Free Republic

Republican presidential candidates. who have had to seek contributions from a handful of wealthy contributors, want to cut Social Security. Average Americans love the program; the superwealthy don’t. Something strange is happening in the Republican primary — something strange, that is, besides the Trump phenomenon. For some reason, just about all the leading candidates other than The Donald have taken a deeply unpopular position, a known political loser, on a major domestic policy issue. And it’s interesting to ask why. The issue in question is the future of Social Security, which turned 80 last week. The retirement program is, of...

<p>Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee delivered a strong defense of government safety net programs for seniors at a candidate forum in Florida Tuesday, aiming for retired voters in a state rich with them.</p> <p>While former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have called for raising the retirement age and means-testing Social Security benefits, Huckabee called those proposals “absolutely ridiculous.”</p>

As he gears up for another presidential campaign, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is making a big break with the Republican party on the issue of entitlement reform. Meeting with reporters at a hotel in Washington, D.C. this morning, Huckabee strongly criticized New Jersey governor Chris Christie's proposal to reform Social Security and said he would not sign Paul Ryan's Medicare reform into law if he were president. "I don't know why Republicans want to insult Americans by pretending they don't understand what their Social Security program and Medicare program is," Huckabee said in response to a question about Christie's...

The Democratic Party on Friday adopted a call to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr as part of their established party platform heading into the 2016 election season. The move further polarizes the progressive wing of the party by moving them further to the left of both the Republican Party, and corporate centrist Democrats such as Hillary Clinton. In response to the Democratic Party’s vote, Terrence Wise, a Kansas City, Mo. McDonald’s and Burger King Worker and member of the National Organizing Committee of the Fight for $15, issued the following statement.

It was particularly revealing when David Axelrod explained that, of all his accomplishments in Barack Obama’s White House, he was proudest of the fact that “there hasn’t been a major scandal.” The qualifier “major” lays the burden on shoulders of the press to define what constitutes a serious scandal, and political media had thus far reliably covered the administration’s ethical lapses as merely the peculiar obsessions of addlebrained conservatives. Surely, much of the political establishment in Washington nodded along with Axelrod as he patted himself on the back. A mere seven months later, though, and it is clear now that...

The Washington Post published a column Thursday night by David Ignatius that purports to clear leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in exclusively using a home brew server kept in her home that held top secret classified information during her four year tenure as secretary of state. The column is entitled The Hillary Clinton e-mail ‘scandal’ that isn’t. Ignatius’ lead defense witness for Clinton is one Jeffrey Smith who is given four paragraphs of quotes defending Clinton. Ignatius identifies Smith as “a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents...

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump on Friday ripped longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her hubby Anthony Weiner, calling the ex-Congressman a “perv” and a “sleazebag” during a speech in Boston. Trump said that Abedin — whose first name he repeatedly mispronounced “Ooma” — worked closely with the former first lady and has access to classified information. “And who is Huma married to?” Trump asked, according to The Hill. “One of the great sleazebags of our time, Anthony Weiner.”

...Trump accuses Clinton aide of sharing secret emails with 'perv' husband Anthony Weiner Trump launched highly personal attack on Clinton aide Huma Abedin Accused her of sharing secret emails with husband Anthony Weiner He branded Weiner a 'perv' and 'one of the great sleaze bags of our time' Trump also called America the 'sucker' of the international community Said U.S. 'gets involved in everything' without asking for anything back In typically brash style Donald Trump has tonight taken a blistering aim at Hillary Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin during an event for supporters in Boston. Discussing the Clinton email...

What if former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been pulling the wool over our eyes for years? What if, while she was secretary of state, she ran two secret wars, one in Libya and one in Syria? What if there already were wars in each of those countries, so she used those wars as covers for her own? What if President Obama gave permission for her to do this? What if the president lacks the legal authority to authorize anyone to fight secret wars? What if she obtained the consent of a dozen members of Congress from both...

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, if you permit me a brief personal aside, here: Everybody is sending me e-mails about Hillary Clinton. Do any of you really, really think she's not going to be the nominee? Come on, let's get serious! There isn't anybody else that's gonna be the Democrat nominee. All of this doesn't mean anything. ... For crying out loud, you see what happened with Ed Rendell, Fast Eddie? A couple of days ago -- we've even got the sound bite here -- Fast Eddie comes out and says, "You know what? I'm really, really alarmed about the e-mail...

The stench of desperation Let’s say you’ve been in politics for thirty or forty years. You’re crooked, corrupt, and mad with power. Your long history of deceit is well documented, but you’ve decided it’s your turn to be President. So, you’re running for the nation’s top job. To your consternation, your campaign is being decimated by your own checkered past. You’re primarily known as a dishonest, untrustworthy, liar. What do you do? HTML5 video is not supported! Special: Remove Bags and Wrinkles From Your Eyes With Two Simple Steps Well, if Hillary Clinton is any indication, you become desperate to...

The Quinnipiac University poll, released Thursday, also shows Donald Trump smashing the GOP presidential competition garnering 28% support from registered Republican voters in the 17-member field. The real estate mogul's closest competitor is retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who tallies 12%. Just 7% said they would vote for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a record low since November 2013. Those results show just how far both Trump -- now the Republican front-runner -- and Bush -- the old one -- have come. Bush led national polls for much of the first half of 2015, but was quickly dislodged by Trump, after...

Hillary Clinton is taking aim at the Republican presidential front-runner, proclaiming Friday that “the party of Lincoln has become the party of Trump.” In a fiery speech to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) annual summer meeting in Minneapolis, Clinton told a cheering audience that the rest of the GOP presidential field is Donald Trump "without the pizzazz or the hair." Coming a day after a Trump speech where he had audience member pull his hair to prove it's his own, Clinton said, "A lot of people have said a lot of things about my hair over the years. So I...

Democratic leaders are increasingly frustrated by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s failure to put to rest questions about her State Department email practices and ease growing doubts among voters about her honesty and trustworthiness. On top of that, many say, her repeated jokes and dismissive remarks on the email controversy suggest that she is not treating it seriously enough. Interviews with more than 75 Democratic governors, lawmakers, candidates and party members have laid bare a widespread bewilderment that Mrs. Clinton has allowed a cloud to settle over her candidacy — by using a private email server in the first place, since it...

During a news conference at the DNC in Minneapolis, MN, Hillary Clinton again reiterated that she did not send or receive material marked 'classified' on her private and unsecured email server. Nice word play you did there, Hillary, but whether or not classified information is marked as such or not is NOT the question or issue. The question is, "Did you send or receive CLASSIFIED INFORMATION (MARKED OR NOT) ON YOUR UNCLASSIFIED SERVER???" As Secretary of State, Hillary of ALL PEOPLE should be well aware of what information is classified or unclassified, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT IT WAS MARKED.

Townhall Media and Hot Air commissioned a national poll from Survey Monkey, with whom NBC News has partnered this election cycle. Our colleague Ed Morrissey offers a full demographic breakdown of the 1,783 respondents HERE, as well as an explanation of the organization's methodology. The partisan sample was D+10. Results, starting on the Republican side: (1) In accordance with other national polling, Donald Trump leads the primary battle among self-identified Republican voters, with 29 percent support. Ben Carson is in second place (10.45 percent), followed by Jeb Bush (9.59 percent), Marco Rubio (6.40 percent), and Carly Fiorina (5.97 percent). John...

In a challenging field of competitors, Fox News Channel’s Andrew Napolitano has a strong entry for the most laughable legal analysis of the Indiana religious-freedom law. In an April Fool’s Day op-ed that he evidently means to be taken seriously, Napolitano argues that state Religious Freedom Restoration Act laws are unconstitutional. Napolitano’s core claim is that the Supreme Court, in its 1997 ruling in Boerne v. Flores, ruled that the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act is unconstitutional. In Boerne the Court ruled that Congress lacked the constitutional power to apply the federal RFRA against the states. Napolitano accurately summarizes...

Does Hillary Clinton have a serious legal problem because she may have transmitted classified information on her private e-mail server? After talking with a half-dozen knowledgeable lawyers, I think this “scandal” is overstated. Using the server was a self-inflicted wound by Clinton, but it’s not something a prosecutor would take to court. “It’s common” that people end up using unclassified systems to transmit classified information, said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents defendants suspected of misusing classified information. There are always these back channels,” Smith explained. “It’s...

On May 4th 2015, Richard Chambliss was arrested by the Bald Knob Police Department (BKPD) for carrying a weapon, despite Arkansas Act 746, which allows the carrying of a weapon. After realizing the open carry charge would likely not hold, a madeup charge of disorderly conduct was added. The BKPD Chief of Police, Judge, & prosecuting attorney appear to oppose Act 746 & the 2nd amendment in general. The previous police chief was fired by Mayor Mary Beth Calhoun in January 2015, possibly due to politics, & replaced him with current Police Chief Erek Balantine. Balantine had been charged with...

The most disturbing aspect of the scandal around Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as secretary of state is not the former first lady’s penchant for secrecy. What’s truly unsettling is that it has been widely taken as read among both the media and the general public that Mrs. Clinton will likely avoid serious legal consequences for her behavior because the Justice Department is ultimately answerable to President Obama – and Democrats will not use the instruments of government to destroy one of their own. Whether that eventually proves true, the sentiment itself reveals a...