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INDIANAPOLIS — It’s no fluke that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz stopped by Lucchese’s Italian restaurant outside Elkhart on a barnstorming tour of Indiana this past week. The family-owned eatery is a local landmark. Located on a busy county road, it was started more than 30 years ago by a firefighter who'd learned how to cook for his firehouse crew. It's now managed by his son, a Republican county commissioner, and frequented by conservative GOP Congresswoman Jackie Walorksi when she’s in town. Owner Frank Lucchese confessed to being a John Kasich fan in the presidential primary race, but he understood why...

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The group could be pivotal Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has a clear early lead in the Republican race for unbound delegates who can vote their personal preference on the first ballot at the Cleveland convention, according to a TIME survey, presenting an obstacle for frontrunner Donald Trump if he falls just short of the 1,237 bound delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Of the 63 unbound delegates who have already been named, 26 have told TIME or other news outlets that they are either committed to support Cruz, lean towards supporting Cruz or refuse to support Trump on the first...

"I beat him in every single debate. Every single debate, I beat Ted Cruz. He was supposed to be a good debater," Trump said at a rally in Bridgeport, Conn. "He never had a debater like me where I interrupt him every four minutes. … I don't think he actually is a good debater."

People are not pleased that Target is now allowing men and women to use whichever bathroom they want. Of all the reactions I’ve seen to it, “I won’t be shopping at Target anymore” is at the top. Boycott is now the name of the game, and it’s not just Target’s former customers that seem to be calling for it. Politicians are now weighing in as well. Mobile County Commissioner, Jerry Lee Carl, posted a very forward message on his Facebook in response to Target. Do you really want your wives and daughters using the same restroom with every street freak...

Now that the 2016 presidential election season is in full swing, which candidate(s) are people in the adult industry supporting? Every election year is a nail-biter for pornographers, who are wracked with worry over potential persecution from the next presidential administration. Demonizing the porn industry under the guise of protecting the public’s morality is an old politician’s trick. Charge XXX producers with obscenity, collect fines and put a dent in the debauchery. “Obscene” porn is illegal but not all porn is obscene. Content that was considered extreme 15 years ago might be closer to the norm now. In the late...

The math is certain, it's time to move on to fighting Hillary. The current real numbers are just fine, Trump was expected to win New York, optimistic news I had received not with standing. Yes Trump got 90 delegates. Yes he did well. Yes Kasich got 5 delegates, his first in how long? Yes yes and yes. And No I am not even bothered. Real Numbers: Cruz 696 Delegates to Trumps 815 Delegates. Whats left now? California 172 Indiana 57 New Jersey 51 Washington 44 Maryland 38 Nebraska 36 West Virginia 34 South Dakota 29 Connecticut 28 Oregon 28 Montana...

When I was a lad, I very much enjoyed the comedy of Cheech & Chong. Tonight, at the Novo by Microsoft theatre in downtown Los Angeles, I got to see them live. Their humor comes from a gentler, and now rather distant, time in our nation’s history, but only one of the many bits actually felt dated. Amid the drug-related and social-observation material came a genuine political surprise. An anti-Trump joke in the opening act fell a little flat, and a few minutes later, when the main act got under way, Cheech asked the audience, “Are there any Donald Trump...

Today the Cruz campaign announced the endorsements of former Chairmen of the California Republican Party John S. Herrington and Tirso del Junco. They join former CRP Chairmen Ron Nehring and Michael Schroeder on the Cruz team From the campaign statement: “As a member of President Reagan’s cabinet, I’ve seen first-hand how a great leader can change the course of our nation. Ted Cruz is the proven conservative leader our country needs to lead us to prosperity once again,” said Herrington. John S. Herrington served as President Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1981-83, Deputy Assistant for Presidential Personnel from...

In an interview with the Today show, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he “absolutely” wants to change the Republican party’s current pro-life platform to promote abortions in cases of rape or incest. The comment is the latest in a long line of comments from Trump upsetting pro-life voters — including multiple remarks praising the Planned Parenthood abortion business, saying abortion laws should not be changed and saying women should be punished for having abortions and flip-flopping hours later. ….. Below is the full text of the current pro-life platform in the Republican Party: THE SANCTITY AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN...

Donald Trump no doubt had a big win in New York. He’s on track to claim nearly all of the state’s 98 delegates in a victory that saw him not only smash the 50 percent mark – which allowed him to gain extra delegates – but win nearly every region of the state. But according to the widely respected Nate Silver, writing for his political website, FiveThirtyEight, Trump is still also on track to come up short at the convention. The main question is, will he get close enough to required 1,237 that he can maneuver his way over the...

The mess the Republicans have got themselves into leaves them facing a likely landslide defeat regardless of whom they nominate for president. So while television, the press and party leaders focus on whether Donald Trump, Ted Cruz or a Sir Galahad to be named later emerges as their candidate, there is a greater, related question lurking. Does about the Republican Party have a future? Or is the Party founded in 1856 no longer Grand, just Old, falling apart, on its way to dissolution? In its 2016 campaign, the G.O.P. is squandering the political advantages of the recent tradition of changing...

It wasn’t a good night for Ted Cruz, who finished third in New York amid a landslide for Donald Trump in his home state. There was some talk, which turned out to be more hopeful than realistic, that because of the fact New York was a closed primary with registration rules so restrictive that you had to be registered as a Republican back in October of last year in order to vote in it the circumstances would serve to hold down his vote – perhaps even keep him under 50 percent. That didn’t happen; with 70 percent of the vote...

When Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz came to the Bronx to campaign in the run-up to the New York primary, ridicule was not far away. After all, what is a Republican candidate doing in the staunchly Democratic, minority-majority northern part of New York City? What is he doing in New York State at all, when Donald Trump is nearly certain to carry the most votes and, according to market-based forecasts, has an 85 percent chance to win more than 50 percent of the vote? Why would Ted Cruz campaign in the Bronx? For someone like Cruz to campaign exactly...

Donald Trump's final push for the GOP nomination starts Tuesday in New York, where the front-runner is heavily favored over rivals Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The burning question is not whether Trump wins New York — if he doesn't, it will be among the biggest polling surprises ever — but whether Cruz and Kasich can pick up enough delegates to derail his nomination before July's convention in Cleveland. Since Trump's last victory in Arizona's March 22 primary, Cruz has won a competitive race in Wisconsin, as well as a series of sweeping victories in North Dakota,...

To refresh your memory: Washington State has 44 delegates, winner-take-most (majority takes all) proportional primary (20% threshold), with statewide and CD delegates. Closed primary (deadline to switch is next week; deadline for first-time voters is next month), but it’s all mail-in. …And, just think! Five months ago, I would have had to write another three or four sentences to explain all of that. Now I can just assume that most of you folks will be able to follow along. It’s an ill wind, huh? Anyway, it turns out that Ted Cruz has already done the work – before the deadline...

Whenever Ted Cruz appears on television, I cringe as unpleasant memories of distant relatives cross my mind, reminding me of things best forgotten. And what is best forgotten is simply the Hispanic political tradition of severity. Think Francisco Franco. Think Fidel Castro. Think Ted Cruz? Yes, Ted Cruz is a would-be autocrat. My paternal grandmother, a Galician matron who despised sexism in all its forms, called it “la maldición gallega,” or “the Galician curse.” By that she meant the dreadful and familiar anti-democratic tendency in the political lives of the Hispanic world where dictators, strongmen, caudillos, and caciques have ruled...

On 4/23/2007, Jim Robinson posted a manifesto, "Giuliani as the GOP presidential nominee would be a dagger in the heart of the conservative movement" (and a knife in the back) . The thread was subtitled, "The only difference in a Liberal Rudy Giuliani and Liberal Hillary Clinton is the fact of which bathrooms they select to use and there are some who are willing to even question that.

On Twitter, Donald Trump, the GOP presidential front-runner, lashed out at Hillary Clinton, directly attacking her husband, the former president, for what Trump called “his terrible record of women abuse.” "If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women's card on me, she's wrong!" Trump is obviously referring to the sexual allegations that have long swirled around Clinton, even before he became president. We’d earlier explored this question in 2014 when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wrongly claimed that a half dozen women had called Clinton a “sexual predator.” But for...