Free Republic

        GOD'S PERFECTION In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning disabled children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire school career, while others can be main-streamed into conventional schools. At a Chush fund-raising dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, "Where is the perfection in my son Shaya? Everything God does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child...

Chris McDaniel may have refused to concede the Mississippi Senate primary without a challenge, but Sen. Ted Cruz appears to be moving on after the Tea Party suffered primary defeats last night. (SNIP) The Texas Senator stated that although it was clear that thousands of Democrats voted in the primary, it was all part of the political battle.

In the Iowa Democratic party's chaotic attempt to report caucus results on Monday night, the results in at least one precinct were unilaterally changed by the party as it attempted to deal with the culmination of a rushed and imperfect process overseeing the first-in-the-nation nominating contest. In Grinnell Ward 1, the precinct where elite liberal arts college Grinnell College is located, 19 delegates were awarded to Bernie Sanders and seven were awarded to Hillary Clinton on caucus night. However, the Iowa Democratic party decided to shift one delegate from Sanders to Clinton on the night and did not notify precinct...

Former Senator Trent Lott – who, as you might remember, walked into a political buzzsaw in 2002 over comments that effectively destroyed his Senate career – highly disapproves of this Senator Ted Cruz fellow. Not least because Senator Cruz said some awful, awful things about former Senator Lott’s good friend, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It’s always interesting to see how a lobbyist defines ‘inappropriate behavior,’ really. Hoover up all the political pork you can? That’s Senatorial. Call Mitch McConnell a liar over the Export-Import Bank? Call out the Sergeant-At-Arms: “Having been majority leader, I’ve never had someone stand on...

Last evening, Ted Cruz was at a town hall meeting in Salem, NH, when he was hit with a question about drug abuse. If you’ve followed Cruz’s campaign, you know that his own family has experience loss due to drug abuse. His older sister, Miriam became addicted to pain pills following and accident and slid into a life of drug abuse. Because it is a campaign season, the left used the town hall as an excuse for some low-level street theater. Not a day goes by on the New Hampshire campaign trail without residents grilling the men and women running...

The Washington Post’s one-man Fifth Column, Dana Milbank, is at it again. Apparently, he has been shadowing Ted Cruz’s campaign. Unable to come up with anything substantive, what he’s produced is one of the most juvenile screeds ever to appear in any major newspaper: "When Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) last month mocked Donald Trump’s “New York values,” it wasn’t entirely clear what he was implying. This week we got a clue: For Cruz, “New York” is another way of saying “Jewish.” At an event in New Hampshire, Cruz, the Republican Iowa caucuses winner, was asked about campaign money he and...

Pg 60-61 Art of the Deal (1987) ...if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on. I think of Jimmy Carter. After he lost the election to Ronald Reagan, Carter came to see me in my office. He told me he was seeking contributions to the Jimmy Carter library. I asked how much he had in mind. And he said, "Donald I would be very appreciative if you contributed 5 million dollars." I was dumbfounded. I didn't even answer him. But that experience also taught me something. Until then, I never understood how Jimmy Carter became president. The...

The European Union on Saturday called on Israel to halt the demolition of illegal Palestinian buildings, some of which are EU-funded, and reiterated its opposition to building Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria. "In the past weeks there have been a number of developments in Area C of the West Bank, which risk undermining the viability of a future Palestinian state and driving the parties yet further apart," the EU diplomatic service said in a statement. It referred to Israel's decision on January 25 to declare 154 hectares (380 acres) of land near Jericho in Judea as state land, with...

The Iowa Republican winner appeals by trumpeting the gold standard, privacy rights and limits on eminent domain Eric Eastman, a pony-tailed actor from Nashua, N.H., became a coveted commodity here last week. In the hours after Sen. Rand Paul dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday, the libertarian state representative and passionate Paul supporter says he fielded a personal phone call from Jeb Bush and an offer from Donald Trump's campaign promising VIP treatment. Even an aide to Chris Christie reached out. But as he processed his grief over Paul's exit, Eastman already had a new candidate in mind. On...

Presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have held onto significant leads in the final days before the New Hampshire primary, according to the Saturday results of a Umass Lowell/7 News tracking poll. Trump’s biggest challenge comes from Senator Marco Rubio, whose post-Iowa surge seems to have stalled at 14 percent in the tracking poll’s latest results. Senator Ted Cruz follows in third, at 13 percent. He’s ahead of Ohio Gov. John Kasich (10 percent), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (10 percent), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (4 percent), Dr. Ben Carson (3 percent), and Carly Fiorina (3 percent).

Friday night's program featured a fireworks show and a One Republic concert.San Francisco police turned away thousands of people from Super Bowl City late Friday when the event reached maximum capacity. The popular free event along the Embarcadero on Friday night drew a crush of visitors and NFL fans looking to soak up the excitement over Super Bowl weekend. The night was headlined by a fireworks show and a performance from One Republic. An officer patrolling Super Bowl City estimated at least 15,000 people inside the event late Friday. Many who planned to attend the event were disappointed when police...

SALEM, N.H. -- It may have been too snowy for Donald Trump to campaign in New Hampshire on Friday, but the weather didn't stop his top Republican opponent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Trump was stranded in New York as nearly a foot of snow fell in the Granite State, prompting the campaign to postpone a town hall meeting at the Londonderry Lions Club. But Cruz, who pulled off an upset win over the front-runner Trump in the Iowa Caucus on Monday, turned out for his scheduled appearance that night at Lancaster School in Salem -- as did several hundred...

A recent survey from Gallup shows that Jeb Bush is the only candidate with a net unfavorable rating — even after he’s aired millions of dollars of ads to promote his candidacy. Since July, Bush’s net favorable rating has gone from 27 points in to negative one point, according to the survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. That’s even lower than Donald Trump, widely considered to be the most controversial candidate in the Republican field. Forty-five percent of voters have an unfavorable view of Bush, ten points more than Trump. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has the lowest unfavorable ratings with...

Thousands of people are taking part in protests against Islam and immigration in several European cities. Police in Dresden say they expect about 15,000 protesters at a rally organized by the group Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West. Known by its German acronym PEGIDA, the group emerged in Dresden two years ago and has become a magnet for far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment.[snip} Similar, smaller PEGIDA-style protests were planned in France, Britain, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Nationalist groups in Europe have been galvanized by the unprecedented influx of refugees from Africa, Asia and the Middle East...

The Utah Attorney General's Office filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture, claiming the agencies' strategy to disallow new mining on or near greater sage grouse habitats is a breach of "numerous federal laws and regulations." The lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeks an order voiding the federal government's land-use plan amendments submitted last year that would directly prohibit new hard rock mining on 233,300 acres in Utah. "The state of Utah claims that the 2015 federal plan amendments disregarded the hallmark of federal land management -- multiple use and sustained yield --...

A pernicious cycle of collapsing commodities, corporate defaults, and currency wars loom over the global economy. Can anything stop it from unravelling? A global recession is on the way. This truism of economics holds at any point in which the world is not in the grips of a contraction. The real question is always when and how deep the upcoming downturn will be. "The crash will come, but it would be nice if it came two years from now", Thomas Thygesen, head of economics at SEB told over 200 commodity investors and analysts in London last month. His audience was...

A prominent Democratic donor worried about the party's chances of winning the presidency emailed dozens of fans of Vice President Joe Biden on Friday, urging them to remain prepared to donate if Biden jumps into the race. The donor, Bill Bartmann, cited new polling showing Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont nearly tied with the Hillary Clinton, eroding the 30-point lead the former secretary of state held at the end of last year. Bartmann and other party insiders are concerned that Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist, is too far to the left to win against a Republican in the Nov. 8...

An all-out assault on Sen. Marco Rubio by groups aligned with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is angering GOP senators, who fear it could hurt the party's chances of capturing the White House. Right to Rise, a pro-Bush super PAC, has spent an estimated $20 million against Rubio. It is expected to launch a new ad this weekend featuring a clip of former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who endorsed Rubio Tuesday, fumbling to name one of his accomplishments. One senator who has endorsed Bush, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), is urging the PAC to rein in its attacks.

Running a country is not like being a real estate developer or being a governor, Marco Rubio said Friday, firing back on the notion that his political career, and degrees of experience for that matter, are a liability rather than an asset. During an interview with NBC News, the freshman Florida senator brushed aside concerns that he is "too scripted" and made his case for being the best Republican candidate, arguing that he gives the party the best chance to unify and expand the party and defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election. He went on to add that "no...

N. Korea moves up planned rocket launch to between Feb. 7-14: report 2016/02/06 18:45 TOKYO, Feb. 6 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has moved up its plan to launch a long-range rocket to between Feb. 7 and 14, Japanese media reported Saturday, citing a Tokyo government announcement. Earlier this week, Pyongyang informed the International Maritime Organization (IMO) of its plan to launch a satellite between Feb. 8 and 25. Japan's Kyodo News reported that the North has informed the IMO of its change of plan. Experts earlier expected that the North would likely launch the rocket around Feb. 16, the birthday...