Free Republic

How can one write history so that it seems like a thriller? How does one write a biography without making the subject the centerpiece of the narrative? I have no idea if David Pietrusza asked himself these questions — or this one: How can history be written as a newspaper headline? Call this a biography by indirection. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defined by competing individuals and movements: Huey Long, Father Coughlan, Al Smith, the Liberty League, Earl Browder and the Communist Party, Dr. Francis Townsend and the Townsend Plan, Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party. They threatened FDR’s majority in...

A new effort has commenced in the struggle to block President Trump from running to regain the highest office in the land. In an unprecedented move, a statement has been mailed to every secretary of state in the union asking for their signed commitment to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot.After disqualification battles against candidates for the House of Representatives from North Carolina to Georgia to Arizona have largely stalled in state and federal courts, the statement signals a new front in the campaign to use the events of January 6, 2021, to shape the future of American elections.Free Speech...

The buckets of cold water Turkey is pouring on Finland and Sweden’s bids to join NATO may be coming from the sea around the shore of Cyprus, the divided Mediterranean island that is a bargaining chip for the Turkish president, Tayyip Erdogan. There is mounting evidence that Turkey could be using its status as a member of NATO to wield its veto power over the anticipated accession to the alliance of the two Nordic countries as a lever to force the international community to confer legitimacy on its de facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. London’s Sunday Express recently reported...

Russia’s president, calling the 2020s a period of “strengthening economic sovereignty” for his country, has said that this decade will see the formation of an independent and efficient financial system in Russia. In an advance greeting to the participants of the upcoming St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin also blamed “a wave of global inflation” and “a sharp increase in poverty and food shortages” on “long-term mistakes” made by Western countries as well as the imposition of “illegitimate sanctions.” ... “I am convinced that for Russia the 2020s will become a period of strengthening economic sovereignty, which provides for...

Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front, an opposition group, is claiming this evening to be on the verge of victories over the Taliban in several districts in the country’s Northeastern provinces. The NRF, which describes itself as “the last force fighting for the restoration of democracy in Afghanistan,” expressed hopes that these victories were the first steps in an effort to liberate the country from Taliban rule. It noted, though, that it was working without foreign aid that could bolster its efforts. Security analysts, meanwhile, expressed skepticism over whether the NRF could topple the new regime in Kabul, though noting the Taliban...

Now here's some old-school shoe leather investigative reporting the New York Times probably didn't anticipate after it published its stolen-documents expose about President Trump's bad, bad, tax returns, coming from the green-eyeshade mavens at its tiny rival, the New York Sun. In Ira Stoll's report, headlined "Guess How the Times Knows So Much About Tax Losses Trump Uses," the Times is exposed for doing the exact same things that President Trump did on his taxes, in a report that leaves it its piety in smoking ruins. Hypocrite much?  The brilliant piece begins with: The New York Times’ investigation of President Trump says the president used big tax losses...

His vow was that the American people “will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them.” At this point the audience was chanting “USA!” Mr. Trump then laced into “cancel culture,” which he called “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.” He called it “completely alien to our culture and our values.” It would be one thing were any of the major Democrats saying such things. The cat, though, has got their tongues. Not a peep of support from, say, Vice President Biden...

The latest hero of the Never Trumpers — the ex-secretary of the Navy, Richard V. Spencer — is out with an op-ed column on what he learned from getting fired. The answer, it appears, is not much. His column, which appears in the Washington Post, turns out to be an exercise in constitutional misconception, self-righteousness, whinging, bellyaching about his superiors, and tin-eared politicking. Mr. Spencer, a Marine, was fired Sunday for misleading Secretary of Defense Esper over the case of Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher. The Navy had accused Gallagher of murdering a war prisoner — and of more than...

The New York Sun announced it is endorsing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% in the Republican primary Tuesday. According to the Sun: It hasn’t been our normal practice to endorse in the primaries, but this year the vote, set for Tuesday, will take on outsized importance as we career toward a contested convention. The junior senator from Texas has emerged from a crowded field by dint of his fidelity to principles — limited, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a strong foreign policy — that couldn’t be at higher premium. They are the true New York Values. Regardless of the...

How panicked should we be about the rise of Donald Trump? A professor at Harvard, Danielle Allen, recently published a widely shared op-ed piece in the Washington Post likening his rise to that of Hitler... ...such Hitler hype has happened before, and been unwarranted. Steven Hayward, author of “The Age of Reagan,” recalls the rhetoric: Democratic Rep. William Clay of Missouri charged that Reagan was “trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf.”

Patrick J. Buchanan's new contribution to the flourishing genre of World War II revisionism, should appear in the same season as Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke." Never has there been such a clear demonstration of the way ideological extremes tend to converge. Messrs. Baker and Buchanan probably could not stand to be in the same room for five minutes. The former is to the left of most Democrats, the latter to the right of most Republicans. When they look back to the 1930s, Mr. Baker's role models are the Quakers and pacifists who believed it was better to lie down for...

...So what is Mr. Cruz's "one big problem"? It turns out to be that he's for honest money, ideally a dollar defined in terms of gold. That is, he's got the same problem that dogged those notorious losers like, to name but a few, Geo. Washington, John Adams, Thos. Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, Wm. McKinley, Thos. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.This is a bizarre argument that puts the Huffington Post - the dispatch is by its senior political economy reporter, Zach Carter - in the company of, say, Richard Nixon. It was Nixon...

Hard to believe that this much time has passed. On Christmas Eve 2004, I shared this editorial with all my FRiends here, while I was icebound in West Virginia heading back from leave to report for mobilization. And then, on Christmas Eve 2005, while downrange in Ramadi, Iraq, I shared this editorial with all of you again. And this year once again, from our new digs in Florida with The Bride and my new family, I offer this beautiful story, a very favorite of mine, for all my FRiends again. Take the time to read it - REALLY read it...

The coming clash between President Obama and Congress over immigration promises to light up what I like to call a constitutional moment. This is a moment in which our politics are so divided that we have scraped away the soil of legislation and are fighting on American bedrock. Rarely has it shone more clearly than in respect of who has the power to decide who can come here and be naturalized as a citizen.

My relations with my National Post colleague Diane Francis have had their ups and downs over three decades or so. We have gotten over some rough patches, including a period of a couple of years when her chief public conversational gambit seemed to be the moral imperative that I be sent to prison. But we had put that behind us well before I was, in fact, to her apparent regret, actually sent to prison, and our relations have been fine for years. She is a very nice person and often an interesting business writer. And I have enjoyed reading her...

One of America’s most powerful labor leaders, teachers union president Randi Weingarten, has quietly moved out of New York City, a decision that saved her from paying more than $30,000 in city income taxes that she would have owed if she had stayed. Discussion of people fleeing New York City in part because of high income tax rates has mostly focused on high-powered conservative commentators and billionaire hedge-fund managers. Glenn Beck moved to Dallas, and Rush Limbaugh sold his New York apartment and announced he was vacating the city. An article in last week’s New Yorker discussed the case of...

The growing signs that Sarah Palin may enter the race for president are igniting warnings that she takes inspiration from Esther. The signs that she might run include reports that she has purchased a house that could serve as a base for a national campaign, that she has given her approval to a film that depicts her years as governor of Alaska and that will debut at Iowa, and that she’s launching a “One Nation” bus tour. One of the warnings about her that crossed our screen was a blog post by Andrew Sullivan, who writes that Mrs. Palin “is...

It’s a classic movie plot. Think “Woman of the Year,” with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. At first the man and the woman hate each other, then they fall into each other’s arms? Well, feature the fight that has erupted between the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, and Governor Palin of Alaska. The leader of Big Labor went to Anchorage to give a speech and attacked Mrs. Palin, accusing her of doing everything from writing notes on her hands to coming out with conspiracy theories about President Obama and his “death panels” to getting close to calling for violence....

Following are excerpts of remarks by the Editor of the Sun, Seth Lipsky, to the newspaper's staff: It is my duty to report today that Ira Stoll and I and our partners have concluded that the Sun will cease publication. Our last number will be the issue dated September 30, the first day of Rosh Hashanah. I want you to know that Ira and I, and our partners, explored every possible way to avoid having to cease publication. We have spoken with every individual who seemed to be a prospective partner, and everywhere we were received with courtesy and respect....

Dear Readers of the Sun: This morning I write to you about the future of The New York Sun, which is in circumstances that may require us to cease publication at the end of September unless we succeed in our efforts to find additional financial backing. The managing editor, Ira Stoll, who is one of the founding partners in the paper, and I have shared this news with our colleagues, and we would like our readers as well to be aware of the situation.