Free Republic

PAMELA GELLER'S CONTROVERSIAL GROUP WINS IN COURT Soon, you could see MTA buses in New York with the words "Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah" on the side. That's because a controversial pro-Israel group wants to run the ads—they show a man with a Palestinian keffiyeh covering his face alongside the aforementioned quote, which is attributed to "Hamas MTV," plus the slogan, "That's his Jihad. What's yours?"—and this week a federal judge decreed that the MTA must comply in order to abide by the First Amendment, Courthouse News reports. (There is no "Hamas MTV"; the ad...

To: Recent Donors SUBJECT: DO IT NOW Dear Freeper, Free Republic is, in my opinion, the best conservative news and discussion site on the web. It has been the best for so many years running, that I really cannot think of any other site that comes close. I've gone to other news outlets, conservative ones, and they allow you to comment on their articles, there's some possibility of those comments starting a discussion, and with great difficulty one can carry on that discussion. With Free Republic it is automatic. The very nature of the software makes discussion possible, comments findable,...

Ben Affleck insisted on censoring the fact that one of his ancestors owned slaves from PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” the Sony email hack has revealed. In a hacked Sony email from July 22, 2014, now available on WikiLeaks, the show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., writes to Sony USA chief Michael Lynton asking for advice: “One of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors–the fact that he owned slaves. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We’ve never had anyone ever try to...

Ted Cruz is raising money for his presidential campaign at a significantly faster rate than Mitt Romney did four years ago, eclipsing the early total raised by the former Massachusetts governor who went on to win the Republican nomination in 2012. The conservative Texas senator, who is seeking to unite the Republicans’ tea party wing behind his White House run, raised $4.3 million during the final days of March – his first full week after declaring as a candidate for president. Cruz proved particularly popular with small donors, raising more in his first week from contributors giving $200 or less...

The $4 million that Sen. Ted Cruz collected in the first eight days of his presidential bid came from 46,871 donors in all 50 states, according to his campaign’s first Federal Election Commission filing. More than a third of that — about $1.5 million — came from donors who gave at least $2,700, the maximum allowed per election per person. Of that, more than $400,000 came from 38 couples who gave $2,700 each for the primary, and another $2,700 each for the general election, for a total of $10,800. General election funds can’t be touched unless Cruz wins the nomination....

Sen. Ted Cruz’s, R-Texas, state director has left his post to run a political action committee that supports Cruz, “Make DC Listen.” John Drogin embraced one of Cruz’s signature stump speech lines, “Make DC listen,” in naming the PAC, which will support Cruz’s presidential campaign as well as other conservative non-presidential candidates. Drogin was Cruz’s campaign manager in 2012 when the little-known Cruz won a come-from-behind race to beat then-Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for the Senate. Drogin was earlier a press aide to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “Americans are worried about the federal government’s crippling effect on jobs and opportunity,”...

Ted Cruz hauled in more than $4 million during his first nine days as a formal presidential candidate—with help from a handful of Rick Perry's top donors. Five members of Perry's leadership PAC advisory board contributed to Cruz's presidential campaign in late March, a National Journal review of Federal Election Commission records found. San Antonio auto dealer Red McCombs, Austin oil executive Ben "Bud" Brigham, Houston chemical company executive Steven P. Mach, retired Houston technology executive Holloway Frost, and Houston Republican Kathaleen Wall each wrote four-figure checks to Cruz's campaign in late March. Those five donors were also among the...

IRAN BILL BATTLE: "Congress’s Role in Iran Nuclear Deal Shows Limits of Obama’s Power" by Peter Baker: "In his assertions of executive power to advance his agenda in an era of gridlock, President Obama has been largely on offense. But his latest battle with Congress not only left him on defense, it actually broke the gridlock. Against him. Mr. Obama’s abrupt decision to sign a compromise version of legislation on Iran that he had previously vowed to veto was a bruising retreat in his larger campaign to act without Congress’s getting in his way. In this case, partisanship gave way...

Robert Mercer, a Long Island hedge fund magnate, has made some lavish investments over the years: There's his 203-foot super yacht, called the Sea Owl. There's the $2 million model train set he had custom-built in his mansion—and the lawsuit he filed against the builders, saying they'd overcharged him. And now there's the money he's putting behind Ted Cruz's presidential ambitions. Mercer is the main bankroller of a ring of four super-PACs supporting Cruz for president, the New York Times reported Friday. The PACs have collected $31 million in the four weeks since Cruz launched his campaign, giving the freshman...

The Long Island-based hedge-fund magnate who is helping bankroll Sen. Ted Cruz's campaign for the Republican nomination is also one of the top investors in the Breitbart News Network, sources with knowledge of the matter told the On Media blog on Monday. Robert Mercer, the co-CEO of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, is the main donor behind a network of pro-Cruz super PACs that have raised at least $31 million to date, according to a recent New York Times report. Mercer has spent more than $15 million on conservative political campaigns and causes since 2012. What the Times report did not...

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that a presidential candidate demonstrates an ability to raise enough money to effectively reach the “inhabitants of America” with his political message? On Friday, National Public Radio’s The Diane Rehm Show took a further drag on our tax dollars to take incredulous note of the fact that four Super PACs supportive of Republican Ted Cruz’s campaign for president declared having collected, collectively, $31 million. One of Diane’s guests, Neal King, Jr., with the Wall Street Journal, explained that all four PACs associated with the Cruz effort sport the “Keep the Promise”...

For a $25 donation. As campaigns work to amass the money they need to be successful, they often try a range of tactics from contests to raffles. A certain campaign has even been known to discount, deeply, their $5 raffle tickets when they weren’t selling. I think, though, that we have a winner: Ted Cruz ✔ @tedcruz Join me in Texas for an afternoon of shooting! Donate $25 or more here for your chance to win: http://www.tedcruz.org/donationlanding/winanafternoonofshooting/ … 11:32 AM - 11 Apr 2015 An afternoon of shooting with Ted Cruz in Texas? Way better than a thousand dollar copy...

You probably guessed it...Ted Cruz! At least if we're going solely by the measuring stick of fund raising. Yes Cruz announced his candidacy not much earlier than Paul did, but still he's managed an astounding $31 million in a single week! Which has really turned a lot of heads. Including a good number of people in more traditionally liberal news outlets... (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Notice how they're trying to pin so much of this on the citizens united case? As though that one supreme court decision has allowed for the rise of a principled conservative with real values and beliefs to occur. Only...

Millionaire Robert Mercer helps him raise an 'eye-popping' $31M right off the bat.If other GOP contenders shrugged off Ted Cruz's chances of winning the nomination, it's a safe bet they're reassessing things after four new super PACS announced they'd raised a staggering $31 million to support his new candidacy. "Even in the context of a presidential campaign cycle in which the major party nominees are expected to raise more than $1.5 billion, Cruz’s haul is eye-popping, one that instantly raises the stakes in the Republican fundraising contest," writes Mark Halperin at Bloomberg. The super PACs in question are only a...

The two men share a passion for unbridled markets, concerns about the Internal Revenue Service and a skeptical view of climate change. Now the two — Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Robert Mercer, a Wall Street hedge-fund magnate — share another bond that could link them through November 2016: Both want to see Mr. Cruz elected president. Mr. Mercer, a reclusive Long Islander who started at I.B.M. and made his fortune using computer patterns to outsmart the stock market, emerged this week as a key early bankroller of Mr. Cruz’s surprisingly fast campaign start. He is believed to...

Ted Cruz has hit pay dirt — and he might have Jeb Bush to thank. In his first week as a presidential candidate, the Texas senator raked in more than $4 million for his campaign account, including $1.5 million from major donors, and he has already brought in hundreds of thousands more dollars since. A herd of super PACs supporting Cruz brought in another $31 million, Bloomberg reported Wednesday — an eye-popping sum that has stunned more than a few competing Republicans. Bush, a former Florida governor whose powerful family has deep roots in Texas, has factored prominently into Cruz's...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Round one in the battle of anti-Establishment Republican presidential candidates goes to Sen. Ted Cruz. In competition for the Tea Party's vote in 2016, the Texas Republican has bested Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky with a campaign rollout that GOP strategists say exceeded expectations and was almost flawlessly executed. Announcing for president two weeks later, Paul accomplished nearly the opposite, forcing a swift recalculation about which candidate is best positioned to win over the party's insurgent wing and vie for the nomination. "Cruz had a superb rollout. He hit all the right notes," Republican guru Ed Rollins told the Washington...

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...