Free Republic

I don’t know who is going to win Saturday’s special Democratic Senate primary between Sen. Brian Schatz and Rep. Colleen Hanabusa — and it’s not just because there’s a lot going on in Hawaii right now (an earthquake rattled Hawaii on Thursday, and two tropical storms are on course to hit or come near Hawaii in the next five days). Instead, the polling picture in the Aloha State is a mess. One poll has Hanabusa up by 8 percentage points, and another puts Schatz up 8 points. Why the discrepancy? Hawaii’s diversity has troubled pollsters in the past and looks...

New York Times best-selling author and long-time journalist Ed Klein said that Valerie Jarrett has been engaging in secret meetings with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in recent months, giving rise to speculations that the Massachusetts political newcomer is actually the administration’s choice to head the White House in 2016. “President Obama has authorized Valerie Jarrett, his most important political adviser, to hold secret meetings with Elizabeth Warren to encourage her to challenge Hillary Clinton because the Obamas do not want to see the Clintons succeed them in the White House,” Mr. Klein said during a broadcast interview on “America’s Forum” on...

Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis on Thursday questioned the deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops on the border with Mexico to curtail illegal immigration and she promised, if elected, that she will study withdrawing them. The troop contingent was promised a month ago by current Republican Gov. Rick Perry, and it is expected that in the coming days they will begin to be deployed along the Texas-Mexico border, which stretches some 2,000 kilometers (about 1,240 miles). "The action I am ordering today will tackle this crisis head-on by multiplying our efforts to combat the cartel activity, human traffickers and...

Getting the president’s backing isn’t what it used to be—he looks set to go 0-2 on Saturday, with the two candidates he endorsed in his home state apparently headed for defeat.When Barack Obama vaulted onto the national stage a decade ago, part of his appeal was that he seemed to be from so many places at once. All corners of the country could lay claim to him: He was Hawaiian by birth, Illinoisan by choice, and Kansan by heritage, and he spent his formative years in New York City. He marched through the 2008 primaries by winning in both the...

The senator’s broad appeal threatens to weaken Democrats for 2016, and they are going on offense—sending out no less than 10 press releases on his latest trip to Iowa.

When Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, claimed earlier this week that Democrats were waging a “war on whites,” he lifted the lid on a simmering resentment that is very real and very resilient and feeds on anxiety — and fear — about a changing America, and the possibility of those changes upending historical architectures of privilege. On Monday, Brooks was on Laura Ingraham’s radio show to talk about Republicans’ deportation policies. She played a clip of Ron Fournier of National Journal on Fox News saying: “The fastest-growing voting block in this country thinks the Republican Party hates them. This...

It's time to revisit the widely disseminated myth that compromise in politics and governance is the highest virtue. Recently, I heard a television host whom I like and respect lament that Congress left town without taking action on our border crisis. Members of Congress, the argument goes, just need to get together, put aside their partisanship and get something done. After all, even couples going through an acrimonious divorce can sit down in the same room, close the doors and work out some agreement. But getting something done isn't always preferable to doing nothing, especially if the proposed action would...

Last Friday, for the first time in nearly a decade, Minnesota's minimum wage went up. The first in a series of incremental hikes brought the wage floor from $6.15 to $8 per hour for relatively large companies, and from $5.25 to $6.50 for small ones. As you'd expect, some businesses aren't thrilled about that -- especially bars and restaurants, as the new law doesn't include a tip exception. But the Oasis Cafe in Stillwater is generating a stir for transparently including a "Min Wage Fee" on all customer checks:

It is next to impossible to come up with a more cynical political strategy than the Democratic Party’s current attempts to goad their Republican opposition into impeaching President Barack Obama. Facing what could be a disastrous midterm season, the party in control of the White House has fired every last shot they have in the effort to gin up enthusiasm among their base voters, and they have all but given up on governing in a manner which might elicit a positive response from the electorate. Republicans, well aware of how impeachment backfired politically in 1998, are not biting. So, the...

A Russian activist group used a racist laser show to send President Barack Obama a sardonic “happy birthday” message on Monday, with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow serving as the display’s unwilling backdrop. The projection depicted a party hat-clad Obama swallowing a banana.

The Senate’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbents, caught in the crosscurrents of immigration reform, are urging President Barack Obama to show restraint in using his executive powers to slow deportations. Obama is locked between a progressive base demanding aggressive action and voters in conservative states that will decide the fate of the Senate and hold outsized importance in shaping the final two years of his presidency. The White House is weighing how far it can go, legally and politically, in delaying deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants. His decision will be announced just weeks before Election Day, and the timing is...

Though I typically resist, my wife often tries to get me to put down the laptop and enjoy the Zen of gardening with her. So you can imagine her surprise when she returned from a trip to find a beautiful clump of nonwild flowers planted in her garden. She loved the welcome-home gift and was ready to bestow upon me many valuable (and increasingly elusive) good-husband points. The thing is, I have no idea how those flowers got there. And like George Washington, I could not tell a lie. But had I in fact been an actual president, I probably...

(CNSNews.com) - When asked if marijuana-infused food products should require federal labeling, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said consumers want accurate information “to make smart choices”. Currently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t enforce federal food safety standards on marijuana-infused food products that are available in the few states where marijuana has been legalized.During a conference call with lawmakers on FDA food labeling on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked: “Given that the FDA currently doesn’t enforce any federal food safety standards on marijuana-infused foods and with a lot of states obviously changing their marijuana laws  -do you think they should require nutritional...

It appears Hillary Clinton has launched her 2016 presidential campaign. HollywoodLife.com can exclusively report that Hillary has leased office space on a high-level floor of a corporate New York City office building, overlooking Times Square, for what sources are saying, is her campaign headquarters. It looks like Hillary Clinton has officially begun her campaign to be the next President of the United States. Three sources tell HollywoodLife.com that the former Secretary of State has rented sunny, spacious digs for two years in a midtown office tower, as the headquarters for her 2016 presidential bid. Hillary Clinton Sets Up Campaign Headquarters...

Via RCP, I want to believe it, I almost believe it — but I don’t really believe it. All the makings of a Democratic clusterfark are there. If O legalizes five million workers, plenty of blue-collar Democrats are bound to put two and two together and wonder what that means for their wages. And plenty of Democratic Senate incumbents in red states, like, oh, let’s say Mark Pryor, are going to panic, knowing what could happen if the backlash among conservatives is as ferocious as everyone expects. In fact, as Newt alludes to, both Pryor and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan...

This is really not the biggest deal in the world, but every year on August 4, I’m reminded of something kind of creepy in the Cult of Obama. That, my friends, is the obsession with his birthday. I totally get that if you run a monarchy or are a dictator or if you’re a good president, your birthday might be cause for celebration. Oh, it’s the Queen’s birthday? Let’s celebrate. Oh, we’re going to be killed if we don’t pay honor to you, Kim Jong Un (not to be confused with his father who held the titles of “Dear Leader,...

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jimmy Carter takes to ForeignPolicy.com to argue that the key to ending the current war in Gaza is "recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political actor." Writing along with fellow "Elder" Mary Robinson (part of an "international group of elder statesmen"), the former president pins the blame for the current conflict on Israel's refusal to appreciate a "major concession" made by Hamas in April and to recognize the new Palestinian government formed by the Hamas-Fatah "reconciliation": This tragedy results from the deliberate obstruction of a promising move toward peace in the region, when a reconciliation agreement among...

Colin Collette, former music director at Holy Family Catholic Church in Illinois, says his partner, William Nifong, asked to “marry” him while they stood in front of St. Peter’s Basilica on a recent trip to Rome. In Illinois and Chicago, thanks to Catholic Democrat politicians, same-sex marriage is legal, so the two men planned a wedding. When Colin returned to the Chicago area, Father Terry Keehan of Holy Family Catholic Church, asked Collette to resign. Colin refused, and was subsequently fired. According to Collette, someone sent Francis Cardinal George a Facebook picture of him and his husband to be. That...

As expected, such a pithy observation has elicited howls of outrage from the left. The comment was made by Alabama Republican Congressman Mo Brooks, who used the phrase in a purely political context — that the GOP’s immigration stance wouldn’t hurt the party, while the Democrats’ push for immigration reform was politically stupid. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) doesn’t think that the hardline stance Republicans have taken on immigration could hurt the party’s standing with Hispanic voters. Instead, he thinks Democrats are hurting their prospects with white voters. “This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by...

What better way to help out the less fortunate than to raise the minimum standard of wage that an employee is paid? The idea is simple and the public supports it. However, the poor are the ones most negatively affected by minimum wage laws through multiple channels such as employment and consumer prices of everyday goods. As Nobel laureate and economics titan Milton Friedman observed, "The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken."...