Free Republic

HENNIKER, N.H. - For months, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has tried to poach libertarian-leaning voters here away from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Now, with Paul's exit from the race, Cruz has even more of an opening to make inroads with supporters of the Kentucky Republican. Cruz is running as a tea-party darling and evangelical Christian, constituencies that helped propel him to victory in the Iowa caucuses. But he is also attempting to expand that base, particularly with libertarian-leaning supporters. Here in New Hampshire, Cruz speaks of limited government, gun rights and privacy. "But part of the reason we're more competitive...

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker has a new book out: “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.” It’s mostly about those old devils the Koch brothers. Charles and David Koch are billionaires. They own a very big company. They also are very prominent philanthropists, giving hundreds of millions to cancer research, concert halls and other worthy causes. But what makes them hated and feared by progressives such as Mayer is their political work. They help fund some organizations and foundations, some purely educational, some partisan. To listen to the left, they...

Today I join some 20 other writers in making the case against Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. The venerable National Review, founded by William F. Buckley, Jr., assembled a group of diverse critics to argue that Trump is not a conservative, not an advocate of limited government, but rather (as the editorial asserts) “a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.”

Dear Reader (including those of you born in Canada), I guess we should start there. I find this birther stuff to be a lot like women's prison movies: compelling, entertaining, and totally ridiculous. Other than the presidency, there's no place in American life where the distinction between "naturalized" and "natural-born" citizenship matters. But imagine if it did? Imagine that your American-born mother just happened to give birth to you in Canada or Belize while on vacation. Your American-born mom and dad bring you home days later and raise you exactly as they would have had they been in Cleveland the...

An Alabama man remains in jail on drug and weapons charges two days after his wife was found dead after both are suspected of overdosing in the Cincinnati hospital room of their daughter... Cincinnati police were first called to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center at about 11:30 a.m. local time Thursday about a potential overdose... There they found Mary Ann Landers dead on the floor and her husband, Wesley, unresponsive in the bathroom, says Cincinnati police Lt. Stephen Saunders. Mary was found in the room with a needle in her arm, Saunders says; and though police believe that she...

Officials said Dean May Jr., 31, called police after he got ripped off while trying to buy methamphetamine Wednesday night. They said May told them he paid a woman $60 to buy the illegal drug, but she left with his money.

If you believe more gun control by your government is going to save lives, you are being naïve. The champion of all the mass killings in this world is always a tyrannical government. Where I came from, China had killed thousands of the students by its own government during the massacre of Tian An Men square in 1989. I surely wish my fellow Chinese citizens back then had guns like this one I am holding in the picture. I am a Chinese immigrant and an American citizen by choice. I once was a slave before and I will never be...

Sioux Center, Iowa -- Ted Cruz was running a few minutes late for his appearance at Dordt College, having to reply to the latest provocation from Donald Trump without angering the erratic businessman. Earlier in the day, Trump had wondered aloud whether Cruz might be ineligible for the presidency because he was born in Canada. Cruz has sedulously avoided criticizing Trump, even as he eagerly attacks other candidates. So Cruz once again offered a kind of jocular nonresponse response. He tweeted "My response to @realdonaldtrump calling into question my natural born citizenship?" with a link to the Happy Days episode...

Gary Johnson, a two-term Republican governor of New Mexico who became the Libertarian Party's 2012 presidential nominee, will officially announce his 2016 campaign on Fox News on Wednesday.

Bolick is a veteran litigator whose long record includes arguing and winning cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Arizona Supreme Court, and various state and federal courts. In 1991, along with William H. "Chip" Mellor, Bolick co-founded the Institute for Justice, a national public interest law firm. In 2007 Bolick joined the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, where he most recently served as vice president for strategic litigation. It's no exaggeration to describe Clint Bolick as one of the central figures behind the rise and success of today's libertarian legal movement. Bolick's legal theories and litigation strategies—some of which...

There's a reason liberals have been so successful in advancing their agenda in the past few decades. It's not just electoral victories they've played a part, and it's easier to make things happen if you win elections. But the main factor in their victories is one thing we conservatives are losing sight of: patience. In the time of Twitter breaking news, Tinder, microwaves, On Demand, etc., patience is as dead as detectives wearing Fedoras and calling people "Mac." But it's key in politics, and conservatives have forgotten that. Ronald Reagan the real man, not the myth created with his name...

Dear Muslim Republicans, I share your outrage and hurt at Donald Trump's recent comments and policy suggestions about Muslims. I share your outrage and hurt that he still is polling well among Republicans. I share your outrage and hurt that we should even have to discuss such matters. But obviously we do.

Out promoting his new film “The Hateful Eight,” longtime libertarian Kurt Russell opened up again about his politics, this time to the Daily Beast, where he pointed out an obvious fact: that Bill Maher is nothing close to a libertarian. “I’m not a Bill Maher libertarian,” Russell said. “That’s faux-libertarianism. He doesn’t know what it is. I like him, and he’s a nice guy, but seriously, that’s not libertarianism.”

Hey man you wanna go out and get a beer and burn one or something, I can't man the police they got my car, What do you mean the police got your car, Just what I said the police got my car, The police got your car,

The Soros-Koch Brothers Criminals Lobby At a time of rising crime across the nation, Dr. Tina Trent exposes how George Soros and the Koch Brothers have joined forces to empty the prisons of illegal aliens and other criminals. Trent says the Koch Brothers are libertarians, not conservatives, and that "They're more like George Soros than not." The bills they are pushing are S. 2123 and H.R. 3713. Trent, an advocate for victims of crime, says the "criminal justice reform" legislation will modify the mandatory minimum sentences that have been put hardened criminals in jail and reduced crime. But many conservatives...

Three of the four sides of the Republican Party are combining into one powerful group — conservatives — Ted Cruz says seizing that combined group is the key to securing the GOP presidential nomination next summer. "The players that were expected to be formidable in those lanes have not got the traction they had hoped," the Texas Senator told Politico in an exclusive interview.  "The most encouraging thing I would say is that I think three of the lanes are collapsing into one...the evangelical lane, the conservative tea party lane, and the libertarian lane are all collapsing into the conservative...

When Rand Paul entered the GOP presidential race, he sought to stitch together a distinct coalition: his father's fiercely loyal libertarian supporters, millennials, and others new to Republican politics whom he hoped to draw with his provocative stances on privacy and marijuana laws. Six months later, none of that is working. Paul is a low single-digit blip in the polls. He barely meets the threshold to participate in the next debate later this month. Influential conservatives are urging him to bail out. ... As the Kentucky senator struggles, a sometime ally turned rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, is working...

On Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul, a candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, took some questions on a livestream about his campaign. One of the questions he fielded was one that was the third-most popular on Google, which was, “Is Rand Paul still running for president?” “Uh, I don’t know,” Paul replied. “Wouldn’t be doing this dumbass livestreaming if I weren’t. So yes, I still am running for president. Get over it.”

Earns 51% of voter approval in Republican Liberty Caucus Straw Poll — just a few points behind Rand Paul, among Libertarians HOUSTON, Texas – Presidential candidate Ted Cruz continues to shore up his strong support among libertarian voters, earning 51 percent support from voters participating in the straw poll held at the Republican Liberty Caucus in Nashua, NH over the weekend.Cruz received 399 votes (51%), just a few points behind Rand Paul’s 445 votes (57%).“We are very encouraged by the growing support we are seeing among liberty voters in the early states and across the country,” Cruz said. “I have...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Two years ago, Augustus Sol Invictus walked from central Florida to the Mojave Desert and spent a week fasting and praying, at times thinking he wouldn't survive. In a pagan ritual to give thanks when he returned home, he killed a goat and drank its blood. Now that he's a candidate for U.S. Senate, the story is coming back to bite him. The chairman of the Libertarian Party of Florida has resigned to call attention to Invictus' candidacy in hopes that other party leaders will denounce him. Adrian Wyllie, who was the Libertarian candidate for governor...