Free Republic

Sen. Marco Rubio’s delivery of the GOP response to the State of the Union shows he’s a force the Democrats must reckon with, says former White House advisor Van Jones. The Florida Republican poses a “dangerous” political threat to Democrats because of his keen ability to emotionally connect with voters, Jones said.

The liberal hosts on MSNBC just couldn't get enough of watching U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reach for a glass of water and take a sip during his rebuttal of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, airing the snippet a staggering 155 times during the Wednesday broadcast schedule. Other cable news networks showed the footage far less often. CNN aired it 34 times, and Fox News Channel played it just 12 times -- all of which took place on “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity” while the hosts discussed the media's obsession with the Florida Republican's “watergate” incident. MSNBC's total...

<p>A parched Marco Rubio's awkward reach for a drink of Poland Spring water during his Republican rebuttal to the president's State of the Union address Tuesday night became an instant online sensation. Predictably, the video clips, jokes and Twitter hashtags that have become so familiar in such situations took the social Internet by storm.</p>

Freepers! Marco Rubio is just great and what a sense of humor. This is exactly how to respond to liberal hubris and their synthetic, hibrow, intellect. You need this water bottle if only to get Marco notice from now on. He is going to be Yuge and you need to support him.

About 100 people gathered Wednesday night to hear three panelists discuss racism and immigration law issues, with one panelist comparing a new Arizona law to the Jim Crow laws of the past. The panel, called "Brown Person, Show Me Your Papers," included S.A. Mora James, a Latina civil rights attorney; Norman Pflanz, an attorney for the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest; and Paul Olson, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor and president of Nebraskans for Peace. James compared the stringent law in Arizona to the Jim Crow laws used against blacks. The Arizona law would make the...

Building a fence along the Mexican border and fighting over proposed immigration restrictions in Fremont are a lot more visible right now than any new paths to citizenship. But that didn’t stop Nebraska advocates of a more welcoming attitude from stepping forward to make their case in Lincoln and Omaha Monday. “I can’t tell you how devastating it is to me to see that fence as an American citizen,” the Rev. Chuck Bentjen said at the Lincoln launch of the National Campaign to Reform Immigration for America. Bentjen, based in Lincoln with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was one...

Local and national business groups are funding a media campaign launched Wednesday in Arizona to convince voters the United States has done enough to secure the border and now needs to legalize the 12 million or more undocumented immigrants and consider allowing more foreigners into this country. The group, Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, is going to spend “several hundred thousand dollars” on TV advertising in four states. Jim Pignatelli, president and chief executive officer of UniSource Energy Corp., the parent of Tucson Electric Power, said the time has come to move the debate along and find ways to help...

The Mother of All Bailouts has many fathers. As panicked politicians prepare to fork over $1 trillion in taxpayer funding to rescue the financial industry, they've fingered regulation, deregulation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, both Bushes, greedy banks, greedy borrowers, greedy short-sellers and minority home ownership mau-mauers (can't call 'em greedy, that would be racist) for blame. But there's one giant paternal elephant in the room that has slipped notice: how illegal immigration, crime-enabling banks and open-borders Bush policies fueled the mortgage crisis. It's no coincidence that most of the areas hardest...

A Fairview man admitted in court today that he raped a drunken woman last year after she got off a bus and passed out on the sidewalk.  Martin Cana-Chocoj, 26, said he had several drinks himself but was sober enough to know what he was doing on Sept. 11, 2007, when he carried the 29-year-old woman into a dark alley behind a bank on Fairview Avenue in Fairview.    He said he sexually assaulted her as his friend stood lookout.  Answering questions from defense attorney Jaclyn Medina and Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor David Calviello, Chocoj said the woman did not resist...

EL PASO, Texas — Two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a drug smuggler and trying to cover it up have been denied a request for a new hearing. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans denied the request by Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean on Wednesday. The same court upheld the men's convictions in July. No reason was given for the Wednesday's denial. Ramos and Compean are each serving sentences of more than 10 years for shooting Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks while he was fleeing from an abandoned marijuana load in 2005....

TIJUANA, Mexico - The towering black gate opens silently to an alley with walls of corrugated metal. Scrawled in large white letters on one wall is: "The End." For those deported from the United States, the words are an unnecessary reminder. Nearly every hour of the day, guards unlock this gate that leads back into Mexico, clicking open the padlocks hung on each side, in each nation.

OTTAWA -- Sen. John McCain traveled to Canada on Friday to offer a vigorous defense of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as his campaign sought to portray rival Sen. Barack Obama as inconsistent on free trade. "For all the successes of NAFTA, we have to defend it without equivocation in political debate because it is critical to the future of so many Canadian and American workers and businesses," McCain told a crowd of several hundred at the Economic Club of Canada. "Demanding unilateral changes and threatening to abrogate an agreement that has increased trade and prosperity is nothing more...

We are all fallen, imperfect beings. The news of the federal indictment of Bernie Kerik is a sad moment, a cautionary tale, and an object lesson. Sad, because Kerik rose from the child of a prostitute to “America’s cop”–and this nation loves such tales of success. Cautionary, because it speaks to the fallibility of anointed heroes and the temptations of power. An object lesson, because it highlights the flaws and vulnerabilities of GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani’s on the issues of corruption and immigration enforcement. Here’s what I wrote back in December 2004 when Kerik was forced to withdraw from consideration...

You're not going to believe this. Rep. Raul Grijalva has introduced two bills that could be used to create a virtual free passage highway for illegals and drug smugglers as a fast track into the United States. Rep. Grijalva is Chairman of the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee. The first bill is the Tumacacori Highland Wilderness Act of 2007 that creates a new Forest Service Wilderness Area in Arizona on the border with Mexico. This bill, HR 3287, creates a new wilderness area exactly where a major illegal traffic area already exists....

With only a small fraction of the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico complete, California congressman and Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter is warning President Bush the construction mandated by the Secure Fence Act is falling drastically behind schedule. "Unless construction is promptly accelerated," Hunter wrote in a letter to Bush, "deadlines for the completion of fencing will not be met." Hunter's letter was written Monday to be delivered to the White House during the Security and Prosperity Partnership third annual summit that concluded Tuesday in Montebello, Quebec. His criticism that the Bush administration is making no significant progress...

One could, I suppose, regard this as one of those unforeseen incremental consequences that happens in the darkest shadows of society. But that doesn't extend to Newark's official status as an illegal-immigrant "sanctuary city." Like Los Angeles, New York and untold others, Newark has formally erased the distinction between U.S. citizens and the armies of the undocumented. This is the active collusion by multiple cities and states in the subversion of U.S. sovereignty. In Newark, N.J., it means an illegal-immigrant child rapist is free to murder on a Saturday night. In Somerville, Mass., it means two deaf girls are raped...

Border Patrol agents have directed my attention to a letter their union, the National Border Patrol Council, sent to the City of Newark: August 10th 2007 Dear City of Newark If your city officials had reported Mr. Carranza as an illegal alien to DHS while he was in your jail for raping children, the three young people murdered by Mr. Carranza would be alive. Other sanctuary cities pay heed, because it is only a matter of time until it happens to someone in your town. Jose Carranza, Illegal Alien Mass Murderer Several promising lives snuffed out in an instant by...

Mexican and U.S. customs officials signed an agreement Monday aimed at fighting contraband and terrorism while streamlining trade across the border. The agreement sets up four working groups to encourage cooperation between agencies on both sides of the border, which sees more than $320 billion in trade cross each year, said Mexico Customs Administrator Juan Jose Bravo. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham said the agreement represents a mutual desire of the United States and Mexico to protect their people and economies. Basham said the relationship with Mexico is crucial to the U.S. customs and border patrol agency's...

It is among the odder ironies of modern political life that the Fourth of July, a holiday set aside to celebrate American exceptionalism, has become an occasion to proclaim multicultural pieties. For a vivid demonstration of this tendency, look no further than the habit of our high-minded commentators to lecture every Independence Day that “we are a nation of immigrants.” In in its most extreme incarnation, this claim holds not only that America has been “a nation of immigrants from its very inception” – an observation equal parts true and misleading – but that any reflection on the American character...

Democrats won both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections in part by arguing that Republicans were incompetent to govern. On immigration, they enjoyed a comparatively united party and cooperation from a Republican White House. More than any other factor, heat from the right killed the bill. But voters elect congressional majorities to solve problems, and Democratic incumbents can expect to pay some price every time they fail. But that fallout almost certainly will pale alongside the damage to future Republican presidential candidates. Hispanics represent the fastest-growing chunk of the U.S. electorate. Their choices help drive the rising swing states...