Free Republic

... Regardless of how he fares here, Cruz will be in a strong position headed into the string of upcoming Southern primaries; a second-place or strong-third place finish could put him in a commanding one. Cruz's biggest opening is with...

After last week's surprise statements by two top generals that women should sign up for the draft just like men, Sen. Ted Cruz has set himself apart from his Republican rivals in the race for president by saying unequivocally that the idea is "nuts." When questioned at a Senate committee hearing last week, the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Gen. Robert Neller and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley both said they thought women should have to register for Selective Service when they turn eighteen, just like men. During Saturday's presidential candidate debate in Manchester, N.H., everyone on stage...

One of the under-reported stories leading up to Ted Cruz' win in the Iowa Republican Caucus was his ability to attract libertarian-leaning members of the GOP base. With Rand Paul in the race, it seemed unlikely he would be able to convince New Hampshire's decidedly more libertarian "liberty wing" to follow suit. Paul dropped out of the race last week, and this week seven of the Kentucky senator's biggest Granite State supporters announced they are backing Cruz now. State Rep. J.R. Hoell was among the first to switch. The mechanical engineer now in his third term serving New Hampshire House...

... Now that Cruz regularly polls toward the top of an ever-shrinking field, his early tenure bears closer scrutiny. Cruz has gained fame as a social conservative and an unwavering opponent of Obamacare. In his first major leadership role, however, he developed economic policy as the director of the Federal Trade Commission's Office of Policy Planning...

Just in: Rand Paul's New Hampshire state chairman Sen. Avard has endorsed Ted Cruz's campaign, he tells a crowd here...

There’s a new push by Bernie Sanders supporters to try to lure Rand Paul supporters into the #FeeltheBern fold. Julie Borowski was the first to notice a meme circulating around the web, and put it up on her Facebook page. First off, it’s doubtful Borowski is even considering Sanders as a potential candidate because of her videos on economic freedom and past criticism of Sanders. But it’s not surprising at all to see Sanders supporters go after Paul ones based on the stances listed in the meme. After all, Paul supporters have targeted Sanders supporters over certain issues before turning...

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has picked up endorsements from six New Hampshire lawmakers who previously supported Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) presidential bid. From The New Hampshire Union Leader: The six state lawmakers endorsing Cruz are: Rep. Max Abramson of Seabrook, Rep. Eric Eastman of Nashua, Rep. Harold French of Franklin, Rep. Larry Gagne of Manchester, Rep. JR Hoell of Dunbarton, and Rep. Mark McLean of Manchester.

Now that Rand Paul is out of the race for the White House his father Ron Paul, who ran in 2008 and 2012, isn't impressed by Ted Cruz's attempts to pick up the "free market" libertarian banner. "You take a guy like Cruz, people are liking the Cruz - they think he's for the free market, and [in reality] he's owned by Goldman Sachs. I mean, he and Hillary have more in common than we would have with either Cruz or Trump or any of them so I just don't think there is much picking," Paul said of the Texas...

The liberty movement must help elect Senator Ted Cruz the next President of the United States. Many of us in the liberty movement saw the handwriting on the wall some time ago, as far as the Rand Paul campaign was concerned. He came in a distant fifth in Iowa, a state many thought he would win a year ago. His polling looked bleak in the other early states, and he was short on resources. He likely could have gone on, but instead, suspended his campaign Wednesday morning. He'll focus on securing re-election to the Senate, which he should easily accomplish....

Principled limited government constitutional conservative Ken Cuccinelli has issued an appeal to Rand Paul supporters to vote for Ted Cruz now that Senator Paul is out of the race for president, and it is an appeal that we wholeheartedly endorse and invite our liberty-minded friends to accept. As Cuccinelli noted in a letter to Senator Paul’s supporters, “Rand has been the most passionate defender of civil liberties and personal privacy – not just in the U.S. Senate, but anywhere in government today.” Ted Cruz and Rand PaulWe agree. Cuccinelli went on to respectfully suggest that when it comes to protecting...

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...