Free Republic

Imagine for a moment that Robert Mueller was never pressed into service as a special counsel and wasn’t a household name. Imagine that there had never been any prompt for his investigation — that Donald Trump hadn’t blown all those kisses at Vladimir Putin, that the stooges and grifters around Trump hadn’t swooned at the prospect of sucking on Mother Russia’s teat, or that there’d been no offer of milk in the first place. What would we be focusing on right now? Maybe the just-published Politico report of Trump’s deliberate, cavalier use of a cellphone that doesn’t have strict security...

President Donald Trump has repeatedly hurled insults at the FBI agents working on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 campaign. Rudy Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney who’s now Trump’s lawyer, has attacked them as “stormtroopers.” The vitriol is unsurprising. The agents are powering an investigation that has shadowed Trump’s entire presidency — and they are mostly unknown to the public, making them easy targets. They are a mix of bureau veterans and relative newcomers handpicked by Mueller and his prosecutors to handle the highest-profile and most sensitive federal investigation in a generation. To assemble this portrait of Mueller’s...

Bernie Sanders’ top operatives formed “Our Revolution” after he lost the 2016 primaries to keep his army organized and motivated — and potentially prepare for another presidential run in 2020. But an extensive review of the Sanders-inspired group depicts an organization in disarray — operating primarily as a promotional vehicle for its leader and sometimes even snubbing candidates aligned with Sanders. Our Revolution has shown no ability to tip a major Democratic election in its favor — despite possessing Sanders’ email list, the envy of the Democratic Party — and can claim no major wins in 2018 as its own....

You know those stories that make you roll your eyes so far back in your head you think they might get stuck there? This hot mess from POLITICO is one of those stories:From POLITICO (sorry!): Maybe you’ve never heard of Hillsdale. Or maybe you hadn’t heard about the school before it precipitated a floor fight in the Senate during tax bill negotiations last fall. But the tiny Christian college with a graduate school in statesmanship, a strong conservative bent and roots in an anti-slavery Baptist church, has long been a treasured institution in right-of-center circles—known for its required classical liberal...

President Trump's absence for the second year in a row from the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner may end up being the least controversial thing about Saturday night's gathering of the White House press corps. Chatter online among journalists and some in the administration's orbit after the event was full of criticism for comedian Michelle Wolf, who was the evening's headliner; criticism and soul-searching about the annual event itself; and an effort by former White House press secretary Sean Spicer to pressure the leadership of the White House Correspondents' Association into answering for Wolf's vulgar, personal jabs leveled primarily at...

James Comey’s new memoir is already a pre-publication media hit, but the former FBI director’s tell-all assault on President Donald Trump also poses major risks—not only for Comey’s personal reputation but for the wider Russia investigation he helped launch. Trump and his allies bombarded Comey with insults Friday, targeting his credibility and seeking to undermine his image as a nonpartisan law enforcement professional. On Twitter Friday, Trump called Comey an “untruthful slime ball,” while White House press secretary Sarah Sanders branded him a “discredited partisan hack.” Other critics accused Comey of cashing in on his celebrity to an unseemly degree....

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....