Free Republic

Back in March, Mitch McConnell made a brash prediction about how Senate Republican incumbents would fare against Tea Party insurgents in the upcoming primary season. “I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” the minority leader told the New York Times. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”

Recent polls show Karen Lewis, the Jabba the Hut-like leader of Chicago’s Teachers shown above the odds-on favorite to unseat Rahm Emmanuel and become the next Mayor of Chicago. And this is the reality: the old JFK bargain, where White Liberal Democratic elites govern and give out special favors to Blacks (and Hispanics) in exchange for votes is ending. Chicago’s “FIRE” interests (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) had a good long run. But demographics is everything. Why indeed should Black populations with the majority or near majority of votes and most active voters (and least vulnerable to double/triple voting prosecutions)...

A longtime defense analyst and critic of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program says taxpayers next year will pay between $148 million and $337 million per jet, depending on the model. Winslow Wheeler, a staff member at the Project On Government Oversight who has worked on national-security issues for the Senate and the Government Accountability Office, detailed his cost estimates for the Lockheed Martin Corp.-made fifth-generation stealth fighter in a recent article on Medium​.com. Wheeler puts the per-plane production price tag at $148 million for the Air Force’s F-35A, which can take off and land on conventional runways; $251 million...

My grandpa had a bird’s eye view of the D-Day landings, seventy years ago today. He flew tactical bombing missions, watching the invasion unfold beneath him. Compared to his earliest missions in ’43, it wasn’t that dangerous. The Luftwaffe had already been reduced to hit and run attacks, and couldn’t challenge the US Army Air Force. Somehow, despite a long life enjoying cigars, scotch whiskey, martinis and huge amounts of beef, he’s still alive at 91, but he’s not all there anymore. However, I like to think some of those memories linger in his mind, as they do for an...

Democratic nominee Tom Wolf has gotten quite the post-primary bounce. In the first poll released after the former Department of Revenue Secretary won the Democratic primary, Tom Wolf holds a twenty point lead over the Governor. According to Rasmussen Reports, 51% of likely voters would support Wolf while 31% would vote for Governor Tom Corbett. Only 14% of respondents were undecided. As expected, Wolf is supported by 83% of Democrats yet only 59% of Republicans favor Corbett. Wolf pulls away 25% of PA Republicans and holds a ten point lead among independents. Meanwhile, among those surveyed Governor Corbett’s job approval...

Google Street view from top to bottom: 2009, 2011, 2013

Shocking footage has emerged of an Ohio woman handcuffed and charged with resisting arrest after sheriff’s deputies pinned her down on the floor pried open her mouth to retrieve a Tylenol tablet. Surveillance video shows Siobhan Householder, 35, of Akron, being confronted last week by a police officer after she took the prescription medication – the altercation left her injured and arrested. Householder was in a holding area while waiting to make a court appearance when she took the medication for a tooth infection, she told the Akron Beacon-Journal.

At the start of the 2014 election cycle, Mark Pryor's future in the Senate was widely considered as dead as the raccoons at the Gillett Coon Supper, an annual fundraiser and gathering spot for Arkansas pols. ....... A series of Pryor television ads focus on Medicare and Social Security, hitting his opponent for supporting Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, which would alter the structure of the programs and increase the eligibility age. It’s a well-worn strategy used by Democrats in states and districts across the country and designed to portray their adversaries as extreme. But there are a couple of particular...

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said Monday he is “nudging” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to run for the Republican nomination to be president. Though he stopped short of endorsing anyone early in the process, Boehner named Bush, son of President George H. W. Bush and brother of President George W. Bush, as a favorite. “We’ve got a lot of good candidates out there. If you look historically, our best candidates have come from the ranks of governors, of former governors, and yes, Jeb Bush is my friend, I think he’d make a great president, and I’ve been nudging...

Vice.com has a piece up titled How Sad Young Douchebags Took Over Modern Britain (H/T Captain Capitalism). In the piece the author struggles to identify why the culture of young men has changed in recent years: But while it’s easy to scorn the banality—and the vanity—of the modern British douchebag, they’re only products of their environment. An environment that has very little to offer them anymore, other than gym memberships, intentionally ripped clothes, alcohol, and creatine. The institutions that gave British men a sense of well-being have been ripped apart. Nobody trusts the police any more; nobody wants to join...

As birth rates among young women plummet, small dog ownership has risen rapidly in America’s urban centers. America’s next generation of youngsters should be called “Generation Rex.”If you’re wondering why playgrounds around the city are so quiet and dog runs are packed, a new report has an answer: More and more US women are forgoing motherhood and getting their maternal kicks by owning handbag-size canines.Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that a big drop in the number of babies born to women ages 15 to 29 corresponds with a huge increase in the number of tiny...

If you're poor, the only way you're likely to injure someone is the old traditional way: artisanal violence, we could call it – by hands, by knife, by club, or maybe modern hands-on violence, by gun or by car. But if you're tremendously wealthy, you can practice industrial-scale violence without any manual labor on your own part. You can, say, build a sweatshop factory that will collapse in Bangladesh and kill more people than any hands-on mass murderer ever did, or you can calculate risk and benefit about putting poisons or unsafe machines into the world, as manufacturers do every...

Journalist Melissa Kite said men who don't want children are selfish Peter Lloyd says men know babies will always be 'hers', not 'theirs' Yesterday, journalist Melissa Kite became the latest woman to publicly trash men in a sexist, undeserving rant - this time, by saying those exercising a human right not to become fathers were 'selfish'.

700,000 have effectively seceded from the corrupt, socialistic, and repressive government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The rebels are working on defensive perimeters to keep out the National Guard. Meanwhile, back in Caracas Maduro is getting an upper hand on the opposition. Maduro is trying to pacify San Cristobal by sending goods to its supermarkets that were rarely there before the rebellion. Students want their deaths at the hands of thugs to have meaning for a big cause: “We prefer to die in an army attack than for an iPhone in an armed robbery outside our homes.” Hey Mexican readers,...

The driver of an unmarked Maricopa County Sheriff's Office SUV was traveling 41 mph faster than the speed limit seconds before it T-boned a Nissan Cube and killed the driver in December. A crash reconstruction by the Glendale Police Department showed Deputy Sean Pearce was going 81 mph in a 40 mph zone just prior to slamming on his brakes and colliding with the Cube driven by John Edward Harding, 63, of Glendale, according to a Glendale police report obtained by CBS 5 News on Monday. Pearce, a 20-year veteran of the MCSO and the son of former state Sen....

Health insurance premiums have risen more after Obamacare than the average premium increases over the eight years before it became law, according to the private health exchange eHealthInsurance.The individual market for health insurance has seen premiums rise by 39 percent since February 2013, eHealth reports. Without a subsidy, the average individual premium is now $274 a month. Families have been hit even harder with an average increase of 56 percent over the same period — average premiums are now $663 per family, over $426 last year.Between 2005 and 2013, average premiums for individual plans increased 37 percent and average family...

Voting begins Sunday on a referendum on whether Venice and its surrounding region should secede from the rest of Italy, in an attempt to restore its 1,000-year history as a sovereign republic. La Serenissima — or the Most Serene Republic of Venice — was an independent trading power for a millennium before its last leader was deposed by Napoleon in 1797.

"Who am I to judge?" makes a triumphant entry in the American subset of the College of Cardinals, in an interview granted to the highest-rated political debate program on US television, to be broadcast tomorrow: Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York praised University of Missouri football star Michael Sam for coming out as gay, saying he would not judge the athlete for his sexual orientation. "Good for him," Dolan said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" airing Sunday. "I would have no sense of judgment on him," Dolan continued. "God bless ya. I don't think, look, the same...

The promotion of an astronaut considered a role model for women in the military has been scrapped in a career-ending move over her action in overruling a conviction in a sexual assault case. Air Force officials would not confirm that President Obama had withdrawn the nomination of Lt. Gen. Susan Helms to be vice commander of the Air Force’ Space Command, but the officials said that “she has put in for retirement.” The nomination of Helms, who flew on five space shuttle missions and jointly holds the record for the longest space walk, had been put on “permanent hold” by...

The latest round of speculation about the 2016 presidential race stars former Florida Governor Jeb Bush whose Republican nomination could potentially lead to a matchup between two powerhouse political families. Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton holds a double-digit lead over Bush in a hypothetical matchup, but half of voters are less likely to vote for Bush because of his family’s history in the White House. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that if the 2016 presidential election were held today, 47% of Likely U.S. Voters would choose Clinton, while 33% would opt for Bush. Fourteen percent (14%) prefer some...