Free Republic

The fundamental offense of the Covington Catholic High School kids wasn’t so much allegedly mobbing, mocking, or getting in the face of an American Indian drummer at the Lincoln Memorial. It was wearing red Make America Great Again hats. That was the actual, incontestable conduct that created the predicate for the presumption of guilt and all the rest of the grief they’ve been subjected to since. For much of progressive America, if you are wearing the hat, you are suiting up for Team Racist. You are marking yourself out as a bigot and a goon. Your individuality doesn’t matter anymore,...

We're sweeping past the Lincoln Memorial incident without adequately dealing with one of its crucial outcomes: the abject failure of traditional conservative media. In fact, it's twice in the past two weeks that conservative media, instead of the thoughtful, measured approach required of them, immediately jumped through the hoops set up by the left and then lined up happily, dancing on their hind legs and barking for treats. The first involved Steve King and his "white supremacy" oration. Now, don't get me wrong: King clearly revealed himself to be a jackass. At best, he's the latest in a long line...

Rush Limbaugh identified National Review as a news media outfit that prioritizes the pursuit of “approval [from] the mainstream media” over veracity in reporting, offering his remarks on Monday’s edition of his eponymous show. Limbaugh highlighted recent news media narratives framing a group of Covington Catholic High School students as “racists,” including agreement from ostensibly conservative news media outlets and personalities.

Small flames could be seen igniting at the base of the engines before they quickly disappeared The rocket remained still. With favorable weather conditions, Saturday’s launch was originally slated for 8:06 p.m., but a brief stop in the countdown to troubleshoot a problem pushed the liftoff back to 8:15 p.m., the company said. All systems were “go” until the countdown was halted just seven second before liftoff after a problem was detected, ULA said. The attempt was cancelled for the night, but it was not clear when ULA will try again. ULA is working in conjunction with the Air Force’s...

When the history of the 2018 midterms is written, there will be a chapter on missed opportunities for Democrats. Some may wonder if they should have spent so much money supporting Beto O’Rourke in Texas, or whether Heidi Heitkamp was doomed from the start in North Dakota. One painful question for progressives will be whether it was a good idea to spend millions trying to unseat House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes. The Los Angeles Times reports that Democrat Andrew Janz, a first-time candidate, raised $4.3 million in three months, a sum it calls “a staggering amount in a district...

Britain’s long-running crisis-cum-soap-opera over Brexit may be reaching its denouement today at Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, where the full cabinet is locked in a final debate on whether or not to accept Theresa May’s proposed terms for leaving the European Union. And “locked in” is the appropriate phrase. Ministers have had to surrender their cell phones on arrival; they have been told to expect the meeting to continue until 10.00 p.m.; and a Downing Street flack briefed the media that any minister who resigns will lose his official car straight away and have to walk three-quarters of a...

While it is true that Justice Anthony Kennedy was a disappointment to conservatives, the observation misses the point. Kennedy did not owe conservatives decisions that they liked. What all Americans deserved from him was the conscientious application of the law. That they did not get it is the true indictment of his time on the Supreme Court. Again and again, Kennedy made rulings that aggrandized the power of the Court and of himself as its swing justice. No justice, right or left, was more willing to substitute his judgment for that of elected officials and voters. No justice was less...

He has gone just as low, but she’s a comedian, not president, so she does deserve a bit more leeway when it comes to making jokes. At Saturday’s White House Correspondents Dinner, comedian Michelle Wolf made some jokes about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that have a lot of people, particularly on the right, very upset. ... Sanders was visibly upset the entire time, and many people on the right rushed to her defense — saying that Wolf’s jokes were inappropriate and an outrage. Here’s the thing, though: Many of those same people have absolutely no problem with...

Now, yesterday I spent some time on this program recounting the positive accomplishments of Trump administration this year — and it’s the only year and it’s significant — and the resulting boom economically and culturally, immigration, border-wise. I want to do it again today, but using someone else. Rich Lowry, National Review Online: “Trump’s First Year Starting to Look Like a Big Win.” Now, I’m not typecasting Lowry. I’m just telling you that this comes from a sector of the news media that never thought that was gonna happen, that only somebody like Jeb or Ted Cruz could deliver something...

As we hoped, the Republican tax legislation improved as it moved through Congress. Harmful ideas such as eliminating the adoption tax credit were abandoned. Some tax relief for the working poor was added. The final bill should increase investment, reduce the distortionary effect of tax breaks, and lighten the especially excessive burden that the federal government puts on parents. While the bill is nobody’s idea of perfection, it is nonetheless a solid accomplishment and we are glad that Congress is moving quickly to pass it. Our 35 percent corporate tax rate has stayed in place for decades as our major...

<p>If a FBI director is doing his job, we probably should neither see nor hear of him much on television.</p> <p>The FBI director by his very office holds enormous power. And like the IRS director, by definition he or she must show restraint given the vast resources at his discretion and thus the potential for abuse. In other words, we want a FBI director to exude coolness, stay dispassionate, and remain professional. I don’t think that has ever been a description that fit Director James Comey.</p>

Much, for America, depends on his success. It is often hard to discern, but, despite an unprecedented amount of friction and the continued implacable hostility of the discredited post-Reagan political establishment, Donald Trump is continuing to gain ground in his holy crusade against them. He mousetrapped himself into turning 100 days into an important milestone, unlike any other president except Franklin D. Roosevelt (who had a unanimous mandate to deal radically with the Great Depression). Very predictably, this has turned into an empty-net goal for the large swath of the media whom he has correctly described as, in terms of...

It is now reported that the Obama administration during the campaign went to a FISA court to tap the communications of Trump-campaign officials and unofficial supporters. FISA applications are almost never rejected (and never leaked), but the court rebuffed this one in June 2016, ostensibly for insufficient cause. Ostensibly it is also unprecedented for a sitting president’s administration to order surveillance of campaign personnel of an opposite party before an upcoming election — a fact suggesting that Obama-administration officials may have assumed that a grateful shoo-in successor Clinton Justice Department would not worry greatly about such interference. News reports further...

The elevation of the former Breitbart CEO to the Trump administration is cause for concern. Let’s start with some sense: Steve Bannon is not Josef Goebbels. That is how Bannon was described recently by French cable news network La Chaîne Info (The Info Channel), and American media have taken up the comparison, particularly in light of Bannon’s appointment as the president-elect’s “chief strategist and senior counselor.” The Huffington Post wailed representatively: “A White Nationalist Is the New White House Chief Strategist.” About Bannon’s personal attitudes, this is hyperbole. Julia Jones, Bannon’s screenwriting partner in Hollywood for nearly two decades, told...

Charlotte’s revulsion over Huma Abedin’s calculated “stand by your man” routine is surely right. Still, it is amazing, as we speculate about Ms. Abedin’s political future, that the elephant in the room goes unnoticed, or at least studiously unmentioned. Sorry to interrupt the Best Enabler of a Sociopath Award ceremony but, to recap, Ms. Abedin worked for many years at a journal that promotes Islamic-supremacist ideology that was founded by a top al-Qaeda financier, Abdullah Omar Naseef. Naseef ran the Rabita Trust, a formally designated foreign terrorist organization under American law. Ms. Abedin and Naseef overlapped at the Journal of...

Conservatives should vote for the Republican nominee. Donald Trump needs a unified Republican party in the homestretch if he is to have any chance left of catching Hillary Clinton — along with winning higher percentages of the college-educated and women than currently support him. But even before the latest revelations from an eleven-year-old Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump crudely talked about women, he had long ago in the primaries gratuitously insulted his more moderate rivals and their supporters. He bragged about his lone-wolf candidacy and claimed that his polls were — and would be — always tremendous — contrary...

Abort, Euthanize, or Get Out of Medicine Bioethics discourse aims to change the practice of medicine and the thrust of public policy — usually not for the better. As I have been noting, the field is increasingly targeting the right of doctors to refuse to perform an abortion, euthanize patients, and perform other procedures or issue prescriptions that violate their religious beliefs.A bit ago, I discussed a “consensus statement” on this issue in Practical Ethics, published by Oxford. Now, two internationally influential bioethicists — Jualian Savulescu and Udo Schuklenk — join forces to advocate that society legally coerce doctors to kill. First, they deconstruct medical...

That’s Official Conservatism™. It is a bunch of men standing aside as men from the Left assault whomever happens to be to their Right. It is a movement that never moves. It remains relatively stationary, fixed to a spot just to the Right of the Progressives. When they are not refining the narrow differences they have with the Left, they are expanding the list of people to their Right that are no longer welcome in the club. Official Conservatism™ holds its audience in contempt, preferring to focus on itself and its peculiar aesthetic.

Labor Day traditionally sounds a gun that starts the general election in earnest — vacations are over, kids are back in school, and voters are finally tuning in to a presidential race that’s competitive coming out of the party conventions. This year feels very different. With two prolonged primary seasons, two deeply polarizing nominees, and two conventions that were moved up by a month (from late August to late July), voters have been unable to escape the shadow cast by a bizarre and historic race for the White House. And with the GOP nominee trailing badly in nearly every national...

Trump’s voters (and many are staying mum) are well aware of his flaws and might carry him to victory anyway. For what it is worth: Nothing is ever certain, and much could go wrong, but my money remains on a Trump victory. Why? 1) It feels a whole lot like Reagan in ’80 and Newt in ’94. Reagan was disliked by the establishment (who liked Baker or Bush), viewed with suspicion by professional conservatives (they liked Phil Crane, not a divorced, former Democrat, big-spending governor), and regarded with condescension by the media and the Left (who saw him as stupid...