Free Republic

Glenn Kessler, the so-called “fact checker” at The Washington Post , this week called out Vice President Mike Pence’s answer to an interview question about election fraud. But it’s Kessler, not Pence, who deserves four “Pinocchios” for many of the misleading claims he makes about it in his column. Pence said: “Make no mistake about it. The reality of voter fraud is undeniable. We’ve seen case after case around the country where there have been prosecutions.” Kessler concentrates on a case in Indiana that the vice president—a former governor of that state—mentioned in passing, and the dispute is over the...

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s order soliciting comments from outsiders opposed to the Justice Department’s motion to throw out charges of lying to FBI agents against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is highly unusual and contradicts earlier rulings by the judge. Sullivan’s order, issued Tuesday, solicits “friend of the court” (“amicus curiae” in legal parlance) briefs from third parties on the request by the Justice Department to halt the prosecution of Flynn. It is particularly odd because Sullivan previously resisted all third-party efforts to intervene in the case. The judge did this a total of 24 times, according to...

A new report has revealed how vulnerable voting by mail can be. It should alarm all who are pushing for all-mail elections: Based on federal data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, millions of mail ballots were never counted as completed votes. According to the commission’s 2016 report, for example, more mail ballots were misdirected and unaccounted for than the margin of votes between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. She had 2.9 million more votes, yet 6.5 million ballots were misdirected or unaccounted for by the states. In other words, for every vote that Hillary won over the eventual...

In a torturous, twisted interpretation of federal immigration law, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary court order Friday to block the Trump administration from continuing to implement its Migrant Protection Protocols, known informally as the Remain-in-Mexico policy. But shortly after issuing the ruling, the three-judge panel voted 2-1 to put a hold on it, preventing it from going into force until the federal government can file written arguments by the end of Monday in favor of the Remain-in-Mexico policy and plaintiffs can respond by the end of Tuesday arguing in favor of...

The first day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump was largely taken up with procedural issues. Senators argued over and then adopted an organizing resolution laying out the rules under which the trial will proceed. In his opening statement, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., charged that the resolution proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was “partisan,” a “national disgrace,” and a “dark day in Senate history.” All of this heated rhetoric was based on Schumer’s misleading claim that McConnell’s resolution was unfair and significantly different from the resolution governing Bill Clinton’s trial. Yet the resolution adopted...

The War Powers Resolution passed Thursday by the House in an effort to restrict President Trump’s ability to take military action to defend America against attack from Iran is a meaningless political document designed only to embarrass the president. The nonbinding resolution criticizes the president for not “consulting” with Congress and receiving its “authorization” before ordering the killing of Iranian general and terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani. The resolution also orders Trump to stop using military force against Iran until he gets congressional approval. Trump acted fully within his constitutional authority when he ordered the drone strike against Soleimani, a mass...

The vote by the House Judiciary Committee Friday to adopt two articles of impeachment against President Trump makes it clear that Democrats are moving full speed ahead on the road to impeachment – regardless of the merits of their accusations or the integrity of their process. But speeding down this road looks like it will be dangerous for the Democrats, who face the strong possibility that the trip will end in a crash and leave the party with serious injuries that will cause it to lose majority control of the House in the 2020 elections. House Democratic leaders are so...

Watching the hysterical reaction of the radical left—such as Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post—to Attorney General William Barr’s thoughtful, well-reasoned, important speech at the Federalist Society convention on the constitutional doctrine of the unitary executive is like history repeating itself. Liberals had the same overreaction to then-Attorney General Edwin Meese’s 1985 speech to the American Bar Association on the Constitution and originalism. Only someone as openly partisan and ill-informed as Marcus could possibly claim that a speech explaining the historical basis of the Founders’ views on the importance of a strong executive is “angrily partisan” and “scary.” So what...

Full title: Von Spakovsky and Phillips: Bizarre federal court ruling halts Indiana efforts to clean up voter rolls With the 2020 presidential election less than a year away, America’s voter registration rolls are woefully out of shape. Yet well-funded liberal organizations are working to stop states from cleaning up rolls. Their latest victim is Indiana. A federal district court has temporarily halted the state’s effort to compare its voter rolls with those of other states to eliminate duplicate registrations. A three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals went to extraordinary lengths to come up with excuses for why...

Full title: Spakovsky & Jipping: Pelosi hasn't really started the impeachment process – She needs to do it or give upDoes an impeachment inquiry require a vote of the full House of Representatives? President Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., maintain that it does. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., claims that it doesn’t. Pelosi is correct that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly require it. It simply gives the House the “sole Power of Impeachment.” But the gravity of even considering impeachment, fundamental principles of fair and impartial justice, and preserving our republican form of government, do require it. Pelosi alone...

We’re all used to seeing California throw its weight around, but its new law requiring a presidential candidate to provide five years of tax returns to be eligible to appear on a primary ballot is a new low. Now, however, a federal district court judge has blocked the state from enforcing it, at least temporarily. It’s the right decision. The law is nothing more than a political attack on President Donald Trump, the federal elections process, and the right of free association of citizens and all political parties. California is weighing its options, but if it chooses to appeal, the Ninth...

Last month, both Maine and Nevada did what was in the best interests of their states: They rejected bills that would have enrolled their states in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an unwise effort to override the Electoral College. In Maine, it was killed by legislators in the state House after it passed Maine’s Senate. In Nevada, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak vetoed the bill that had been passed by members of his own party in the Legislature. The National Popular Vote compact, which is an agreement between states, requires a participating state to award all of its electoral votes...

Full title: Hans von Spakovsky: Congress has no right to Trump tax returns – Justice Department makes right decision President Trump won a victory Friday when the Justice Department said Congress does not have the right to see his tax returns. More importantly, all American taxpayers won a victory, because the Justice Department memo regarding Trump’s returns has the effect of upholding the privacy and confidentially of all our tax returns as well. If Congress is allowed to examine the president’s tax returns, the next step will be demands by lawmakers to examine the tax returns of others – political...

Full title: Hans von Spakovsky: House Dem zealots ignore facts to wrongly cite Trump Cabinet members for contemptA House committee vote Wednesday holding the attorney general and commerce secretary in contempt for failing to turn over confidential documents dealing with a lawsuit involving the U.S. census was political gamesmanship of the worst kind by Democrats. In a 24-15 vote, all Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to the committee’s subpoena. Republican Justin Amash of Michigan – who has...

Acting in the interests of transparency and justice, President Trump took exactly the right action Thursday night when he gave Attorney General William Barr new authority to disclose information dealing with what Barr has called “spying” on the Trump election campaign in 2016. The president issued a memorandum authorizing Barr to “declassify, downgrade, or direct the declassification or downgrading” of any information relevant to “intelligence activities” connected to the “2016 Presidential election.” President Trump’s action is long overdue and should be welcomed by everyone who advocates more government disclosure about its activities – including journalists, who are always seeking such...

Full title: Hans von Spakovsky: Lock them up? Dems seeking to jail top Trump administration officials face big obstaclesSome congressional Democrats want nothing more than to hand Attorney General William Barr and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (among others) a “GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL” card like the ones you find in the game of Monopoly. But calls to lock them up are unjustified and uncalled for. What would jailing two Cabinet members be based on? The attorney general’s handling of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been in accord with federal law, the federal rules of criminal procedure and...

Full title: Hans von Spakovsky: NY Times publication of Trump tax information violates his legal right to confidentialityThe New York Times no doubt considers it quite a coup to have obtained and published President Trump’s tax return information from 1985 to 1994. But doing so violated Trump’s right under federal law to the confidentiality of his tax returns. The Times – which reported that Trump’s businesses lost $1.17 billion during the 10-year period – has no more right to Trump’s tax returns than it has to mine or those of any of you reading these words. Confidentiality, as the Ninth...

While we don’t know yet what’s in the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many news organizations have reported on what’s not in the report – any recommendation by Mueller for further indictments. This is very good news for President Trump and people in the Trump orbit. Not a single one of the nearly three dozen criminal indictments Mueller has obtained in his nearly two years of investigation deal with collusion between the Trump campaign or Trump himself and Russia to win the presidential race against Hillary Clinton. ~snip~ Keep in...

An investigation is needed to determine if socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the media magnet on the far-left fringe of the Democratic Party, has broken federal campaign finance laws. If convicted of criminal conduct, she could get up to five years in prison for each violation. We don’t know at this point if the New York congresswoman has engaged in improper conduct. But she and her chief of staff and former campaign manager Saikat Chakrabarti are accused of serious charges in a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by the National Legal and Policy Center. The accusations against Ocasio-Cortez...

Democrats are calling President Trump every name in the book and threatening multiple lawsuits to overturn his Friday declaration of a national emergency on our southern border. The president is using the declaration to enable him to shift funds already in the federal budget to border security. The shifting of money from one set of priorities to the more urgent priority of border security will allow the president to spend over $8.1 billion to build barriers along part of our border with Mexico and fund other border security measures. But listen to the angry denunciations of the president by outraged...