Free Republic

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - A California bill to let undocumented immigrants become lawyers passed its last legislative hurdle on Thursday and will be sent to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature.

Sen. Ted Cruz and his libertarian-leaning comrades in the Republican Party seem to be gaining support with the American people, according to a recent survey conducted by the polling company, inc. The economic conservatism paired with a socially moderate outlook that characterizes the libertarian wing of the Republican Party may be signifying a sift in the party’s politics in the years to come. “The perfect storm is being created between the NSA, the IRS, the implementation of Obamacare and now Syria,” said Republican pollster Kellyanna Conway who ran the poll, according to Politico. “People are looking at the government more...

Paul accused Booker of having an “imaginary friend,” referring to a story in the conservative National Review magazine that questioned whether T-Bone — a drug dealer Booker frequently talks about in stories — was real. A 2007 Star-Ledger story also cast doubt on the character’s veracity. “I’ve been reading a lot about Cory Booker’s imaginary friend and I wanted to come up there and see if New Jersey would elect real workers or someone with imaginary friends,” Paul said. Booker and Lonegan are running in the special Oct. 16 election to fill the remaining year-and-a-half of the late U.S. Sen....

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), praised President Barack Obama on Wednesday for bringing the Syria strike to Congress, saying that the move gave the chance for the voices of Americans to be heard. “I want to commend President Obama for two different things. Number one, I want to commend President Obama for listening to the bipartisan calls to submit to the constitutional authority of Congress. That was significant, it was the right thing to do and I’m glad he did so,” Cruz said in a detailed foreign policy speech at the Heritage Foundation’s 4th Annual Jesse Helms Lecture Series. “And secondly,...

NBC’s Richard Engel speaks to Abu Abdul Rahman, a Tunisian man who dropped out of college to fight with al Qaeda in Syria.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Twelve years after we were attacked by al-Qaida, 12 years after 3,000 Americans were killed by al-Qaida, President Obama now asks us to be allies with al-Qaida. Americans by a large majority want nothing to do with the Syrian civil war. We fail to see a national security interest in a war between a leader who gasses his own citizens and Islamic rebels who are killing Christians. Some argue that American credibility is on the line, that because President Obama drew a red line with chemical weapons, America must act or lose credibility. I would argue...

Russia is stepping up weapons supplies to Syria’s President Bashar Assad, to help him prevail in the civil war, as part of the arrangements under which the Assad regime has agreed in principle to have its chemical weapons stockpiles placed under international supervision, Israel television reported on Tuesday night.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul vehemently opposes going to war with Syria, and he outlined his thoughts clearly in a letter to his fellow senators on Monday. As a libertarian, Paul believes that America should stay out of most foreign affairs, and in general promotes a smaller government that does not take action when there appears to be no immediate security risk. Paul also questioned the wisdom of taking limited action, as Obama has suggested. The president has previously vowed not to put any “boots on the ground,” and to make any attack narrow in scope to avoid a full-fledged war...

Foreign diplomacy doesn’t always resolve world-class problems, but it sure does rake in the swag. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was given a half-million bucks worth of diamond and ruby jewelry by Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and received $58,000 worth of bling from Brunei. The lavish gifts were among a treasure trove of keepsakes bestowed upon U.S. leaders in 2012, the State Department disclosed Thursday. ... Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden got a bare-breasted female bust from Liberia. The Constitution prohibits U.S. government employees from keeping presents worth more than $350. But officials at the U.S....

Charlie Rose interviewed Syrian President Bashar Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus on Sunday morning. --- UPDATE (11:05 a.m.): Rose's preview of the interview as relayed by phone from Beirut, Lebanon, on CBS's "Face The Nation" on Sunday: [Assad] denied that he had anything to do with the attack. He denied that he knew there was a chemical attack, notwithstanding what has been said and notwithstanding the videotape. He said there’s not enough evidence to make a conclusive judgment. He would not say even, even though I read him the lead paragraph of the New York Times today in...

Barack Obama-backed Syrian rebel terrorists this week have dismembered a girl while she was alive along with other similar atrocities in a Christian village in Syria, according to Russia Today. Hit-and-run attacks on the ancient village of Maaloula, one of the few places in the world where residents still speak "the original language of Christ," Aramaic, has intensified fears among Syria’s religious minorities about the growing role of U.S.-backed rebel extremists among those fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.. President Barack Obama has aimed to topple Assad with support from Congress and the public, first using US-backed rebels to...

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough asserted that a "common-sense test" rather than "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence" makes the Syrian government responsible for a chemical weapons attack that Obama says demands a U.S. military response. McDonough acknowledged the risks that military action could drag the U.S. into the middle of a brutal civil war and endanger allies such as Israel with a retaliatory attack.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is being criticized by The New Republic for concern over Christians after Syrian rebels attacked a Syrian Christian village. In an article titled “Rand Paul’s Syria Bible Thumping: Why does he only seem to care about the country’s Christians?” journalist Julia Ioffe rails, “Paul’s emphasis on Syrian Christians is more than a simple reminder of a neglected aspect of an already complicated situation.” Ioffe continues, Rand’s concern over Christians in Syria “sounds distinctly like the garbage about America being a Christian nation, like the unnerving evangelical support of Israel, like the not-too-subtle hum on the right...

At an invitation-only breakfast for establishment Republican types in Mount Pleasant, S.C. this week, Graham said that if America doesn’t take military action against the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon by the end of 2014. “I believe that if we get Syria wrong, within six months – and you can quote me on this – there will be a war between Iran and Israel over their nuclear program,” Graham said, according to U.S. News and World Report. But the fear-mongering didn’t stop there. Graham says this conflict will come home to – of...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry a liar, claiming he had denied that al Qaeda was fighting with the Syrian opposition in that country's civil war. Speaking to his human rights council, Putin recalled watching a congressional debate where Kerry was asked about al Qaeda. Putin said he had denied that it was operating in Syria, even though he was aware of the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group. Putin said: "This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them (the Americans) and we assume they are decent people, but he...

Secretary of State John Kerry said at Wednesday’s hearing that Arab counties have offered to pay for the entirety of unseating President Bashar al-Assad if the United States took the lead militarily. “With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes,” Kerry said. “They have. That offer is on the table.” Asked by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) about how much those countries would contribute, Kerry said they have offered to pay for all of a full invasion.

WASHINGTON — Leading congressional Republicans praised President Barack Obama's decision to seek lawmakers' approval before punishing Syria for a chemical attack. But it was far from clear whether they would support such a strike in a region rife with warfare and the specter of retaliation. "I do believe (Syria) should not have impunity," for the Aug. 21 attack near Damascus, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said by telephone. "But we need to understand what the whole scope of consequences is. What the president may perceive as limited...won't stop there."

WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Friday for a strong U.S. response to last week’s use of chemical weapons outside Damascus, urging multiple missile strikes aimed at destroying Syrian President Bashar Assad’s major military assets and rendering him largely powerless. While Graham, in a statement with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, said the attack could be done “in a limited way, without boots on the ground,” the breadth of the two Republican senators’ suggested action would significantly increase U.S. involvement in a two-year civil war in Syria that has left 100,000 people dead and sent 1 million refugees into neighboring...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Officials in the Obama administration and on Capitol Hill say President Barack Obama intends to seek congressional approval for action against Syria. Obama will speak on the developments in Syria from the Rose Garden on Saturday. The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak ahead of the president

National Security Adviser Susan Rice took to Twitter Saturday morning to bolster the White House's case for military strikes against Syria to prevent "attacks on innocents using world's most heinous weapons." Rice repeated Secretary of State John Kerry's comments on Friday that the evidence is clear that Syrian President Bashar Assad's government was responsible for chemical weapons (CW) attacks last month in the suburbs of Damascus.