Free Republic

Fifth District Congresswoman Susan Brooks says the immigration reform plan unveiled this week by a bipartisan group of senators represents an encouraging first step toward solving one of the nation's thorniest problems. Brooks praises the so-called Gang of Eight for requiring that the nation's borders be secured first, and for placing illegal immigrants at the back of the line for citizenship, behind those who have entered the country legally.

It used to be that if you went to a college-level debate tournament, the students you’d see would be bookish future lawyers from elite universities, most of them white. In matching navy blazers, they’d recite academic arguments for and against various government policies. It was tame, predictable, and, frankly, boring. No more. These days, an increasingly diverse group of participants has transformed debate competitions, mounting challenges to traditional form and content by incorporating personal experience, performance, and radical politics. These “alternative-style” debaters have achieved success, too, taking top honors at national collegiate tournaments over the past few years. But this...

INDIANAPOLIS | Hoosiers never again would vote in a primary election for U.S. Senate candidates if the decision were up to Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller. Zoeller is among a growing number of state's rights conservatives who favor a so-called "soft repeal" of the 17th Amendment that would empower members of the General Assembly, instead of voters, to nominate each party's U.S. Senate candidates. Voters still would have the final say on who represents Indiana in the Senate. But Zoeller, a Republican, believes giving the General Assembly's control of selecting candidates could revive the idea that U.S. senators are ambassadors...

A virus that has killed more than 100 people in the Middle East has been found in the United States for the first time, in an Indiana health care worker who recently returned from Saudi Arabia, federal health officials said on Friday. The man, whose name, age and exact occupation have not been released, is in stable condition in an Indiana hospital, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of respiratory diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is in isolation and receiving oxygen. A single American case of the virus — called MERS, for Middle East respiratory syndrome...

The first U.S. case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus has been reported in Indiana, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The patient is a health-care provider who recently traveled to Saudi Arabia to provide health care, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, assistant surgeon general with the U.S. Public Health Service and director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. The person, an American male, traveled on April 24 from Riyadh to London, then to Chicago, and took a bus to Indiana, officials said. He began experiencing shortness of breath, coughing, and fever on April...

Health officials say a deadly virus from the Middle East has turned up for the first time in the U.S. No details about the case have been released. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention planned a Friday afternoon briefing about the case. The CDC says it is investigating along with health officials in Indiana.

If the state provides free IDs, is there really an “unjustified burden” on poor voters?To better understand the contrast between an activist, liberal judge who refuses to follow the law and a judge who understands that his job is to follow precedent and the Constitution, consider two recent federal cases on voter-ID laws. On Tuesday, federal-district-court judge Lynn Adelman — a Clinton appointee, former Democratic state senator, and former Legal Aid Society lawyer — held that Wisconsin’s voter-ID requirement violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, because it places “an unjustified burden on...

Frustrated with President Barack Obama’s reaction to Russian action in Ukraine, a group of Republican senators said Wednesday they will introduce legislation outlining a more muscular response. “What we’ve seen from the administration is a lot of rhetoric,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. The White House has been dealing “with the situation after something bad has already occurred,” he said. Earlier this week, violence flared up in another area of Ukraine that hugs the Russian border, as the new government in Kiev criticized local police...

There’s plenty of talk about possible Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush campaigns for the White House in 2016, but what about Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Pence? “I'm always humbled and flattered any time I'm mentioned for the highest office in the land,” Pence told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." "Much of that talk is the result of the progress the people of Indiana have been making,” Pence told Wallace. “I mean the fact is we have the lowest unemployment rate in the Midwest, we demonstrated the ability to balance our budget, cut taxes even while we invest in expanded...

One summer day last July, a six-year-old boy was walking across a dune when he disappeared, falling into a deep, narrow hole in the sand. This and two other holes that have since appeared at Indiana's Mount Baldy are unlike anything scientists have seen before—it could be an entirely new geological phenomenon. After being buried for three horrifying hours in the eleven-foot-deep hole, the boy was fortunately rescued. But the incident left an impression on geologist Erin Argyilan, who happened to be doing research at Mount Baldy that day and heard his parents' terrified screams. "I couldn't help in the...

Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn is in some hot water with the Jewish community after his campaign tweeted—and then quietly deleted—several messages urging backers to read an article comparing black Republican voters to Jews who collaborated with the Nazis.

Spring seems to be taking forever to arrive, but we are not really seeing the worst of the late spring. The Great Lakes, and Lake Superior is holding on to their ice. As a result the freighters that normally travel the Great Lakes are having their fair share of problems. This has been a very long winter season, beginning with the Great Lakes freezing on December 6th, not allowing Northwest Indiana steel mills to stockpile materials. Glen Nekvasil, vice president for Lake Carriers' Association explained that lake freighters are struggling to make the voyage across Lake Superior despite the thick...

In the small town of Lake Station, Ind., the news that the mayor, his wife and stepdaughter have been indicted on federal corruption charges this week came as little surprise. Residents in Lake Station, one of many working-class towns that fringe the northwest Indiana industrial centers of Gary and Hammond, have seen FBI agents leaving the town hall several times in recent years. On Thursday, Keith Soderquist and his wife and personal secretary, Deborah, were in federal court in Hammond to face charges of wire fraud and filing false tax returns, after allegedly using money from Soderquist’s campaign fund and...

After the 1848 revolution in France, the slogan of the non-socialist revolutionaries, lifted from a speech by Lamartine, became “the tricolor [flag] has gone around the world; the red flag [of socialism] has only gone around the Champs-de-Mars [a large park on the Left Bank of Paris].” ...................................................... John Kasich and Mike Pence, both governors of substantial Midwestern states, have been around the track many times. Both served with distinction in Congress. Kasich was a congressman from 1981 until 2001. He was a key player during the heady Gingrich days during which he became Chairman of the House Budget Committee.

If you’re wondering why this otherwise prosaic Bloomberg piece about Pence’s national future begins with a mention of the Koch brothers, it’s probably because the guy who wrote it worked for Paul Sarbanes and, briefly, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz before resuming his career as an impartial reporter.But never mind that. Is Pence the dark horse? “I have no doubt that he would make a great president,” said Steven Chancellor, the chief executive officer of Evansville, Indiana-based American Patriot Group, the parent of a company that makes ready-to-eat rations for the Pentagon. “He certainly distinguished himself in the House” and is “off...

Some righties are laughing about this on Twitter (Democrats against … personhood?), and granted, it’s a transparently desperate shiny-object attempt to change the subject from O-Care and the economy. But strategically it’s not half-bad, a decent play from a weak hand. They already owe not one but two of their swing-state Senate seats, in Missouri and Indiana, to Republican gaffes involving conception and rape. Go figure that they’d turn to conception again to try to minimize what looks like heavy losses in the Senate. The issue isn’t being discussed at all by Washington prognosticators these days. But you can bet...

A children’s book that is part of the Common Core curriculum portrays white voters as racists who would never vote for Obama for president. The book called, “Barack Obama,” says: “Some people said Americans weren’t ready for that much change. Sure Barack was a nice fellow, they said. But white voters would never vote for a black president,” the book reads. This is in spite of the fact that millions of whites voted for the sitting president. Follow TLR on Google+ Common Core’s implementation has gotten off to a rocky start. States like Indiana have opted out of the unified...

ANDERSON, Ind. — With a jury selected and attorneys minutes away from presenting opening statements, an Anderson teen pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 93-year-old woman. Iquise Taylor, 17, will be sentenced on four felony charges on May 5, with the plea deal he accepted Tuesday capping possible prison time to 50 years. In front of his own family and victim Amelia Rudolf's family, Taylor pleaded guilty to each charge read by Madison Circuit Court 3 Judge Thomas Newman — burglary, criminal deviate conduct, criminal confinement and strangulation. On July 16, Taylor kicked in the locked door to Rudolf's home...

Did the Welsh discover America? 26/8/2002 A team of historians and researchers announced today that Radio Carbon dating evidence, and the discovery of ancient British style artefacts and inscriptions in the American Midwest, provide the strongest indications yet" that British explorers, under the Prince Madoc ap Meurig, arrived in the country during the 6th Century and set up colonies there. Research team members have known the location of burial sites of Madoc's close relatives in Wales for some time, it emerged today; but they have decided to break their self-imposed silence in order that their research be fully known and...

Madoc In AmericaNative American Histories in the USA Is truth stranger than fiction? Of course it is; it always has been One subject that has been debated for the last four hundred years was whether or not a Khumric-Welsh Prince called Madoc discovered America. Queen Elizabeth I was persuaded by her advisors that this was so and the Khumric-Welsh discovery was put forward as somehow giving England a prior claim in the political wrangles over first rights in the New World of the Americas. No one ever thought to investigate the British records. Caradoc of Llancarfan wrote about it circa...