Free Republic

Lawmakers and experts are sounding the alarm about "deepfakes," forged videos that look remarkably real, warning they will be the next phase in disinformation campaigns. The manipulated videos make it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction, as artificial intelligence technology produces fake content that looks increasingly real. The issue has the attention of lawmakers from both parties on Capitol Hill. “It is almost too late to sound the alarm before this technology is released — it has been unleashed … and now we are playing a bit of defense,” Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) told The...

When a BuzzFeed reporter first sought comment on the news outlet’s explosive report that President Trump had directed his lawyer to lie to Congress, the spokesman for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III treated the request as he would almost any other story. The reporter informed Mueller’s spokesman, Peter Carr, that he and a colleague had “a story coming stating that Michael Cohen was directed by President Trump himself to lie to Congress about his negotiations related to the Trump Moscow project,” according to copies of their emails provided by a BuzzFeed spokesman. Importantly, the reporter made no reference to...

The National Rifle Association's (NRA) insurance policy known as NRA Carry Guard is for concealed carriers who want personal liability insurance. The insurance policy protects carriers from civil liability and "provides them with immediate access to attorneys, supplementary payments as needed for bail, criminal defense legal retainer fees, lawful firearm replacement, compensation while in court, psychological support and cleanup costs for any covered claim resulting from the use of a legally possessed firearm—including an act of self-defense." Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler on Tuesday announced a ban "on the sale of illegal insurance policies branded by the National Rifle...

A fire Sunday morning in Northwest Washington, D.C., damaged studios for Fox News, C-SPAN and MSNBC, and forced "Fox News Sunday" to relocate its broadcast to a local affiliate's studio. D.C. Fire and EMS tweeted that an electrical fire broke out in the 8th floor television studio but nobody was injured. Steve Scully, the political editor for C-SPAN, tweeted shortly after 7 a.m. that the Fox News and C-SPAN studios sustained "extensive damage," and MSNBC's studio took on "extensive smoke and water damage."

(Skip) The Associated Press reported that Gillette’s new toxic-masculinity ad caused an “online uproar.” “Gillette Ad With a #MeToo Edge Attracts Support and Outrage,” claimed The New York Times. “Gillette faces backlash and boycott over ‘#MeToo advert,” ran a typical headline in the BBC this week. Outrage? Uproar? Backlash? I’d say it’s more like a hacklash. It’s journalists dealing out pretend outrage. (Skip) After an anonymous Twitter user posing as a hater posted video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doing a cute “Breakfast Club” dance on a rooftop while she was apparently still in college, Republicans were reported to be going bonkers....

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If someone walks up to you and bangs a drum in your face, are you guilty of harassing the drummer? You might be if you’re white and wearing a MAGA hat. Just a day after rushing to judgment about a Buzzfeed story that claimed President Trump had instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress—a story Robert Mueller’s own office subsequently debunked, the blue-checkmark media elite had a new instant narrative to promote. It was a tale perfectly tailored to liberal biases: white Catholic teenagers in MAGA hats had harassed an old and frail Indian veteran during the March for Life,...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s refusal to meet with US National Security Advisor John Bolton has become the latest episode of what are now periodic US-Turkey tensions over the Syrian Kurds. Erdoğan declared that he would not “accept or swallow” Bolton’s earlier comments that Turkey should provide security guarantees for Syrian Kurds as a precondition for US troops’ withdrawal from northern Syria. This has obviously become unsure as the withdrawal of these troops has actually begun. The “non-paper” that Bolton delivered to the Turkish presidential office included the statement that “the United States opposes any mistreatment of opposition forces who...

Trump is making liberal heads explode this morning: Nancy Pelosi has behaved so irrationally & has gone so far to the left that she has now officially become a Radical Democrat. She is so petrified of the “lefties” in her party that she has lost control...And by the way, clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting! Don’t forget, we are building and renovating big sections of Wall right now. Moving quickly, and will cost far less than previous politicians thought possible. Building, after all, is what I do best, even when money is not readily available! Wow,...

Less than three weeks after being sworn in as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez already has more Twitter followers than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, more interactions than Barack Obama, one of C-SPAN's most-watched congressional floor speeches of all time and a ubiquitous nickname that doubles as her Twitter handle — "AOC." Democrats want to learn from her, Republicans want to destroy her and many in Washington fear being "dunked on" by her. The 29-year-old House freshman from New York is showing her older peers what the future of politics might look like once the digital natives like...

President Donald Trump's 2020 team has found a rather clever way to cash in on the border wall debate. Supporters who want a wall can now pay $20.20 to have a fake brick sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “Weeks after the Democrats began stonewalling President Trump in his fight to secure our border, the American people now have a chance to send a clear message to Democrat leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi about the need to build the wall,” a fundraising email sent Friday read. But according to Trump's campaign manager,...

The majority of American Millennials identify as socialist, according to surveys by both Reason-Rupe and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. That’s the bad news. The good news is that just 32 percent of Millennials can define socialism. The frequently-wrong but never-in-doubt freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., may indeed be the voice of her ignorant generation. During an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Anderson Cooper asked Ocasio-Cortez, “When people hear the word socialism, they think Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela. Is that what you have in mind?” He neglected to mention the vicious socialist regimes of Cambodia, Ethiopia, Poland, Romania, North...

Recall that President Trump’s number one priority was to reverse the alarming decline in military readiness, which he (correctly, in my view) regarded as extremely dangerous, possibly tempting external enemies into a military confrontation in the belief that the US military would be unable to respond effectively

“Israel must preserve its capability to protect itself and deter its enemies, and we thus retain our right to defend ourselves against terrorism and to take actions against terrorist organizations." In 2002, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon wrote a letter to US president George W. Bush, informing him of his intentions to make a bold new initiative for peace by removing thousands of Jews from their homes in the Gaza Strip and completely withdrawing all Israeli forces, and he received a response from Bush. In this letter, Sharon wrote, “The Palestinian Authority under its current leadership has taken no action to...

What's in the news day and night? The wall. It's all anyone talks about or thinks about or debates. Have you heard? The U.S. government is partially shut down over the wall. But it's all a massive liberal scam. A Ponzi scheme. Pure fraud. Bernie Madoff couldn't come up with a better scam. Because the same liberal politicians and donors who scream about the "racism" and "immorality" and "ineffectiveness" of a wall all live behind walls. President Trump needs to buy TV infomercial time and run a 30-minute TV show in a Ross Perot fashion -- featuring aerial views of...

A Republican congressman is urging Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to block freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress, from leading a delegation to the West Bank, arguing that the trip would hurt U.S.-Israel relations. Tlaib's planned delegation to the West Bank, which is set for the same time as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) trip for new members of Congress, would be "inconsistent with our national values," Texas Rep. Brian Babin (R) argued in a letter. "I am writing to express my extreme concern that a newly elected Member of Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib,...

Often these days people tell me how they don’t trust what they are told by the press.  I tell them they don’t know half the story.  I read many news stories that I find interesting and then I decide I should dig deeper.  It is very often surprising how the story turns out quite a bit different than what the MSM has led us peasants to believe.When the story broke that there was mistreatment of women during the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, I initially had a moment of schadenfreude and then moved on to other matters.   Then the complexion...

The president’s proposal was met with disdain from an array of top Democratic lawmakers. Many used the same language in their critiques, accusing Trump of holding the government and federal workers "hostage."

Delusional. Arrogant. Chauvinistic. Egomaniacal. All of these words could probably aptly describe Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at this historical moment. In a sense, referring to him as ‘president’ seems quite disrespectful to the countries that actually have a semblance of democratic institutions. Erdogan has proven himself a ‘leader’ who aspires to be a sultan, a neo-Ottoman dictator who not only sees the Kurdish people as ‘mountain Turks’ but the Turkey-Syria border as fluid and illegitimate. Fascist. Authoritarian. Dictatorial. The friend of al-Qaeda ideologues. With his government’s ill-named ‘Operation Olive Branch’, the 21st century Sultan has shown his willingness to...

'They only see 2020 - which they are not going to win': Trump accuses Democrats of playing politics in their rejection of his deal to end shutdown and attacks Pelosi of being too 'petrified' of the left to make a deal President Donald Trump accused Democrats of playing presidential politics with their rejection of his offer to end the government shutdown He attacked Speaker Nancy Pelosi of being too 'petrified' of the liberals in her party to make a deal with him In a series of early morning tweets, Trump indicated his reelection bid was on his mind with his...