Free Republic

Ted Cruz's campaign produced and released this attack ad overnight, after Donald Trump came out in favor of allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice, rather than the bathroom corresponding to their birth. The Cruz campaign has seized on this issue as a clear indicator that Donald Trump is "not a conservative." "Leave it the way it is," Trump said. "There have been very few problems." "Should a grown man pretending to be a woman be allowed to use the women's restroom?" asks the Cruz campaign, calling the bathroom issue "PC Nonsense that is destroying America." "North...

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is set to tour the border Friday, officials say. House Speaker David Gowan will lead the tour, which will also include Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who dropped her run for the White House.

Congressional Republicans vowed Thursday to kill President Barack Obama's plan to add a $10-per-barrel tax on oil production to pay for "green" transportation projects, with House Speaker Paul Ryan calling it "dead on arrival" and "an election-year distraction." "The president expects hard-working consumers to pay for his out-of-touch climate agenda," the Wisconsin Republican said. "A $10 tax for every barrel of oil produced would raise energy prices -- hurting poor Americans the most." [...] President Obama will include the plan in his budget proposal that he will present to Congress on Tuesday. The fee will be phased in over five...

California Republican Carly Fiorina said Friday it is "insulting" for radio host Rush Limbaugh to call a student activist a "slut" and "prostitute" because she is pushing for employers to pay for contraception. "That language is insulting in my opinion," said Fiorina, who launched an unsuccessful Senate bid against longtime California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010, on "CBS This Morning." "It's incendiary and most of all, it's a distraction. It's a distraction from what are very real and important issues," the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard said. At least one advertiser, The Sleep Train, has pulled its advertising from...

The outrage over Cecil's death is absurd when you think of the other, bigger problems which people are happy to ignore There is a new, pointless ride opening in town designed to give users an instant but ephemeral rush. It isn’t the slide down the ugly, unnecessary Olympic tower, but the convenient and free outrage bus currently stopping on your street and picking up passengers for Cecil, the beautiful dead lion. Out of any and all proportion to the severity of his dreadful act of animal murder, the dentist who killed Cecil has become an international focal point of hate...

Senate Bill 539, which would prohibit the naming of public buildings and roads in California after Confederate leaders, advanced from its sole policy committee Tuesday on a 7-1 vote. It heads next to the Assembly Appropriations Committee for fiscal consideration.

As calls grow to remove the Confederate flag from public spaces across America's South, Vanessa White says she questions whether that would mark real progress for black Americans like her.... White’s view, she says, was shaped by exposure to racism as a child and also by a family she describes as dysfunctional. Her single mother was an alcoholic, and her brothers began committing crimes at an early age. She says she grew up never feeling like a real person because of her race....

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is asking Congress to formally authorize war against Islamic State militants, offering a draft resolution that says the Islamic State "poses a grave threat."

’m a New York Giants fan. So besides erecting a makeshift shrine to Odell Beckham Jr. and soaking in schadenfreude at the expense of Philadelphia Eagles fans, I haven’t found the last couple of weeks of the NFL regular season super interesting. And yet, many teams that were eliminated from the playoffs appeared to pack stadiums – despite frigid temperatures and the promise of mediocre football. That prompted an argument over this question: Who goes to the meaningless NFL games at the end of the season and why?

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When the lights change at the Shibuya crossing in Japan's capital, one of the world's busiest pedestrian thoroughfares, hundreds of people with their eyes glued to smartphones pick their way over the road. Despite being engrossed in the latest instalment of Candy Crush or busy chatting with their friends on messaging app Line, most manage to weave around cyclists, skateboarders and fellow Tokyoites. But the growing ranks of these cellphone addicts are turning cities like Tokyo, London, New York and Hong Kong into increasingly hazardous hotspots, where zombified shoppers appear to be part of vast games of human pinball.

A hatchet-wielding attacker charged a group of New York City police officers posing for a photograph on Thursday, wounded two, one critically, before the assailant was shot dead, police said. The officers were on foot patrol when they were asked by a freelance photographer to pose for a picture on a Queens street at about 2 p.m., a New York Police Department spokesman said. Suddenly a man carrying a hatchet charged the officers, swinging it and striking one officer in the right arm and then swinging it again and striking a second officer in the head, the spokesman said.

News about the spread of the Ebola virus has been an increasing focus for market participants in recent days. Despite rising media coverage, Ebola seems to have had little discernible effect on consumer sentiment to date. However, as Goldman Sachs notes, the "fear factor" associated with Ebola appears more significant than in past instances of pandemic concern. While expert opinion sees the likelihood of a significant outbreak of Ebola in the US as very low, it is likely any negative macroeconomic consequences are most likely to be transmitted through fear or risk-aversion channels.

I encounter so many struggling pastors. And unfortunately, I know so many who used to be pastors but no longer hold the position. It may be through a blatant sin or a casual drifting from doing what they knew to be right, but it landed them in disaster. A pastor friend of mine said recently, “We need healthy churches and we need healthy pastors.” Amen. Agreed. We must stand guard. What are we guarding against? No single post would be perfect. Obviously sin, but I can’t address everything that gets in the way of a healthy pastor. I can only...

A common theme in the failure of armed robbers is the problem of becoming distracted, if only for one or two seconds.   That is all the time a prospective victim needs to access a weapon and strike a fatal blow or three.   Robbers want compliance and money or goods.   They generally do not want murder, at least until after they get the goods or money, which compliance helps them to obtain.   In this case in Phoenix, the would be robber was distracted, and loses the subsequent gunfight.   From kpho.com;  Crump is a police Sargent: The suspect walked up to...

We usually think of distractions or interruptions as coming form the world around us. But is that really the most common source? Consider the following parable drawn from the stories of the early Desert Fathers and from monastic experience: Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the silence of the monastery would be shattered.This would upset the disciples; not the Master, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the silence.To his protesting disciples he said one day, “Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.” The fact is, our greatest...

Eye and head tracking sensors will make it harder to text while driving General Motors is reportedly installing sensors in its next generation of cars that will detect drivers’ eye and head motions and alert drivers to prolonged moments of distraction...

Eric Holder is instituting the same process in Ferguson Missouri he used in Sanford Florida. The civil rights wing of the DOJ is dispatched into Ferguson. They are officially called the “Community Relations Service” (CRS), and historically -in previous administrations- have been called upon when racial animus is a concern amid a local municipality. However, under the Eric Holder tenure, and as a specific mandate of the current administration, the CRS has been given a different mandate. The CRS is a statutorily protected secret entity within the DOJ, and is now the official racial advocacy network for the professional black...

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- King James has reclaimed his throne in Cleveland. LeBron James stunned the NBA on Friday when he announced his long-awaited free agency decision, choosing to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers and leaving the Miami Heat.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Libyan militant charged in the 2012 Benghazi attacks was in federal law enforcement custody, the U.S. attorney's office said Saturday. Security at the city's federal courthouse was heightened.