Free Republic

The Republican Party is launching a campaign to try to derail President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, teaming up with a conservative opposition research group to target vulnerable Democrats and impugn whomever Obama picks. A task force housed within the Republican National Committee will orchestrate attack ads, petitions and media outreach to bolster a strategy that Senate Republicans adopted as soon as Justice Antonin Scalia died last month: refusing to consider an Obama nominee out of hopes that the next president will be a Republican. The RNC will contract with America Rising Squared, an outside group targeting Democrats...

Bernie Sanders said Saturday that his supporters were not to blame for the unrest that led to the cancellation of a Donald Trump rally in Chicago, instead accusing the Republican front-runner of encouraging violence. "I don't think our supporters are inciting. What our supporters are doing is responding to a candidate who has, in fact, in many ways, encouraged violence," Sanders said Saturday at a press conference in Chicago. "When he talks about ... 'I wish we were in the old days when you could punch somebody in the head.' What do you think that says to his supporters?" Sanders...

The invective against Donald Trump has recently reached new heights, as his detractors have dusted off the old “Hitler” comparisons and brought them to the fore. Even Bill Maher jokingly compared The Donald to Hitler in a segment on his show. Needless to say, such misguided attempts at castigating Trump sickeningly diminish the real atrocities committed by the real Hitler. These people show how little they know, but in addition, last night they showed their hypocrisy. In advance of a Trump rally on the University of Illinois-Chicago campus on Friday night, protesters flooded the arena with the express goal of...

President Barack Obama says years of knee-jerk GOP hostility toward him has fueled Donald Trump’s rise, arguing Thursday that Republicans have no one to blame but themselves. Trump’s GOP rivals headed into their final debate before next week’s key primaries wondering if it was already too late to stop him from claiming their party’s nomination. Relishing the opportunity to ridicule what he called the GOP “circus,” Obama sought to tie Trump to his primary election opponents by claiming they see eye to eye on the issues — even if the flamboyant billionaire puts on a more provocative act. The president...

Politico reports: The White House chided Israel on Tuesday for the way it canceled a meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying it would have been “good manners” for Israeli officials to tell the White House directly.

Indirectly invoking the left-wing and Islamic narrative of Israel’s existence as the cause of political dysfunction in the Middle East, Senator Bernie Sanders implied to supporters at a campaign rally on Monday in Dearborn, Michigan - home of one of the nation’s largest Arab and Muslim communities - that “hatred and warfare” in the Middle east region were the fault of Israel. Praising former Democrat presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for their presumably good faith-endeavors to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict, Sanders implied that America unjustifiably treated the various parties unequally. In other words, allegedly favorable treatment of Israel at...

Pedestrian deaths surged by an estimated 10 percent last year as the economy improved, the price of gas plunged and motorists put more miles behind the wheel than ever before, according to an analysis of preliminary state traffic fatality data. The growing use of cellphones distracting drivers and walkers may also be partially to blame, states a report released by the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents governors’ highway safety offices. Warmer weather and shorter winters along with a greater awareness of health benefits may also be encouraging people to walk more. […] The data analyzed were from the first...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says the late Justice Antonin Scalia was like the brother she sometimes “wanted to kill” but loved and misses. Sotomayor told a crowd at the University of Illinois College of Law on Monday that the politically conservative Scalia often said things “just to annoy me.” But the liberal-leaning Sotomayor said that despite their disagreements, “on a personal level, he was very warm.” …

According to a piece in the feminist blog Bustle, the tradition of men proposing women is “problematic” because it “perpetuates rape culture.” Yes — not “problematic” because it perpetuates recklessly emotional social media posts, but because it “perpetuates rape culture.”

Justin Trudeau, the new, young prime minister of Canada with movie-star looks, is bringing his star power to the White House. The tall, dark-haired, 44-year-old scion of one of Canada's most famous politicians was sworn into office in November. Within weeks, President Barack Obama granted Trudeau one of the highest honors the U.S. reserves for close allies: a pomp-filled visit with plenty of time in private talks and in front of cameras with Obama, who remains popular in Canada. [...] "Obama was delighted that Trudeau got elected," said Nelson Wiseman, a University of Toronto political science professor, offering perspective on...

Hillary Clinton said Friday the nation needs a "new bargain" for the economy and called upon all the presidential candidates to offer a "credible strategy" for raising wages as her primary race against rival Bernie Sanders shifts to a series of Rust Belt contests. Clinton's address at Detroit Manufacturing Systems, a manufacturer of instrument panels for cars, offered her the opportunity to contrast herself with both Sanders and business mogul Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate. "Anyone running for president owes it to you to come up with real ideas, not an ideology, not an old set of talking points...

(Video) Political candidates who are telling voters that the economy is bad are living in an "alternative reality," President Obama said Friday. Touting the jobs report Friday morning that showed relatively strong growth, Obama accused people skeptical of the economy of engaging in "fantasy." "There seems to be an alternative reality from some of the political folks that America´s down in the dumps. It´s not. America´s pretty darn great right now," Obama said in brief remarks delivered at the White House. Obama boasted that the unemployment rate remained below 5 percent in February while 1.5 million workers have entered the

Journalists from The Associated Press who uncovered extensive slave labor in the Thai seafood industry won an investigative reporting prize from Harvard University's Shorenstein Center. The media and public policy research center bestowed the $25,000 Goldsmith Prize to Margie Mason, Robin McDowell, Martha Mendoza and Esther Htusan this week for their work on "Seafood from Slaves." [...] The finalists for the prize included the Guardian, The New York Times, the Tampa Bay Times, The Washington Post and InsideClimate News. ...

"Do you want me to punch you to the floor to realize I am still there?" The speaker was not a boxer trash-talking before a fight. It was Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is 92 and known for pugnacious comments. This one, to an interviewer from state TV, was in response to a question about retirement plans and who would succeed him. "Why 'successor' when I am still there?" Mugabe said in the interview aired Thursday night. "Why do you want a successor?" ...

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has married actress-model Jerry Hall in London.Mr Murdoch, whose News UK company publishes The Times and The Sun newspapers, and Miss Hall married during a ceremony at Spencer House. It is the fourth marriage for Mr Murdoch, 84, and the first for Miss Hall, 59, although she lived with singer Sir Mick Jagger for many years.Australian-born Mr Murdoch, who now has US nationality, split up with his third wife Wendi Deng in 2013.The pair will hold a private ceremony of celebration on Saturday at London's St Bride's Church, in Fleet Street, which proclaims itself as the...

Once reluctant to hype the U.S. economy's slow climb out of recession, President Barack Obama now is in cheerleader mode. "America's pretty darn great right now," Obama told reporters Friday as he celebrated a strong jobs report that he said proved Republicans' "doomsday rhetoric" is little more than "fantasy." Obama's brief remarks were a striking turn for a president who for most of his seven years in office has put on a sober face every time he spoke about the economy. Years of slow jobs growth and stagnant wages made the president and his team wary of seeming out of...

In thousands and thousands of unmarked cemeteries throughout the South, the gradual decay of human remains forms shallow depressions in the earth. There is no comprehensive list of such sites, and many have been destroyed. Still, in places such as Charlotte and Orange and Bedford and Hendersonville and Tuscaloosa, the ground undulates over those believed to have been slaves. There are places in the political landscape, too, where the ground shifts ever so slightly, where slavery has warped the electoral terrain. In the South, it seems, old prejudices have persisted. Southern counties that had more slaves on the eve of...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canadians would appreciate it if Americans paid more attention to what's going on around the globe. [...] Trudeau, elected in October, made the remarks after being asked what Canadians don't like about the U.S. [...] He also seemed to take a jab at an unnamed U.S. presidential candidate whose rise he attributed to Americans' lack of knowledge of foreign affairs. ...

An atheist member of the Arizona House denied the chance to deliver the chamber's opening prayer by majority Republican leaders last month got the opportunity Thursday, only to see leaders rule his prayer didn't pass muster and call up a Christian pastor. The opening prayer by Democrat Juan Mendez included a call to work to help the state and its residents flourish and to "honor the Constitution and the secular equality it brings." But he didn't pray to any deity, which infuriated some Republicans who are Christians. Mendez said before the session that he had been invited to deliver the...

Democrat Hillary Clinton gets it. Say what you will about her less flattering qualities, there is no doubt that she understands how deeply a skewed economy has taken a toll on the very people who power the United States. There is also no doubt that her likely opponent, Donald Trump, looks at the economy from the top down, through a lens that foregrounds corporate giants like Caterpillar and puts real people in the background. -snip Trump peddles the fiction that choking immigration, slashing taxes — especially for the wealthiest — and hitting multinational companies and other nations with debilitating tariffs...