — comes at a considerable cost. In this project, the...

Roy Moore’s reputation depends on denying the allegation that he dated teenage girls as a grown man, and yet he can’t quite bring himself to do it. The Alabama Republican’s campaign for the Senate has been rocked by allegations of sexual improprieties with underage girls. While he’s denied the worst of the allegations, he turned in a rocky performance in an interview with radio talk-show host Sean Hannity that lent credence to the charges against him rather than dispelled them. The alleged conduct dates back 40 years and, absent some difficult-to-imagine documentary proof, it will always be Moore’s word against...

The allegations against Roy Moore are disgusting — and if you find yourself reluctant to say so because of your politics, then you’re pretty gross, too. The Leigh Corfman story, reported by the Washington Post, is about so much more than just some older guy having a relationship with some younger girl. That, of course, would be bad enough — many girls haven’t even had their f***ing periods at age 14 — but this is also about a man who abuses his power to prey on the powerless. It’s about a respected district attorney finding a girl in a vulnerable...

"Roy Moore is a dangerous man who never should have received the GOP nomination. Republican primary voters selected as their champion a person who seeks to suppress the civil rights of his fellow citizens and defies the law whenever it suits his ideological and political purposes. Even before today’s allegations, he was unfit to be a United States senator. Now the question is whether he’s dangerous, unfit, and vile. The Alabama GOP options for replacing him on the ballot are limited, at best. It’s time to consider a write-in challenge, and if he wins the election, the Senate should consider...

The editors of the National Review are back on their high horse again, recalling the days of their “Against Trump” issue devoted to foiling his quest for the GOP nomination.  This editorial in National Review, calling for a “time out” on the NFL for Trump (like some naughty preschooler) and calling for better “judgment” (in other words, their judgment) from the president: The president has conducted himself here in an unseemly fashion, to say the least, and has exhibited his remarkable knack for making everything he touches about him, which the NFL protests weren’t until he stuck his nose...