Free Republic

The summer season has ripped off the thin scab that covered an American wound, revealing a festering disagreement about the nature and origins of the United States. The San Francisco Board of Education recently voted to paint over, and thus destroy, a 1,600-square-foot mural of George Washington's life in San Francisco's George Washington High School. Victor Arnautoff, a communist Russian-American artist and Stanford University art professor, had painted "Life of Washington" in 1936, commissioned by the New Deal's Works Progress Administration. A community task force appointed by the school district had recommended that the board address student and parent objections...

Media need to pay better attention to reality instead of getting routinely duped by multiple sources peddling false information.This week Politico’s Kyle Cheney and John Bresnahan wrote what they presented as significant. “House Republicans quietly investigate perceived corruption at DOJ, FBI,” the report said.It is a weird claim at the outset, since House Republicans up to and including Paul Ryan have been screaming bloody murder about the FBI and DOJ’s refusal to cooperate with House investigators probing the use of a shady piece of Democratic-funded opposition research alleging that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. True, the...

“A New York Times story about alleged Trump team contacts with Russian officials was “in the main not true.” (The New York Post quoting James Comey, 6/8.)Now over to the opposite end of the media’s political spectrum:"The assumption of the critics of the president, of his pursuers (especially The New York Times) …is that somewhere along the line in the last year the president had something to do with colluding with the Russians…and yet what came apart this morning was that theory," (Chris Matthews, MSNBC 6/8.)In brief, after this week’s Senate hearings (and especially after “Little Marco’s” gutsy performance) it...

If you want to read something crazy, look no further than the New York Times opinion section. The paper actually published an editorial Monday morning that outright denied free speech applied to anyone who wasn’t a liberal. In his appalling article, “What ‘Snowflakes’ Get Right About Free Speech,” New York University professor Ulrich Baer argued that conservatives are simply wrong about what free speech means, and that protesters who censored conservative or otherwise “offensive” guest speakers were actually protecting free speech. Baer begins his article by breaking down the modern understanding of free speech as “anything goes.” While Baer is...

The first salvo was the parking tickets: Politics is not the only area where Mr. Rubio, a Republican from Florida, has an affinity for the fast track. He and his wife, Jeanette, have also shown a tendency to be in a rush on the road. According to a search of the Miami-Dade and Duval County court dockets, the Rubios have been cited for numerous infractions over the years for incidents that included speeding, driving through red lights and careless driving. A review of records dating back to 1997 shows that the couple had a combined 17 citations: Mr. Rubio with...

This week Charles Blow single-handedly serves up enough cheap laughs for this week’s review of vapid and ridiculous nonsense from the op-ed pages of the New York Times. In his Monday column titled Library Visit, Then Held At Gunpoint, Blow breathlessly announced that his son had been momentarily mistaken for a burglar and detained at gunpoint on the campus of Yale University, where he is a third year student. Blow’s column was originally titled By The Numbers, and was purportedly going to be in depth and original statistical analysis of current trends and events in America. Well, it became painfully...

In an angry editorial published in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, the newspaper's editorial board called on president Barack Obama to “Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses.” The list of offenders “in a credible investigation” is a long one, including former vice president Dick Cheney; his chief of staff, David Addington; former CIA director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the lawyers for the Office of Legal Counsel who helped draft the documents clearing the way for “enhanced interrogation“ of prisoners and enemy combatants. In addition, the editors called for charges to be brought against Jose...

Nasty New York Timeseditorial writer David Firestone pretends to care about campaign scare-mongering. But what he and his elitist ilk really fear are independent-thinking women who have dared to exercise their First Amendment powers to defend their Second Amendment rights. This week, Firestone took aim at "attack ads" sponsored by the National Rifle Association. The "worst commercial," he says, "features a rape victim describing her assault and accusing" former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg "of wanting to take away her right to defend herself." That rape victim has a name and a story Firestone couldn't even bother to mention....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: To the election. The New York Times is all over the place today. The New York Times is a good place to start because it's the house organ for the Democrat Party. In one story in the New York Times you find, unbelievably, why polls tend to undercount Democrats. You heard me right. "Polls show that the Republicans have an advantage in the fight for control of the Senate. "They lead in enough states to win control, and they have additional opportunities in North Carolina and New Hampshire to make up for potential upsets. As Election Day...

The agonizing death of Detroit is cause for celebration. It’s the first of the liberal-run big cities and states to fall, and we should welcome its collapse with glee. Yeah, liberals, eventually you do run out of other people’s money. The blue state model is a terminal disease, and Detroit is its poster child. Only this is one telethon where we should pledge that we won’t pay a single dime to keep the progressive party going a single minute longer. Detroit represents the epitome of the blue state, Democrat machine liberalism that Barack Obama represents. Well, not one damn cent...

Turns out the New York Times is worried about the future of the Republican Party. So concerned, in fact, it has dedicated more than 6,000 words in this week’s magazine to explore, as the title puts it, “Can The Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence?” Indeed, the folks at The Times seem extremely concerned that which they hate might not survive. And by “concerned” I mean they’re hoping. That The Times would seek to harm Republicans, and more specifically conservatives, is about as shocking as Piers Morgan doing a special episode on the need for gun control. But that so...

Here's a resolution for one and all as we slide down the fiscal cliff (or not): Beware of fakery in popular places. Fakery, particularly in the culture both high and low, bubbles up from the media, affecting the way we see everything -- even, for example, politics. Roger Scruton, the public philosopher and conservative commentator, writes in Aeon magazine, a provocative digital magazine of ideas and culture, how fake ideas, fake criticism and fake emotions have come to dominate public conversation and marginalize thoughtful appreciation of beauty, truth and honest debate. His initial concern is about the collusion of critics...

The way in which the New York Times reports good vs. evil is one of the most important stories of our time. Take the war between Israel and Hamas that is taking place right now. This war is as morally clear as wars get. Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty and no freedom of speech or press. In a nutshell, Hamas is a violent, fascist organization. Israel, meanwhile, is one the world's most humane states, not to mention a democracy that is so...

A Christian can be crushed gazing at the picture of Mary standing at the foot of the cross, watching her beloved son suffocate and die. But in that vision, she stands there for hours, patiently enduring her suffering. For two millennia, she has been a role model for Christians, a woman who practiced obedience in the most difficult of human circumstances, with fervent hope for what this sacrifice will offer all mankind as it struggles with sin. This is why it seems so hard to reflect that vision of patience when black-hearted "artists" practice character assassination on the Blessed Virgin...

Have you noticed that The New York Times editorial page is becoming increasingly strident, increasingly emotional and increasingly irrational? Here is Paul Krugman in last Monday's column: Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan…want to expose many Americans to financial insecurity, and let some of them die, so that a handful of already wealthy people can have a higher after-tax income. No, that's not a misprint. The Republicans actually want to let some people die so that they can reward their rich friends. It's not an isolated comment either. Under the heading "Death by Ideology," Krugman actually lists all of the ways...

The explosion of anti-American unrest in the Islamic world will damage the Obama campaign in its drive for reelection for two reasons. First, the turmoil undermines the administration’s claims for transformative success in producing a more peaceful and stable world. And second, the lurid displays of violent fanaticism dramatically discredit the underlying world view promoted by Barack Obama since the earliest days of his candidacy—negating the notion that concession and conciliation toward hostile, backward societies can bring an end to stubborn conflicts. The threat to the president’s prospects posed by the first factor has become so obvious that even The...