Free Republic

It's starting to look like the GOP won't have many female candidates left standing by November. Voters in a Florida congressional district went to the polls Tuesday to elect a new representative following Trey Radel’s resignation this year after pleading guilty to cocaine possession. The winner was millionaire businessman and Tea Party darling Curt Clawson, who self-funded his campaign to the tune of $2.65 million. But the story of who won isn’t much of a surprise: A rich, white Tea Partier is not a new breed in Washington these days.

(Corrects to show Rostov region in south-west, not south-east)****************************************** MOSCOW, April 23 (Reuters) - Russia on Wednesday conducted military exercises in its south-western Rostov region, which borders Ukraine, a spokesman for Russia's southern military district said.

Majority Leader (D-Nevada) Harry Reid is threatening Cliven Bundy with the ominous words “something is going to happen.” “ “It’s obvious that you can’t just walk away from this. And we can speculate all we want to speculate to what’s going to happen next,” Reid told KSNV-TV. “But I don’t think it’s going to be tomorrow that something is going to happen, but something will happen. We are a nation of laws, not of men and women.” If it weren’t so scary, it would be funny. Reid’s manner of speaking is like the person that says “No offense meant, but…”...

After weeks of deliberation, a committee is poised to make a final recommendation Thursday on what to do with Oregon’s botched health insurance exchange portal. The technology committee will decide whether Cover Oregon should ditch its glitch-filled website and replace it with the federal government’s health insurance marketplace, or try to fix the existing system with the help of a new IT contractor. The decision comes nearly seven months after Oregon’s exchange was supposed to go live so that residents could use it to compare and buy health insurance plans. Cover Oregon’s website is seen as the worst of the...

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is being portrayed by some as a man of principle, an iconoclast who should be admired for his willingness to stand up to the federal government. But in fact he's a petty scofflaw who seems to think that he has the right to pick and choose which rules must be obeyed. Bundy is the cattleman who grazes his herd on federal land operated by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, but unlike more than 15,000 other ranchers, he refuses to pay the associated grazing fees. After 20 years of disagreements and court battles, the U.S. government...

AMSTERDAM (AP) -- The Dutch defense department says several NATO member countries scrambled jets Wednesday afternoon after a pair of Russian bomber planes approached their airspace over the North Sea.The Dutch ministry identified the planes as two Russian TU-95 Bears, and said it had launched two F-16s from Volkel air force base to intercept them. The Russian jets were escorted by aircraft from the Netherlands, Britain and Denmark until they departed.

Would you support raising San Diego’s minimum wage to $13.09 an hour over the next three years? Poll Here

The Federal Communications Commission is getting ready to propose new rules when it comes to net neutrality, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are reporting based on unnamed sources. Late Wednesday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler called the reports of a turnaround “flat out wrong.” According to the Times and the Journal, the FCC is planning to allow Internet service providers to sell a faster pipe into people’s homes to content companies willing to pay for it. In other words, content providers could pay for preferential treatment into American homes. …

DONETSK, April 24. /ITAR-TASS/. The leadership of the recently self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic plans to hold a referendum simultaneously with east Ukraine’s Luhansk region, co-chairman of the Donetsk People’s Republic presidium Denis Pushilin told ITAR-TASS. “A referendum will be held no later than on May 11 and it is highly probable that Luhansk will also hold it with us no later than on May 11. Ludansk just has to confirm similar wording of the question. Our question is as follows, “Do you support the independence of Donetsk people’s republic?” Pushilin said. In his words, sovereignty gives the right and opportunity...

First lady Michelle Obama took her campaign to help veterans find jobs to Fort Campbell, Ky.., Wednesday where she said that most Americans don´t know much about the military. Following comments from Jill Biden, the vice president´s wife and Obama´s teammate in helping veterans, she noted that unlike Biden, she had little familiarity with the military prior to campaigning for the White House in 2008. “Unlike Jill, I wasn´t a military mom. I wasn´t a Blue Star family member. I didn´t know much about the military, and I was probably more like the average American,” said Obama.

After a crash involving a truck carrying turkeys, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants Iowa to approve a memorial to the birds. PETA asked for the memorial to honor turkeys that died when a truck crashed April 12, 2014 in Sioux City, Iowa. The truck hit ten parked cars, and then tipped over, according to the Sioux City Journal. PETA claims more than 500 turkeys perished in the crash. The proposed memorial features an image of a turkey and reads, “In memory of the hundreds of terrified turkeys who died here in a truck crash April 12, 2014....

The federal government wants to extend its oversight of tobacco to include cigars, hookah, nicotine gels, pipe tobacco and dissolvable tobacco products. The Food and Drug Administration proposal being issued Thursday would ban sales to minors and require approval for new products and health warning labels. …

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is being advised by a prominent pro-amnesty ally to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, said that he understood and sympathized with people who break the law to enter the United States illegally to take care of their families. Appearing on Your World on Fox News with guest-host Stuart Varney Wednesday, Perry was asked how he felt about former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's "act of love" comments about illegal immigration. "I have sympathy. I totally understand about people breaking a law to take care of their family," Perry said, noting that that was especially the case when...

The fight for the Senate majority boils down to boogeyman billionaires against the shifty septuagenarian—if party operatives’ spin is to be believed. For months, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been unrelenting in his criticism of Charles and David Koch, the wealthy industrialists who have backed some of the nation’s most effective conservative groups. Now, Republican candidates are adjusting their plans. They’re linking Democratic Senate candidates to Reid, painting the 74-year-old leader and his allies as unscrupulous politicians. “There’s little doubt that Harry Reid is abusing his power as majority leader and resorting to desperate and deceitful measures to hold...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) believes the country's illegal immigrants should be given work visas and be allowed to remain in the United States. The potential 2016 presidential contender spoke at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago on Tuesday and told David Axelrod, President Barack Obama's former top adviser who now heads the institute, that he did not vote for the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill. He did not do so because it did not grant enough work visas in the agricultural and construction industries. The Congressional Budget Office determined that bill would lower the wages of American...

The founder of Russia’s leading social media network—a wunderkind often described as Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg—has left his post as CEO and fled the country as cronies of President Vladimir Putin have made steady inroads into the company’s ownership. The slow-motion ouster of Pavel Durov from the network known as VKontakte, or “In Contact,” is the latest sign that independent media outlets in Russia have become increasingly imperiled. Although months in the making, the loss of Durov’s leadership in VKontakte means that the space for free speech on the Russian web could shrink even further. …

School officials in northern Colorado are asking parents to take care with their newly legal recreational marijuana, after fourth graders were caught dealing the drug on an elementary school campus. John Gates, director of safety for Weld County School District 6, said Wednesday that the students involved, three 10-year-old boys and a 10-year-old girl at Greeley’s Monfort Elementary School, faced tough discipline but not suspension or expulsion. He would not elaborate on their punishment. […] The marijuana appears to have been legally purchased by adults—grandparents in two families—and no charges were expected to be filed, Gates said. He said the...

A prominent Japanese politician has raised hackles as Barack Obama visits Tokyo by claiming it's an 'open secret' that he and the first lady are headed for divorce, and that the president has been using Secret Service agents to cover for him as he pursues extramarital affairs. Kazuyuki Hamada, who sits in the upper house of Japan's parliament, earned his PhD a half-mile from the White House at George Washington University, and emerged as a shrill commentator on America's economy and foreign policy. In 2009 he also joined the ranks of the so-called 'birthers,' arguing in a book titled 'Who...

A new poll shows that only 15 percent of Americans want former Florida Governor Jeb Bush to run for president. The latest YouGov/Economist poll shows that 47 percent indicated that they did not want Bush to run. Thirty-eight percent indicated that they were not sure. The poll also shows that both Bush and former Governor Chris Christie get a 49 percent favorability rating among those that identified themselves as Republicans. Christie, however, is disliked by 37 percent of Republicans, which is a higher unfavorable rating than Jeb Bush - who got 25 percent. Forty-two percent of respondents who identified themselves...

Detailed images two American ships that sank off the coast of England during a pre-D-Day training exercise in World War II have been recorded by a U.S. submarine. The images, recorded by a Massachusetts company that surveyed the wreckage to mark the 70th anniversary of the sinking, are the first in high definition. The two ships were sunk off by German forces during Exercise Tiger on April 28, 1944, claiming the lives of 749 U.S. soldiers and sailors.