Free Republic

I feel like the prophet Jeremiah. He was always the prophet I did not want to be when I grew up. He not only was the bearer of bad news to Israel, but he did not exactly live a mostly comfortable life – like Ezekiel and Daniel. But it’s been my misfortune to raise alarms about the devastating attacks by the Digital Cartel – Google-Facebook – on the independent media. They’ve been going on for a long time to be sure. But the scorched-earth policy began last summer – and it’s been killing sites like WND, Breitbart, Daily Caller, et...

By KYLE CHENEY 03/23/2018 02:17 PM EDT Updated 03/23/2018 03:01 PM EDT Share on Facebook Share on Twitter A Virginia Beach man was charged Friday with threatening to murder his local congressman, Rep. Scott Taylor (R-Va.), the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia announced Friday. According to court documents, Wallace Grove Godwin, 69, visited Taylor's office on Thursday and threatened to shoot him and two staffers at a Saturday event. The dispute arose, according to the District Attorney's office, over a discussion about marijuana policy. “Scott is having an event this Saturday. I am going to get my...

The New York Times has broken ranks with the the establishment media, publishing an effective mea culpa over the mainstream denial of migrant-related gang crime in Sweden. The paper — which previously mocked President Trump for highlighting Sweden’s migrant crime problems — published over 1,500 words on the subject in its Sunday edition this weekend, stating: Weapons from a faraway, long-ago war are flowing into immigrant neighborhoods here, puncturing Swedes’ sense of confidence and security. The country’s murder rate remains low, by American standards, and violent crime is stable or dropping in many places. But gang-related assaults and shootings are...

Michael Grunwald expressed his anger in Politico magazine at Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel. He is upset because Sheriff Israel's inept leadership and boastful manner has diverted attention away from the anti-NRA narrative being promoted by the left and the mainstream media. Yes, instead of being primarily concerned about how the sheriff overlooked dozens of red flags that allowed the tragic shooting to take place on Valentine's Day in Parkland Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Grunwald focused his ire upon him because the sheriff, not the NRA, became the primary target of anger.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) is weighing his options for a possible 2020 presidential run, including a possible primary challenge of President Trump, according to a new report. Nine Republicans familiar with Kasich's political operation told Politico the governor is weighing his options from a primary challenge of the president to an independent presidential campaign.

Florida Rep. Thomas Rooney is the latest Republican who will not seek re-election in 2018, according to Politico’s Jake Sherman. In a statement tweeted by Sherman, Rooney said, “After what will be 10 years in the United States Congress representing the good people of Florida’s Heartland, it’s time to “hang em up” as my old football coach used to say.”

RUSH: I’ll holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a printed piece from the recent issue of The Politico magazine, and the headline: “Why the NRA Always Wins.” And in the second paragraph is their answer: Rush Limbaugh. “Rush Limbaugh went on Fox News, right after an interview with several Parkland [student] survivors critical of the gun lobby” but of course they’re not political, you see “to scold those who ‘bash the NRA’ and insist the only solution to school shootings is ‘concealed carry in the schools.’ … “Why does the NRA always win, despite the repeated national traumas, and...

RUSH: I was overwhelmed with email reaction to Fox News Sunday yesterday, more than ever. I’m hard-pressed to figure out why. I think it’s probably ’cause I don’t do these things very often and we’re in the midst of massive audience growth and so forth, but I just want to thank everybody. And even though those of you who were snarky about the glasses, I love you. I absolutely love you. “You look like Harry Potter.” You know, every time I go on TV, I prove what it is about TV. The only thing that matters is how you look,...

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin warned that if Senator Barack Obama were elected president, his “indecision” and “moral equivalence” may encourage Russia’s Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. Palin said then: After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next. For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine. Hounshell wrote then that Palin’s comments were “strange” and...

The raw emotions generated by immigration policy—provoked by heartrending stories of families torn apart by deportation, or citizens murdered by illegal immigrants—have scrambled political allegiances and confused public debate. Republicans, usually the champions of family values and small government, now want to restrict family reunification and give bureaucrats the power to screen people who want to enter the country. Democrats, traditionally the allies of the working class, want big business to select immigrants and have given scant attention to the legitimate interests of working-class natives. The only way to end this politically charged debate is to think carefully about benefits...

The polls point to the promised land. But she'll have to get past Trump and WikiLeaks first.___ The final three weeks should have been an anxious but happy time for a Hillary Clinton team on the cusp of making history. Her odds of victory, according to most prediction experts, sit north of 80 percent, and she has solidified modest but durable leads over Donald Trump in most battleground states. But Clinton's final sprint has become a joyless, nail-gnawing slog through Trump Tower’s moat of mudslinging — and the day-to-day worries of WikiLeaks’ dump of internal emails from campaign chairman John...

Trump's proposal to hold a pro-military parade has excited much heavy breathing and political posturing from Democrats. To wit: Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.): "I think confidence is silent and insecurity is loud. America is the most powerful country in all of human history; you don’t need to show it off.” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Calif.): “A military parade of this kind would also be a departure from the values of our constitutional democracy." Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.):"Because authoritarian regimes like Russia and North Korea hold massive military parades does not mean that we must as well." Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.):...

As with many of his Republican predecessors, Trump has effectively tapped into the sense among millions of Americans that pride in the United States is diminishing, not only abroad but at home. Many of his supporters share a sentiment that D.C., N.Y. and L.A. “elites” are embarrassed about our country and our achievements. This is why, as a candidate for the White House, Trump frequently lambasted President Barack Obama for his alleged global “apology tour.” It’s why he’s waded into the protection of confederate monuments and claimed that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln might be the next to...

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, host of “Hardball,” was conspicuously absent from a scheduled “Meet The Press” appearance on Sunday morning. Matthews announced the scheduled appearance on a pre-taped episode of “Hardball” on Friday, and it was noted in the Friday edition of POLITICO’s Playbook. Matthews may have chosen to sit out the appearance because of a 2016 video uncovered by New York Magazine’s The Cut late Friday, which showed him joking about drugging and raping then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “This was a terrible comment I made in poor taste during the height of the Bill Cosby headlines,” Matthews told The Cut....

NBC boosts Axios out of the gate By Erik Wemple January 24, 2017 Start-up news site Axios, like all start-ups, begins life with a name-recognition deficit. The term itself is Greek for “worthy” and thus could describe a number of industries, including, say, an organic juice bar and dry-salt-therapy provider” in Tallahassee, Fla. Around these parts, however, Axios gains recognition from its co-founders, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen — the Politico mainstays who upended the way that Beltway journalism is practiced. One of Politico’s most resounding lessons — and one that VandeHei, Allen and former Politico executive Kim Kingsley willed...

If recently retired New York Times publisher, Arthur O. "Pinch" Sulzberger, expected to finally receive some respect now that he has turned the keys of his newspaper kingdom over to his son, A.G. (Arthur Gregg) Sulzberger, he would be quite disappointed after reading the January 14 Politico Magazine story. Senior Media Writer Jack Shafer ridicules Sulzberger and how he ran the Times during his quarter century reign there until he retired on January 1. The profile of just how out of his depth the elder Sulzberger was is brought to us as part of advice to Sulzberger the Younger in...

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., once falsely accused President Ronald Reagan's CIA of all but causing urban cocaine dealing in the '80s. She claimed that Reagan, by working with Nicaraguan drug dealers to defeat the communists running that country, colluded with them to created the urban drug epidemic. Never mind that The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all debunked Waters' claim. At a town hall meeting about these allegations, Waters shouted, "If I never do anything else in this career as a member of Congress, I'm gonna make somebody pay for what they've done to...

A week after Josh Meyer’s Politico expose,“The Secret Backstory Of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook,” former Obama officials are still berating Meyer for his 13,000-word article detailing how the Obama administration killed a nearly decade-long DEA effort to stem a global Hezbollah cocaine-smuggling-and-organized-crime ring to help secure its nuclear deal with Iran. “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” former Defense Department analyst David Asher explained in the article. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.” Asher helped establish and...

Politico published a jaw-dropping, meticulously sourced investigative piece this week detailing how the Obama administration had secretly undermined US law enforcement agency efforts to shut down an international drug-trafficking ring run by the terror group Hezbollah. The effort was part of a wider push by the administration to placate Iran and ensure the signing of the nuclear deal. Now swap out “Trump” for “Obama” and “Russia” for “Iran” and imagine the eruption these revelations would generate. Because, by any conceivable journalistic standard, this scandal should’ve triggered widespread coverage and been plastered on front pages across the country. By any historic...

Media need to pay better attention to reality instead of getting routinely duped by multiple sources peddling false information.This week Politico’s Kyle Cheney and John Bresnahan wrote what they presented as significant. “House Republicans quietly investigate perceived corruption at DOJ, FBI,” the report said.It is a weird claim at the outset, since House Republicans up to and including Paul Ryan have been screaming bloody murder about the FBI and DOJ’s refusal to cooperate with House investigators probing the use of a shady piece of Democratic-funded opposition research alleging that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. True, the...