Free Republic

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) On Saturday’s “Melissa Harris-Perry” Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors spoke about the protests at Democratic primary candidates Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), when Black Lives Matters protesters demanded O’Malley and Sanders mentioned Sandra Bland, who was recently found dead in her prison cell, by name. Cullors was asked by guest co-host Janet Mock what her plan was for Republican candidates, specifically Jeb Bush, for calling “black lives matter” a “slogan.”(continued)

Calling on his party to embrace diversity, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush declared Thursday that Republicans will never win the presidency if they don't campaign in "every nook and cranny" of the country - especially in Hispanic and African-American communities. "I'm running to draw people toward our cause rather than push them away," Bush said during a town hall-style meeting in New Hampshire. "Our message has to be uplifting, positive, hopeful, rather than negative (and) divisive." Speaking to a predominantly white audience in northern New Hampshire, Bush said Republicans must campaign in Latino communities. He delivered a brief line in...

In never-before-released photographs taken on Sept. 11, 2001, the shock, horror and gravity of the terrorist attacks can be read on the faces of President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, their wives Laura and Lynne, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet and other senior Bush and Cheney staffers. The photos were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Colette Neirouz Hanna, coordinating producer for the Kirk Documentary Group, which covered the Bush administration in many films for FRONTLINE, including Bush’s War, Cheney’s Law and The Dark Side. The photographs, which were...

Via the Weekly Standard, where were you the day Hillary’s campaign imploded? No, I kid. Drudge was pushing this earlier because the idea of lefty infighting over whether their nominee-in-waiting is a racist or not is simply delicious. Spoiler: She is racist, or at least the left used to think so. (A few of them still do.) Now that their hold on power depends upon her being absolved, though, absolution is freely granted via the memory hole. She’ll be given a pass on this partly for that reason and partly because her admission about fear of black men in hoodies...

Real estate billionaire Donald Trump's recent showing in national polls looks less like a fluke with each passing day, and numbers from Friday's YouGov.Economist poll has him leading the pack with support from 28 per cent of Republican primary voters. The survey, which is based on Internet interviews, ranked Trump twice at high as second-place finisher Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who leads in the fundraising sweepstakes but will fall far short of competing with Trump's $10 billion personal wealth. Bush is the first choice of 14 per cent of Republicans in the poll; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is...

First the rules, then the analysis. (The count shown is the number of elected delegates.)EARLY STATES 25, Iowa (Likely Feb 1. Non-binding caucus) 33, Colorado (Likely starting Feb. 2. Non-binding caucus) 20, New Hampshire (Likely Feb. 9. 10% threshold) 47, South Carolina (Likely Feb 20. 21 delegates to top 2 in each of 7 CDs; 26 chosen statewide) 27, Nevada (Likely Feb 23. proportional caucus) "Top 2": The most common way of allocating Republican delegates is to have a certain number (usually 3) of delegates chosen per congressional district. If any candidate wins a majority, or no other candidate reaches...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says Republicans won’t win the White House if candidates don’t campaign in “every nook and cranny” of the country, especially in Latino and African-American communities. The Republican presidential contender made his comments Thursday during a town hall meeting in New Hampshire. They come as businessman Donald Trump’s hardline rhetoric on immigration continues to dominate the GOP primary race. …

One idea that came up was to urge three leading candidates — Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor; Mr. Walker; and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — to band together and state that they would not participate in any debate in which Mr. Trump was present, using his refusal to rule out a third-party bid as a pretext for taking such a hard line. The thinking, according to a Republican involved in the conversations, was that the lesser-funded prospects who have been eclipsed by Mr. Trump would follow suit, and the TV networks airing the debates would be forced to...

In a snapshot? Jeb Bush and John McCain have just illustrated exactly why Donald Trump is surging in the polls. The other day, Governor Bush came out four square for lobbyist reform. As reported in the Hill: Bush called for three reforms: 1) broadening the official definition of lobbyist to include ambiguous work such as "government relations"; 2) increasing lobbying disclosure from quarterly to weekly; and 3) extending the lobbying "cooling off" period to six years for former members of Congress. He also pledged to limit lobbying of his White House by former administration officials. But back in January? Here’s...

For those of us who predicted the inevitable, watching Donald Trump verbally wander into a field of face-whacking garden rakes like Sideshow Bob fills one with a mixture of schadenfreude and affirmation. We knew it was coming, but it still feels good to be proven right. Of course Trump wouldn't hesitate to attack John McCain's war-hero status. Trump's bottomless insecurity cannot countenance the idea that his critics have any legitimacy. Of course Trump won't apologize -- because his dog-and-pony show is predicated on the idea that he "tells it like it is" and "fights." He's the omniscient master of "The...

Ever since Donald Trump announced he was seeking the White House, his foot has rarely left his mouth. Yet voters are still enamored by him. Why? He couldn’t make it through his announcement speech without calling Mexican immigrants rapists and vowing to build a wall that he would make Mexico pay for to keep them out. This, of course, led to business partners including NBC and Macy’s to sever ties with Trump, but that didn’t stop him. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) While most candidates would realize their mistake and back down, Trump did exactly the opposite. In a way only he could, Trump...

Ted Olson and David Boies, the prominent attorneys who helped overturn California’s same-sex marriage ban, are backing a new federal law that would extend anti-discrimination protections to LGBT Americans. Olson, a Republican former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, and Boies, who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, are urging Republicans and Democrats in Congress to support the Equality Act, which will be introduced on Thusday. The law, whose language was provided to the Advocate, would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other federal law to protect LGBT people from discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and...

The experienced, accessible and disciplined candidate gets sarcastic in South Carolina. Jeb Bush said he’d give John Kasich a shout-out from the debate stage if the Ohio governor doesn’t make the cut. He publicly lamented the media’s obsession with Donald Trump. He even mocked the notion that his family lineage means he’s been waiting his whole life to become president. “It’s not like I’ve been kind of in some test tube waiting for my chance now, the third Bush,” he quipped. “I’ve actually had a life.” The 200 people who showed up here Tuesday afternoon got a glimpse of a...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.news-press.com/story/news/2015/07/21/jeb-bush-hillary-clinton-marco-rubio-candidate-contributions-ted-cruz/30488003/

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Donald Trump's incendiary comments - and the GOP response - are proving political gold for Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid jumped on both Tuesday, first attacking Trump for his criticism of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., then pivoting to a larger target: the growing GOP presidential field and the entire Republican Party. Reid, D-Nev., noted that while Trump's GOP White House rivals were nearly unanimous in denouncing Trump's suggestion that McCain is not really a war hero, they were more tentative in responding to his criticisms of Mexican immigrants as "criminals" and "rapists."(continued)

Six candidates will miss out on the first primetime debate. Is that really such a terrible thing? We’re about two weeks out from the first GOP presidential debates and oh god this is so exciting. We here at Salon Dot Com consider it our first priority to inform the American consumer, and right now we’d urge you to stock up on popcorn *today* before the nation’s entire stock dries up. There will be two debates on August 6 in Cleveland: a grown-ups’ table and a kids’ table. The top ten candidates in an average of the five most recent national...

Ted Cruz is way behind in polls about the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But he’s killing it when it comes to fundraising. The Texas senator is in eighth place among the GOP White House hopefuls, according to the latest average of polls from RealClearPolitics. But Cruz places third in the money race, when counting his own campaign and affiliated super PACs, behind fellow Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton. On Wednesday, the public got a look at how the campaigns are raising and spending money through the end of the second quarter. As The Wall Street Journal points out,...

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-21/there-s-just-one-way-to-achieve-4-percent-growth

There is a disturbance in American politics. But no one in the political class seems to be pinpointing the correct source. Donald Trump gets all of the credit for it from journalists, pundits and academics. They could not be more wrong. They are looking only at the surface, seeing the response to his harangues as an affirmation of the man. If they looked beyond the cartoonish image of Trump, they would understand that the true disturbance is the frustration of Americans, not the bluster of one man. The same goes for the surge by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont against...

If the other Bush campaigns are any guide, the gloves are about to come off. Like father, like son—or perhaps it’s the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Whatever cliché you prefer, one of the useful things about dynasties is that patterns emerge over time. With the Clintons, for instance, we know to pay attention to every modifying word and each verb tense they use (the meaning of “is” and such). The whole truth usually has to be dragged out of them—or discovered independently. Similarly, an examination of the Bush family legacy in campaigning makes clear that Jeb Bush’s...