Free Republic

Finally!The economy sucks, the Islamic State now controls half of Syria and is poised to do the same in Iraq, our allies are losing faith in this country, and the media are acting as if gay marriage and a 14-year-old decision made by the previous president are the two most important issues facing the country.Senator Ted Cruz says he’s had enough, at least when it comes to questions about gay unions. Coming out of a meeting with Beaumont Texas officials, the candidate for the GOP presidential nomination stopped to take some questions from the press.After getting questions about his views...

In a Midtown specialist’s office, I confessed the secret that’s been weighing on my mind. “My health insurance expires at the end of May,” I told the doctor. I had a lot of questions for him: How much does an uninsured visit cost? What is the fewest number of follow-ups we can do this year? Do you have payment plans available to patients paying cash? I’ve been down the uninsured path before, having spent my post-college years waiting tables and freelance writing. I know the risks involved, but I also know what information I need to make sure I’m relatively...

The third Republican presidential aspirant to address the Georgia GOP crowd at its convention was Sen. Ted Cruz. (See my previous write-ups on Chris Christie and Marco Rubio.) While one could hardly mistake Cruz for anything other than a Texan, right down to the cowboy boots he wore with his suit, and he described Georgians as having a lot in common with the people of the Lone Star State, Cruz channeled Missouri’s Show Me State mentality in explaining how he would stand out from other primary candidates who have similar messages.“Everyone’s going to say they’re super-duper conservative,” he said in...

Rand Paul says the Islamic State exists and increased in strength because of the hawkish wing of the Republican Party that provided weapons to the region “indiscriminately.” The Kentucky senator and Republican presidential candidate blasted members of his own party like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham for arguing that the terrorist group exists because of people like him. “I would say it’s exactly the opposite. ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS. These hawks also wanted to bomb Assad, which would...

In a lengthy May 26 article, Jodi Rudoren, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, goes apoplectic over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s selection of Dore Gold to run Israel’s foreign ministry. The headline and the lead paragraph immediately signal to readers that Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, is disastrous for Israel’s diplomacy –“Netanyahu Appoints Hawkish Ally to Run foreign policy” – buttressed by Rudoren’s own depiction of Gold as a Bibi confidant who is “hawkish on Iran and the Palestinian issue.”

Black freedom & opportunity in America has always required the very federal intervention the right wants to destroy The continuing decline of public sector jobs at local, state, and federal levels is having an abysmal economic impact on African Americans, for whom steady, stable government employment opportunities have provided a sure path into the middle class. The New York Times reported yesterday that “roughly one in five black adults works for the government, teaching school, delivering mail, driving buses, processing criminal justice and managing large staffs.” Because Black people hold a disproportionate number of government jobs, cutbacks that affect everyone...

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is praying for political lightning to strike twice. Even after pulling an upset win in the Iowa caucuses four years ago and going on to survive the longest against eventual nominee Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential hopeful is again the underdog in a much more crowded 2016 field. Expected to announce his second bid for president in his hometown of Butler, Pa., Wednesday, Santorum is nowhere near the silver-medal finish he pulled off in 2012. But that's not stopping him from still preaching his brand of "blue-collar conservatism" with an emphasis on workers and manufacturing...

The foreign policy position of several Republican candidates took a dramatic turn after Jeb Bush, by common perception, bungled a question on the Iraq War.  Knowing what he knows now (i.e., that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) would Governor Bush have launched an invasion in 2003?  Bush answered in the affirmative, thereafter discovering that he had misunderstood the question and needed to amend his response.  Immediately after, such other candidates as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz deemed it prudent to say no – knowing what they also know now, they would not have attacked Iraq...

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the longest-running Southern Gothic soap opera in American history! It is a mix of “Days of Our Lives,” “Dr. Phil,” “The Sopranos,” “Oprah,” and “Judge Judy” all rolled into one, long, endless saga called “The Clintons — a Tale of Naked Ambition, Unquenchable Libido, Towering Greed, and Their Desperation to Be a Part of Every American’s Life as Long as We Live.” It is about 20 years on from being “The Young and the Restless.” It has become “The Old and Relentless.” Washed Up. Won’t stop talking. Won’t stop spinning. Won’t stop lying. Won’t stop...

FACT CHECKER: “ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president. Al Qaeda in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president.” Bush seems to have fallen prey to Washington conventional wisdom, in which ISIS suddenly emerged into consciousness in the past year or so. That may be fine for armchair analysts or journalists. But that’s little excuse for a presidential candidate, who might have to grapple with this problem if he or she is elected president. With some fine-tuning of his statement, Bush could have made the case that Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq, combined with the president’s...

Is Bernie Sanders pulling Hillary Clinton to the Left? No, for the same reason a canoe doesn’t pull an aircraft carrier. The Vermont socialist running in the Democratic presidential race is currently at 7.4 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, versus Clinton’s 64.2 percent. Clinton is in fact moving leftward on issues like immigration, gay marriage, inequality and more, but it’s not because she’s feeling the heat from a little-known competitor. Still, Sanders is staking out a role as the forward scout of the Democratic Left,

Columnist and author of “Adios, America,” Ann Coulter heavily praised Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s (R) immigration position and said she would be supporting him on Tuesday’s “America with Jorge Ramos” on Fusion. Coulter said that while none of the GOP presidential candidates have her exact position on immigration, she stated, “What’s interesting now is Scott Walker’s the first one of the announced candidates to come out and say he wants to protect American jobs and American livelihoods, and it’s as if, until this moment, all the Republican candidates have agreed, ‘OK, none of us will take steroids,’ now that he’s...

TEXAS REPUBLICAN SENATORS DEFY CONSTITUENTS’ LOUD CRIES FOR ACTION TO STOP THE OUT-OF-CONTROL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT Senators in State Affairs Skirt Vote to Avoid Accountability on HJR 77 With A Few Hours Left To Vote, Republican Senators Give ‘Thumbs Down’ to Supporting Constitutional Efforts to Bring Power Back to the States AUSTIN, Texas, May 26— In a massive grassroots initiative during the 84th legislative session in Texas, constituents propelled an Article V resolution, HJR 77, to victory in the House 80-62 on May 14. It was then sent directly to the Senate State Affairs Committee. This week, cowardice and defiance were...

Nearly two years after Veo Vessels died, her daughter, 70-year-old Mary Frances Hickman, decided to sell the home her mother had left to her. A sprawling brick house in Oklahoma City’s historic Highland Park neighborhood, it was built in 1924, just a year after Mary’s birth. Decades later, one of Vessels’ great-grandchildren fondly recalls the wood and tile floors, the fish pond, the butler’s quarters, and the multi-car garage where children played house. “It was really, really nice,” says Hickman’s granddaughter, Andrea Martin. That’s part of the reason she’s so surprised her grandmother sold the home in 1993 for a...

...it’s time to rev up Air Force One...Obama has a pair of fundraisers to attend in Florida. On Wednesday he’s off to Miami to raise money for the Democratic National Committee...in the home of a local real estate kingpin, priced up to $33,400 a plate. Then it’s on to one of those private “roundtable discussions,” this at the home of a mortgage broker, fetching $33,400 a person... ...Hillary Rodham Clinton is bound for Florida as well, and yes, the two will be in Miami on the very same day. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton attends a pair of “Conversations with Hillary”...

Jim Quinn is back! - and in better form than ever!! The Quinn in the Morning Show airs from 6:00am to 9:00 am, Monday thru Friday. To listen online, go to www.warroom.com and sign up (for a small fee). Or you can listen on the radio locally in the upstate NY area on 1040 WYSL Rochester, NY or 1480 WCNS in Latrobe, Pa. If you sign up online, be sure to choose the "auto-renew" option in order to have full access to archived shows and podcasts.

DES MOINES — While many Iowans scatter to the coasts, mountains and “Up North” in summer, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is hearing from a lot of people who want to spend the next few months here. Hillary for Iowa, the 2016 presidential hopeful’s campaign in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, reports receiving applications from more than 1,000 people who want to be Clinton fellows in Iowa this summer. Interviews are underway for the Hillary for Iowa Organizing Fellowship program, which will give those selected the opportunity to learn organizing strategies as full-time volunteers on the former secretary of state’s Iowa caucus...

Our friends from Prager University have released another great video. The subject (for Memorial Day): is America the world’s policeman? And if so, is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and foreign affairs expert Bret Stephens weighs in: [VIDEO] Let me share my Dutch perspective on this matter: I thank God every day that the United States is the world’s only superpower and that it behaves like an international policeman. Think about it: what’s the alternative? If the United States withdraws, Russia and China will immediately expand their sphere of influence. These countries are ruled...

Turns out George Stephanopoulos did more than just donate to the Clinton Foundation while working as an ‘impartial’ media person for ABC. He also joined Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein at Lolita Island in 2010. Lolita Island is also known as ‘Pedo Island’. This one documented trip by George Stephanopoulos and Bill Clinton was in December of 2010. George Stephanopoulos was at ABC at the time. This was just two years before that ridiculous GOP debate where George Stephanopoulos badgered Mitt Romney about banning contraception. Now I know why it was such an issue for George Stephanopoulos.

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont began drawing implicit contrasts with Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, as he played the liberal purist in throwing down policy gauntlet after gauntlet – a $15 minimum wage, $1 trillion for public works jobs, a “Medicare-for-all” system of universal health care — in his first campaign rally since declaring his candidacy last month. The rally ended with a sing-a-long of the folk anthem “This Land is Your Land” as Mr. Sanders, known as a no-nonsense and rumpled antipolitician, shook hands and frequently flashed...