Free Republic

There’s little question that he’s talking about Nikki Haley, right? Among his clues:1. The suspect is a she, not a he. 2. The suspect has denied writing the piece. 3. The suspect isn’t in the White House but is high up. 4. The suspect believes she should be president. 5. The suspect is known to rant about Trump and has “purged” her staff of Trump loyalists.The only person “high up” in the administration who fits the first four criteria is Haley. Trump’s other women agency heads — Kirstjen Nielsen, Betsy DeVos, Elaine Chao, Gina Haspel — have no political...

Ha! It looks like two (or more) can play the Deep Quote game popularized by the anonymous New York Times "I Am Part of the Resistance" op-ed. This round is compliments of Doug Ross: CONFESSION: I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the New York Times “I work for The New York Times but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of its agenda and its worst inclinations, like Holocaust-denial.”Doug Ross @ Journal is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior editor whose...

President Trump called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the New York Times Friday afternoon in order to find out which "senior administration official" wrote an anonymous op-ed published in the paper earlier this week. Trump is arguing it is essential to U.S. national security to find out who the author is. "It’s a disgrace that somebody can do that. I think it’s more disgraceful that the New York Times would do it. That somebody is allowed to do that is very sad commentary," Trump said onboard Air Force One. "It doesn’t seem to be anybody very high up...

Whodunnit?  That's the question roiling social media and news websites around the world as the hunt is on for the identity of the anonymous author of a New York Times op-ed that savaged Donald Trump and his administration. How crazy has it gotten?  Bookies around the world are giving odds on who the traitor might be.  Fox News: Vice President Mike Pence – and "the field" – lead offshore bookmaking picks as the White House mole behind the anonymous bombshell New York Times op-ed blasting President Trump. Pence was listed at 2-to-3 odds on the site MyBookie as the fifth column official who...

Howard Jacobson, in his June 24 New York Times op-ed piece, "Why We Must Mock Trump," began by referring to the anti-Trump production of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in New York's Central Park, as proof "that plays retain the power to shock and enrage." Do productions of "Julius Caesar," played straight, generally "shock and enrage"? I don't think so. And this production is not straight Shakespeare – not with reference to President Trump's apartment on "Fifth Avenue." At the end of his column, Jacobson asserted, "Derision is a social necessity." Okay. Imagine, say, Kathy Griffin holding what looks like the severed...

FBI Director James Comey attempted to go public as early as the summer of 2016 with information on Russia’s campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election, but Obama administration officials blocked him from doing so, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Newsweek. Well before the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence accused the Russian government of tampering with the U.S. election in an October 7 statement, Comey pitched the idea of writing an op-ed about the Russian campaign during a meeting in the White House’s situation room in June or July....

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) responded on Monday night to the publication of Marwan Barghouti's article in The New York Times: "Barghouti is not a prisoner," Hotovely said. "He is a convicted murderer and a terrorist. "The New York Times has provided a platform to a terrorist without noting the fact that he planned and carried out the cold blooded murder of Jews simply for having been Jews. "This is not a matter of freedom of speech. It is anarchy. When a major newspaper with a reputation for responsible journalism becomes a platform for murderers, it provides legitimacy for...

Full title: The 9th Circuit’s dangerous and unprecedented use of campaign statements to block presidential policy The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has just upheld a nationwide temporary injunction on President Trump’s executive order relating to refugees and visas from certain countries. I think the court’s opinion is weak in most respects, but I will address one of the most interesting and potentially far-reaching aspects. Generally, the president has vast discretion in issuing visas. One of the major arguments against the executive order is that while in principle a president can limit immigration from the seven affected...

It's like "Christmas in January" for conservatives. Every day is a new present under the tree...or two, or three, or a half dozen. Trump is Santa Claus...if Santa never slept and worked 365 days a year! Donald Trump is the Harlem Globetrotters of politics. Trump vs the politicians of Washington DC isn’t even fair. It’s like the Harlem Globetrotters vs. the Washington Generals. Try as they may, the Generals can never win. The Globetrotters run circles around them. The Globetrotters bounce balls off their shoulders, heads, even butts, then shoot long jumpers that go…swoosh.

Donald J. Trump won the white working-class vote over Hillary Clinton by a larger margin than any major-party nominee since World War II. Instead of this considerable achievement inspiring introspection, figures from the heights of journalism, entertainment, literature and the Clinton campaign continue to suggest that Mr. Trump won the presidency by appealing to the bigotry of his supporters. As Bill Clinton recently said, the one thing Mr. Trump knows “is how to get angry white men to vote for him.” This stereotyping of Trump voters is not only illiberal, it falsely presumes Mr. Trump won because of his worst...

Obama retreats from Putin in Syria — again By Editorial Board July 2 at 4:46 PM FOR SEVERAL years, the Obama administration’s Syria policy has been stuck in a cycle of failure. Secretary of State John F. Kerry negotiates deals with Russia to end the fighting or create a new government in Damascus, while warning that if they are not respected by Russian President Vladi­mir Putin or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the United States will consider other options, such as stepping up support for Syrian rebels. In every case, the Russian and Syrian regimes have betrayed their commitments, continuing to...

...In real life, expletives are often used as a form of aggression or cruelty. A co-worker who tells you to Trump yourself is usually being unpleasant. A co-worker who does this every day is often creating a hostile or demeaning work environment. Language suitable for decent company is a form of politeness, which is a species of respect, which is an expression of morality. And if I am the last holdout on this issue, so be it. I don't really give a damn. Win or lose, Trump has brought the language and sensibilities of cable TV to presidential politics...

... Traditionally, candidates who have attracted strong evangelical support have in part emphasized the need to lend a helping hand to the economically stressed and the least fortunate among us. Such candidates include George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. But Cruz's speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets...

A couple of years ago, I participated in an Aspen Institute symposium on the state of race. During the roundtable that followed the panels, as I spoke about my experiences growing up black in the 1990s, I was interrupted by a Latino sociologist and former gang member from UC Santa Barbara. People who care about people of color, the professor instructed me, ought to focus their energies on continued systemic racism and forget about anything so nebulous and untrustworthy as observation. Like it or not, I was the victim of greater social forces. It did not matter that I had...

The blobby Republican primary field is finally beginning to take shape, but sadly that shape is a mushroom cloud. For Donald Trump and his fans, that's a metaphor that refers to a nuclear explosion. You people seem to think that knowing about H-bomb stuff means you are part of the Great GOP Establishment Conspiracy. This is the week we learned that knowing about the nuclear triad is unnecessary. You only have to know that "nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important…." I was in Vegas for the debate, and the main takeaway is that it's better to watch it...

I've never formally endorsed a candidate in any presidential primary. This time the stakes are too high not to. Look around. The world is on fire and the party of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, not to mention the GOP's Obama-enabling RINO establishment, are playing with gasoline. And so, while he's been among my top picks all along, I am now proud to publicly endorse for president of the United States Sen. Ted Cruz, the man who best personifies the anti-establishment, principle over perceived pragmatism, survival over political correctness mood of the American electorate. I believe, God willing, that Sen....

During the last Republican debate I noticed an interesting parallel between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and the Republican icon, former President Ronald Reagan. Now before you fall over backwards in your chair, just take a second to think about it and let me explain. For much of the time the debate focused on Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas who engaged in a number of back-and-forth's over the minutiae of various pieces of legislation, to the point that Governor Christie made the memorable comment about the voter's "eyes glazing over". But during a break in...

Maybe it was because it was held in Las Vegas, where so many great prizefights have been held. But Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate was easily the best yet. CNN and Wolf Blitzer did a good, fair-and-balanced job of staging and refereeing the nine-person fight card. Most of the time was spent discussing substantive issues like foreign policy and national security, not throwing personal low blows. No candidate was the clear winner. No one was the unanimous loser. No one dramatically moved up or down in the rankings. A day later it's still No. 1 Donald Trump against everyone else...

Judge Robert Bork wrote a book titled "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" as a way to argue that Western culture was experiencing a decline. The same can be argued about South Korea. This nation was once a bulwark against communism and now it is a nation slouching toward a statist form of government that resembles a dictatorship more that a western style liberal democracy. Back in April, I wrote a piece titled "South Korea Not Ready for Pacific Trade Partnership" where I argued that the deteriorating human rights situation in South Korea was troubling. The Wall Street Journal reported that South Korea...

Iknoor Singh, a student at Hofstra University, thought he had found his calling when he attended a campus meeting of the U.S. Army’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. But when he tried to sign up, he was told that he would have to shave his beard, cut his hair and remove his turban. When he asked for a religious accommodation as a Sikh, the Army refused, saying that these articles of faith would undermine unit cohesion and morale, readiness, health and safety, and discipline. ..................................................... Yes, religious freedom needs protection. But religious liberty doesn’t mean the right to discriminate or to...