Free Republic

C’mon. In the new America, you’re not really an adult until you’re 26. Maybe longer, depending on the next unilateral executive rule change.This case had to end this way, didn’t it? Rachel Canning, a senior at Morris Catholic High School, went to court to force her parents, Sean and Elizabeth Canning, to pay her child support, her private school tuition, medical and related bills, college expenses and legal fees. Canning is an honor student and athlete, but her parents have stopped paying her bills because, they say, she would not obey their rules…Her parents countered that she voluntarily left home...

Full Title - "Lawyer on Chris Christie’s SCHOOL FUNDING task force is bankrolling teen suing parents for college cash" The prominent New Jersey attorney who is funding the legal costs of 18-year-old Morris Catholic High School senior Rachel Canning in her lawsuit against her own parents serves on Gov. Chris Christie’s School Funding Task Force. The attorney is John P. Inglesino, the managing partner at Inglesino, Wyciskala & Taylor, LLC, a 10-attorney firm in Parsippany, N.J. Gov. Christie’s School Funding Task Force exists to eradicate abuse and fraud from New Jersey’s education system, explains the Common Sense Institute of New...

TRENTON New Jersey Democrats on Monday proposed legislation that would limit the ammunition capacity of gun magazines, 14 months after a massacre at a Connecticut elementary school revived a national debate about the role of guns in America. The bill, announced by the Legislature's Democratic leadership at a Statehouse news conference with parents of children slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, would reduce magazine capacity to 10 rounds, from 15. It also would ban semiautomatic rifles with fixed-magazine capacities that exceed 10 rounds. "When you meet families that lost their loved ones, it's pretty hard to explain...

Special to the Star-Telegram One year after his death, hundreds of items from the estate of Van Cliburn are going on sale at Christie’s auction house in New York. The pianist, who died in February 2013, filled his Westover Hills home with items encountered during his world travels — fine art, furnishings, tableware — and selected with a veteran collector’s eye. Two years ago, Cliburn parted with some of his most valuable treasures at a Christie’s auction of what was billed as “The Van Cliburn Collection.” That sale earned almost $4.4 million, beating a presale estimate of $3 million. The...

Moving cautiously to repair his image, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is maintaining a low profile this weekend as the nation’s governors gather in Washington. Republican officials have been eager to change the subject as Democrats link Christie’s troubles to vulnerable GOP governors in a challenging election season. The usually outspoken Christie is scheduled to attend just one public event over the three-day annual meeting. He avoided a media-sponsored forum on Friday, wasn’t granting interviews, won’t attend a White House dinner and was skipping a news conference hosted by the Republican Governors Association, an organization he heads. …

Whatever we had is not working any more. You’re obviously interested in another man: Chris Christie. You’re obsessed with him. So I wanted you to hear it from me first. I’m going to start seeing other news organizations. I’ll miss what we had. It was a rocket ship ride. We were both passionate flaming liberals and we didn’t care what the world thought of us. It was a glorious time. We finished each other’s Sarah Palin jokes. But now we never talk about any of the things we used to talk about: global warming, gun control, poverty… All because Chris...

As New Jersey dug out Friday from the Nor’easter and braced for more snowflakes on Saturday, Gov. Chris Christie jetted off to Puerto Rico for some sun and fun, CNN reported on Friday. “After the storm had passed, the governor left the state [Friday] morning for a long weekend away with his family, and he will return Monday night,” Christie spokesman Colin Reed told the network.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) saw his deficit in a 2016 presidential matchup against Hillary Clinton balloon to 21 points, according to a new national poll. A Marist-McClatchy poll released Tuesday found 58 percent of people would support Hillary Clinton in a general election race, while 37 percent would support Christie. Christie’s poll numbers have been struggling since revelations that a staffer in his administration had a hand in the closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge last year. The state legislature and the U.S. attorney in New Jersey are looking into the closures. The new poll shows his ratings have sunk...

When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie visited Florida shortly after the revelation that his staffers had caused a traffic disaster for political retribution, no Republican would be seen in public with the RGA chairman. Last week, the same happened in Texas, and this week, Illinois Republicans will steer clear of Christie's events. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the four gubernatorial candidates competing in Illinois have no plans to join Christie at various Republican Governors Association events. Christie will be landing in Chicago on Tuesday to attend a number of fundraisers, but he will not be greeted by Republican gubernatorial candidates, and the...

Where just months ago Republicans brimmed with pride over Chris Christie’s landslide re-election, doubts about his prospects as a potential presidential candidate have begun creeping into the minds of some donors in key states, according to some GOP fundraisers. […] “There are influential donors who are giving him a second and third look,” Herberger said of Christie. “Where they would have been ‘this is the guy’ two months ago, I think a lot of people are giving him a second look and keeping their powder dry.” “But that could change, too,” said Herberger. “There’s so much time between now and...

The New Jersey legislative committee investigating the Bridgegate scandal will probe records of helicopter rides Gov. Chris Christie took to see if he flew near Fort Lee while lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge were closed, sources told The Post. Lawmakers also want to know if the New Jersey governor took a ride with then-Port Authority exec David Wildstein, who allegedly orchestrated the lane closures on the order of a Christie aide.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has spent his gubernatorial campaign avoiding other people's scandals. Emphasizing policy and refusing to make Wendy Davis's false life story the center of the race, it was little surprise that Abbott chose not to meet with scandal-plagued RGA Chairman Chris Christie when he visited Texas yesterday. But Abbott wanted nothing to with the New Jersey governor and was quick to announce that he would not meet with Christie at any of the RGA's private events. Current Governor Rick Perry, who has no elections to worry about, made the same decision. Abbott's team stated that he...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Dallas, Texas (CNN) -- In the afterglow of Chris Christie's smashing re-election win last November, a chorus of big-name Republicans heralded the charismatic New Jersey governor as the party's savior in 2016. Not everyone was so enamored. Just days after the election, Texas Gov. Rick Perry appeared on national television and poured cold water on Christie's impressive victory. "He was a successful governor in New Jersey," Perry said on ABC's "This Week." "Now does that transcend to the country? We'll see in later years and months to come. We're all different states. Is a conservative in New Jersey a conservative...

The gravamen of the media’s case against Christie on Bridgegate seems to be that he is a “bully” — which I painstakingly gleaned from the fact that the governor is called a “bully” 1 million times a night on MSNBC and in hundreds of blog postings and New York Times reports. Christie is not a bully. If anything, he’s a pansy, a man terrified of the liberal media, of Wall Street, of Silicon Valley, of Obama, of Bruce Springsteen, of Mark Zuckerberg, of Chuck Schumer. It’s a good bet he’s afraid of his own shadow. (In fairness, his shadow is...

New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie will speak at 2014’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the American Conservative Union (ACU) announced late Sunday. The ACU’s decision to invite Christie comes after he was denied a speaking slot in 2013 and amid a scandal over politically motivated highway lane closures that may jeopardize the rough-and-tumble Governor’s political future. “We are very excited to announce that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will speak at CPAC 2014,” ACU chairman Al Cardenas said in a statement. “At this year’s CPAC — and through our theme ‘ACU’s Golden Anniversary: Getting It Right for 50 Years’...

Responding to embattled Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's scandals concerning "Bridgegate" and Hurricane Sandy Relief funds, conservatives have been more anti-mainstream media, anti-President Barack Obama, and anti-Hillary Clinton than pro-Christie.  Their support, though, has been far from enthusiastic, showing how difficult it will be for Christie to not only win the Republican presidential nomination if he becomes a candidate but to win in the general election if he gets the nomination. The mainstream media--and his friends at MSNBC--have turned on Christie, and conservatives have again defended an establishment Republican more than the establishment has ever defended them. Conservatives have pointed out that Christie has taken...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was greeted with a scattering of boos when he appeared at a Super Bowl ceremony in New York City on Saturday. The embattled governor wouldn't answer questions from the press about the bridge-gate scandal sparked when his top aides orchestrated traffic gridlock on the George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey as apparent political retribution. He has denied any knowledge of an plot.

Longtime readers here may recall that yours truly and others have written about liberties New York Times reporter Kate Zernike has taken with the truth, especially in her reporting on the Tea Party movement. Her penchant for inventing baseless stories about alleged racism in the movement once caused the late Andrew Breitbart to label her "a despicable human being." Breitbart might well have the same reaction to the hours-later revision made at Zernike's Times story Friday about Chris Christie. Several alert bloggers and tweeters noted that her story about Christie's knowledge of shut lanes on the George Washington Bridge conveniently...

If I am not mistaken, Governor Chris Christie said in his 100+ minutes speech that he did had knowledge (at some point in the past) of the lane closures -- but that knowledge was related to the lane closures being in connection with a study. Based upon this, how can Christie's words that he had no knowledge of the lane closures be used against him? I may be wrong, but it would seem that the only logical conclusion to the two seemingly diametrically opposed statements is that his words (that he had no knowledge of the lane closures) would have...

The New York Times changed the lede of its explosive story about former New York Port Authority official David Wildstein on Friday. Whereas the original story stated that Wildstein has the evidence to prove Gov. Chris Christie knew about the George Washington Bridge lane closings when they were happening, the new version has Wildstein saying “evidence exists.” […] This seemingly minor change carries a big difference in meaning. The original lede reads as though Wildstein is saying he specifically has evidence that links Christie to knowing about the bridge lane closures. The second lede suggests only that “evidence exists,” not...