Free Republic

The Republican presidential primary field is shaping up to have about a dozen contenders in 2016, and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas may become one of them. But if Cruz decides to mount a campaign, his biggest strength -- strong support among conservative, tea party voters – may also be his biggest liability. While he hasn’t yet officially announced a run for president, Cruz has said he is strongly considering it. In October, he made a visit to the Wichita, Kansas, headquarters of the oil billionaire Koch brothers to make the case that Republicans need a grassroots conservative as...

Foreign service officer, who will be named soon, to help promote awareness of LGBT issues across the world The United States will appoint an openly gay official as a special envoy to promote the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people overseas, the US State Department said Friday. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said US Secretary of State John Kerry would “soon” make the appointment. “It will be an openly gay foreign service officer. We don’t have a finalized name yet. But we will announce soon,” Harf said. Harf said the appointment reflected Kerry’s “commitment and the administration’s commitment...

Army Secretary John McHugh said Friday that he has approved awarding the Purple Heart and its civilian counterpart to those wounded during a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, following years of pressure from families and a change in rules approved by Congress. The Nov. 5, 2009, shooting killed 13 people and wounded more than 30. It was carried out by Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who was convicted in August 2013 of 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. Hasan said he acted because of what he alleged was U.S. aggression against Muslims...

"We're as free of foreign oil as we've been in 30 years," Obama said. "We've doubled the amount of clean energy that we're producing. A lot of families are saving a lot of money at the gas pump, which is putting some smiles on folks' faces." "You're welcome," Obama said to tepid applause.

The White House has still refused to name the “American Muslim leaders” with whom President Obama met to “discuss a range of domestic and foreign policy issues.” According to a White House statement on the President’s meeting, the domestic issues discussed were the “Affordable Care Act, anti-Muslim violence and discrimination, the 21st Century Policing Task Force, and the upcoming White House Summit on Countering Violence Extremism.” On the foreign policy front, “the President discussed the need to continue countering ISIL and other groups that commit horrific acts of violence, purportedly in the name of Islam,” while also congratulating Muslims on...

At the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama reminded attendees that violence rooted in religion isn’t exclusive to Islam, but has been carried out by Christians as well. ~snip~ “Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Website Citizen Warrior gathers polls from the U.S. and Europe to paint a portrait of growing unease about Islam in the Western world, presented as evidence that “the Great Awakening has begun.”

ISIS murdered a Jordanian pilot today. They torched Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh alive in a cage.Barack Obama responded to the horrific murder by pushing Obamacare. “Should, in fact, this video be authentic, it’s just one more indication of the viciousness and barbarity of this organization. And I think we’ll redouble the vigilance and determination of the a global coalition to make sure they are degraded and ultimately defeated. And it also just indicates the degree to which whatever ideology they’re operating off of is bankrupt. We’re here to talk about how to make people healthier and make their lives better. And...

In his recent trip to India, President Obama repeated a long-standing pattern of his — denigrating the United States to foreign audiences. He said that he had been discriminated against because of his skin color in America, a country in which there is, even now, "terrible poverty." Make no mistake about it, there is no society of human beings in which there are no rotten people. But for a President of the United States to be smearing America in a foreign country, whose track record is far worse, is both irresponsible and immature. Years after the last lynching of blacks...

During Wednesday afternoon’s White House press conference, ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl cornered Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz over why the administration does not consider the Taliban to be a “terrorist” organization. In light of a possible Jordanian prisoner swap with ISIS forces, Karl asked Schultz how that government’s actions differ from the United States’ 2014 release of Gitmo prisoners to the Taliban in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. When the spokesman suggested the Taliban is just an “armed insurgency,” and not a “terrorist organization” like ISIS, Karl pounced: “You don’t think the Taliban’s a terrorist group?” In the clip...

During his trip to India, President Obama declared America’s commitment to “help design smart cities” and “bullet trains” in the country. The main selling point for “smart cities” is that they are “sustainable,” a vague but applauded term that often used in context of combating what this author strongly believes is a non-existent problem: man-made climate change. During a speech at the Siri Fort Auditorium in India, Obama, who met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the tour, declared: We are ready to join you in building new infrastructure…roads and airports, the ports and bullet trains to propel India into...

At Wednesday's White House press briefing, deputy press secretary Eric Schultz wouldn't call the Taliban a terrorist group, instead referring to it as "an armed insurgency." Video and transcript at link ...

Media Yawn at Obama and Biden Snubbing Auschwitz Anniversary; Mocked Cheney’s Appearance in 2005 By Curtis Houck | January 28, 2015 Tuesday marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and, naturally, the event attracted plenty of media coverage. In addition to each of the three major networks devoting segments to it on their evening newscasts, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post and published stories on the topic. Over on cable, CNN covered it multiple times throughout the day for a total of 10 minutes and 27 seconds worth of airtime. At the other...

Michelle Obama did not look happy today when she had to cut short her visit to India to accompany her husband on a trip to a country where women aren't even allowed to drive cars. The First Lady bowed and beamed as she boarded Air Force One in New Dehli on Tuesday, but by the time she landed in Saudi Arabia a few hours later, she had traded her floral dress for a more conservative long-sleeved jacket and slacks - as well as a new scorned expression. In pictures at the airport and Egra Palace, Mrs Obama pursed her lips...

"President Barack Obama’s gay allies are ignoring his endorsement of the long-standing claim that sexual orientation is a matter of choice."

Evicted four months ago from their Highland Park apartment, Louis Morales and his 18-year-old stepson, Arthur Valenzuela, live half-hidden by brush along the nearby Arroyo Seco riverbed. Morales, 49, keeps a framed bible verse and a stuffed monkey in his tent. Water hauled by bike from a park heats up on the camp stove. Next door, their friend Johnny Salazar fixes bikes and shattered computer screens on the cheap for people who live in the neighborhood. A brother and sister Morales has known for years live up the river, and three couples stay down by the bridge. "Everybody here is...

U.S. President Barack Obama will travel to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday in order to meet the newly appointed monarch, King Salman, and pay his respects to the family of the late King Abdullah, the White House said Saturday.

The director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, the storied home of the agency’s most secretive intelligence operations, has announced that he plans to retire, The Daily Beast has learned. CIA spokesman Dean Boyd confirmed that the director announced his retirement “after a long and distinguished career at CIA. We thank him for this profound and lasting contributions to both CIA and to our nation’s security.” As a practice, the CIA doesn’t identify the head of the clandestine service by name. But Frank Archibald was outed in a Twitter post in 2013, and details of his biography were known to...

Just saw a local Miami tv station using video from the government web site with an "interview" of Obama, where he spews some crap about how his goal is to outline for the nation how he is going to make sure things are fair, now that we have "made it through the crisis". I nearly spit my coffee out. We are not out of a crisis. My point is that these kind of videos are NOT a proper use for news....and I expect that if a REPUBLICAN president put out this type of "interview", the media would ignore it....on the...

Army commanders Order Removal Of 'God and Country' Recruiting Sign January 18, 2015 An Army recruiting station has been ordered by higher ups to shelve a sidewalk sandwich board with the wording "On a mission for both God and country.” The order went out Friday to a recruiting station in Phoenix that had been displaying the outdoor sign since at least October. The sign board also shows an image of a Special Forces patch and Ranger, Airborne and Special Forces tabs. An inquiry from Army Times to the U.S. Army Recruiting Command prompted the sandwich board’s immediate removal.