Free Republic

The conservative group American Future Fund will begin airing a TV commercial in South Carolina that labels Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz as "weak" on national security, an especially damaging claim in the military-heavy state. The ad likens Cruz to Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and President Barack Obama. According to the ad, "Ted Cruz talks tough on national security. But look at his record. Cruz voted with Bernie Sanders against defense spending," and the ad also claims "Cruz sided with Obama to weaken our ability to track terrorists." The Anti-Cruz group - run by GOP bigwig Nick Ryan, is spending...

We know that the Clinton Foundation has been drawn into the ongoing investigation over the Clinton emails. The State Department issued the family nonprofit a subpoena last fall, asking for all documents relating to the Foundation's ventures that might have required approval from the government while she was our top diplomat in the Obama administration. Moreover, documents related to Huma Abedin, Clinton's trusted aide who worked for both her office at State and other areas of the family's operations, are included in this subpoena (via WaPo): Investigators with the State Department issued a subpoena to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea...

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned Thursday that if Arab forces entered the Syrian war, they could spark a "new world war" and urged ceasefire talks instead.

Conservative leaders are opposiong the position taken by top military commanders that all young women be required to register with the Selective Service System, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) summing up the mood of many on the Right: "I do not want to see my 15-year-old daughter drafted." In December, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that all combat positions without exception – including those in elite special forces units - would be open to women, and ordered all service chiefs to submit plans to implement the new policy by January 1. Last week, top military brass told the Senate Armed...

The Clinton email scandal is getting bigger again, as Fox News cites a source close to the investigation who says at least a dozen different accounts on Hillary Clinton’s notorious homebrew email server handled Top Secret material. The number of different accounts could be as high as 30. “The official said the accounts include not only Clinton’s but those of top aides – including Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan and Philippe Reines – as well as State Department Under Secretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy and others. There is no public evidence they were authorized to receive the intelligence...

A pair of Texas litigators are following Cruz's lead as they gird for a Supreme Court battle this April. On the campaign trail, Ted Cruz has vowed to rescind President Barack Obama's controversial executive actions on immigration - but it's two of his former aides who could actually kill it. Scott Keller and Chip Roy - who served in top roles in Cruz's Senate office - are now litigators on behalf of Texas, leading the lawsuit against Obama's unilateral actions, which are at the cornerstone of the president's immigration legacy. The duo's positions also underscore Cruz's enduring influence and reach...

The Republican establishment is grappling with an uncomfortable reality: No single candidate is about to be crowned as its standard-bearer after New Hampshire's primary. And that means Donald Trump and Ted Cruz could be sprinting toward the presidential nomination before a third rival gets out of the starting blocks. "The only way for Donald Trump or Ted Cruz to be stopped is for the establishment to finally rally around one candidate - and it doesn't look like that is going to happen anytime soon," said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and a former aide to GOP leaders on Capitol Hill....

With the republican primary race now heading to South Carolina we take a look at the last verifiable polling (large sample, low MOE) which was taken by NBC and the Wall Street Journal in January (full pdf below). Remember the golden rule of MSM polling. “When polls are silent, it generally means the outcomes are adverse to their preferred media narrative."

Welcome to the Free Republic CaucusPlease read the rules, and participate according to the guidelines provided.  Thank you. REMEMBER:  To find the Caucus thread for the day, Search "Caucus".       The South Carolina Primary takes place in nine days. Only vote on this thread on: 02/11/2016  another thread will pop up moments before: 02/12/2016Wait to vote until 12:00 midnight EST, and don't vote after 12:00 midnight EST at the at the end of the day.  Look for the new thread. Votes outside the 24 hour period, will not be counted.  Give it three minutes or so on each...

"Trump won, the exit polls were right," Limbaugh continued. "Trump won men. He won women. He won every age group. He won every ideology. Liberal, conservative, moderate, Libertarian. Every group Trump won a majority of voters. He won among people who had gone to college and people who hadn't. He won among people who only had a high school education; he won among people who did not have a high school education. He won every single age bracket. He won those groups by huge margins. He won men 3-to-1 over second place finisher. Women he won 2-to-1. Voters under 30...

For the first time since combat operations were declared over at the end of 2014, a battalion of 500 U.S. Army infantrymen is being sent to southern Afghanistan's volatile Helmand Province where the Taliban have made a comeback, Fox News has learned. The decision, confirmed by defense officials, is a sign of military escalation in the country even as the Obama administration tries to draw down. The battalion is meant to relieve a company of 150 soldiers, giving the U.S. Army nearly 350 more soldiers to prevent the Taliban from taking over volatile Helmand province. The Army's 2-87 infantry battalion,...

Syria’s national wealth, infrastructure and institutions have been “almost obliterated” by the “catastrophic impact” of nearly five years of conflict, a new report has found. Fatalities caused by war, directly and indirectly, amount to 470,000, according to the Syrian Centre for Policy Research (SCPR) – a far higher total than the figure of 250,000 used by the United Nations until it stopped collecting statistics 18 months ago. In all, 11.5% of the country’s population have been killed or injured since the crisis erupted in March 2011, the report estimates. The number of wounded is put at 1.9 million. Life expectancy...

With Ted Cruz the victor of the first contest of the GOP nominating calendar, we can no longer avoid the question mischievously posed by Donald Trump: Is Cruz ineligible to be president? Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. The Constitution says that only a “natural born citizen” can be president. Is Cruz a natural born citizen? (You may recall that before he attacked Cruz on this front, Trump spent months flogging a ludicrous version of this critique against President Obama, who was actually born in the United States, unlike Cruz.) The words natural...

Everything wrong with Jeb Bush can be summed up in his approach to border security and American sovereignty. As we all now know, the former Florida governor considers illegal immigration an "act of love" on the part of the illegal immigrant sneaking into America illegally. Wednesday morning on "Morning Joe," after barely getting out of New Hampshire alive, Bush repeatedly described frontrunner Donald Trump's proposed temporary ban on foreign Muslims as "horrific." You don't have to agree with the idea of Trump's temporary ban to see the benefits of such a thing, or why two-thirds of Republican voters in a...

If conservatism is your bag, if conservatism is the dominating factor in how you vote, there is no other choice for you in this campaign than Ted Cruz, because you are exactly right: This is the closest in our lifetimes we have ever been to Ronald Reagan. ***snip*** But for those of you that conservatism's the answer and conservatism is the way, you have no choice here. Ted Cruz has got to be your guy. There's nobody even close. Nobody.

Obama establishes Federal Privacy Council as part of massive cyber effort https://iapp.org/news/a/obama-establishes-federal-privacy-council-as-part-of-massive-cyber-effort/ Obama establishes Federal Privacy Council as part of massive cyber effort Sam Pfeifle The Privacy Advisor | Feb 9, 2016 Obama establishes Federal Privacy Council as part of massive cyber effort As part of his 2017 budget proposal for the United States, President Barack Obama is including $19 billion for cybersecurity efforts, a 35-percent increase over fiscal year 2016. The funds will go toward a Cybersecurity National Action Plan, which includes the hiring of a chief information security officer, a $3.1 billion fund for IT modernization at the...

It’s a distant memory now but in the last two weeks of September, after her celebrated attack on Trump at the second Republican debate, she was in double digits nationally and in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. Then everyone just … moved on and she was a low single-digits candidate the rest of the way. Even now, I’m not sure what she did to fade so quickly and durably. I suppose it was a simple matter of her being outraised and outspent and then suffocated by Trump’s total domination of earned media.Of all the dark-horse candidates who’ve run in...

Ted Cruz's critics are wasting no time hitting him in South Carolina. American Future Fund, a conservative group that spent heavily against Cruz in Iowa, will begin airing a TV commercial in South Carolina that labels Cruz as "weak" on national security -- a damaging label in military-heavy South Carolina. The spot ties Cruz to Bernie Sanders, the liberal insurgent who's gaining momentum in the Democratic primary, and President Barack Obama. "Ted Cruz talks tough on national security. But look at his record. Cruz voted with Bernie Sanders against defense spending," the ad says. "Cruz sided with Obama to weaken...

Why does the mainstream media heap such scorn and disbelief on Donald Trump over his promise to build a great wall along the border with Mexico — and make Mexico pay for it? After all, Donald Trump has built a winning presidential campaign — and made the media pay for it.

This campaign was always about citizenship—taking back our country from a political class that only serves the big, the powerful, the wealthy, and the well connected. Election after election, the same empty promises are made and the same poll-tested stump speeches are given, but nothing changes. I've said throughout this campaign that I will not sit down and be quiet. I'm not going to start now. While I suspend my candidacy today, I will continue to travel this country and fight for those Americans who refuse to settle for the way things are and a status quo that no longer...