Free Republic

Billie Sol Estes, a flamboyant Texas huckster who became one of the most notorious men in America in 1962 when he was accused of looting a federal crop subsidy program, has died. He was 88... One of the strangest episodes in his life involved the death of a U.S. Department of Agriculture official who was investigating Estes just before he was accused in the fertilizer tank case. Henry Marshall's 1961 death was initially ruled a suicide even though he had five bullet wounds. But in 1984, Estes told a grand jury that Johnson had ordered the official killed to prevent...

Herseth Sandlin passes on Senate run, leaving Republicans with early edge to win seat. ... Democrats had targeted the onetime congresswoman, who served from 2004 to 2011, as their top recruit in a seat currently held by retiring Sen. Tim Johnson. Even if Johnson had decided to run for another term, Republicans would have considered the solidly-Republican state one of their top pickup opportunities of the 2014 election. ... The state's former GOP governor, Mike Rounds, has already declared he will seek the Republican Party's nomination. While Rounds announced his campaign early and has high name-identification in the state, he...

The images coming from Newtown last fall were nothing less than a nightmare come true. Every American was saddened and disturbed by the actions of a seriously disturbed young man who shot his way into a school and committed mass murder. Immediately afterward, President Obama announced that Vice President Biden would lead a "comprehensive" review of the causes of this kind of senseless violence. Most Americans supported a complete conversation to determine the root causes. Unfortunately, what could have been a meaningful conversation possibly leading to effective measures designed to better protect Americans was quickly hijacked by the anti-gun lobby....

NEW YORK — J.C. Penney's board of directors has ousted CEO Ron Johnson after only 16 months on the job as a risky turnaround strategy backfired and led to massive losses and steep sales drops. In a statement issued late Monday, the department store chain said that it has rehired Johnson's predecessor Mike Ullman, 66, who was CEO of the department store chain for seven years until November 2011. The announcement comes as a growing chorus of critics including a former Penney CEO Allen Questrom called for his resignation as they lost faith in turnaround strategy. Penney reported dismal fourth-quarter...

A year and a half into his dismal attempt to turn around J.C. Penney, Ron Johnson was ousted as chief executive on Monday and replaced with his predecessor, Myron E. Ullman III, as the board searched for a new direction for the struggling retailer. The board said Mr. Ullman, who was at the helm for seven years, “is well positioned to quickly analyze the situation J.C. Penney faces and take steps to improve the company’s performance.” Penney’s shares, after initially rising 10 percent after hours on reports that Mr. Johnson was out, then headed downward and were off more than...

Father Earl 'Magic' Johnson II 'Couldn't be prouder!' Wicked gossip rag TMZ caught Johnson's gay, 20-y.o. son out on the Sunset strip this weekend while the lad was home from NYU for the holiday: man is this kid laying-it-on-thick with the purse, mink stole, and effeminate accent- OK we get it already, dude.  Just remember when you're paying $100 for a Lakers ticket that the owner's son is wearing mink coats with diamond necklaces to five-star restaurants while daddy Magic sends the rest to Obama. He told the interviewer he's a big Lakers fan still though, and is 'hoping and praying' for...

Hall of Fame basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson spoke out on behalf of President Obama’s healthcare law on Monday. “ObamaCare is working. I talk to a lot of CEOs of hospitals. It is working,” he said on MSNBC. Johnson was speaking on "NOW with Alex Wagner" about the NCAA basketball tournament, but he veered into politics at the end of the segment, lauding conservative Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) decision to accept the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. II’m glad that Gov. Scott down in Florida accepted ObamaCare because it will work,” he said.

Is he right? I don't think so. Boehner has caved many times already and he still got elected to the speakership. How many times have I pondered 'is THIS the time the Republicans will show some backbone' and each time I am disappointed. Girding for disappointment again: WI Sen. Ron Johnson warned yesterday that he believes John Boehner would lose his speakership if he caved on higher taxes. "I don't quite honestly believe that Speaker Boehner would be speaker if that happens. I think he would lose his speakership," Johnson told FOX News' "Special Report. Boehner is sending the right...

JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson is mounting a radical overhaul of the flailing department-store chain — but that doesn’t mean he’s stuck at the office on nights and weekends. Over the past year, the former Apple exec only rarely spends a full work week at the retailer’s headquarters in Plano, Texas, sources told The Post. “He’s there four days a week, if that much,” according to one source close to the company. Commuting on a company jet from his home in Palo Alto, Calif., sources say Johnson stays during the week at Dallas’s swanky Ritz-Carlton hotel — a perk subsided by...

Turns out, the language one uses in speeches on the House floor is no small matter. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) today apologized for using what he terms “the m-word” during a speech the previous evening.

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) says, “corporations control the patterns of thinking” in the United States and that the Bill of Rights to the Constitution should be amended so that the government is given the power to restrict freedom of speech. "We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations," said Johnson. “These corporations, along with the people they support, other millionaires who they’re putting into office, are stealing your government. They’re stealing the government and the U.S. Supreme Court was a big enabler with the Citizens United case,” Johnson...

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson says he's satisfied with his 2012 run, but he is keeping quiet on whether he'll take another shot at the White House or another elective office. "Ours is a mission accomplished,” Johnson told FoxNews.com. “We put a true small-government, individual-freedom option on the ballot in virtually every state and have assembled an organization that will carry that message forward.”

Hover over Google's state map at link.

When it comes to Who’s No. 1 in Woody Johnson’s life, the Jet owner has a simple answer: M-I-T-T, Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. One day after his Jets suffered an embarrassing 34-0 loss at home to San Francisco he deemed “unacceptable”, Johnson was asked on Bloomberg TV Monday if he would rather have a winning Jets’ season or a victorious presidential election for Mitt Romney. Hope you are sitting down Jet fans.

Washington — Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson isn’t going out without a fight. The former New Mexico governor this week took his case for inclusion in the presidential debates to U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Johnson’s presidential campaign filed an antitrust lawsuit alleging that the Commission on Presidential Debates is colluding with the Republican and Democratic parties to prevent third-party candidates from participating. “It’s antitrust. We’re being excluded by a private organization, and it is fundamentally unfair,” Johnson told the Journal on Friday. The first presidential debate is Wednesday. Two more debates are scheduled for Oct. 16 and Oct....

The usual wisdom is that, as election day grows closer, support for third-party candidates tends to shrivel as the voting public heeds the tribal war drums and comes home to Team Red or Team Blue in a ritualistic display of political masochism that could be topped only by the sight of actual hair-shirted flagellants lined up to enter the polling booths. That third-party shrinkage may not be happening this year, though — or not yet, at least. A new poll from Ohio shows Gary Johnson gaining support, even as press reports emphasize the hold-your-nose-quality in which both major-party candidates marinate,...

The prevailing wisdom is that Gary Johnson would pull votes away from Romney. But I disagree. Johnson's libertarian philosophy is, in reality, quite attractive to a lot of libs, especially younger ones. Johnson is strongly in favor of legalizing marijuana. I can see many college students, Occupy types, and gray-bearded aging 1960s hippies liking that message. And I think a lot of them, who you would normally expect to vote for Obama, will vote for Johnson. I think Johnson being in the race could be a significant positive for the GOP.

In their zeal to exploit Friday’s shooting near the Empire State Building in New York City, anti-gunners are deliberately overlooking some facts and adding their own agenda items instead. Kudos to the Seattle Times for not picking up on the rhetoric in its selection of stories about the incident to publish. Then, again, one might wonder if the Times is just playing down the event because the “mass shooting” that had initially been reported now has been revealed to have been caused by police gunfire, not dead gunman Jeffrey T. Johnson. His pistol was an old Star .45-caliber semi-auto, a...

the poor turnaround that Ron Johnson has engineered at JCPenney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP). Our take is that this is the beginning of the end and is a prelude to Ron Johnson's termination. Shares have gone from $60 five years ago to under $25 again, and the 52-week range is $19.06 to $43.18. Johnson has been on the job now for just under a year ... Perhaps chimpanzees could have done as well. Howard Davidowitz, of the retail consulting firm Davidowitz & Associates, said on Bloomberg TV that Ron Johnson will "be a goner" in another nine months if this...

Ron Johnson . . . By Kathryn Jean Lopez August 20, 2012 12:26 P.M . . . calls for Akin to step aside after his controversial comments. Akin will be on Mike Huckabee’s radio show today.

The Former Governor of New Mexico and current Libertarian Party candidate for president Gary Johnson isn’t likely going to become the next president, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have an effect on the outcome of the election come November.Johnson briefly participated in the Republican primaries and debates before switching over to the Libertarian ticket, and per Fox News, Johnson is polling about 5% nationwide, which isn’t particularly bad for a third party candidate. Despite his low numbers, Johnson isbeginning to show a little pull in a few battleground states out west which includes New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado....

Miami Dolphins wide receiver Chad Johnson was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence Saturday night after allegedly head-butting his wife in front of their house. Johnson was arrested after police arrived on the scene and found Evelyn Lozada with lacerations on her forehead. He told police the two of them had accidentally bumped heads. According to police, Lozada confronted her husband after finding a receipt for condoms, which started a "heated argument."

<p>President Barack Obama’s re-election effort is paying close attention to two candidates mounting third-party campaigns for the presidency, believing they could draw votes from Republican rival Mitt Romney and help Obama win a few tightly contested states.</p> <p>One candidate is Virgil Goode, a former conservative Virginia congressman who is running as a member of the Constitution Party. The other is Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico who is the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee.</p>

A Romney campaign official has blasted Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, as an ‘eccentric, odd fellow’ whose public attack on the Republican candidate was ‘unbecoming’ and an indication of his bias towards President Barack Obama. The official said that Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘wisecrack’ about it being harder to stage an Olympic Games in London than ‘in the middle of nowhere’ – an apparent reference to Salt Lake City, where Romney oversaw the 2002 Winter Olympics – was ‘probably appropriate, albeit awkward’ and unfortunate for Romney ‘Johnson on the other hand lived up to his reputation as an eccentric, odd...

A man is in extremely critical condition after he led sheriff's deputies on a chase through Offutt Air Force and was shot by authorities. Sarpy County Sheriff Jeff Davis said he believes an Offutt civilian officer shot the man as he was attempting to leave the base. The identity of the man, who was taken by helicopter to Creighton University Medicval Center, was unknown, as was the name of the officer who shot him, Davis said. Davis said deputies tried to pull over the man's blue Honda sedan on Highway 73-75 about 3:15 p.m. because they believed the car was...

Levin talks about what he says few have the guts to talk about, and that is how the Senate GOP establishment, McConnell, is trying to minimize conservative Sen. Ron Johnson who has made it clear he isn’t in the Senate to buddy up with the leadership, but rather to represent his constituents and fight for conservatism. And on the other hand, the establishment types like McCain are teaming up with one of the go-along-to-get-along increasingly liberal senators, Dick Lugar, to help him defeat a great conservative he’s running against. So while they claim to be conservative, what they really want...

Freshman GOP Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.) is looking to purge nearly his entire Washington, D.C.-based legislative team, according to multiple Republican sources familiar with the situation. Johnson's frustration with his legislative staff has been one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington for months, those close to Republican Conference politics said.

Latest Doc Dump Shows GSA's Johnson Planned to Meet with Solyndra but Changed MindBy John Parkinson | ABC OTUS News – 8 hrs ago The House Energy and Commerce committee released documents late Wednesday that show former General Services Administration administrator Martha Johnson had planned to meet with Solyndra in California at the same time GSA employees attended a lavish Las Vegas conference, but she changed her mind just days before her trip. An investigation into that conference and other wasteful spending at GSA led to Johnson's resignation earlier this month. Johnson did not attend the Solyndra meeting scheduled for...

One year after the passage of ObamaCare, this paper published an op-ed I wrote ("ObamaCare and Carey's Heart") about how America's health-care system saved my daughter's life, and describing how implementing this law will limit innovation, lead to rationing, and lower the quality of care. Now, two years out, I would like to focus on the budgetary disaster. As a candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly claimed that his health-care plan would lower annual family health-insurance premiums by $2,500 before the end of his first term as president. But the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that the average family premium has increased...

A Senate runoff election between Lyndon Johnson and Coke Stevenson in 1948 was a fierce contest. For five days after the election, Stevenson believed he had won the closest senatorial election in American history. Out of nearly a million votes cast, he had a 112-vote lead.

"Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark." Samuel Johnson This quote just made me think of Breitbart. It's so unfair.

Rep. Johnson, I won’t begin this with letter with the salutation “Dear,” because I only have contempt for you, and the disgusting responses you gave to The Daily Caller when they asked you about the Congressional investigation into the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” international criminal conspiracy (see article for video--Examiner.com does not accomodate the html code to embed it here). Has Guam tipped over and capsized yet? And have you “fl[own] a space shuttle” through the “gun show loophole” yet—you know that “hole in our gun control laws” you lie about when you say “untold thousands of unlicensed private weapons...

Gary Johnson will quit the Republican primaries and seek the Libertarian Party nomination instead, POLITICO has learned. The former two-term New Mexico governor, whose campaign for the GOP nomination never caught fire, will make the announcement at a press conference in Santa Fe on Dec. 28. Johnson state directors will be informed of his plans on a campaign conference call Tuesday night, a Johnson campaign source told POLITICO. The move has been expected for weeks — Johnson had run a New Hampshire-centric effort that never got him past a blip in the polls. He appeared at only two nationally televised...

The Senate on Saturday morning approved a two-month extension of the payroll tax holiday, the centerpiece of President Obama’s jobs agenda, setting up Congress to revisit the contentious issue next year. The legislation would also extend unemployment benefits and freeze scheduled cuts to doctors’ Medicare reimbursements until March. It was approved by a vote of 89-10. Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) voted against the package. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) did not vote. The...

Remember the Gerald Walpin affair? Republican Sen. Charles Grassley does. Walpin was the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the organization that runs the AmeriCorps service program. In June 2009, Walpin received a call from Norman Eisen, who was then the Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform. Eisen told Walpin he had an hour to either resign or be fired. Eisen's call appeared to violate the 2008 Inspectors General Reform Act, which is designed to protect inspectors general from political interference. The Act requires the president to give Congress 30 days'...

Last night, Presidential candidate and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson announced during an on-line Town Hall Thursday night that he supports civil marriage for gay Americans. Having long supported civil unions for gay couples, Johnson's decision to endorse gay marriage is based on "a great deal of deliberation, discussion with the gay community, and a conclusion that government has no business choosing who should be allowed the benefits of marriage and who should not." Announcing his support for gay marriage, Johnson said, "As a believer in individual freedom and keeping government out of personal lives, I simply cannot find...

Gary Johnson's savage beating saved Clinton in 1992 (this is not in the book) Clinton Chronicles transcript | 1993 Posted on Thursday, June 17, 2004 9:13:47 AM by doug from upland Note: Scumbag testified under oath to a one-time affair with Flowers. Everyone in the state of Arkansas knew he had a 12-year affair with her. Had Gary Johnson not been beaten up and left for dead, his tape would have verified Flowers' claims and the Clintons would have been sent back to Arkansas. No, I do not believe Clinton ordered it. People sometimes just know what they are supposed...

Gary Johnson is running for the Republican nomination for president. If you didn’t know that, you’re not alone. Precious few people do. He is the longest of long shots, with little money, a bare-bones grassroots organization and parsimonious media coverage, to say the least. He has had to fight through the indignity of being uninvited to most of the candidates’ debates. When polls are taken about voters’ choices, his name is often simply omitted from the list, lending him little chance to develop support momentum. That he’s being ignored is not surprising, given his shoestring budget in a campaign where...

Secretary of State Unveils Secure & Fair Elections Initiative OCTOBER 12, 2011 Ruth Johnson to push for tougher laws, clean voter rolls and greater election integrity LANSING, MI -- Secretary of State Ruth Johnson today announced a comprehensive plan to help ensure integrity in Michigan's elections through stronger campaign finance laws, new policies and the expanded use of technology. The package is known as the Secure and Fair Elections, or SAFE Initiative. "There is nothing more important to America, to our values and democracy, than clean and fair elections," Johnson said at a press conference held at the Secretary of...

BOCA RATON— When Skylar Johnson was asked to be in a spelling bee at her school, she wondered why since they had never had one before. She had no idea it was part of a plot. U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Therron Johnson surprised Skylar, 9, on Friday during a mock fourth-grade spelling bee at Boca Raton Elementary School. When she correctly spelled s-e-r-g-e-a-n-t, her father stepped from behind the curtain.

Just took phone poll. Asked if election held today would I vote Obama or GOP? Asked two times, slightly different in wording, then asked Obama or Gary Johnson? Do I trust the american people having my best interest or the governing powers? Do I consider myself part of the movement known as The Tea Party? What??? Didn't ask me the choice between Obama or any other candidate EXCEPT Johnson specifically. Says quite a bit.....strange questions.

BET founder Robert Johnson on the "FOX News Sunday" program: "Well, I think the president has to recalibrate his message. You don't get people to like you by attacking them or demeaning their success. You know, I grew up in a family of 10 kids, first one to go to college, and I've earned my success. I've earned my right to fly private if I choose to do so. "And by attacking me it is not going to convince me that I should take a bigger hit because I happen to be wealthy. You know, it is the old --...

In an interview on CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, the founder of BET,(Black Entertainment Television) Robert L. Johnson, a successful businessman in his own right, who founded BET in 1980, then sold it to Viacom, for three billion dollars.Mr. Johnson, now at the present time chairman of RLJ took the time to be seated for an interview with Mr. Pelley in this brief interview. When I took the time to watch this interview, even though Mr. Johnson himself is not running for any public office; as a businessman he should be given CREDIT for telling it just like it...

Broadcast on: FOXNEWS Broadcast time: 9pm EDT/6pm PDT The NINE(!) Candidates: Michele Bachmann Bachmann is serving her 3rd full term in the U.S. House. Founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, worked as a tax attorney, and was a foster mother for 23 teenagers. She is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Herman Cain Cain is the former chief executive of Godfather's Pizza and former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. He lost the Georgia Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat in 2004. He was recently the host of Atlanta-based radio show....

… Participants: Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich Date/Time: Thursday, August 11th – 9pm EST / 8pm CST on the Fox News Channel ...

Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal. The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him. She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald – long claimed to have been a lone assassin – merely part of a much larger conspiracy. Texas-born Mr Johnson, who...

... Why these people? Their appearance here is based on the interest they have shown in potentially running for President, and in the interest that the news media has in them, plus their standing in preference polling. We will be adding other people to – and removing people from – the grid as these levels of interest shift. Why these categories? The 12 categories on this grid deal with the vast majority of problems with current immigration policies that grant more than 1 million permanent work visas to immigrants each YEAR, and which allow an estimated 7 million jobs in...

Johnson & Johnson said Thursday that it's reducing the maximum daily dose of its Extra Strength Tylenol pain reliever to lower risk of accidental overdose from acetaminophen, its active ingredient and the top cause of liver failure. The company's McNeil Consumer Healthcare Division said the change affects Extra Strength Tylenol sold in the U.S. -- one of many products in short supply in stores due to a string of recalls. Starting sometime this fall, labels on Extra Strength Tylenol packages will now list the maximum daily dose as six pills, or a total of 3,000 milligrams, down from eight pills...

Republican Leadership Conference kicks off C.J. Ciaramella Top Republicans will flock to New Orleans today for the Republican Leadership Conference, where presidential hopefuls and GOP leaders will try to woo the party faithful during the three-day event. The annual conference, formerly the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, has become a bellwether for the Republican Party, especially because of its audience straw polls. Presidential candidates speaking this year include Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann Texas Rep. Ron Paul, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman. (DNC chair looking forward to working...