Free Republic

I expect this will occur the day the pope throws open the gates of Vatican City to all who wish to live there.The Hill: Invoking Martin Luther King Jr. and his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Francis made an impassioned plea for the refugees fleeing Syria, saying the crisis is “of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War.”Noting his own status as “the son of immigrants,” the pope pivoted to a more sensitive subject: The flow of illegal immigrants across the United States’s southern border.He urged compassion for immigrants, warning not to repeat “the sins and...

Washington (CNN)Sen. Marco Rubio on Friday morning will unveil his plan to support employers who give their workers paid family leave at the annual conservative confab the Value Voters Summit. "Our policies should help workers, not cost them their jobs," the Florida senator will say, according to excerpts provided by his campaign. "I believe we can fix this problem by creatively applying our free enterprise principles in a way that encourages businesses to choose to offer more paid family leave." Rubio's proposal will use tax credits to incentivize companies to offer at least four weeks of paid leave. According to...

Forgive me if I don’t watch Faux News’ coverage of this visit by the very liberal leader of the Faithful, first to Communist Cuba, then on to D.C., Philly, NYC. Forgive me if I quit going to the Catholic church of my designation every Sunday. Forgive me if I got not one, but two divorces from Catholic men who, to say the least, abused me and my child every which way but loose. And they weren’t the meanest man who abused me, a man who happened to be Catholic. Forgive me. I say my prayers at home now, every Sunday....

When Pope John Paul II was selected in 1978, I'm convinced that God was in the room. At a moment when Communism was spreading and threatening the world spearheaded by the Soviet Union, a Pope was selected from a Communist ruled country (Poland). A Pope who knew the Marxist-Leninist ideology first hand and had spent a lifetime fighting the good fight against it. John Paul II was such a threat to the Soviets that they tried to kill him in 1981. John Paul joined other contemporaries of his time from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher to provide a counterpoint to...

It's not really news anymore when a poll finds former Florida Governor Jeb Bush far below "frontrunner" status. The best-funded of the Republican establishment candidates has struggled for months, and never achieved the sort of advantage that Mitt Romney, John McCain, or George W. Bush did in the years before they became the party's nominee. Still, the new WMUR/CNN poll out of New Hampshire -- which has Jeb Bush tied for 5th place with John Kasich, well in back of Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina, and just behind Ben Carson and Marco Rubio -- suggests that the months of weak...

The Emperor’s New Clothes is the tale of an Emperor who loves clothes above all else. One day, two swindlers come to town who say they can weave the most magnificent, brilliantly colored cloth. And, they confide, garments made from this fabric have the special power of being invisible to those who are stupid or not fit for their post. The Emperor hires the swindlers and they set to work. In time, he sends trusted officials to check on the weaver’s progress. The officials see only empty looms but know of the cloth’s special power. So they tell the Emperor...

Pope Francis on Thursday urged the U.S. Congress to reject a "mindset of hostility" on immigration and to recognize people who wish to move to the United States as people who are trying to improve their lives and those of their families.

Both the Hungarian and Italian prime ministers have spoken of huge dangers of unchecked floods of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East which have set previously peacable EU nations against each other. The scenario - especially the one currently being played out in Serbia and Hungary - is hauntingly similar to that which triggered the First World War. The problem has manifesting itself in central Europe where Hungary is besieged by growing numbers of refugees passing through from Serbia and Croatia, forcing its government to build fences to stem the influx. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán warned European life...

The Washington Examiner has taken the, “Beep beep, move along folks, nothing to see here” approach to try to bring down Donald Trump. These latest Wile E. Coyotes have pronounced, “Trump is obsessed with an immigration crisis that’s already over.” The illegal aliens they are talking about are being supported to the tune of $200 billion a year by the few Americans who are still working but that is not a problem, the Washington Examiner assures us. The fact that Barack Obama has done so well in “fundamentally transforming America” into a third country has made life so intolerable here...

Columba Bush, the wife of Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, is playing an increasingly important role in her husband's campaign, as the former Florida governor seeks to appeal to Hispanics. The 62-year-old philanthropist is a native of León, Mexico. She met Bush in 1970 when the future governor was teaching English as a second language and assisting in the building of a school in a small village outside of the Guanajuato city. In a new video released on Monday designed to appeal to Latino voters -- a key constituency -- Columba Bush made her most expansive comments to date, the...

Jeb Bush admitted Monday his views on immigration may not be "mainstream" in the Republican Party. But he praised the "vitality" of a multicultural society as other GOP presidential candidates find themselves in trouble over comments about minorities. "If we embrace a set of shared values, then it shouldn't matter if you have a 'z' at the end of your name, or your accent might be different, 'cause guess what? There are people in this country, that have accents different from mine and mine's different from theirs. It doesn't matter," Bush said to a roomful of Hispanics. The former Florida...

There's only one time when you can depend on the chronically backlogged, recklessly inefficient Department of Homeland Security to perform smoothly: election season. While hundreds of thousands of visa overstayers and deportation fugitives remain on the loose, federal bureaucrats at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are hastily recruiting tens of thousands of foreigners for the Obama administration's new "U.S. citizenship and immigrant civic integration" campaign. For the past week, the agency has staged more than 200 naturalization ceremonies for more than 36,000 new citizens. In partnership with the Interior Department (the same one that blocked American veterans from...

EU leaders meeting in Brussels are set to approve a plan to relocate 120,000 migrants across the continent, despite fierce opposition from some members. Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary voted against the mandatory quota scheme. Wednesday's emergency summit will also focus on tightening EU borders and boosting aid to neighbours of Syria, from where many migrants come...... US President Barack Obama said all European states should accept their "fair share" of asylum seekers, after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.... In a rare move for an issue involving national sovereignty, EU interior ministers approved the resettlement scheme on...

Can Carly Fiorina Win Over Latino Voters? California Republican's Immigration Views Differ From Donald Trump. As a U.S. Senate candidate in California in 2010, Carly Fiorina advocated legislation that would grant legal rights to undocumented immigrants. Now, as the former tech CEO climbs in the polls and takes on Republican front-runner Donald Trump, her moderate positions on immigration reform could become a weakness in a race that has seen many GOP voters demand more border security and a tough stance against illegal immigration. -snip- Fiorina has "a strategy of being vague on some of the issues and potentially allowing herself...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush reaffirmed his support Monday for allowing undocumented immigrants to earn legal status, denouncing proposals to build a wall at the Mexican border and deport those living in the United States illegally. Both are plans touted by billionaire businessman Donald Trump, who has topped the Republican field in recent polls. After initially steering clear of Trump, Bush has become more outspoken in his criticism of the frontrunner with a penchant for incendiary comments about illegal immigration. “We need to respect the rule of law. There’s national security questions, public health questions. There’s important questions about protecting...

Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush on Monday praised the contribution of Hispanics to the U.S. economy and set himself apart from his GOP rivals by coming out in favor of immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship. “Here’s what I believe. I believe we need immigration reform. I’ve been clear about this. I believe that DREAM Act kids should have a path to citizenship,” the former Florida governor told pro-immigration reform protesters who interrupted him during his address before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce conference in Houston. “I’ll continue to be consistently for it irrespective of what the...

EU ministers are to meet to try to resolve a dispute over how to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers who have recently arrived in Europe. A group of central European states is resisting calls for EU members to accept mandatory quotas. Hungary, which takes one of the strongest lines on the issue, has said European borders are under threat...... If disagreements persist, ministers could force a deal through by a majority vote, rather than a unanimous decision, writes the BBC's Europe correspondent Chris Morris. Enough countries are in favour of the proposal to form a majority-but huge efforts are being made...

An invigorated Jeb Bush defied his party’s lurch to the right over immigration on Monday with a passionate speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, in which he called for a path to legal citizenship for undocumented migrants. -snip- “Donald Trump apparently said I should not speak Spanish to them for some odd reason,” said Bush, who began and ended Monday’s speech in Spanish. “They spoke in Spanish to me and I spoke in Spanish to them.

Jeb Bush responded to hecklers chanting “no hope without our vote” on Monday by reiterating his support for granting a pathway to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. The protest came minutes into the GOP presidential candidate's speech at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s national convention. Bush addressed the demonstrators directly, sharing a more moderate piece of his immigration program that has drawn the ire of some conservatives. “Here’s what I believe. I believe we need immigration reform. I’ve been clear about this. I believe that DREAM Act kids should have a path to citizenship,” he said. “I’ll...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush used a speech here Monday before Hispanic business leaders to chide his party over its attitude toward immigration, drawing not-so-subtle contrasts between himself and bomb-throwing billionaire Donald Trump. "This apparently is somewhat out of the mainstream temporarily in my party, but it isn't really," Bush told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce's national convention. "A great majority of Republican believe in immigration reform." Bush, who had hardly started speaking before being interrupted by protesters, only said Trump's name once, but clearly had the GOP foe on his mind. The real estate mogul's rants against illegal...