Free Republic

The latest hero of the Never Trumpers — the ex-secretary of the Navy, Richard V. Spencer — is out with an op-ed column on what he learned from getting fired. The answer, it appears, is not much. His column, which appears in the Washington Post, turns out to be an exercise in constitutional misconception, self-righteousness, whinging, bellyaching about his superiors, and tin-eared politicking. Mr. Spencer, a Marine, was fired Sunday for misleading Secretary of Defense Esper over the case of Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher. The Navy had accused Gallagher of murdering a war prisoner — and of more than...

In the battle unfolding in Congress between the Democrats and Attorney General William Barr, I’m on the side of the US Constitution. That means defending not only Barr but also President Trump. The two men stand on America’s legal bedrock. Which is why Barr was able to make short work of his Democratic questioners at Wednesday’s hearing in the Senate. His calm, straightforward testimony made it clear that he isn’t the caricature the Democrats have been drawing of him. And events aren’t the conspiracy they are still trying to validate, even after special counsel Robert Mueller’s finding that there was...

The Democratic warhorse Dianne Feinstein is warning that Bernie Sanders’ campaign against Hillary Clinton could turn the party’s convention in Philadelphia into the kind of disaster that erupted in Chicago in 1968. “It worries me a great deal,” she tells CNN. I can understand why. I was there. Covering the Democrats’ 1968 convention for one of America’s greatest newspapers, the Anniston (Ala.) Star, I saw a bitterly divided party, riven by the Vietnam War and Jim Crow, met with violence in the streets. The convention finally handed up, in Vice President Hubert Humphrey, one of the finest liberals in history....

Mitt Romney showed once again that he is truly a class act. In his announcement that he will not be running for president in 2016, he stated, "I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee." This was unusual political humility. But let me highlight this specific phrase: "one who has not yet taken their message across...

The coming clash between President Obama and Congress over immigration promises to light up what I like to call a constitutional moment. This is a moment in which our politics are so divided that we have scraped away the soil of legislation and are fighting on American bedrock. Rarely has it shone more clearly than in respect of who has the power to decide who can come here and be naturalized as a citizen.

Dear Readers of the Sun: This morning I write to you about the future of The New York Sun, which is in circumstances that may require us to cease publication at the end of September unless we succeed in our efforts to find additional financial backing. The managing editor, Ira Stoll, who is one of the founding partners in the paper, and I have shared this news with our colleagues, and we would like our readers as well to be aware of the situation.