Free Republic

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie delivered a message to his fellow members of the Republican Party on Thursday: being pro-life means reforming America’s drug laws and criminal sentencing procedures. Christie has long advocated for drug treatment programs as a means of reforming the country’s prison system, but Christie took a new tactic on Thursday when he framed that advocacy as a pro-life argument. “I’m pro-life, and I believe strongly in the sanctity of life,” Christie told an audience in Jersey City on Thursday. Addressing his fellow Republican governors, Christie said that “it’s great to be pro-life, but you need to...

Having a high school diploma isn’t good enough to make it anymore, first lady Michelle Obama warned high school and college students at Howard University. “No longer is high school the bar. That is not enough in today’s globalizing economy. You have got to go to college, or get some kind of professional training beyond college,” she said Thursday. It was the first of what is likely to be many more speeches on education as the first family readies for retirement and takes up helping younger Americans, especially blacks get a leg up. “One of the things that Barack and...

The man who was almost president graced Honolulu with his presence Tuesday and walked us through a "seminar of sustainability." By turns a university professor, a wry observer, a recovering politician, a joke teller and a Southern preacher, Al Gore fired up an audience of thousands at the Stan Sheriff Center to believe that global warming can be stopped. But it's possible only if each of us does our part. "Ultimately, we are going to win this thing," he said, one of many statements met with hearty applause. He also managed to repeatedly gush over fellow Democrats Neil Abercrombie and...

Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI) says her constituents are "frustrated and embarrassed" by Hawaii's failed Obamacare exchange, which cost taxpayers $204 million and signed up only 8,000 people. On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced it will launch an investigation into Hawaii's busted Obamacare program. "This is not a partisan issue, this is an economic issue," said state Sen. Sam Slom. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie previously predicted "hundreds of thousand of people" would sign up for Obamacare in the President's home state. On Thursday, President Barack Obama tried to rally Democrats to support his unpopular Obamacare program. "I think Democrats...

Recently Hillary Clinton gave what appeared at first to be a rambling and unfocused answer when asked to name the proudest achievement of her four years as secretary of state. The short version is, she doesn’t have one. But Clinton’s words make a lot more sense when seen not as a nonanswer to a specific question but as an effort to lay the foundation and establish a theme for a presidential campaign. The occasion was her appearance on a panel discussion at the Women in the World meeting in Manhattan. It was pretty easy going; the moderator, New York Times...

After the emotional trial of slain teenager Trayvon Martin's killer George Zimmerman last year, justice is being demanded for the unlawful killing of another teen by a New York police officer. A "Justice for #RamarleyGraham" campaign has launched in hopes of indicting the man responsible for taking an 18-year-old's life. The Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney's office have the power to take over the case and hold Ramarley's killer accountable. Join us in demanding the DOJ and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara conduct a thorough investigation and bring federal charges against Officer...

Sarah Palin already announced her support for US Senate candidate Joni Ernst. Now Palin is joining her on the campaign trail. The former vice presidential candidate will stump for Ernst at a rally in West Des Moines as part of a ShePAC event that aims to support, honor and elect conservative women. The “Heels On, Gloves Off” event is set for April 27th. Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds, Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska and former Nebraska Governor Kay Orr will also attend the event.

Let’s do a thought experiment. If Charles or David Koch got invited onto NBC’s Today show to talk about their efforts to advance their political agenda, would either or both get partnered with Savannah Guthrie for a softball interview? Would their interview include suggestions that one of them should run for President? Kyle Drennen at Newsbusters notes that two weeks prior to Michael Bloomberg’s appearance on Today, the network took a much different approach to money in politics: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The clip just provides the highlights. Newsbusters has the whole transcript up, but let me just note the tough questions asked by...

EDMONTON — U.S. Sen. Rand Paul made a visit to Edmonton on Wednesday afternoon for a community forum during which he spoke mostly about health care and the economy and how he proposes to fix problems with each. The stop was one of several he made across the state during the week. After addressing about 30 people who turned out to hear him, the senator opened the floor for questions. One constituent asked him why he came out in support of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville. Paul declined to answer the question publicly, saying he would speak with her in private...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: From Katie Pavlich at Town Hall.com: "According to new IRS emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner was in contact with the Department of Justice in May 2013 about whether tax exempt groups could be criminally prosecuted for 'lying' about political activity." So Eric Holder and Lois Lerner not only are liars, they're in cahoots. Lois Lerner was asking the Department of Justice to criminally prosecute people like Catherine Engelbrecht. This woman, this Lerner, this is a witch. This is a...

Donald Trump is showing his cards in the early 2016 sweepstakes – and he's betting on Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. The New York real estate mogul donated $5,000 to the Texas senator's leadership PAC during the first quarter, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission. Cruz's PAC, called the Jobs, Growth & Freedom Fund, took in far fewer receipts than the PACs of his potential White House rivals, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rand Paul, R-Ky. It took in only about $23,000 in contributions and then added approximately another $120,000 in transfers from other committees and rebates. Comparatively,...

In keeping with the tradition of the FBI’s position on gun rights, it appears the Bureau is working overdrive to monitor and harass gun owners and the gun shops that sell to them. While government surveillance of gun purchases and gun owners is nothing new, a recent visit by an FBI Counterterrorism agent to a Columbia, South Carolina gun shop has only reinforced the knowledge that the U.S. government is growing more and more concerned by the prospect of a well-armed populace – particularly one that prefers to live without constant government interference in their personal lives. While the narrative...

On April 16th – the same day Michael Bloomberg told NBC's Today show that his gun control push "isn't gun control" – he released a new ad targeting parents who have kids in the home yet own guns. The ad is an emotional appeal aimed at building support for new gun control restrictions on gun owners with kids in the home, specifically focused on having guns in the home locked up. In the ad, a young girl and her brother play hide and seek. The girl hides in her parents' closet and finds a pistol that the parents kept in...

Final Four most outstanding player Shabazz Napier complained on the eve of UConn's tournament win over Kentucky that he sometimes goes to bed "starving" as a student-athlete. The NCAA has heard the growls of Shabazz's stomach. The NCAA announced that schools can now provide student-athletes with unlimited food. The NCAA release called the Division 1 rule revision "an effort to meet the nutritional needs of all student-athletes." Prior to Tuesday's change, schools could provide their competitors with a stipend or dining hall pass good for three meals a day, a deprivation which sent Mr. Shabazz to sleep starving. Other changes...

Scientists at CERN have confirmed the existence of a new 'exotic' particle International team used the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) detector The particle was first detected in 2007 but it has only now been confirmed Dubbed Z(4430), the discovery challenges existing models of physics It may also indicate that a new type of neutron star, a quark star, existsIn the early 1930s, scientists were fairly confident they understood subatomic physics. That was until dozens of new elementary particles were discovered in the 1950s, forcing scientists to rewrite their models. Now a new particle, first detected in 2007 but not...

Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., from Aurora, Missouri, founded and built the only White people’s party ever in the U.S. – the White Patriot Party – between 1980 to 1986, with a peak membership of around 5000. On Sunday Glenn Miller shot three people dead outside two Jewish Centers in Overland Park, Kansas. After going underground, Glenn Miller was arrested on April 30, 1987 in Ozark, Missouri, on numerous Federal criminal charges in the company of three other men (Tony Wydra, Robert “Jack” Jackson, and Douglas Sheets), who were also taken into Federal custody. Glenn Miller (with bullhorn), who headed the...

Fear replaced communal atmosphere in Donetsk's Jewish community as armed men handed out a leaflet Passover eve calling on Jews register their religion and property with the interim pro-Russian government or face deportation and loss of citizenship.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) A leaflet distributed in Donetsk, Ukraine calling for all Jews over 16 years old to register as Jews marred the Jewish community's Passover festivities Monday (Passover eve), replacing them with feelings of concern. The leaflet demanded the city's Jews supply a detailed list of all the property they own, or else have their citizenship revoked, face deportion and see their assets confiscated. Donetsk,...

The Feds may have set a troubling precedent by allowing a Nevada rancher and his band of armed followers to win a standoff with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The rancher refused to pay more than $1 million in fines for letting his cows graze on government land It could have been a catastrophe. For several days last week, hundreds of angry protesters faced off with federal workers on an arid ranch near Bunkerville, Nev. Militiamen squatted among the sagebrush and crouched on a highway overpass, cradling guns and issuing barely veiled threats at the government officials massed behind...

At The Hobby Center in Danbury, Karl LaLonde, the store's owner, holds the Proto X in the palm of his hand. It's the size of a fairly healthy tarantula. LaLonde has decorated it with an orange piece of plastic shaped like a bird's beak. Switched on, its four tiny propellers spin. Under LaLonde's control via a joystick, it lifts off the counter and scoots around the store's airspace. The Proto X costs $50. "You can get a camera to fit it," LaLonde said. It's the smallest of the many UAVs -- unmanned aerial vehicles -- LaLonde sells. Business is good....

Harry Reid seems to have taken the Bundy standoff rather personally: "Well, it's not over. We can't have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it's not over," Reid said. It is a very scary thing when a government officer takes such things personally -- given that the government can and does order the use of lethal force against citizens. What is the rationale for Reid's We-Must-Not-Let-This-Insult-Pass attitude? Were Reid talking about a slight from a hostile foreign power -- such as Russia, or, for that matter, al-Qaeda -- he's more than...