Free Republic

A couple caught shoplifting at a Lauderdale Lakes WalMart left their three young children in their car for several hours after they didn't tell deputies the kids were waiting for them, authorities said. Gerald Moultrie and Tosheba Hope are facing grand theft and child neglect charges following their arrest Monday night, the Broward Sheriff's Office said. Moultrie, 24, and Hope, 30, were being held on $1,000 bond early Tuesday, jail records showed. It was unknown if they have an attorney. According to the BSO, the couple left their three young children - ages 2, 5 and 7 - in a...

Has Jeb Bush offered the Republican Party a new way to talk about same-sex marriage? Fred Sainz thinks he has. Sainz grew up two doors down from Bush in Coral Gables, Fla., and counts the former Florida governor as an early mentor who got Sainz a job working for Bush’s father in the White House. But Sainz left the GOP in 2004 after George W. Bush, Bush’s brother, railed against same-sex marriage in his reelection campaign. Sainz, now a leader of the gay rights movement as a vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, sees an important evolution in the...

Doctors who perform abortions would be required to have privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the location where the abortion is performed under the first anti-abortion billed filed in the 2015 legislative session. HB 147 is sponsored by two Republicans, Pensacola Rep. Walter Bryan “Mike” Hill, former president of the Northwest Florida Tea Party, and Rep. Scott Plakon of Longwood, who pushed a bill in 2012 that would have required doctors to sign an affidavit stating the abortion is not being performed because of the sex or race of the fetus. The bill is patterned after laws in...

After long probe, Palm Beach billionaire faces solicitation charge By Larry Keller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 26, 2006 Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein paid to have underage girls and young women brought to his home, where he received massages and sometimes sex, according to an investigation by the Palm Beach Police Department. Palm Beach police spent months sifting through Epstein's trash and watching his waterfront home and Palm Beach International Airport to keep tabs on his private jet. An indictment charging Epstein, 53, was unsealed Monday, charging him with one count of felony solicitation of prostitution. ******...

A woman who left her 1-year-old child sitting alone at a Boynton Beach bar was arrested Sunday, police said.. Concerned customers at Banana Boat Lounge and Restaurant, at 739 E. Ocean Ave., told police a woman, later identified as Ashton Krauss, 28, of Ocean Ridge, went to an outdoor bar in the back of the restaurant at about 5:30 p.m. and put the child in a high chair.

A secret plea deal for Britain’s Prince Andrew’s pal Jeffrey Epstein protected the prince and any other high-powered friends who may have used his alleged sex slaves, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned. Federal prosecutors promised they “will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein” if the Wall Street money manager pled guilty to two relatively minor state underage sex charges that put him in a local jail for 13 months, the confidential plea agreement obtained by Radar says. A lawsuit filed by four women, who say federal prosecutors illegally ignored them and kept them in the dark...

Last month, Jeb Bush announced that he would actively explore a run for president in 2016, and it’s never too early to start lining up the dollars: 2016 “exploration” has kicked off: The Republican will raise money for his newly-created leadership PAC at a reception Wednesday in the hometown of his father, former President George H.W. Bush. Proof that not all of Greenwich winters in Florida, a popular tax-Haven for Connecticut residents, Bush will be hosted by an assemblage of relatives and political allies with ties to his father and brother. The excitement among conservatives is not palpable.

~~snip~~ Voting against Boehner (10) Gohmert* Yoho* Rep. Steve King (Iowa) Rep. Jim Bridenstine (Okla.)* Rep. Dave Brat (Va.) (freshman) Rep. Walter Jones (N.C.)* Rep. Gary Palmer (Ala.) (freshman) Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.)* Rep. Paul Gosar (Ariz.) Rep. Marlin Stutzman (Ind.) Said prior to 2014 election that they would vote against Boehner (2) Rep. Jody Hice (Ga.) (freshman) Rep. John Ratfliffe (Tex.) (freshman) Voted against Boehner in 2013/haven't weighed in (2) Rep. Steve Pearce (N.M.) (spokesman says he's "undecided") Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.) Voted against Boehner in 2013/will support him (3) Rep. Mick Mulvaney (S.C.) Rep. Raul Labrador (Idaho) Rep....

Miami-Dade County will become the first place in Florida to allow same-sex couples to marry on Monday, 13 hours before a gay-marriage ban that has been ruled unconstitutional is lifted in the rest of the state.

WASHINGTON – Two Republican lawmakers have stepped forward to challenge House Speaker John Boehner’s campaign for a third term as top dog in the lower chamber, raising the specter of an extended selection procedure that could muddy the selection process.Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), a Tea Party Republican who has been a consistent pain in Boehner’s side, announced Sunday that he will challenge Boehner, declaring that the election “is not about a particular candidate — it is about whether we keep the status quo or make the change the country demands.”Gohmert’s announcement follows on the heels of the declaration by...

Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) will officially join the rebellion against John Boehner’s re-election as Speaker of the House on Monday morning, Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) announced in a statement late Sunday evening. Stutzman, Bridenstine said, will issue a statement early Monday announcing his public opposition to Boehner’s re-election. That brings the total number of members who are public in their opposition to nine, as Bridenstine and Reps. Steve King (R-IA), Dave Brat (R-VA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Walter Jones (R-NC), and Thomas Massie (R-KY) issued public statements saying they are opposing Boehner. Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Ted Yoho (R-FL) both...

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) called GOP challenges to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) “pretty unprofessional and very disappointing” on Monday. Cole, a close ally to Boehner, said the challenges aren’t serious and blasted Republicans trying to unseat the Speaker for not trying to do so when the GOP held its internal discussions late last year. “Well, I don’t think they’re very serious,” he said while appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe" of the bids by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) to challenge Boehner for speakership. “And frankly, they’re pretty disappointing in the sense that anyone who wanted to...

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL), who is challenging House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for the Speakership, said he fears no man and does not expect retribution for trying to oust Boehner. On Breitbart News Sunday, Yoho said voters in his district, including a seasoned farmer in his seventies this weekend, have urged him to vote against Boehner because he is a “weak leader” and not a good voice for the GOP. “My base wants me to vote this way,” Yoho said. When asked if he expected retribution for challenging Boehner, Yoho indicated that he did not anticipate that, saying, “I don’t...

From the first day of 2011, Mitt Romney was the favorite to win the 2012 Republican presidential primary campaign. No one else was even close. The 2016 outlook could not be more different. Offered the choice to bet on one single candidate to win the nomination versus the rest of the field, the choice would have to be "the field." For the first time in years, there is no one next in line. And without a former vice president or powerhouse former candidate looking likely to run, Republicans are shaping up to spend the next year and a half fighting...

December’s disgraceful CRomnibus debacle fresh in mind, House conservatives may finally be ready to hand the most powerful gavel in the House from John Boehner to a more principled leader when they vote for Speaker of the House on January 6th. Replacing Boehner is both possible and necessary for a multitude of reasons, but it’s important to understand how the vote works in order to counter the misinformation that has already started coming from those with a vested interest in keeping the status quo. Under the Constitution, the Speaker of the House must be elected each Congress by a majority...

On the surface, this sex scandal involving Prince Andrew, second in the line of succession to the British crown, famed constitutional lawyer Alan Derschowitz, and former President Bill Clinton, would appear too bizarre to be true. But in a civil suit filed this past week in Florida, alleging that billionaire Jeffrey Epstein received special treatment from the government in a child sexual abuse case in 2008 in which Epstein served only 13 months in jail while avoiding far more serious charges, all three celebrities were named as persons having sex with underage girls at Epstein's estate on his Carribean island....

Buckingham Palace officials have again denied claims made by a woman who alleged that she was forced to have sex while underage with Prince Andrew, Duke of York. The second denial comes after two Sunday papers in Britain published interviews with the woman in which she claimed that she was forced by American financier Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew at least three times between 1999 and 2002. The woman alleges that the encounters took place in London, New York, and on a Caribbean island owned by Epstein. A Palace spokesman has said that the allegations are "false...

More on breaking Prince Andrew story/'VIP orgies' here...

Papers filed against his pervert pal Jeffrey Epstein say he recorded VIP orgies he threw at his luxury homes using cameras hidden in the walls.... The woman known as Jane Doe 3 – said to be 30-year-old Virginia Roberts – claims she was held as a sex slave and forced to sleep with the Duke of York in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands. She says she was 17 at the time – under the age of consent in Florida.

For those of us who have managed to survive 2014 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns. We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those...