Free Republic

Northwest Suburban High School District 214 may drop out of the National School Lunch Program next year due to what officials called restrictive changes in the law. The change comes in advance of a new "Smart Snacks in Schools" law that goes into effect July 1. The law will mandate what can be served, not only for reimbursable meals, but for all food items available in the morning, during the school day and 30 minutes after school ends, including food sold at a fundraiser such as a bake sale, food in vending machines and school stores and school breakfast. "The...

VIDEO In case you hadn’t heard the news, American Idol star, singer and actor Clay Aiken is running for Congress in North Carolina’s second congressional district. He’s hoping to take on (and take down) current GOP Representative Renee Ellmers. While Aiken’s success could allow him to largely self-fund the effort, politics still requires you to get out there and do some fundraising, pressing the flesh with the local donors and power brokers. But as the following video shows, don’t bother stopping by if you’re a Republican. You’re likely to get an icy – and expletive laden – welcome. You can...

The 113th Congress is considered one of the richest Congresses in history, and it’s possible that there are more millionaires in Washington than ever before. It’s easy to assume that everyone in politics is rolling in the dough, that they all have massive bank accounts with six and seven digit salaries coming in from goodness-knows-where. Yes, the picture of Congress that’s often painted is that they are the elite, among America’s top 1%. And it’s true that many of them are wealthy and successful, with assets outweighing their liabilities. But we can’t assume that’s the case for all of them....

Few mixtures in American life are more emotionally combustible than the one formed by the combination of politics and race. That helps explain why Democrats, in general, and President Obama, in particular, have tended to steer clear of overtly raising race as an issue to explain some of the opposition to Obama's presidency and agenda. There seems to be a shift in recent days, however. Top Democratic party officials have either directly or indirectly blamed race for some of the hostility to Obama, his policies, or both. Is this partly about activating minority voters during a midterm election year in...

he Obama administration once again has punted on a final decision for the Keystone XL pipeline, announcing ahead of the holiday weekend it is extending a key review period indefinitely -- a move that could push off a determination until after the midterm elections. Republicans, as well as red-state Democrats who want the proposed Canada-to-Texas pipeline approved, slammed the administration for the delay. Democrats even threatened to find ways to go around the president to get the project approved.

Democratic Congressman Mike Honda, now engaged in a contentious fight for re-election in a Silicon Valley House race, has made the unusual move of locating his 2014 campaign office inside the headquarters of a major South Bay labor organization — the Service Employees International Union Local 521. The details about Honda’s campaign office emerged after the Chronicle reported last week that Honda can’t vote for himself in the 2014 election because his home is located outside the 17th Congressional District he represents.

Virginia’s highest court has denied a conservative group’s effort to force the University of Virginia to turn over emails from a controversial climate scientist who worked at the school. The Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday held that the public university wasn’t obligated under the state’s freedom of information law to release thousands of emails that Penn State researcher Michael Mann wrote while he was a UVA professor several years ago. Mr. Mann in 2009 came under scrutiny among global warming skeptics after hackers leaked thousands of email exchanges between the professor and other researchers that suggested that the scientists sought...

An 18-year old abortion survivor brought a packed Convention for Life in Dublin to its feet with a moving and inspiring testimony on forgiveness and the value of every human life. (Video at bottom).Josiah Presley, originally from South Korea but now living in Oklahoma, said that when he first found out that his mother had wanted to abort him he was devastated and felt deep hurt and anger towards his birth parents.However, he said, the power of God’s love meant he realised that he was “important to God and that every child was important to God” and this led him...

Officials from nine Western states met in Salt Lake City on Friday to discuss taking control of federal lands within their borders on the heels of a standoff between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management. The lawmakers and county commissioners discussed ways to wresting oil-, timber- and mineral-rich lands away from the feds. --snip-- "What's happened in Nevada is really just a symptom of a much larger problem," Lockhart said, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. The Legislative Summit on the Transfer of Public Lands, as it was called, was organized by Utah state Rep. Ken...

Hotel magnate Donald Trump donated $5,000 to Sen. Ted Cruz’s leadership PAC in January, according to new campaign records. Trump’s show of support for the Texas Republican's leadership PAC — the maximum allowed under the law per election cycle — is an indication that the men are becoming political allies. The relationship between Trump and Cruz initially appeared to get off to a rocky start. In August, Trump said he wasn’t sure whether Cruz could be president because he was born in Canada. But in the months that followed, Trump has spoken favorably about the Tea Party darling, who has...

On Thursday, after President Barack Obama again declared that the Obamacare debate was over, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who led the effort to defund the law last year, had a message for him: not so fast.  Sen. Cruz tweeted that message: The repeal debate is far from over. #FullRepeal — Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) April 17, 2014"The point is the repeal debate is and should be over," Obama said. "The Affordable Care Act is working. And I know the American people don’t want us spending the next two and a half years refighting the settled political battles of the last...

WASHINGTON—Rushing to an afternoon vote last month, Sen. Ted Cruz hopped the underground tram to the U.S. Capitol from his office across the street.The Texan planted his black ostrich cowboy boots in the middle of the small subway car without getting so much as a nod from the other senators—Republican or Democrat—amiably chatting or huddled in their seats.Mr. Cruz finds himself standing alone a lot these days. His response to the cold shoulders: "The establishment despised Ronald Reagan" before he became president, "but the people loved him."For the 43-year-old Republican, the Reagan name illuminates his political life's fundamental dichotomy: Many...

LONDON – Setting up an intriguing election battle, Britain’s opposition Labor Party announced Friday that it had hired President Obama’s chief campaign advisor to help the party return to power next year over the ruling Conservatives. The decision to recruit David Axelrod means that the 2015 British election will pit two of Obama’s strategists against each other. Working for the Conservatives is Jim Messina, who, like Axelrod, toiled on both of Obama’s presidential campaigns and who served as his deputy White House chief of staff during his first term. “David is used to tough fights, and he is going to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)BUNKERVILLE, Nev. -- Armed civilians continue to guard the Cliven Bundy ranch. They have traveled from afar, are camped out, and remain at their posts for hours in an effort to provide security for the cattle rancher. Bundy supporters drove to Bunkerville from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other states to show they believe in Bundy's cause. The rancher has been in a battle with the federal government over the illegal grazing of his cattle for the past two decades. "I'm just here to help them sleep easy and rest at night," said Booda Cavalier, who says he is providing security...

[rest of title] who had 'regular' orgies at his Caribbean compound that the former president visited multiple times The former president was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, a financier who was arrested in 2008 for soliciting underage prostitutes A new lawsuit has revealed how Clinton took multiple trips to Epstein's private island where he 'kept young women as sex slaves' Clinton was also apparently friends with a woman who collected naked pictures of underage girls for Epstein to choose from He hasn't cut ties with that woman, however, and invited her to Chelsea's wedding Comes as friends now fear that if...

We are pretty familiar with this story: A perfectly sensible if slightly boring idea is walking down the street. Suddenly, the ideological circus descends, burying the sensible idea in hysterical claims and fevered accusations. The idea’s political backers beat a craven retreat. The idea dies. This is what seems to be happening to the Common Core education standards, which are being attacked on the right because they are common and on the left because they are core. About seven years ago, it was widely acknowledged that state education standards were a complete mess. Huge numbers of students were graduating from...

When I wrote about Adam Weinstein of Gawker and his proposal to literally imprison people for their political views, most of the pushback from the left and from David Frum, America’s Hall Monitor™, consisted of hand-waving, e.g. “You can’t generalize from the position of one crank with a blog, etc.” And while I am sympathetic to the emerging bipartisan consensus that no sentient being could possibly take Adam Weinstein seriously, the fact is that Gawker has a larger readership than The Nation and The New Republic combined. Sure, it’s 99.44 percent pure riff-raff, but the damnable thing about democracy is...

Rand Paul will do his best to charm a group Mitt Romney’s top donors next week at an event facilitated by Romney finance director Spencer Zwick. The Friday luncheon will take place in Boston at the offices of Zwick’s private-equity firm, Solamere Capital, according to a source familiar with the event. Romney’s eldest son Tagg is also a managing partner at the firm, and Romney is the executive chairman. The event is yet another signal that Paul is preparing a for a serious presidential bid in 2016. Two years before the GOP primary, Paul is attempting to branch out beyond...

Next thing you know, cats and dogs might start sleeping together. In today’s brave new world, teacher responsibilities seemingly grow by the hour. With classroom responsibilities that now include nutrition, character development, parenting, sex education and family counseling, the very last thing teachers need is ignorant, anti-scholarship, disrespectful politicians stripping them of their ability to exercise their professional judgement. Teachers, just as other performing artists, need certain freedoms to create, improvise and respond to the needs of students, just as musicians need flexibility to play to their unique audiences. Teacher union’s have long argued that a smaller class sizes offers...

The number of people signing up for private insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act has now reached eight million. While primarily symbolic, it does represent a victory after initial projections of seven million were reduced to six million due to the problems when the exchanges opened. We know that if they failed to meet these projections, Republicans would be making a big deal of them. In addition, late enrollees included a high percentage of young people. Good news means more positive head lines, such as National Journal writing that Obamacare is on a Winning Streak. The political climate is...