Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s impotent approach to the international crises proliferating around the globe has resulted in a bipartisan barrage of criticisms directed at him and his administration, and it’s all getting to be just too much to handle for Obama’s remaining supporters. The latest to offend the sensibilities of those for whom the Islamic State is a threat only to our ability to craft convincing moral equivalencies for their abhorrent acts is New Jersey governor and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie. According to a report from New York Times journalist and Christie tracker Michael Barbaro, the governor had the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. fired back at Texas Senator Ted Cruz for remarks he made over the weekend about his borough. During a speech in Dallas Saturday, Cruz said he was tired of northern senators like Charles Schumer lecturing him on border security. He then added, "I understand that Manhattan is very concerned with their security with the Bronx, but it's a little bit different on 2,000 miles of the Rio Grande." Diaz Jr. responded, "This is unbecoming of him as a U.S. Senator, you know, who wants to be President of the United States—which, last I checked,...

ANDERSON, S.C. - Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., "the son of Ronald Reagan when it comes to national security" Monday night at a barbecue gathering of nearly 1,000 conservatives in the upstate. South Carolina's senior senator also dubbed Rubio "a rising young star" in the GOP "who you will see a lot," a nod to his colleague's White House aspirations in 2016. The high praise comes from one of the Senate's biggest foreign policy hawks at a time when the country is confronting how to deal with the unraveling violence and chaos in Iraq being caused...

Mitt Romney appeared on WNYM's "The Cats Round Table" with John Catsimatidis today and took on Barack Obama over domestic issues, including immigration. The President should have enforced our immigration laws from the very beginning. His announcement of a form of amnesty only encouraged people to continue to flood over the border. So the right answer, of course, is to secure our border and hopefully to put in a series of immigration policy reforms so that we can finally get our handle on this immigration mess. We can stop illegal immigration and also make the legal process more transparent and...

Even after the unrest in Ferguson has subsided, we're left with questions about the tension that built up and exploded in the small St. Louis suburb. Among those questions: How did a city where two-thirds of the residents are black elect an almost entirely white city government? The answer is simple: Ferguson holds its city elections entirely separate from state and national elections, and that can make all the difference. People rarely think about the timing of elections. But Missouri's election rules set the stage for the discontent that has tormented Ferguson recently. The state requires its cities to hold...

For House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the “war on women” and victimhood are always in style when election season rolls around. According to CNS News.com, on Thursday, Pelosi said on a conference call that American women have been victims throughout the history of the nation. “It was a struggle all the way,” Pelosi said. “Women marched. Women starved. Women were starved. Women were force-fed. Women could barely speak up in their own homes.” She continued: Women left their homes to take the message. And it was successful, and the right to vote, again, so precious, so hard fought. ......

In Dallas at an Americans For Prosperity event, Heritage Foundation president and former-Sen. Jim DeMint put his thumb firmly on the scale for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over fellow Texan Gov. Rick Perry for the coming 2016 presidential contest. “I think Cruz even more than Perry right now,” DeMint told the Associated Press. “Ted has become really the national conservative leader.”(continued)

I know what you’re thinking: “Yes, Hillary will be nominated, but Mitt Romney? Again?” The problem with all the other potential GOP presidential candidates is that either they are indicted (Perry), about to be indicted (Walker, Christie), the Tea Party hates them (Rubio, Paul), or they are just too crazy, even for the GOP (Cruz, Palin, Bachmann). Then there’s Bush III (Jeb). When you see him on TV, doesn’t he seem to be half-asleep? Even his own mother thought he wouldn’t be a good candidate. Paul Ryan? He just doesn’t LOOK “Presidential.” He looks like Hoody Doody, baby boomers’ favorite...

A letter released by the Charlie Crist campaign: Dear Governor Scott: Four years ago, a district court of appeals ruled Florida’s ban on gay and lesbian adoption unconstitutional. When the ruling came down, I believed it was my job as Governor to exercise the authority vested in me by the people and our Constitution. The day the judge ruled, I declared Florida’s adoption ban over. Gay and lesbian parents began adopting the children they loved immediately. It is one of my proudest moments as an elected official. Last Thursday Federal District Judge Robert Hinkle gave you the same chance to...

Jesse Benton, the campaign manager for U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, will resign his post as a bribery scandal from the 2012 presidential campaign threatens to envelop Benton and become a major distraction for McConnell's campaign. Benton told the Herald-Leader that he met with McConnell Friday afternoon and offered his resignation, which McConnell "reluctantly accepted." Benton said he offered his resignation, effective Saturday, with a "heavy heart." He maintained his innocence, faulting "inaccurate press accounts and unsubstantiated media rumors." "This decision breaks my heart, but I know it is the right thing for Mitch, for Kentucky and for the...

The overload of coverage over Barack Obama‘s tan suit has led to some unexpected consequences: Rep. Peter King (R-NY), called into The Steve Malzberg Show to rage about how “trivial” the summer suit was. Summer suits, according to Rep. King, are not appropriate garb for talking about terrorism or ISIS, and especially when the President says he doesn’t have a strategy to deal with the resurgence of terrorism. “For him to walk out — I’m not trying to be trivial here — in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans...

Progressives really, really, really wanted to hear from Hillary Clinton on the events in Ferguson, Mo., where an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer on Aug. 9, sparking days of unrest in that small city outside St. Louis and elsewhere. Al Sharpton said he wanted to smoke Clinton out on Ferguson and suggested that if she ran in 2016, he would be a thorn in her side on civil rights issues. MSNBC host Chris Hayes thought it was “bizarre” that Clinton hadn’t at least weighed in with a statement on the incident, even though...

Six years to the day after he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, President Barack Obama announced that he did not have a strategy to combat ISIS, which recently beheaded American photojournalist James Foley. “I don't want to put the cart before the horse,” Obama said of ISIS at a Thursday press conference. “We don't have a strategy yet.” After Obama accepted the nomination in front of Greek columns on August 28, 2008, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin asked, “But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium...

Nearly three weeks after an unarmed black teen was gunned down in a St. Louis suburb by a white police officer, sparking violent riots and a national conversation about race, Hillary Clinton finally broke her silence about the ongoing tension in Ferguson, Mo. "Watching the recent funeral for Michael Brown, as a mother, as a human being, my heart just broke for his family because losing a child is every parent's greatest fear and an unimaginable loss,” the former Secretary of State said Thursday at a technology conference in San Francisco. "Behind the dramatic, terrible pictures on television, there are...

Sen. Al Simpson (R-WY) retired from the Senate in 1997, but he is now celebrating another political victory in his state. The retired senator ran and won his election as a member of the Republican precinct committee in his hometown of Cody, Wyoming, together with his wife Ann. Both Simpsons earned a majority of the vote, effectively pushing out Tea Party Republicans in the precinct. “We decided we’d start over,” Simpson explained in an interview with Breitbart News. “We did that about forty years ago when we started in politics.” Although he retired from state politics long ago, Simpson indicated...

What do the midterm elections have to do with the killing of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.? Ask CNN contributor and former Democratic National Committee vice chairwoman Donna Brazile. The politicization of Ferguson in the small world of cable news has been limited to liberals claiming the incident was racially motivated and conservatives leaping to the defense of Darren Wilson, the white officer who shot Brown. That was until Tuesday, when Brazile began encouraging her followers to use Ferguson as inspiration to vote in the November midterm elections. “We have to be passionate about the upcoming election,” Brazile...

Wilcox for Congress In a close primary duel, Arizona congressional candidate Mary Rose Wilcox targets her opponent's support for Stand Your Ground.Could the 2012 killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin prove a deciding factor in an Arizona Democratic congressional primary? Former Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox certainly hopes so. Seeking to gain an edge over her rival, ex-state Rep. Ruben Gallego, in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's primary, Wilcox's campaign has invoked Martin's shooting and her opponent's past support for a controversial Stand Your Ground law. "America doesn't need more Trayvon Martin tragedies," read a mailer distributed by...

DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, she would -- if she runs, and she's got to make that decision, she'll be the strongest non-incumbent candidate we've ever seen in history of American politics, certainly in the modern primary system.

How the same right allows for both same-sex marriage recognition and refusing to sell gay couples wedding cakes.How can a libertarian support gay marriage but also the right of businesses to decline to provide goods and services such as cakes, wedding dresses, and photographers for gay weddings? For many libertarians, it makes perfect logical, philosophical, and legal sense. But from the outside perspective, it often does not. As a result, critics looking for an opportunity to throw shade on the increased media and public interest in libertarian ideas can focus on just a piece of this mentality. We saw the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) CHRIS WALLACE: Karl. Attorney General Holder visited Ferguson this week and very pointedly said, I understand -- not that I condone or agree with, but I understand the mistrust you have in the police department, and he talked about some cases where he had been profiled. Afterwards he met, you can see here on the screen, with Captain Ron Johnson of the state highway patrol, who is in charge of the police effort, who said that he thought that Holder and the fact that the grand jury was beginning to hear actual evidence, were the two major factors in...