Free Republic

It's easy for me to understand why people were so favorably disposed toward Trump at first because initially, I liked him, too. I'd read and liked Trump's books, I found him to be gracious in person and I had friends who went to work for him. I also loved his charisma, his stance on the wall, his refreshing lack of political correctness, his scrappiness and his ability to just shrug off what would be career-ending mistakes for other Republican politicians. Unfortunately today, Trump looks to be completely unelectable. There are massive numbers of Republicans pledging not to vote for him...

There's a truism amongst fighter pilots: you can't fake it at 500 knots and enemy fire all around. One's real character emerges. That's what's happening as the presidential race has begun. Real results - not polls - are now being felt, and Donald Trump, who beat his chest as the inevitable victor in the polls, is revealing his true character - as is Ted Cruz, who surprisingly bested him in the first live battle, the Iowa caucuses. As the caucuses commenced, Cruz was accused of maliciously reporting that candidate Ben Carson was dropping out of the race. That would help...

He Delights in Your Prosperity Today's Scripture “...let them say continually, ‘Let the Lord be magnified, Who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant.’ ” (Psalm 35:27, NKJV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria God desires that you be blessed and prosperous. He desires that you be so blessed that you can turn around and be a blessing everywhere you go! He wants you to have so much peace, so much joy, so much victory that when other people get around you, it spills over onto them! Don’t let yourself have a barely-get-by mentality. Jesus came so that...

On Wednesday, the White House's Chief Technology Officer said he would not consider an item in his online shopping cart on Amazon.com to be "a sale."This week, the Obama administration, though, said it would count healthcare plans put in online shopping carts as "enrollments" in its tally of the number of "enrollees" in Obamacare. “In the data that will be released this week, ‘enrollment’ will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace,” an administration official told the Washington Post.

Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax reform is attracting enough attention to become the focus of this week's Presidential debate. As a plan for overhauling revenues and unleashing the private sector, it's a bold gambit that shows Cain is willing to take chances and shake up the Capital. The 9 percent business tax is a stroke of genius. It would give us the lowest business rates in the world and would make us the "tax haven" for investment from everywhere. The stock market would barely be able to stay abreast. The 9 percent personal income rate would eliminate all the deductions and...

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has an important column in which he argues that the Solyndra fiasco is not just a garden-variety scandal, but a criminal fraud that should land someone, inside and/or outside of the Obama administration, in the slammer. The facts are very bad. Solyndra was a money-loser from beginning to end. Its business model was untenable. The Bush administration turned it down for funding. Its owners wanted to do a public offering; for that purpose, they had to have their books audited and a report written by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The report was more or less an obituary for...

The popular speaker announces plans to leave the priesthood amid an investigation into allegations of misconduct, and his religious superior breaks his silence on the investigation. Raising more questions than it answered, the message did not state the precise reason why Father Corapi chose to resign from the priesthood, rather than waiting for the outcome of SOLT’s investigation of the alleged misconduct.

In the wake of being suspended over what he claims are unproven allegations, popular speaker Fr. John Corapi announced that after 20 years in ministry, he's leaving the Catholic priesthood.“I am not going to be involved in public ministry as a priest any longer,” he said in an online post. “There are certain persons in authority in the Church that want me gone, and I shall be gone.”In a June 17 post on a website with the title of his new ministry “Black Sheep Dog,” and a related YouTube video clip, Fr. Corapi outlined his reasons for leaving. He said...

While British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne frets over spending £148 on a fish and chips lunch with the Governor of the Bank of England, Barack Obama has no qualms about requesting an expensive revamp of the Oval Office when the US federal deficit is approaching a staggering $1.3 trillion and unemployment hovers at just under ten percent. The Wall Street Journal has outlined some of the chic decorative changes at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: Handmade striped wallpaper manufactured in Amagansett, N.Y., with trim painted in American-made Benjamin Moore. Obama’s decorating team reupholstered in caramel-colored leather the two mahogany arm-chairs...

I searched all over and didn't see a live thread on tonight's speech soooooo here it is! (Be gentle on me, in all my years here this is my FIRST LIVE THREAD!)

POCATELLO (AP) - An Idaho state judge has sentenced a convicted bigamist to up to three years in prison and set a restitution hearing for late August. Christopher Cameron was sentenced Monday by 6th District Judge Robert Naftz, who gave him credit for the nine months he has spent in jail. Cameron pleaded guilty to felony bigamy in April. Tonya Gifford Kunz, a former Pocatello woman who was married to Cameron for five weeks before filing for an annulment in February 2009, told authorities that he lied to her about his income, assets, health and last name and left her...

Obama says auto bailouts have paid off Photo 6:09am EDT By Steve Holland ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Saturday taxpayer-funded bailouts of the auto industry that he approved had paid off, in what amounted to a rejection of conservative arguments against such government help. In his weekly radio and Web address, Obama kept up the pressure for an overhaul of U.S. financial regulations, saying the promising news from the auto industry had not reduced the need for Wall Street changes. Government bailouts of Wall Street, begun by then-President George W. Bush in 2008 and continued...

Nation wising up on corn ethanol Published: Thursday, April 15, 2010 8:28 AM CDT Corn-based ethanol is losing some of its luster, and that is a good thing for the average American, if not the corn grower. For the past 30 years, ethanol has had powerful advocates in the nation’s capital, including senators and congressmen from corn-producing states from both political parties. The fact that the Iowa presidential primary comes so early hasn’t hurt the corn growers either. But billions of dollars in tax credits for ethanol companies expire at the end of this year, and a fight appears to...

Federal judge in Chicago acts after being flooded with emails prompted by the author-infomercial king. Kevin Trudeau, the slick, silver-tongued infomercial king and best-selling author amassed a fortune over years of persistent, late-night hawking. This week, he made the wrong sales pitch. Kevin Trudeau has been ordered to appear before a federal judge in Chicago this afternoon after flooding U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman with e-mails. CASE AGAINST HIM What led the late-night miracle-cure hawker to criminal contempt charges in Chicago: * Kevin Trudeau's Shop America USA as well as Natural Cures Inc. are in Elk Grove Village. * Trudeau...

Michael Mann switched from physics to climate science back in graduate school because he thought climate offered a better chance to work "on a frontier." He got his wish, and now, as the director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, he has experienced an aspect of frontier life more like the Wild West - a bounty on his head

A broad coalition of black conservatives from across the country are holding a press conference to urge former Governor Mike Huckabee to stay in the presidential race for the Republican nomination until the convention. "Governor Huckabee should not be intimidated to stop his bid for the Republican nomination," states Don Scoggins, veteran GOP activist and ... president of Republicans for Black Empowerment, a DC-based national grassroots organization. The concern of the group is the pressure that is mounting by Republican talking heads to push Governor Huckabee out of the race. The consensus is that Huckabee's campaign was deliberately sabotaged by...

A national lawsuit reform association has named the Rio Grande Valley as the second-worst “judicial hellhole” for 2007. The Rio Grande Valley and Texas’ Gulf Coast collectively made up the second-worst area in the country for “the nation’s most unfair civil court jurisdictions,” according to a report released Tuesday by the Washington, D.C.-based American Tort Reform Association. “Judicial hellholes” are state courts where judges systematically apply laws and court procedures in an unfair and unbalanced manner, generally against defendants in civil lawsuits, according to the organization. The Rio Grande Valley has ranked on the “judicial hellhole” rankings for the past...

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — For many, the resignation of Oral Roberts University's embattled president, Richard Roberts, seemed to be a question of when, not if, amid the financial scandal that hit the school nearly two months ago. Roberts, facing accusations in the lawsuit that he misspent school funds to support a lavish lifestyle, resigned Friday. "Those who have seen what we have seen won't have any surprise about the fact that Richard has stepped down," said attorney Gary Richardson, who brought a wrongful termination lawsuit against Roberts last month on behalf of three of the university's professors. "There was no...

How to determine when Joel Osteen is speaking heresy:

Once again, John Edwards' money is getting in the way of his message. His Democratic presidential campaign spent Friday responding to a front-page Wall Street Journal report showing that a company that Edwards worked for and has invested $16 million in, Fortress Investment Group, owns mortgage companies that have sought to foreclose on homeowners in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. The newspaper identified 34 homes that are the subject of foreclosure suits. Edwards, who made a fortune as a trial lawyer, worked for Fortress from late 2005 through 2006. Campaign finance reports show its employees and family members have contributed heavily to...