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Ted Cruz backers have ushered in a new era for super PACs. Supporters of the Texas Republican presidential candidate made a bombshell announcement this week — that a network of four affiliated super PACs will have raised an eye-popping $31 million by the end of the week. The disclosure, coming within weeks of Cruz launching his campaign for president, has sent deep ripples through the political fundraising world. The idea of not one, but multiple, affiliated super PACs ostensibly working together to haul in donations for the same presidential candidate is unprecedented, campaign finance experts say. Veteran fundraisers point out...

New York hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who spent more than $1 million trying to elect Republican Art Robinson to Congress in Oregon, is reportedly now putting his fortune to work for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. The National Review reports that Mercer controls one of the four super-PACs that together claim to have raised $31 million to support the Texas senator's presidential bid. The super-PACs are set up so that they can raise donations of unlimited size. While the leaders of these groups can't coordinate directly with the candidate's campaign they can otherwise conduct a wide range of advertising and...

Yesterday Ed shared the news that the community of political experts was rather gobsmacked to find out that PACs associated with Texas Senator Ted Cruz had brought in a “record haul” in no time flat following his campaign announcement. While it would be lovely to pretend that money in politics doesn’t mean all that much and what really counts is grassroots support and a solid message, that’s simply not true. Does anyone really think Mitt Romney would have survived the 2012 fight without the mountains of cash behind him, both internally and through associated PACs? That’s a doubtful proposition at...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush continues to lead the pack of Republican presidential hopefuls, but one candidate is making moves. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the only GOP hopeful to formally announced his candidacy thus far, has shot up in the rankings in a new CBS News poll. Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed said that they would consider voting for Cruz in March, up 14 points from when the same question was asked a month ago. By comparison, 51 percent said they would vote for Bush, just two percent higher than did in February. *** Sen. Ted Cruz has raised $4...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ted-cruz-email-push-2016/2015/03/31/id/635475/

Today Show co-anchor and journalist Savannah Guthrie has emerged as the frontrunner to replace Brian Williams as anchor of NBC Nightly News, according to Drudge Report.

Pope says equating Islam with violence is wrong By Julio Severo According to Reuters, Pope Francis said on Sunday that equating Islam with violence is wrong. Pope and Turkish mufti Francis, the leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, told reporters aboard his plane returning from a visit to Turkey that it was wrong for anyone to react to terrorism by being enraged against Islam. Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, caused, according to Reuters, storms of protest throughout the Islamic world in 2006, when he made a speech that suggested Islam espouses violence. Benedict said he had been misunderstood and apologized....

Former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill said in an interview with The Washington Post that he was the one who fired the final shot to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011. The 38-year-old Montanan also said that other SEAL team members were involved in the raid, including Mark Bissonnette, who detailed the group's experiences in his memoir, "No Easy Day." O'Neill, who had been serving as a SEAL for 15 years at the time of the bin Laden raid, had participated in other missions before -- but he said he feared this mission would be his most difficult. I didn't think...

The second person to show Ebola symptoms on US soil has been identified as Nina Pham, a 26-year-old nurse. Pham's family confirmed her identity on Monday. She was diagnosed with Ebola on Sunday and is the first person to contract the disease in the US. Pham is currently in "clinically stable" condition, according to officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pham is reportedly a nurse in Dallas who was caring for Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Duncan contracted the disease in Liberia and then traveled to the US, where he first started...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uud7rcwhI5U&feature=player_embedded

Pennsylvania legislators are poised to pass into law an organ-transplant-donation bill that will make it easier for murderers to avoid detection and prosecution. Two bills, almost identical, Senate Bill 850 (SB 850) and House Bill 30 (HB 30), according to its many bipartisan sponsors, will greatly increase the number of organ donors. There are currently 121,000 people on the national waitlist for organ transplants, and laws to increase the organ supply are perennially popular in many states. Those opposing such laws are commonly accused of condemning to death people on the waitlist. Law enforcement officials, however, are taking exception to...

We're SO close... Let's put this baby to bed!

A union of New York City police sergeants warned the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday against holding its 2016 convention in Brooklyn, issuing an open letter that doubled as a broadside against a mayoral administration with which some officers have grown increasingly frustrated.

Dear FRiends, Time is running short for our FReepathon. We're nearing the end of the second month and we still have a little over $14k to go. We need to wrap this up soon. If you enjoy using FR and find it worthwhile and would like to help keep it going, please consider making your donation today. Thank you very much!! FR is funded solely by contributions made by liberty loving people like you who enjoy and use it. We are beholden to no political party, no advertisers, no sugar daddies, no corporate string pullers, no government subsidies, no outside...

It’s hard to wrap ones head around the idea that giving more power to a terrorist regime would somehow lead to temperance and peace, yet that’s exactly the advice being given by former president Jimmy Carter when it comes to how the world treats Hamas. He had this to say: "…the United States and EU should recognize that Hamas is not just a military but also a political force. Hamas cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise." Only by recognizing its legitimacy as a political actor — one that represents a substantial portion of the...

Toxins possibly from algae on Lake Erie fouled the water supply of the Ohio city of Toledo Saturday, forcing officials to issue warnings not to drink the water and the governor to declare a state of emergency as worried residents descended on stores, quickly clearing shelves of bottled water. The city advised about 400,000 residents in Toledo, most of its suburbs and a few areas in southeastern Michigan not to brush their teeth with or boil the water because that would only increase the toxin's concentration. Showers and baths are fine, the mayor said. Toledo issued the warning just after...

The United States suspended operations at its embassy in Libya Saturday and evacuated its diplomats to neighboring Tunisia under U.S. military escort amid a significant deterioration in security in Tripoli as fighting intensified between rival militias, the State Department said. “Due to the ongoing violence resulting from clashes between Libyan militias in the immediate vicinity of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, we have temporarily relocated all of our personnel out of Libya,” spokeswoman Marie Harf said. No news on how well the president shot.

Everything about the scene suggested that it might very well have been the last we heard of the NanoFlowcell Quant e-Sportlimousine. Promises of a magic bullet of energy storage, made by a three-month-old company, packaged with outlandish numbers like 0-62 mph (100 km/h) in 2.8 seconds and a top speed of 236 mph (380 km/h), hinted, rather strongly, that this car's technology and performance would only exist on paper. Given that a similarly outlandish Quant car, centered in a similar black-walled booth, introduced by a very different Nunzio La Vecchia company, had vaporized years earlier, it seemed a responsible assumption...

Via Charles Cooke, is this the worst listicle ever or the greatest? You’re expecting a list of different makes and models, I know. But look: 2. Revolvers Revolvers, named for their rotating chambered cylinder, placed second in the ATF’s ranking of guns found at crime scenes more than 46,000 recovered in 2012, the most recent year for which statistics were kept. Some grenade launchers, shotguns, and rifles also have rotating barrels, but the term “revolver” is generally used to describe handguns. Revolver types include single and double-action firing mechanisms, the latter of which does not require a cocking action separate...

WFTV - Orlando ORLANDO, Fla. — It's something most students learn in elementary school -- the United States is made up of 50 states and the District of Columbia. But Cox Media Group reporter Justin Gray found out it's a lesson that an Orlando agent with the Transportation Safety Administration seems to have missed. Gray, who lives in Washington, D.C., was flying out of Orlando International Airport when a TSA agent said Gray's District of Columbia driver's license wasn't a valid form of identification. Gray said his license is legal and up-to-date, but the TSA agent didn't seem to know...