Free Republic

If the last two presidential elections tell us anything, it’s that Republicans don’t succeed with candidates who lack clear vision and conviction consistent with the party’s conservative platform. Given this, I understand why Democrats think that New Jersey governor Chris Christie should be a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But why would any Republican see a typical political operative like Christie as presidential material? With the information we have in front of us today, there is every reason to believe that 2016 will be a year of opportunity for Republicans to run a serious and exciting reform-minded...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), fresh off a landslide reelection win and seemingly with an eye on the 2016 presidential race, spent Thursday trying to oust a longtime Republican ally from power. Christie and his staff lobbied Republican state senators to dump their leader, Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., after three terms atop the GOP conference. At least four Republican senators paraded through Christie’s office Thursday morning to get the hard sell. ... Christie appeared to defer to Democrat Sweeney too, angering some in Kean’s camp. In the days before the election, when Christie turned his attention to...

**SNIP** Nearly 800,000 New Jersey residents’ health-care plans will not longer exist in 2014, forcing insurers to create new ones for individuals and small business owners that hew to the Obamacare’s new regulations, The New Jersey Star Ledger found in early October. “I don’t feel like I need to change, but I have to,” Jeff Learned, a television editor in Los Angeles, told Kaiser Health News. Learned now needs to scramble to find a plan to coverage his teenage daughter, whose health problems have required several surgeries. More Americans have lost their individual health coverage in Florida and California than...

I’m a little surprised, even though he’s undoubtedly correct that the appeal was doomed. The New Jersey Supreme Court all but legalized gay marriage in its provisional ruling on Friday; a final ruling next year upholding that judgment was a fait accompli.But as we spent the last three weeks discovering, the fact that a fight is obviously unwinnable and possibly self-defeating from the start is no excuse not to undertake it. Gov. Chris Christie announced today that he was dropping the fight against same-sex marriage in New Jersey by withdrawing his his appeal of a major case that was being...

It's been one of the biggest questions leading up to today's special election for US Senate, how many people would actually turn out to vote?

President Obama is reminding New Jersey voters to vote for Cory Booker in the state’s special Senate election Wednesday. Just one day before the election Obama appeared in a video for the Booker campaign encouraging New Jersey residents to support the popular Democratic Newark mayor. “Voters in New Jersey have the opportunity to vote for a leader with uncommon character, Cory Booker,” Obama said in the video.

In the wake of the government shutdown, despite provisions in the Pay Our Military Act, Catholics at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia are being denied religious services. The Catholic priest who serves this community has been prohibited from even volunteering to celebrate Holy Mass without pay, and was told that if he violated that order, he could be subject to arrest. Protestant services continue to take place. Only Catholic services have been shutdown. This is an astonishing attack on religious freedom by the federal government, and the latest affront towards the military since the beginning of the shutdown....

**SNIP** On Saturday, Palin told a rally at the New Egypt Speedway that Lonegan, a former mayor, would fight against ObamaCare and stand with Tea Party senators including Ted Cruz of Texas. "You have the momentum with Steve's campaign," she said. "The rest of the country knows." The 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate and former Alaska governor told the crowd to vote to defy the "fallacy" that a conservative Tea Party candidate cannot win in a Democratic-leaning New Jersey. Lonegan, who spent the weekend campaigning across the state, wants to repeal ObamaCare and "join those conservatives who stand up for...

The man who died last weekafter being found severely burned on the Mall, was identified Monday night as a 64 year old resident of New Jersey, and D.C. Police said it was "now apparent he had set himself on fire."

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The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was accosted by several people on Van Buren Street around 1:30 a.m. this morning, said Thomas Fennelly, the county’s chief assistant prosecutor. The ICE agent was struck with fists and hands by multiple people, he added. The victim drew and discharged his weapon, striking two of the suspects, Fennelly said. Those two suspects were taken to University Hospital, where they’re in stable condition – and under arrest, the prosecutor added.

Vote for Lonegan for US Senate on 10/16/2013

Obligatory disclaimer: Though I'm generally a fan, I view Chris Christie's record in New Jersey as a mixed bag, and I realize that many grassroots conservatives loathe the guy. But a party that's gotten its butt kicked in the last two presidential cycles by appealing to a small and shrinking slice of the electorate ignores the numbers below at its peril. In the latest Quinnipiac poll of the Garden State's gubernatorial race, Christie has (re)-established a mammoth lead over hapless Democrat Barbara Buono among likely voters:

Nothing clarifies the mind of politicians like a fear of defeat at the ballot box. And nothing stokes such a fear more than watching an upset happen in a supposedly blue state. So with all the bitter arguments inside the conservative movement and Republican Party over health care and budget strategy, I offer a simple plea for unity of purpose around a common cause: elect Steve Lonegan to the United States Senate in New Jersey on Wednesday, October 16. Send a conservative who has promised to repeal Obamacare, cut spending, cut taxes, and limit regulation to the Senate from New...

TRENTON — New Jersey's special U.S. Senate election is a little more than a month away, but for whom would you vote if the polls opened today: Cory Booker or Steve Lonegan? A Rutgers-Eagleton poll released today shows Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark, leading Lonegan, the Republican candidate and a former Bogota mayor, by 35 points — 64 percent to 29 percent — heading into the Oct. 16 election. The two are running to fill the final 14 months of the term left vacant by the death of U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

HOBOKEN – A drunk Glaswegian seaman displayed his naked buttocks to customers and staff at the McDonald's at Washington and Third streets Monday night and then put up a fight with the cops who arrested him, police say.

Though I was apprehensive upon hearing Obama tell Joe the Plumber during the 2008 election that he wanted to spread the wealth around, I understand America's extremely emotional response to electing its first black president. White America naively thought, Finally: we can never be called a racist nation again. My 100-year-old black grandmother wept. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined a colored man sitting in the president's chair in the Oval Office. But little did America realize that the beautiful, articulate, shiny golden black man that they opened the gates of our country was really a socialist/progressive...

The lawsuit The Kuberts both lost their legs. They sued. But they didn't just go after Best. They included Colonna in the lawsuit. In their minds, she was distracting him and was also responsible for their pain and loss. They settled with Best and lost against Colonna, but they appealed that decision. The plaintiffs' attorney, Stephen Weinstein, argued that the text sender was electronically in the car with the driver receiving the text and should be treated like someone sitting next to him willfully causing a distraction, legal analyst Marc Saperstein told CNN affiliate WPIX. The argument seemed to work....

As of last month, the Newark, New Jersey police department is no longer taking orders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain undocumented immigrants who have been picked up for minor criminal offenses such as shoplifting or vandalism. The policy was signed into law by Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio on July 24. Newark may be the first and only law enforcement agency in New Jersey no longer to honor detainer requests from ICE, but it’s far from the only police department in the country to have done so. Police departments in Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, Chicago,...

With another presidential cycle starting in just two years, battle lines are being drawn - not between the two parties, but within the Republican Party itself. Interestingly the differences being aired this summer seem less about ideology than approach: Whether compromise with Democrats is ever okay; even more broadly whether government can or even should try to solve problems through policy or lawmaking. So while most Americans reflexively say they want "something done" there's plenty of difference in defining what that means, and these debates have huge potential to shape the GOP's brand in 2014 and certainly in 2016....