Free Republic

Trump and his staff have told some individuals -- including potential donors -- that as soon as the billionaire businessman secures the nomination, he will pivot and begin fundraising for a general election fight, the source said. In the event that he wins, Trump will have to quickly scale up his campaign -- particularly if he's competing nationwide against Hillary Clinton's behemoth political organization. In private conversations, Trump and his aides have acknowledged that the Republican Party will need to be well-funded for the general election, and that Trump will work with the party to ensure that's the case.

Today, the Supreme Court granted Wheaton College an injunction pending appeal against enforcement of the contraception mandate, even though Wheaton was eligible for the accommodation HHS has provided for religious non-profits. Specifically the Court ordered: If the applicant informs the Secretary of Health and Human Services in writing that it is a non-profit organization that holds itself out as religious and has religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services, the respondents are enjoined from enforcing against the applicant the challenged provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and related regulations pending final disposition of appellate review. To...

American victims of Iranian terrorism were permitted by a U.S. court to assume control over Iran’s Internet licenses and domains in recompense for crimes perpetrated by the regime in Tehran, according to court documents. The decision means that Iran could effectively be kicked off the Internet once control of its “top level domains” are transferred to the American terror victims, who have sought more than a billion dollars in damages from Iran. Court documents detailing the decision and requesting control over Iran’s licenses have been served to the U.S. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees web...

One of the boats can clearly be seen in the water at the Bostanu shipyard on the Strait of Hormuz in Astrium imagery taken on 27 October. It measures 40.5 m long and 4 m wide at the waterline. A second can be seen under construction at the Bandar Anzali Naval Base on the Caspian Sea on 17 September. It is partially shrouded by scaffolding, but is approximately 48 m long and 6 m wide.

Ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama’s to visit Israel, a Gallup poll released on the weekend has found that Americans' sympathies lean heavily toward the Israelis over Palestinian Authority Arabs, 64% vs. 12%. In fact, the poll found, the 64% ties the highest Gallup has recorded in a quarter century, last seen in 1991 during the Gulf War. At that time, 7%, sympathized more with PA Arabs. One of the more notable aspects of the trend is the steady increase in relative support for Israel over the past decade, at the same time that the percentage with no opinion or...

The Second Amendment has always had fair-weather friends. LaRue Tactical, manufacturers of firearms and firearm accessories, is one company that will never be accused of being our fair-weather friend. When New York State passed its unconstitutional anti-gun law, LaRue swung into action. In a move reminiscent of Barrett Firearms’ banning of all sales to California law enforcement (http://www.thegunzone.com/rkba/rkba-50.html) after California banned .50BMG rifles, LaRue has stated that it will not sell anything to local law enforcement that it can’t sell to you and me. In a news release dated 2-8-13, LaRue states: Effective today, in an effort to see that...

An Alabama high school football coach has been suspended without pay for 10 days for making derogatory comments about Michelle Obama and homosexuals. snip “You can go tell the principal, you can call the superintendent and tell her. I don’t believe in queers, I don’t like queers,” Grisham said in an audio recording that has gone viral, according to WHNT. “I don’t, I don’t hate them as a person, but what they do is wrong. It’s an abomination against God.” snip “Look at her. She looks like she weighs 185 or 190 (pounds). She’s overweight,”

A Saudi cleric has called for all female babies to be fully covered by wearing the face veil, commonly known as the burka, citing reports of little girls being sexually molested. In a TV interview on the Islamic al-Majd TV, which seems to date back to mid-last year, Sheikh Abdullah Daoud, stressed that wearing the veil will protect baby girls. The Sheikh tried to back his assertion with claims of sexual molestation against babies in the kingdom, quoting unnamed medical and security sources. Recently picked up on social media, Sheikh Dauod’s statement prompted wide condemnation from his fellow Saudis on...

“Well, first of all, Candy, as you know, the President called it an act of terror the day after it happened,” David Axelrod told CNN’s Candy Crowley this morning, referring to a speech Obama made in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12. Axelrod’s claim has been pushed by journalists over the past few days, most notably Josh Gerstein at Politico, in a blog post headlined “Obama talked of Libya attack as ‘terror’ 2 weeks ago”: 'snip' If Obama wanted to call the Benghazi assault a terrorist attack in that speech, he had plenty of opportunities to do so. Instead, he...

President Obama may be enjoying a slight, if likely temporary, bounce in the polls this week. But one of the surveys showing him with a lead in a tight race over Mitt Romney also provides a breakdown of the data that confirms predictions that he is losing up to a quarter of the Jewish votes he got in 2008. The Investors Business Daily/Christian Science Monitor/TIPP Poll gives a breakdown of religion along with other demographic groups and shows Obama leading among Jews by a margin of 59 to 35 percent with six percent undecided. While that is still a majority...

Flouting international opinion, an Israeli government-appointed commission of jurists said Monday that Israel’s presence in the West Bank was not occupation and recommended that the state grant approval for scores of unauthorized Jewish settlement outposts there. The committee’s legal arguments, while nonbinding, could provide backup for the government should it decide to grant the outposts retroactive official status. But such a move would inevitably stir international outrage and deal a significant blow to prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. “The report relates to the question of legality and legitimacy of the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria,” Prime Minister Benjamin...

Please pray for my 2 year old niece Gefen who just had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor of the kidney. She will now have chemo therapy for 4-6 months. Thank you.

<p>Since Ramesh, Mona, Yuval & Co have got out the tire irons, I figured I might as well pile on. But then a reader from the Cayman Islands reminded me that I’d said pretty much everything I have to say about Newt in November 1998 — in the London Spectator, upon his resignation as speaker. For those Newtroids who huff that I must be in the tank for Mitt (that’s some tank), November 1998 is 13 years ago, when I’m not sure I’d even heard of Mitt Romney.</p>

'What has the country so angry," says Fred Siegel, "is the sense that crony capitalism has produced a population that lives off the rest of us without contributing. They're right. It's not paranoid." The economic historian of the American city has spent a lot of this autumn on Wall Street. He met many of the protesters who camped out at Zuccotti Park, before the city's finest cleared them out last week. He also knows the bankers and finds the theater of the Occupy movement ironic. "They're on the same side of the street politically," he says. "They're both in favor...

<p>Civilizations don’t rise, fall, and then gently decline, as inevitably and predictably as the four seasons or the seven ages of man. History isn’t one smooth, parabolic curve after another. Its shape is more like an exponentially steepening slope that quite suddenly drops off like a cliff.</p> <p>'snip'</p> <p>'snip'</p>

I received the following email: "Hello my name is Kathi. My son has a pit bull that he has left in my care. He leaves for Afganistan on 11/30/11 and from there he will go to Africa to train soldiers with the us army. I am a surgical nurse who works 60-75 hrs per week and the dog has to be crated while I work. I was wondering if your organization could take her and find a loving home for her. I have tried to find a family for her & they hear pit bull & shy away. Lyric is...

Something has gone horribly wrong here in Israel. How did we ever get to a point in this country where the South, including Beersheba, Sderot, Ashkelon, Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Malachi, Be’er Tuvia, Ofakim, Azrikam, Gan Yavne, Gedera and Ashdod were hit by more than 100 Grad rockets this past weekend? How did we ever get to a point in this country where we put the safety of our citizens at the mercy of international approval – with an Israeli defense official proclaiming on Monday morning that “lack of international support” was a reason that “Israel could not open a larger...

But just as the West has consistently misunderstood the Muslim problem, so too has it failed to grasp the Palestinian one. And what it has failed to grasp above all is the centrality of Palestinian refugees to the conflict. 'snip' In this belief the Palestinians are sustained by many things. One is the mythology of 1948, which is long on tales of what Jews did to Arabs but short on what Arabs did to Jews—or to themselves. Another is the text of U.N. resolution 194, written in 1948, which plainly states that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and...

"Maybe he [Obama] didn't write that book" and "There's a lot of speculation that Bill Ayers....wrote the first book" and "The person who wrote the first book didn't write the second book" listen second "Donald Trump" link at 4:35

The newly appointed chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) has sustained and controversial ties to the fringe anti-Israel lobby, J Street. In early 2009, Wasserman Schultz hosted an event on Capitol Hill with J Street, a group then under fire for issuing a statement accusing Israel of collective punishment in Gaza and equating Israeli self-defensive measures with those of Hamas. J Street's comments were so incendiary, they drew immediate condemnation from all corners of the Jewish community, including noted liberal Rabbi Eric Yoffie, who called the group "profoundly out of touch." Yet Wasserman Schultz, only...