Free Republic

The other storyline is simply fantastical. Congressional Republicans have uniformly run away from Trump's Obama-wiretap accusation. Clapper denies it. FBI Director James Comey denies it. Not a single member of Trump's own administration is willing to say it's true. Loopier still is to demand that Congress find the truth when the president could just pick up the phone and instruct the FBI, CIA and DNI to declare on the record whether this ever occurred. And if there really was an October 2016 FISA court order to wiretap Trump, the president could unilaterally declassify the information yesterday. The bugging story is...

Should Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina win the Oval Office, she wouldn’t be making any calls to her counterpart in Russia. “I wouldn’t speak to Vladmir Putin,” Fiorina said. She would, however, rebuild a missile defense program in Poland and conduct military exercises in the Baltic States. “I would guarantee you that after four or five or six months of that kind of behavior, Vladmir Putin will speak differently with the United States of America,” she said. “It’s how people behave. He’s a bully.” Fiorina, the only woman seeking the GOP nomination, is the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. She ran...

For over three decades, Carly Fiorina's bachelor's degree from Stanford University in medieval history and philosophy has had little real-world application. But as she mounts a presidential bid, the Republican candidate says her degree is finally of use as she considers how she would deal with ISIS as commander-in-chief. "Finally my degree in medieval history and philosophy has come in handy," Fiorina said Sunday night, "because what ISIS wants to do is drive us back to the Middle Ages, literally." Fiorina was responding to a question from a member of the military at a town hall in Windham, New Hampshire,...

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina may not be a liberal, but she certainly appears to be a fan of the liberal arts. The 2016 contender said Monday that her college degree in medieval history made her uniquely qualified to combat ISIS and other terrorist groups. “My degree in medieval history and philosophy has come in handy,” Fiorina said at a town hall in Windham, N.H., “because what ISIS wants to do is drive us back to the Middle Ages, literally.”

WWIII over CIA backed rebels? No thanks. We needed a President and Secretary of State who could stymie Russia on the diplomatic front. We needed a President who was up to the task of managing the world stage. We needed a Commander in Chief who would be either feared or respected by our allies and enemies alike. We don't have that. Instead, we're faced with Middle Eastern chaos, a rapidly expanding global terrorist force, and a refugee crisis that is spreading to every corner of the globe. The President's response has, so far, consisted of a feckless UN speech and...

WWIII over CIA backed rebels? No thanks We needed a President and Secretary of State who could stymie Russia on the diplomatic front. We needed a President who was up to the task of managing the world stage. We needed a Commander in Chief who would be either feared or respected by our allies and enemies alike. We don’t have that. Instead, we’re faced with Middle Eastern chaos, a rapidly expanding global terrorist force, and a refugee crisis that is spreading to every corner of the globe. The President’s response has, so far, consisted of a feckless UN speech and...

MOSCOW -- Russian jets carried out a second day of strikes in Syria Thursday, as a senior U.S. politician and activists claimed the targets included rebels backed by the United States. "I can absolutely confirm to you that they were strikes against our Free Syrian Army recruits that have been armed and trained by the CIA, because we have communications with people there," Republican Sen. John McCain, who is head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview with CNN, according to the Reuters news agency.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina chastised the Obama administration, calling its response, or lack thereof, to Russian aggression in Syria, “weak” and willfully naïve. “We must be prepared to use force,” declared Fiorina in a hawkish response to Russian airstrikes in the central city of Homs this week that have transformed the geopolitical calculus in the region. U.S. Pentagon officials insist that the Russian aerial assault is targeting primarily non-ISIS combatants, including the American-backed moderate Syrian opposition. “I can absolutely confirm to you that they were strikes against our Free Syrian Army...

Amid conflicting reports about Moscow targeting U.S.-alllied groups in Syria, GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said late Wednesday that she backs military readiness against Russian forces. “I believe we must tell the Russians that we will conduct [and] we will secure a no-fly zone around anti-Assad rebel forces that we’re supporting,” she said on Fox News’s "Hannity." “Does that mean we might use force against Russian jets?” host Sean Hannity then asked. “Well, hopefully not,” Fiorina responded. "Hopefully, if we are signaling clearly to the Russians are intention, it will not come to that.” “But if it does come to...

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina argued the US should “secure a no-fly zone around anti-Assad rebel forces that we’re supporting” and “be prepared” to use force against Russia if need be on Wednesday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel. Fiorina said, Well, first, we know what’s going on. Syria and Russia, who have had a longstanding relationship, Iran, and Iraq, are forming an unholy alliance. Russia’s intentions are to shore up, and stabilize the Assad regime. ISIS is sort of a camouflage. There is no doubt, that Russia will be conducting airstrikes against anti-Assad rebels, whether or not they happen...

Democracy and the Bush Doctrine By Charles R. Kesler George W. Bush's first presidency, devoted to compassionate conservatism and to establishing his own bona fides, lasted less than eight months. On September 11, 2001, he was reborn as a War President. In the upheaval that followed, compassionate conservatism took a back seat to a new, more urgent formulation of the Bush Administration's purpose. The Bush Doctrine called for offensive operations, including preemptive war, against terrorists and their abetters—more specifically, against the regimes that had sponsored, encouraged, or merely tolerated any "terrorist group of global reach." Afghanistan, the headquarters of...

If you weren't around in 1980, or you were insufficiently sensitized to key world realities, you cannot know how bad things really were — hence the extent to which the nation required, the world required, a catalytic change artist like Ronald Reagan. Regarding Reagan, this is an hour of self-serving hagiography, of transmogrifying anthropomorphism — and comically by many in the press who spent seemingly their every waking hour ripping him and detesting everything he tried. Reagan was not a saint, not a god in human form. Nor was he the Lucifer of leftist desire. He was merely a man...

The joke goes something like this. When an aide used to wake president Ronald Reagan in the middle of the night and say, "Sir, something has happened in the Middle East," Reagan would reply anxiously, "What has happened to Israel?" When the first president George Bush was awakened with news of a fresh Middle East crisis, he would grumble, "What has Israel done now?" The joke draws laughs among American Jewish supporters of Israel who delighted at most of Reagan's policies towards Israel and lamented most of the elder Bush's. Reagan's death from pneumonia at age 93 on Saturday, after...

June 3, 2004 -- Excerpts from President Bush's remarks at yesterday's Air Force Academy graduation ceremony.IN some ways, this struggle we're in is unique. In other ways, it resembles the great clashes of the last century — between those who put their trust in tyrants and those who put their trust in liberty. Our goal, the goal of this generation, is the same: We will secure our nation and defend the peace through the forward march of freedom. Like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless, surprise attack on the United States. We will not forget...