Free Republic

An expert witness paid with tax dollars by the United States Department of Justice testified that North Carolina election laws impact black voters disproportionately and that blacks are less sophisticated. Charles Stewart, a political scientist was retained by the Justice Department to testify against voter identification laws and other election integrity measures. His testimony argued that ending same day voter registration and requiring voters to vote in the precinct where they live constitutes racial discrimination. When asked if terminating the ability to register to vote on the day that someone casts a ballot impacts blacks disproportionately, Stewart testified in court...

Snap on those rubber gloves, zip up your hazmat suits, and tape up those galoshes. Get ready for the Ebola election! The White House is in full scurry before next month’s vote, trying to feverishly scrub the taint of Ebola from President Obama and all the Democrats standing within the electoral hot zone he has become.

The political arm for House Republicans says it is making a play for Iowa's 1st and 2nd congressional district seats. The National Republican Congressional Committee said Monday that it's buying $1.3 million in television ad time in the two districts, with spots to begin airing Friday. The purchase, the first for the NRCC in both districts this campaign cycle, is a sign they think they can win both races, officials say. Tyler Houlton, an NRCC spokesman, said more than $900,000 is being spent in the 2nd District, with purchases in the Cedar Rapids and Davenport markets. Another $400,000 is going...

October 27, 1964. Fifty years ago. It was a Tuesday night, one week from election day. As the Johnson-Goldwater campaign wound to its end, with Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society liberalism he was championing poised to win in a landslide over GOP nominee Senator Barry Goldwater, Americans turned on their television sets to see one last political commercial. They quickly discovered a very familiar face in a very unfamiliar setting.Actor Ronald Reagan, longtime movie and TV star, newly the host and occasional star of Death Valley Days, a weekly TV series based on the old West, was introduced by...

Several male mountain lions have been killed trying to get across a log-jammed freeway to breed Conservationists are trying to raise $4 million to build a special freeway overpass for mountain lions in Los Angeles. A population of the rare and secretive big cats live in the Santa Monica Mountains but are split in two by the city's busy 101 freeway. There is a shortage of males and that has led to inbreeding on both sides of the road, with several males being killed as they try to make the dangerous crossing to breed. Only one big cat - known...

WASHINGTON – The danger posed by ISIS to Americans has come to the homeland for Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and a national publication may be making the ominous threat even worse. Politico has reported federal officials are taking an online threat to the congresswoman so seriously she in now under 24-hour protection by a security detail. However, Politico may be adding fuel to the fire by incorrectly reporting that the congresswoman had called on President Obama to declare war on Islam. “Bachmann has been publicly critical of not only ISIL, but also Islam, calling on President Obama to declare war...

Yeah this new Ebola Czar appears more and more to be a ‘perfect’ pick. He said this in 2008 when asked what the top leadership issue challenging our world today: “I think the top leadership challenge issue in our world today is how to deal with the continuing, growing population in the world and all the resource demands it places on the world and burgeoning populations in Africa and Asia that lack the resources to have a healthy, happy life,” Klain said.“We’ve got to find a way to make the world work for everyone,” Klain said. “Climate change is...

MADISON (AP) – Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is giving up on finding a way to get a voter photo identification law in place for the Nov. 4 election.

An Arizona county party official said he saw a man stuffing “hundreds” of ballots into the ballot box and later told a local news outlet the entire incident was caught on surveillance video. “A person wearing a Citizens for a Better Arizona T-shirt dropped a large box of hundreds of early ballots on the table and started stuffing the ballot box as I watched in amazement,” said A.J. LaFaro, chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party.Surveillance video allegedly captures man stuffing “hundreds” of ballots into a ballot box in Maricopa County, Arizona, Aug. 25, 2014. (Image source: YouTube) The Maricopa...

For the IDF, it was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war with Hamas. On July 19 and 20, only days after Israel began the ground offensive against Hamas, an Israeli armored personnel carrier, with nine soldiers inside from the Golani Brigade, crossed into the Hamas stronghold of Shejaia in Gaza City. It was an older APC, built in the 1970s, and was in dubious mechanical condition. The armor protecting the APC was several inches less thick than the newer models in the IDF. That such an older, outdated and unprotected APC was sent into battle would become...

<p>The likelihood of a Republican Senate takeover continues to increase with all three major election models giving the GOP at least a six in ten probability of winning the six seats the party needs to win take back control.</p> <p>The trend lines in both the LEO and FiveThirtyEight models highlight movement over the past week toward Republicans -- with a slight tick back toward Democrats in the last few days."</p>

In Silwan, an older balaclava-clad child with a slingshot fires off a stone at the police, as cameras in front of him captured his “heroic” pose. Photo: B. Davidson Many centuries before Jerusalem was conquered by King David and became the capital of the united kingdom of Judea and Samaria, Hebron was already deeply embedded in Jewish history. There, according to the biblical narrative, Abraham purchased a burial place for Sarah in the first parcel of land owned by the Jewish people in their promised land. The matriarchs and patriarchs of the Jewish people were buried there. Joseph and his...

TEL AVIV — The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to reduce military coproduction with the United States. A leading Israeli analyst asserted that the Defense Ministry and the military agreed to reduce production of Israeli weapons and platforms in the United States. The analyst, Amir Rapaport, said the decision was based on the U.S. suspension of arms deliveries during the 50-day war with Hamas in July and August 2014. “The Israeli defense establishment will reduce the production of weapon systems in the USA in the context of joint Israeli-American projects, and will rely more heavily on Israeli-made products,”...

Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Democratic voters not to be complacent about the November midterm elections, saying Monday that working women and their families will lose out on a better future if Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress. The former secretary of state made the remarks during a sold-out women's luncheon in San Francisco that raised $1.4 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "It's truly regrettable that despite all the great work Nancy did and President Obama, given what was inherited when the president came into office that we are having to work so hard to elect and...

Kentucky's U.S. Senate race remains a dead heat two weeks before Election Day, with U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell regaining the slimmest of leads over Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in a new Bluegrass Poll. The poll of 655 likely voters found McConnell leading Grimes 44 percent to 43 percent. Libertarian David Patterson received 5 percent support, drawing voters from across the political spectrum. Eight percent were undecided.

Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat running in a tight re-election race, asked for a do-over during a TV interview on Friday night when he couldn't come up with the names of the three most influential books he'd ever read. 'Oh wow,' he said. 'That's the toughest – the, uh, three most influential books in my life–' Gathering his composure during a live news broadcast on 7News in Denver, he came up with one. 'Profiles in Courage. The, um, uh –.' After a three-second pregnant pause, the stumped senator asked for another chance. 'Let me think. We can play this...

A mural was painted over Monday afternoon after Trenton police expressed concern that the painting, depicting Michael Brown, a Ferguson, Mo., teen who was fatally shot by police in August, sent the wrong message about community and police relations. The painting depicted Brown’s face with the caption “Sagging pants … is not probable cause.” Will "Kasso" Condry, the artist behind the mural, said he wanted to start a conversation about racial profiling. The Trenton Downtown Association elected to remove the image after hearing concern from police officers that the mural sends a negative message about the relationship between police and...

Rex W. Tillerson ExxonMobil Corporate Headquarters 5959 Las Colinas Boulevard Irving, Texas 75039-2298 Dear Mr. Tillerson: This letter is being sent to you on behalf of the Qatar Awareness Campaign Coalition. The purpose is to inform you and the public of the activities of Qatar. Of all the American companies currently involved with Qatar, none is more responsible for Qatar’s economic success than ExxonMobil. Indeed, Qatar has the world’s highest per capita GDP, at $102,100 (2013). The United States has two massive military bases in Qatar: Al Udeid, the home of CENTCOM for the region, and As Sayliyah, the largest...

How A Surge In Puerto Rican Voters Is Changing Florida Politics They may lean Democratic, but many —especially the newcomers —are 'up for grabs' By Luisita Lopez Torregrosa A Puerto Rican flag is held by Miami residents at the Calle Ocho Festival in Miami. The road to political victory in Florida is not just a metaphor, it's a place: Interstate 4, the busy highway that cuts across the vote-heavy heart of the state from Tampa to Daytona Beach. And the I-4 corridor, as it's called, now runs through a swing-vote region undergoing significant demographic change. Puerto Ricans have been migrating...

The Environmental Protection Agency took the first step toward regulating a chemical in the country’s drinking water on Monday. The EPA issued a preliminary determination to regulate the chemical called strontium, which is a naturally occurring element. At elevated levels strontium can impact bone strength in people who don’t consume enough calcium, the EPA said. Strontium has been found in roughly 99 percent of the public water systems in the U.S..