Free Republic

California schools posted standardized test scores Wednesday for the first time in two years, and the results were not stellar. Just one-third of the state’s public-school students were tested as proficient for their grade level in math and only 44 percent in English, state education officials said. Under the old test in 2013, 51 percent of students were proficient in math and 56 percent in English.

WACO, Texas – Officers searching a woman after a traffic stop found a fully-loaded pistol in her vagina, Waco police said. Just before 11 p.m. Monday, officers stopped a 1998 Toyota Land Rover at 15th and Blair in north Waco for a traffic violation. During the stop, officers discovered the driver of the vehicle, Gabriel Garcia, 30, was allegedly had 2.7 grams of methamphetamine under his driver's seat. A further search of the car allegedly uncovered another 29.5 grams of meth and weighing scales in the purse of the female passenger, Ashley Cecilia Castaneda, 31. Because the traffic stop occurred...

20 percent of illegals caught at border have criminal recordsLess than half of the U.S.-Mexico border is under “operational control” at this point, the chief of the Border Patrol agents testified to Congress Thursday, detailing the porous situation and violent conditions in the southwest. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, also said one out of every five illegal immigrants agents caught along the border in 2014 had a criminal record, which helps explain some of the violence that occurs. All told, 91,000 criminal aliens caught by the Border Patrol were deported last year, compared to about 486,000...

Congressman Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX) argued that while “you need a wall in some places,” “You can’t build a wall from sea to shining sea. It just doesn’t work. It’s the most expensive way to do border security, and it’s the least effective” on Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

In his wildest dreams Donald Trump could not have imagined his campaign going this well. There is just no way. As I write this, Trump continues to dominate the GOP field and is also beginning to overtake his Democrat rivals in the most recent polling. (Leading Clinton by 5 in Iowa and trailing her by just 1 in New Hampshire.) While I've never been on the Trump bandwagon (though I have appreciated some of what he has said), I am beginning to grow very excited about the possibility that he is changing the national conversation on certain issues -- illegal...

As Congress prepares to return from summer recess this week, my organization, Citizens United, conducted a poll of a cross-section of our national membership asking what issue lawmakers on Capitol Hill should focus on next. We followed that query up with a question regarding congressional term limits. The results of the poll should be both a roadmap and a warning sign for House and Senate leadership as they plot their upcoming strategies for the fall.

Arizona, long a hotbed of anti-immigrant sentiment, finally swallowed its pride and sent a delegation to Mexico City, a mission designed to beckon Mexican shoppers north. The 2013 trip was known as the apology tour. Last year, California retooled its Mexico City office and hosted the Mexican president for his first U.S. state visit. Following years of acrimonious relationships with Mexico, U.S. states along the Mexican border are finding that a little good-neighbor outreach serves their economic interests. Texas is about to take what some experts call a similar mea culpa journey as Gov. Greg Abbott visits Mexico with a...

Joining Lou Dobbs earlier this week, Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was asked to explain his stance on illegal immigration and border security. “I think we need to flesh everyone out from the stand point of of just the rhetoric. When somebody says, ‘let’s build a wall,’ then I think it’s appropriate to say, it’s good to have this conversation, it’s good that we are having this conversation that now for thirty years, this border has not been secured. We’ve known it’s been a problem,” said Perry. Dobbs interjected that he doesn’t believe a single candidate talking about immigration issues...

Does Italy still exist, or is it, as Metternich puts it, a geographic expression? By joining the Euro, it lost its monetary sovereignty. It lost its territorial sovereignty after its defeat in the second world war with occupation by the Americans who have never left since then. It lost its military sovereignty as it is now reduced to taking orders from the USA and organising pretend peace missions in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and bombing Libya (thanks also to grandpa Napolitano)/ The fall of Gaddafi is the cause of the immigration of biblical proportions - from that country that no...

The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office has charged three males in connection with the Friday murder of 17-year-old Danny Centeno-Miranda, a student of Park View High School. A 17-year-old male from Sterling is charged with second-degree murder and use of a firearm in connection with a felony. His name is not being released at this time because he is a juvenile. However, Loudoun Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Plowman said today that his office will seek to try the 17-year-old as an adult. “He will be brought into court on Tuesday for arraignments and advised to his right to counsel, undoubtedly appointed an...

The first annual meeting of the nations that have ratified the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) opened on Monday, August 24 at a spa in Cancún, Mexico. The treaty’s been controversial in the U.S. from the moment negotiations on it began, and this meeting will surely stoke the suspicions of those who think the treaty’s real aim is to crimp America’s sovereignty and constitutional liberties. [Snip] Mexico’s theory is that, since any gun in the U.S. might at some point conceivably cross the U.S. border, all U.S. guns have to be controlled in the name of controlling the international arms...

A federal judge has upheld part of Arizona’s contentious immigration law, rejecting claims that the so-called “show your papers” section discriminated against Hispanics. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton on Friday was on the last of seven challenges to the 2010 law. The section she upheld allows police in Arizona to check the immigration status of anyone they stop. Bolton ruled that immigration rights activists failed to show that police would enforce the law differently for Hispanics than other people. …

The “Terror Threat Snapshot” for August 2015, released by the majority staff of the House Homeland Security Committee, states the terror threat level in America is high and “getting steadily worse,” and that there have been “more U.S.-based jihadist terror cases in 2015 than in any full year since 9/11.”The “Terror Threat Snapshot” also reported that the Islamic State “is fueling the Islamist terror” globally; that Islamist terrorists “are intent on killing law enforcement” officers and U.S. troops, as well as civilians; and that 25,000 fighters from 100 countries have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State.In...

sources headed to the Toronto International Film Festival tell Page Six that some stars may boycott his branded Trump Toronto Hotel, which was buzzing with starry activity just a year ago. “No one’s staying at the Trump” this year, sniffed one showbiz vet. “People are not going back. Talent does not want to stay there. It’s like the Beverly Hills Hotel.” [snip] A Weinstein rep told us of its move: “It was simply based on convenience and logistics” rather than “anything to do with Mr. Trump’s politics.” Harvey Weinstein has joked to the Hollywood Reporter that his liberal mom is...

“I’ve never ceased to be Mexican. I have two passports, and I vote in elections in both countries. (Univision’s Jorge Ramos, Time Magazine, 1/2/2013.) “Then why your silence on the thousands upon thousands of Cubans that are arrested, beaten, extorted and deported by migratory officials of YOUR country, Mr Ramos?” Rafael Alejandro Hernandez, 8/28/2015) Rafael Alejandro Hernández is a young Cuban lawyer living in Mexico who knows from firsthand experience what migrants to Mexico go through. Last week he unloaded on Jorge Ramos: “Mr Ramos, you as Mexican citizen have no moral authority whatsoever to criticize U.S. immigration policy.” “You...

Veep Joe Biden thinks China is in North America. It’s a good thing this clown is a Democrat or he’d never live this down.

RUSH: Now, I want to go back to audio sound bites. I want to go back to yesterday. Following Trump's press conference, which we covered, our microphones there were. He went out after he signed that pledge with Reince Priebus -- and, by the way, in the Stack of Stuff today there are all kinds of reactions to that. I mean, people think Trump has signed away his chance to win the presidency. Others think that Trump has snookered the RNC and Reince Priebus. The opinions of Trump signing the pledge are all over the place. Well, after the press...

The Friday politics panel of CNN’s New Day agreed that Republican Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign was in trouble, citing his poor poll numbers and his wooden attacks on Donald Trump. CNN’s John King noted that while Trump’s poll numbers have gone up and Ben Carson more than tripled his support, Bush’s support has fallen from 12% down to 8% in the newest Monmouth poll. “There’s a reason that Bush better get ‘damn mad,’” King said, quoting Bush’s attack on Trump. “He’s in trouble.” “He’s in big trouble,” agreed AP’s Julie Pace.

During his press conference in New York on Thursday, Donald Trump reiterated his dedication to building a massive wall along the entire southern border of the United States with Mexico. Univision anchor Jorge Ramos thinks this idea is not merely absurd but also a “complete waste of time and money.” “As you can imagine, for the last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about Donald Trump and his plan to deport more than 11 million undocumented immigrants from the United States,” Ramos said in a segment for his Fusion show America, following his confrontation with the GOP frontrunner a...

A federal appeals court has ruled that an illegal immigrant and convicted felon can’t be deported back to Mexico because he identifies as a transgender woman, which leaves him vulnerable to torture back in his home country. Edin Carey Avendano-Hernandez was born male in Mexico, and claims to have been raped by his brothers and suffered other torments. In 2000, he illegally entered the U.S. and took up residence in Fresno, California. Avendano-Hernandez also started taking female hormones and began living openly as a woman in 2005. In 2006, he committed two separate drunk driving offenses, the second of which...