Free Republic

Republican candidates are not trotting out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the midterm election campaign, despite his status as one of the party’s rising stars. While Cruz is a hero to many conservatives, some candidates are leery of appearing with him because he is a polarizing figure who could turn off independents and centrist Republicans.

Earlier today, Alex Griswold told you about Wendy Davis doubling down on her campaign-imploding “Look at the cripple” ad. Or tripling down, or quadrupling down, or however many times it’s been at this point. She told Andrea Mitchell that the ad was “fair.” Oh, and Abbott is “working to kick that ladder down.” Well said, Wendy. But believe it or not, Mitchell said something even dumber. At about the 1:00 mark in the above video, she emitted this brainfart:.....

We are now three weeks to Election Day, which means we are deep into another round of the voting wars—the ceaseless legislative, legal and regulatory battle over which Americans can vote, and when and where and with what paperwork they must do so. Here's a modest proposal: How about we finally call off the fight? Forget it, you say. There is no way the Republican Party and conservative movement, which have invested so much time and effort in restricting the franchise to serve partisan ends, are going to give up now. But what if there are some good reasons why...

Women have been warned in a Planned Parenthood Action Fund email [1] that Alaska Republican Dan Sullivan, who is running for the U.S. Senate, and three other GOPs could “affect their sex lives.”The warning came from Lena Dunham, the creator and start of the HBO series Girls. In the email Dunham urged women to remember Thom Tillis, who’s challenging Sen. Kay Hagan (D) in North Carolina, “stuck a bunch of abortion restrictions into a bill that was supposed to be about motorcycle safety.”She also wrote that Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa running for the Senate who made hog...

Last week, Breitbart News revealed a secret video game journalist mailing list used by a clique of influential writers, editors, and bloggers, some of whom attempted to bully their colleagues with it in an attempt to shape the news agenda for political purposes. We can today reveal the complete list of journalists, some 150 key industry figures, on the list. Outlets with representation span the entire video games journalism universe and include Polygon, Ars Technica, Wired, Eurogamer, Destructoid, Kotaku, Joystiq, TechRadar, and many other well-known brands in games publishing. But they also include freelancers and staffers for publications as solidly...

A lot of people assume the term “female misogynist” is an oxymoron. How can a woman be opposed to the fight to help women achieve equality? The sad fact of the matter is, as long as there has been feminism, there have been women who find it personally advantageous to reject feminism and instead argue for continuing social systems that perpetuate women’s inequality, male dominance, and even violence against women. (There were even plenty of women who were willing to argue against women’s suffrage back in the day.) Here is a list of nine women who have made a career...

A D.C. public school gave a sixth grade class a homework assignment that required students to draw comparisons between former President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler.

Republican congressional leaders are deflecting the tough questions about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria until they hear President Obama's plan for defeating the terrorist group. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was repeatedly pressed by reporters Tuesday about whether he believes U.S. ground troops are needed in the Middle East and whether Congress needed to authorize an expanded military campaign.

A senior communications aide to Attorney General Eric Holder seemingly called House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa's staff by accident and asked for their help spinning new revelations about the IRS scandal, Issa said in a September 8 letter to Holder. The aide, Brian Fallon, is a former senior aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a well-known personality on Capitol Hill. The letter describes Fallon as “audibly shaken” when he realizes his request to leak documents to help get ahead of news stories about them was mistakenly made to the very office he was seeking to undermine. Issa believes...

James Vanderbilt's Truth, the high-profile movie chronicling the scandal that derailed Dan Rather's career, has gotten the greenlight to begin shooting this fall. Brett Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment will finance the movie, starring Robert Redford as the iconic news anchor and Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes, Rather's producer. At the same time, FilmNation has come aboard to represent international rights and will pre-sell the project to foreign buyers at the Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night (based on the cast, it's sure to whet appetites). Mythology Entertainment is the driving force behind Truth, which was...

Since 2012, Americans’ approval of their Congress has fallen to levels not seen in modern times. No longer does the average citizen believe that his children will live a life better than he has. What happened? The election of a class of far-right Republicans running in gerrymandered districts, coupled with the current House Speaker’s commitment to the unconstitutional “Hastert rule,” has allowed this anti-government minority to distort the character of the Grand Old Party, render its moderate members powerless and bring the normal functioning of the entire government to a virtual standstill. In the last few years, the United States...

President Barack Obama on Friday blamed dysfunction in Congress on a Republican Party he said is captive to an ideologically rigid, unproductive and cynical faction, urging like-minded Democrats to show up for November's midterm elections. Addressing Democratic donors at a fundraiser in Rhode Island and another in New York, Obama said Republicans had realized that blocking all progress led Americans to become cynical about government. Republicans consider that "a pretty good thing" because they don't believe in government to begin with, Obama said. "It doesn't have to be that way," Obama said during a barbecue in Purchase, New York. "There...

He keeps saying no to third run for the White House, but another new poll – this time in Iowa – indicates Mitt Romney would be the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination if he changes his mind. A USA Today/Suffolk University survey of Iowa voters released Wednesday should add to the feeding frenzy over a possible 2016 presidential bid by the 2012 GOP nominee. While the former Massachusetts governor's repeatedly said he's not running again, the attention such speculation captures is a sign of the wide open nature right now of the upcoming Republican nomination race.

This month, a federal judge allowed North Carolina to put into effect new laws that would make it more difficult to vote. Most of the American public didn't notice. The Republicans pushing to restrict voting rights nationwide are betting on such inattention. Emboldened by a recent Supreme Court case limiting the reach of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, GOP legislators have moved swiftly in numerous states to cut early voting and same-day registration, and to require ID cards at the ballot box. Democrats claim these measures will discourage young and nonwhite voters from voting, who tend to vote more often...

It’s never been exactly cozy between American Muslims and African Americans. But with Ferguson—and Gaza—that’s changing.The Muslim-American community of which I’m part hasn’t been great in standing up with and for African Americans. A lack of empathy and racism are the main culprits. What makes this especially astonishing is that 30 percent of the Muslim-American population is African-American. You would think that there would be natural alliances, but that hasn’t been the case. At least not up until now. The shooting of Michael Brown and the heavy-handed response by the police that followed has struck a nerve among Muslims. It...

“You go to all of these damn courts, and there’s no white people,” one defendant, slated to appear before a municipal court in St. Louis County, recently said. “In Dellwood, Ferguson, basically, in North County, if you’re black, they’re going to stop you,” the resident said according to a new report on policing in the area. For residents of Ferguson, Missouri, and surrounding municipalities in St. Louis County, it’s not surprising that racial tensions have boiled over. In a town of 21,000, two-thirds of the residents are African-American, and many reports have highlighted a fraught relationship between Ferguson's residents and...

Anonymous comments, even positive ones, damage trust in the news media. Despite their ubiquity on news sites around the Internet, a movement against anonymous comments sections has slowly gathered steam over the past few years. The first call to action came in 2010 when the American Journalism Review said, “It is time for news sites to stop allowing anonymous online comments.” Since that bold declaration, a wide variety of media outlets, including ESPN, the Huffington Post, Popular Science, Sporting News and USA Today have either banned anonymous posts on their sites or eliminated comments sections altogether. In August 2013, the...

A Texas judge opted Monday not to issue an arrest warrant against Gov. Rick Perry, but the Republican still faces the unflattering prospect of being booked, fingerprinted and having his mug shot taken — and has assembled a team of high-powered attorneys to fight the two felony counts of abuse of power against him. "This is nothing more than banana republic politics," Tony Buzbee a Houston-based defense attorney who will head a cadre of four lawyers from Texas and Washington defending Perry, said at a news conference. A grand jury in Austin, a liberal bastion in otherwise largely conservative Texas,...

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry was indicted on two felony counts for abuse of official capacity and coercion of a public servant late Friday by a Travis County grand jury. The case stems from Perry’s vetoing the $7.5 million biennial funding for the Travis County Public Integrity Unit last year. He threatened to withhold the money unless District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg resigned. In announcing the indictment, special prosecutor Michael McCrum of San Antonio said he felt confident of the charges brought against the governor and was “ready to go forward.”

“I can count the number of Latinos in this state in one hand, and most work in my restaurant,” he said jokingly of the Hispanic population in Maine. But the real cultural shock for Diaz, who lives with his wife and 12-year old daughter, wasn’t that he couldn’t find an eatery that carried his favorite delicacy when the craving hit. His big culture shock involved soccer, his favorite sport. “In my old neighborhood I could walk to almost any public park on any day of the week and pick up a game of futbol,” he explained. “Since moving here, I’ve...