Free Republic

California’s high-tech business wizards like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are in full freak-out mode over Donald Trump, and the key to understanding why lies in the H-1B visa program. As a recent L.A. Times story titled “Donald Trump has done the unthinkable: Unite Silicon Valley” reports: Ambitious start-up CEOs who swore off talking politics for fear of offending investors are enlisting in campaigns to discredit Trump. Longtime valley Republican stalwarts who have voted for every GOP nominee for decades say they can’t do it this year. The libertarian-minded innovators who just want to get government out of their way have less...

Judicial officials in Alabama have launched what has been described as a “political” persecution of the elected chief justice of their Supreme Court. Then they created charges against him based on his administrative orders in managing the state’s court system. Finally, they hired the former legal director of the organization that filed the original complaint to prosecute Chief Justice Roy Moore. And he’s had enough. He filed a lawsuit on Friday in federal court explaining that the state process for handling, hearing, responding to and adjudicating complaints against him violates his constitutional rights.

Amid speculation he is on the short list, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions told The Daily Caller on Friday that he “would consider” an offer to be Donald Trump’s running mate, “like any other citizen should,” if offered. It’s the farthest Sessions has gone in publicly acknowledging interest in serving in a potential Trump administration. During an half-hour interview in his Capitol Hill office about a wide-range of topics — including immigration, trade, national security and the 2016 campaign— The DC asked Sessions if he is open to being Trump’s running mate. “If I could help him in some way —...

In its ethics case against Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, state officials have selected a prosecutor who once served as legal director of one of the organizations that filed the charges, prompting a defense lawyer to condemn the move as symptomatic of a “corrupt and unjust system.” The Southern Poverty Law Center was among the parties that filed complaints...

Despite China signaling moves to cut its excess steel production capacity, industry chiefs say the country has declared a metals "war" that has had a "devastating" impact for the rest of the world's industry.

China produces more than 820 million tons of steel per year, of which about 100 million tons are exported and sold at a discount overseas. Only about 3 percent of those exports go to the United States, but American steel producers bristle at the competition. So in keeping with the time-honored practice of the US steel industry — "the backbone of American manufacturing," as it proudly calls itself — domestic producers are rising to the challenge.Are they doing so by making their operations more efficient? By improving the quality of the steel they sell? By cutting their prices to maintain market...

Today Donald J. Trump released the much-anticipated list of people he would consider as potential replacements for Justice Scalia at the United States Supreme Court. This list was compiled, first and foremost, based on constitutional principles, with input from highly respected conservatives and Republican Party leadership. Mr. Trump stated, “Justice Scalia was a remarkable person and a brilliant Supreme Court Justice. His career was defined by his reverence for the Constitution and his legacy of protecting Americans’ most cherished freedoms. He was a Justice who did not believe in legislating from the bench and he is a person whom I...

Don Willett is a Texas Supreme Court justice:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Willett David Stras is an associate justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stras Allison Eid is a justice on the Colorado Supreme Court:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_H._Eid Joan Larsen is a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Larsen Steven Colloton is a federal judge who has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Colloton Raymond Gruender is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Gruender Thomas Hardiman is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardiman Raymond M. Kethledge is a federal judge...

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has released a list of 11 potential Supreme Court justices he plans to vet to fill the seat of late Justice Antonin Scalia. Trump's picks include Steven Colloton of Iowa, Allison Eid of Colorado and Raymond Gruender of Missouri. Also on the list are: Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, Joan Larsen of Michigan, Thomas Lee of Utah, William Pryor of Alabama, David Stras of Minnesota, Diane Sykes of Wisconsin and Don Willett of Texas. Trump said in March he planned to release the list to ease concerns about his conservative credentials...

Trump's picks include Steven Colloton of Iowa, Allison Eid of Colorado and Raymond Gruender of Missouri. Also on the list are: Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, Joan Larsen of Michigan, Thomas Lee of Utah, William Pryor of Alabama, David Stras of Minnesota, Diane Sykes of Wisconsin and Don Willett of Texas. Trump had previously named Pryor and Sykes as examples of kind of justices he would choose.

The names are at the link.

The US has raised its import duties on Chinese steelmakers by more than five-fold after accusing them of selling their products below market prices. The taxes specifically apply to Chinese-made cold-rolled flat steel, which is used in car manufacturing, shipping containers and construction. The US Commerce Department ruling comes amid heightened trade tensions between the two sides over several products, including chicken parts. Steel is an especially sensitive issue. US and European steel producers claim China is distorting the global market and undercutting them by dumping its excess supply abroad.

The ROOT CAUSE of our economic woes including business leaving our shores is the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT unconstitutionally forcing minimum wage on business. Minimum wage, regulations, unions, and high taxes are THE CAUSE of businesses moving elsewhere. Federal government is the problem NOT the solution. Although I support Trump, his tariff proposals are MORE federal government and do NOTHING to attack the ROOT CAUSES of the loss of jobs in our country. Tariffs have the appearance but not the reality of a solution - they are only palliative and delay the actual reforms needed. A tariff is a tax and China...

It turns out the algorithms that govern the internet can be as biased as the people who create and update them. That may be the most surprising takeaway from the political bias scandal that has enveloped Facebook after former employees told the tech blog Gizmodo that they would sometimes suppress conservative-friendly items and promote liberal reports on the newsfeed’s “trending topics” box. Even if no humans were involved, however, the algorithm would not have been completely neutral because it was written by humans, digital media analysts say.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions sought Saturday to convince Texas Republicans that Donald Trump is the conservative leader needed to change Washington. “The American people are not happy,” the Alabama Republican told delegates at the state GOP convention in Dallas. “They are looking for something different.” Session said Trump would properly overhaul the nation’s immigration system and secure the southern border. “He’s going to build a wall to ensure that,” Sessions said. Sessions said Trump, as president, would appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court, reverse bad trade deals and rebuild the military. “Donald Trump believes in a strong national defense,”...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas urged college graduates who seek to "preserve liberty" to do so by fulfilling the duties of their daily vocations rather than attempting to achieve sweeping political goals. "At the risk of understating what is necessary to preserve liberty in our form of government, I think more and more that it depends on good citizens, discharging their daily duties in their daily obligations," Thomas said Saturday during a commencement address at Hillsdale College, a small liberal arts college in Michigan.

KARL: ...So, where is the center of gravity now for the Republican Party? SESSIONS: That's a good question, Jonathan. I would say it's with the movement Donald Trump is leading. He is leading the Republican Party, which is the Republican voter. And the Republican voter is adopting his views and not the views that too often we've seen out of Washington, Democrat and Republican. And so I think he's showing real strength there. He's unifying the people who are going to say we want some change. We want better jobs, better wages. We don't want falling wages. We want an...

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley today signed legislation to ban dismemberment abortions — making it the 5th state to ban the grisly abortion procedure. The law follows on the heels of states like Kansas and Oklahoma as well as Mississippi and Louisiana — where bans have are been approved or are advancing through the legislature. Dismemberment abortion, performed on a fully-formed, living unborn baby, is a barbaric and dangerous procedure in which the unborn child is literally ripped apart in the womb and pulled out in pieces. The law embodies model legislation from the National Right to Life Committee that would...

Alabama’s Governor has signed off on a pro-life bill to ban abortion clinics from operating near schools — and now two abortion centers may close, even if temporarily to relocate, as a result. Gov. Robert Bentley signed the bill today. The legislation would ban abortion facilities from building within 2,000 feet of public elementary or middle schools and prohibit the state health department from issuing or renewing a health center license to current abortion clinics within the same distance of the schools. If passed, the legislation could close the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives Services (AWCRA) in Huntsville or...

TALLADEGA, AL (WCMH) – An 11-year-old boy shot a burglar during a break-in attempt. Chris Gaither was home along Wednesday when he says he heard a noise. It was apparent that someone was trying to break in. Fearing for his life, he tells WVTM he grabbed a 9mm handgun. “When he was coming down the stairs, that’s when he told me he was going to kill me, f-you and all that,” Gaither said. The intruder started walking toward the front door, carrying a hamper full of property. That’s when Gaither opened fire. “I shot through the hamper he was carrying,”...