Free Republic

In Revenge of the Sith, the emperor replaces Count Dooku, his elderly apprentice played by Christopher Lee, with a younger, more vigorous apprentice with puppydog eyes named Anakin Skywalker. It looks like GOP insiders and the Chamber of Commerce crowd have done much the same thing. Bush was supposed to be their anointed candidate but is faltering, and their backup candidate, Chris Christie, seems stuck in the polls. So they have chosen a new and more powerful apprentice for Bush, in the form of John Kasich. Kasich is starting to gain traction in New Hampshire, which is filled with refugees...

WCVB 5 Boston, Mass Great white shark dies after getting beached in Wellfleet UPDATED 6:50 AM EDT Sep 07, 2015 WELLFLEET, Mass. —A great white shark died Sunday after beaching itself in Wellfleet. Beachgoers help rescue stranded great white shark A great white shark that became stranded on a Chatham beach was kept wet by beachgoers until it could be pulled back into the water by officials Monday. More Beachgoers tried to save the shark by pouring sea water on it. Photos show beachgoers throwing buckets of sea water onto the shark and building a stream in the sand. It...

Jeb Bush is still the GOP establishment favorite, with loads of campaign cash and a top-notch political organization. But he certainly doesn’t have the same air of inevitability that Mitt Romney had in 2012. Even some of Bush’s biggest fans in the Beltway are privately wondering whether the former Florida governor has what it takes to out-muscle current frontrunner Donald Trump and emerge next summer with the GOP presidential nomination in hand. Bush is still grappling with the legacies of his brother and father, two former presidents, in a year where voters are rallying behind outsiders. The 17-candidate GOP field...

Secretary of State John Kerry predicted on Thursday that nine in 10 Americans would back President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran once it has been in place for a year or more. “The fact is, a lot of polls show that the country actually supports it, and that’s a fairly even divide,” Kerry said of enthusiasm for the agreement now, according to The Huffington Post. “I think that’s pretty good, considering the amount of money that’s spent with myths being promulgated.” “If Iran destroys its Arak plutonium reactor core, filing it with cement, and it exists no longer, and Arak...

Two Labor Day Polls Portend ‘Splodey Heads For The Anti-Trump Advocates…. Earlier today Gallup released a poll showing that Trump is the most heavily favored candidate (63% Approval Rating) amid Republicans. A devastating defeat for the establishment GOP (GOPe) who are seeking to push their preferred candidate Jeb Bush. Such substantive favorable opinion of candidate Trump puts the RNC/GOPe in a difficult position as they plot to begin their collective assault against the unpalatable frontrunner. But tonight the news for the Vichy Republican crowd is infinite degrees worse. As they plot the best course of Trump’s annihilation – national polls...

Ann Coulter's heckler (here, here, here, and here) may have been a kook, but he was right about one thing: many whites came to this country as slaves. With copious help from sources, I will recount a famous episode of Scots enslavement by the British. On September 3, 1650, the British, under Oliver Cromwell, defeated the Scots, under David Leslie, at the Battle of Dunbar. (See 1892 Gardiner's Atlas - Battle of Dunbar September 3rd 1650 for a nice picture of the British and Scots positions.) The British took some 10,000 Scots prisoners, several of whom were, on September 6,...

In 2013, more than 200,000 people on net fled states with Democrat governors for ones run by Republicans, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by Americans for Tax Reform. "People move away from high tax states to low tax states. Every tax refugee is sending a powerful message to politicians," said ATR President Grover Norquist. "They are voting with their feet. Leaders in Texas and Florida are listening. New York and California are not." That year, Democrat-run states lost a net 226,763 taxpayers, bringing with them nearly $15.7 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI). That same year,...

Every senator who accepted money from the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IPAC) should be impeached and removed from office — or at very least, soundly defeated the next time he or she comes up for reelection. But the enemedia, true to form, will cover for them and do everything it can to keep them on the government payroll. (“Gillibrand and other pro-Dealers got Iran cash,” by Jeff Dunetz, The Jewish Star, September 3, 2015 (thanks to Banafsheh One of the many unanswered questions about P5+1 agreement with Iran is why so many Congressional Democrats are rallying behind the President...

I first became suspicious of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley when Mitt Romney came to South Carolina and serenaded her with "Happy Birthday to You" while Nikki stood there blushing and preening, like a teenager on a first date. Not knowing very much about her politics, I didn't think anything more of it, until yesterday, when Haley attacked Donald Trump. I attack Donald Trump too, but in a good way, raising the inconsistencies of his record. Haley, on the other hand, attacks him from the left for being too tough on illegal aliens and falsely claiming that Trump is against...

Gender-neutral pronouns have hit Harvard.“The Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ registration tool now gives students the option to choose preferred gender pronouns for the first time,” The Harvard Crimson campus newspaper reports. On the page that typically asks students to write down their gender marker—examples of which include “male,” “female,” and “transgender”—they could also manually write in preferred gender pronouns when they registered this week. Examples on the page included “ze, hir, hirs” and “they, them, theirs.”FAS Registrar Michael P. Burke said the change, which administrators have discussed for a number of years, was intended to “make students feel more...

At long last, this whole dumb national nightmare is (hopefully) over. In a shocking announcement on Thursday morning, Judge Richard M. Berman ruled against the NFL, nullifying Tom Brady’s four-suspension for his role in the Deflategate scandal. His ruling confirms what many of us have long thought — that the NFL overstepped its bounds in suspending Tom Brady, doing so with nothing but circumstantial evidence.

A judge let the air out of "Deflategate" Thursday, erasing New England quarterback Tom Brady's four-game suspension for a controversy the NFL claimed threatened football's integrity. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league will appeal.

ESPN NFL reporter Adam Schefter reacted on Thursday’s “SportsCenter” to New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s four-game “Deflate-gate” suspension being uplifted by federal judge Richard Berman, calling it an “embarrassment for the NFL.”

f the 2016 presidential election ends up a contest between 1992’s surnames — Bush vs. Clinton — we will have failed in some way as a republic. The case for Jeb Bush is not exactly clear, though he enjoys an advantage vis-à-vis Mrs. Clinton in that the case against Herself is as clear as can be: She’s inept and dishonest. Bush was a good governor of Florida — a long time ago, politically speaking. Things were different then: His time as governor coincided with a real-estate bubble that relieved him and other Florida leaders of the need to make a...

Breaking.

Kerry admits that, despite the deal, Iran will continue to back terrorist groups across the globe and promises to boost military support and funding to Israel and Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The letter comes in response to concerns among lawmakers, Israel, and other Gulf region allies that the nuclear accord will boost the Islamic Republic’s support for terrorism, while leaving traditional U.S. allies on the defense. “Important questions have been raised concerning the need to increase security assistance to our allies and partners in the...

Millis public schools will be closed Thursday while investigators continue to hunt for the man who shot a police cruiser, causing it to hit a tree and burst into flames Wednesday afternoon. The unidentified officer was able to escape the flames and began to return fire as the pickup truck fled south toward Medfield. The officer was taken to Norwood Hospital to be evaluated and was later released, police said. The shooter who fled the scene in the red or maroon truck was described as a white man, tanned, between 25 and 40 years old. Police said he is armed...

State Police are responding to reports a gunman fired on a Millis cruiser Wednesday afternoon. Shots were fired at a Millis Police cruiser Wednesday afternoon, the Massachusetts State Police announced. A gunman reportedly fired at the cruiser on a Millis street just before 3 p.m. Police officials say the cruiser caught fire after being shot at. The incident is reported to have happened on Forest Road in Millis. Additionally, the Millis Public Library is closed due to the investigation. Millis Police, Millis Fire and the State Police Air Wing are responding. There is no word yet on any potential injuries.

Michelle Carter knew that if anyone found her text messages to her boyfriend Conrad Roy III, she might go to jail. “[If the police] read my messages with him I’m done. His family will hate me and I can go to jail,” Carter texted a friend after her 18-year-old boyfriend used a gas-powered water pump to commit suicide in the parking lot of a K-Mart. Carter had asked Roy in a text message to delete her messages before he carried out the suicide last summer, but investigators found them anyway.

Over the weekend, the undecideds in Congress got another confidence-builder from Iran on the nuclear deal that Barack Obama and John Kerry insist they support. If Congress approves the deal, it carries legal weight in the US, at least for the next 16 months or so until the next President takes office. The Iranian parliament must be rushing to provide the same level of legal commitment, right? Right? Er … no, not really: President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday he opposes a parliamentary vote on the landmark nuclear deal reached with world powers because terms of the agreement would turn...