Free Republic

The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt has come under criticism for a column in which she wrote that she would "vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them" given the importance of ending President Trump's White House tenure. "I would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them. He wasn't my candidate, but taking back the White House is that important," Pollitt wrote. Pollitt also write that she would also vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee even if she believed sexual assault allegations leveled against him by former Senate staffer Tara Reade regarding an incident...

A columnist for The Nation defended 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden from allegations of sexual assault by his former senate staffer Tara Reade, saying, “I would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them.” Columnist Katha Pollitt would vote for Joe Biden even if she believed Reade’s allegations of sexual assault, she wrote in her Wednesday column. “Fortunately, I don’t have to sacrifice morality to political necessity,” she wrote. Reade has accused Biden of kissing her, touching her, and penetrating her without her consent in 1993 when she worked for him as a senate staffer in Washington,...

When the CNN moderators gave Sanders the Trump treatment, the outraged ululations of the Left could be heard from sea to shining sea. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi tweeted, “This is an unusually vile performance by CNN.” The Nation’s Elie Mystal raged, “Jesus Christ I hate these biased questions from the moderators. ‘How would you keep your plan from bankrupting the country?’ JUST ASK THE KOCH BROTHERS TO MODERATE NEXT TIME!” HuffPost’s Zach Carter griped about CNN’s post-debate panel discussion, “CNN’s crew is just straight bashing Sanders post-debate.” The New Republic’s Libby Watson whined, “CNN is truly a terrible influence on...

"No voices calling for peace. No voices critical of empire. Just establishment media and current and former Pentagon officials who feed off the trillion dollar war machine." As President Donald Trump spent the early days of 2020 instigating and then backing down from a potentially catastrophic confrontation with Iran, corporate media in the U.S. turned to the very same people who promoted the country's worst foreign policy disaster in a generation to advocate for repeating the mistakes of two decades ago. The decision of networks and cable news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to bring on a stream of past advocates for...

The Nation published an “anti-endorsement” of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Thursday, calling on the former Vice President to “withdraw from the race” so the Democratic Party has a chance against President Donald Trump. In an editorial, The Nation wrote that Biden’s chance against President Trump in 2020 “has become increasingly threadbare.”

The Second Amendment is why we can’t go to school, or work, or a house of worship, or a nightclub, or a movie theater, or a music festival, or pretty much any public gathering without fear of getting shot to death. The Second Amendment is why you can’t be immediately arrested for openly carrying around an assault rifle in a public place, and why you can’t be immediately arrested for smuggling a hand-cannon in your gym shorts. The Second Amendment is how law enforcement justifies the need for military-grade armaments—to match the “firepower” they meet in the streets. The Second...

It cannot be emphasized too often: Russiagate—allegations that the American president has been compromised by the Kremlin, which may even have helped to put him in the White House—is the worst and (considering the lack of actual evidence) most fraudulent political scandal in American history. We have yet to calculate the damage Russsiagate has inflicted on America’s democratic institutions, including the presidency and the electoral process, and on domestic and foreign perceptions of American democracy, or on US-Russian relations at a critical moment when both sides, having “modernized” their nuclear weapons, are embarking on a new, more dangerous, and largely...

As Trump barrels forward, Democrats are engaged in a furious argument over how to stop him. Many Democratic primary voters indicate they are ready to support the candidate most likely to defeat Trump, even over their personal favorite. Joe Biden has become the early front-runner because of a widespread sense that he is the “safest bet” to defeat Trump. Experienced and moderate, “Scranton Joe” is credited with having a special appeal to the white working-class voters that went to Trump, particularly in the In fact, rather than the “safest bet,” Biden is more likely to end up the worst of...

If I owned all the real estate in the world, I wouldn’t feel so powerful as I do on the streets of this socialist city,” declared former New York City councilman Baruch Vladeck when he arrived in Milwaukee in 1932 for the Socialist Party’s national convention in that city. Norman Thomas, the famed civil-rights and economic-justice campaigner who became the party’s presidential nominee that year, celebrated the fact that he was chosen for that honor in a city governed by Socialists. The success of Milwaukee under then-Mayor Dan Hoan, Thomas said, was proof that the party’s social-democratic “dreams will someday...

Heedless of the consequences, or perhaps welcoming them, America’s Cold Warriors and their media platforms have recently escalated their rhetoric against Russia, especially in March. Anyone who has lived through or studied the preceding 40-year Cold War will recognize the ominous echoes of its most dangerous periods, when actual war was on the horizon or a policy option. Here are only a few random but representative examples: § In a March 8 Washington Post opinion article, two American professors, neither with any apparent substantive knowledge of Russia or Cold War history, warned that the Kremlin is trying “to undermine our...

Robert Mueller has yet to allege collusion, and Democrats who accuse Trump of being a Kremlin conspirator are silent when his policies escalate tensions with Russia. To date, Mueller’s numerous indictments and voluminous court filings have not accused a single American of collusion with Russia. And, tellingly, prominent media and political voices, who have spent two years raising expectations that Mueller will find collusion, are now quietly moving the goalposts. If this is the most damning evidence that the Democrats’ top Russia investigators can adduce, it is no wonder that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence probe has “uncovered no direct evidence...

This is exactly the phenomenon that I had described after the Pittsburgh shootings in, "If the Synagogue Shooter Were Muslim, the Media Would Be Defending Him." In 2006, Naveed Afzal Haq used a teenage girl as a hostage to force his way into the Seattle Jewish Federation where he shot 6 women. The Muslim attacker shouted, “You Jews” at the non-Jewish marketing director and shot her in the stomach. The bookkeeper went into cardiac arrest, died at the scene, was revived and died again on the operating table and still lived to testify at Haq's trial. "I want these Jews...

Three things are true about Elizabeth Warren’s five-minute video debunking Donald Trump’s claim that she’s lying about her Native American roots. First, it’s a terrific introduction to her family history. Second, it won’t change any Republican minds. And third, that doesn’t matter. It’s aimed squarely at Democrats and the media—and yes, it’s an early salvo in what will certainly be a crowded Democratic presidential primary. I’ve sworn I would ignore 2020 politics until after the 2018 midterms, and that I will resist endorsing a Democrat as long as is humanly (for me) possible. With this piece, I’m breaking the first...

The Nobel Prize winner argues that an economy dominated by large corporations has failed the many and enriched the few There is much to be concerned about in America today: a growing political and economic divide, slowing growth, decreasing life expectancy, an epidemic of diseases of despair. The unhappiness that is apparent has taken an ugly turn, with an increase in protectionism and nativism. Trump’s diagnosis, which blames outsiders, is wrong, as are the prescriptions that follow. This is an edited version of his talk delivered at "Does America Have a Monopoly Problem," co-hosted by the Roosevelt Institute and the...

A reporter was forcibly removed from the President Trump and Vladimir Putin presser in Helsinki, Finland Monday morning after he reportedly brought a sign into the meeting. The journalist, identified by CNBC as Sam Husseini, an op-ed reporter with progressive publication The Nation, was initially asked by security to exit the press room, and he obliged, according to CNN. When he was brought back into the room to retrieve his things, he reportedly claimed he got the boot because of a sign that talked about the nuclear test ban treaty. CNBC reports the sign — which read “Nuclear Weapon Ban...

The journalist from US political publication The Nation disrupted the meeting holding a banner that read 'Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty' A journalist has been dragged out of the Trump-Putin press conference by Secret Service agents after protesting over America's use of nuclear weapons. Political journalist and activist Sam Husseini got into a scuffle with security forces in Helskini, Finland, as Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump addressed journalists. Husseini, who writes for The Nation, held up a sign saying 'Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty' as he disrupted the conference just before the two leaders were set to take...

In 1969, NFL linebacker Dave Meggyesy walked away from the NFL in disgust over the way he believed football was acting as a reactionary social force in society, an impediment against meaningful social change. In his book Out of Their League, he wrote, “Politics and pro football are the most grotesque extremes of a dying empire.” In 1975, sportswriter Robert Lipsyte had a similar analysis of not just football but sports as a whole. He wrote in his classic book SportsWorld: An American DreamLand: "A great deal of the angry energy generated in America through the coming apart of the...

No wonder the public image of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has hit an all-time low. People have noticed that after a year of intense investigation and indictments unrelated to his mission, Mueller has found no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. And it isn't only supporters of President Donald Trump who have noticed this lack of collusion evidence. Even the leftist Nation magazine has made this observation. Aaron Maté of that periodical wrote on June 13 that The Mueller Indictments Still Don’t Add Up to Collusion:

Well...The Democrat Party idle dream of fantasy, "The Democrat Blue Wave' is no more, as of the results of last nights primary elections Blue Wave is no more....a dribble, trickle is what remains. Republicans, Conservatives, Independents, Blue Dog Democrats are all singing loudly this morning in the great state of California. Yes, moderate Democrat, Dianne Feinstein will win her seat easily...but, friends, that is about it. And, yes, Republicans will have to fight hard for every vote, Trump will have to storm California and expose and reveal who Gavin Newsome really is....but, Mr. John Cox is a real contender and...

The Nation's sports editor Dave Zirin is livid that the man who occupies the White House, courtesy of the slave-holders who devised the electoral college, is getting the credit for pardoning Jack Johnson. The African-American Johnson was an early 20th century boxing champion who also served prison time for a criminal charge. Johnson (shown in photograph) was the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion, from 1908-1915, the era of Jim Crow. He had dated and married white women, and in 1912, he was arrested for violating the Mann Act forbidding a person from transporting a woman across state lines for...