Free Republic

Fox News lies to its viewers. Its most prominent personalities, among the most influential in the industry, tell their viewers things they know not to be true. This is not accusation, allegation, or supposition. Today, we know it to be fact. Early in the Trump era, news organizations were torn over whether to refer to Donald Trump’s false statements as lies, because it is difficult to know an individual’s state of mind, to know what they know. In the throes of insecurity, ideological conviction, or carelessness, people can make statements that are false without malicious intent. The argument over what...

“The cause of a gambling problem is the individual’s inability to control the gambling.” So says the National Council on Problem Gambling, an organization funded by the gambling industry to help people who have become addicted to its products. This attitude—that anyone who falls into gambling addiction has only themselves to blame—has allowed state lawmakers to ignore arguments that more access to gambling might make it easier for people to lose control. Since the Supreme Court struck down previous restrictions on sports betting in 2018, 36 states have legalized it (26 of which allow mobile betting), and new ballot initiatives...

Party leaders are unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of their own supporters. No country has a perfect COVID-vaccination rate, even this far into the pandemic, but America’s record is particularly dismal. About a third of Americans—more than a hundred million people—have yet to get their initial shots. You can find anti-vaxxers in every corner of the country. But by far the single group of adults most likely to be unvaccinated is Republicans: 37 percent of Republicans are still unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, compared with 9 percent of Democrats. Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest vaccination rates...

On twitter and tiktok over the past few weeks, scores of users have become alarmed about the uncomfortable coziness between the natural-food-and-body community and white-power and militant-right online spaces—the “crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline.” Crunchy, coined as a pop-culture reference to granola, has come to refer to a wide variety of cultural practices, including avoiding additives and food dyes, declining or spacing out childhood vaccinations beyond what pediatricians recommend, and more extreme actions in pursuit of health, independence, and purity. Back-to-the-land living and alternative medicine are hallmarks of “crunch.” Much of this subculture is benign, a declaration of anti-modernism or slow living. But...

David Petraeus is the real Pope of counter-insurgency and if he decides that he needs more troops and more time and more resources in Afghanistan next year, who is going to be able to gainsay him? That's Thomas P. Barnett's shrewd assessment. Obama's pledge to start withdrawing troops in 2011 is now kaput... It really is Vietnam -- along with the crazier and crazier rationales for continuing it. But it is now re-starting in earnest ten years in, dwarfing Vietnam in scope and longevity. One suspects there is simply no stopping this war machine, just as there is no stopping...

Yesterday, an hour and a half into the marathon hearings about whether colleges can use race as a factor in admissions decisions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson began to rub her temples as she looked down at her notes. “We’re entertaining a rule where some people can say what they want about who they are and have that valued in a system,” she said. “And I’m worried that that creates an inequity in the system with respect to being able to express our identity.”

How interesting. The Atlantic is one of the most forward-looking and yet curated publications and they do not publish rubbish and random musings. And now they have a prominent author asking for “amnesty” and forgiveness. Nobody is asking for amnesty for good deeds, right? The article rambles and weaves to avoid mentioning anything specific as to who and what the amnesty would be FOR. What are the specific misdeeds that The Atlantic wants to be forgiven? Emily’s article is NOT clear. It talks, strangely, about people voluntarily wearing masks in foreign preserves:

Jewish News Syndicate editor-in-chief and National Review contributing writer Jonathan Tobin claimed that journalists who pushed the narrative that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman was completely healthy to run for office "lied" in order to ensure that Democrats "maintain control of the Senate." In his column for The Jewish News Syndicate, Tobin declared that these "team blue journalists" "were prepared to cover up or falsify the facts about his health in order to advance his candidacy." [cut] Tobin’s piece, titled, "The painful truth about media bias: Some journalists lie," began with the observation that the debate between Fetterman and...

The Republican candidate for Arizona governor not only won Trump’s endorsement but has emerged as his most talented emulator. Is Kari Lake the new face of the MAGA movement?

Liberal media outlets are rallying around Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman after an NBC News reporter said he had difficulty understanding their conversation during a sit-down interview. On Monday, The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey wrote that despite his "relatively privileged upbringing," Fetterman has long been recognized as a "consummate everyman" and a straight talker. Speaking with Fetterman supporters during the campaign trail, Godfrey reported that supporters of the stroke survivor appeared unfazed by the candidate’s recent health challenges, and that he has now become "more relatable than ever." "Which is to say that Fetterman’s just-like-us appeal before his stroke may...

Usually I’m reluctant to put words in the mouth of my late employer, Senator John McCain, other than those he instructed me to write at some point during our long association. Yet since his death I have so missed not only his company, but his voice in our national affairs, that I have at times been tempted to conjure it from my knowledge of the values and views that animated his distinctive appeals to Americans and the world. I wanted to hear him during President Donald Trump’s two impeachment trials. I wanted to hear him react to the travesty of...

On Saturday, the Ukrainians hit the Kerch Strait Bridge, which leads from Russia to Crimea, with something—a missile, explosives planted by naval commandos, a truck laden with explosives. No one who knows is saying for sure.(snip)The tactical questions of how the Ukrainians pulled off this strike and of whether lasting damage has occurred are interesting and important but currently unresolvable publicly. What can, however, be more profitably discussed is what this tells us about where the Russia-Ukraine war is headed. “Battles are the principal milestones of secular history,” Winston Churchill wrote in his biography of the Duke of Marlborough. The...

A Columbia university Economics professor was censured during a live TV interview when he suggested that US and Poland might be responsible for the mysterious leaks on the Nord Stream gas pipeline.He further claimed that several journalists have reported insinuating Washington for the sabotage of pipelines

A Bloomberg TV host pushed back against Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs on Monday when he suggested that the U.S. and Poland are probably behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. "A lot of the world is watching these events in horror," Sachs said. "They view this as a horrible clash between Russia and the U.S. They don't see this, as we do in the media, as an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine." "Most of the world doesn't see it the way we describe it. Most of the world is just terrified right now, frankly," he added. "The...

JEFFREY SACHS: I was attacked in The Atlantic for being on the side of peace. And I confess, I'm on the side of peace. I'm very worried we are on the path of escalation to nuclear war, nothing less than that. Russia feels that this war is at the core of its security interests. The United States insists it will do anything to support Ukraine's defeat of Russia. Russia views this as a proxy war with the United States. Whatever one thinks about this, this is the path of extraordinary, dangerous escalation. And I am very fearful. A lot of...

Former President Trump called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a “piece of sh*t” during an interview with New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman for her forthcoming book. The Atlantic published an excerpt of Haberman’s book on Sunday, including Trump’s criticisms of the top Senate Republican, whose relationship with the former president soured over their disagreements on the 2020 election. Trump has since nicknamed McConnell “The Old Crow.” “The Old Crow’s a piece of sh*t,” Trump told Haberman during an interview at Mar-a-Lago, according to the excerpt. Haberman’s book, titled “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking...

The Communist Party’s real priority is protecting itself, not the public.The world has moved on from the coronavirus pandemic—except for China. Chinese leaders continue to lock down some of the country’s largest cities, spend millions of dollars on testing, and hunt down individual case after individual case. Nothing—neither a sinking economy nor the availability of vaccines and improved treatments nor the country’s growing isolation—has persuaded the leadership to change course. The latest wave of lockdowns has largely confined millions to their homes: Just two of those lockdowns, involving the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu and the tech hub of Shenzhen, affected...

[G]athered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, the Belarusians preparing to leave Warsaw to join the Ukrainian army look more like a bunch of computer programmers getting ready for a long car trip. Maybe that’s because they are a bunch of computer programmers—or anyway, some of them are—gathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, getting ready for a long car trip...If they are identified, members of their families could be visited, harassed, even arrested by the Belarusian police. “Our relatives are hostages,” one of them told me. Already, mothers of Belarusian soldiers fighting in Ukraine have...

Democrat Joe Biden has caused such a disaster on the Southern Border that Texas Democrats want President Donald J. Trump’s policies back, they want his leadership and they are fleeing the Democrat Party over it. And along the way, at least two former Democrat judges are declaring that the border is such a disaster it is an official illegal ‘invasion’. Though Texas has been getting ‘Operation Lone Star money’ for over a year, the debate over immigration policies has become more heated recently as Democrat County Judge Cinderela Guevara joined Republican judges and issued a formal declaration of “invasion” by...

On August 14, The Atlantic published a blasphemous article by Daniel Panneton titled, “How Extremist Gun Culture Is Trying to Co-Opt the Rosary.” In it, he tries to portray the sacramental, first promoted by Saint Dominic, as an extremist far-right symbol that poses a violent threat to society. Here are some of the things the author said in his article: * Attacking those who faithfully recite the Rosary in reparation for sin, he stated that “armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into...