Free Republic

A super PAC backing Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is pulling no punches with the first attack ad of the 2016 GOP presidential primary, complete with fire-breathing bald eagles and slams of Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham for their stances on government surveillance. Mimicking the aggressive style of a wrestling event promo, the one-minute spot teases the Senate debate Sunday ("Sunday! Sunday!") over expiring portions of the Patriot Act as the “greatest brawl for liberty of the century." The ad, released by America's Liberty PAC, pits a photoshopped picture of Paul’s face on a bodybuilder against President Obama, “the head...

Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul brought his presidential campaign to Chicago on Wednesday, appealing to African-Americans on the South Side, entrepreneurs downtown and Republicans in the suburbs.

The GOP is falling apart. How else to explain the wide variance of positions within the Republican Party on basic issues ranging from same-sex marriage to immigration to tax policy? For years, GOP bigwigs have explained that the Republican Party can only succeed if it expands and evolves, embracing as many views as possible. There’s only one problem: that simply doesn’t work. While the Democratic Party has moved toward leftist purity in which Hillary Clinton’s policy positions are virtually indistinguishable from socialist Bernie Sanders’, the Republican Party has become to political positions what COEXIST bumper stickers are to religion –...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that Jeb Bush, who is seen as an early front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is going to have problems securing the backing of his party. "I think he's going to have trouble," Paul, himself a Republican presidential candidate, said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." When asked if Bush is conservative enough to be the Republican nominee, Paul said, "I doubt it."

Supporters of the NSA’s large scale spying on the American people claim the program has made our country safer. Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)93% —an opponent of the secretive Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track the Pacific Rim trade deal Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—went inside the secret room inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday morning to read the TPP text and told Breitbart News exclusively afterwards that he believes President Barack Obama should make it public now. The deal’s text is kept in a room behind double doors that each have signs: “No Public Or Media Beyond This Point.” “I think the staff signed an agreement [which didn’t include a non-disclosure]—they signed in, it’s a normal procedure,” he explained....

In every speech he has made since announcing his presidential bid, Rand Paul has vowed to repeal Obamacare. At a Las Vegas rally he put it thus: “I will make it my mission to heal this nation ... and to repeal every last bit of Obamacare!” But if Paul’s behavior in the Senate is any guide, this is empty rhetoric. Shortly after his Vegas speech, he aided the Democrats in obstructing an investigation into falsified documents submitted to the D.C. Small Business Exchange so that members of Congress and their staffers could receive subsidies to which they aren’t legally entitled....

Republican Presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul was in San Francisco Saturday to speak about "Disrupting Democracy" in an attempt to woo Millenials and the Silicon Valley crowd. Paul took questions about net neutrality, NSA surveillance and Millennial voters during the discussion, formally titled "Disrupting Democracy: A New Generation of Voter Engagement." The event was co-hosted by Lincoln Labs, a Libertarian-leaning "technology and policy think tank" and Brigade, billionaire Sean Parker's civic engagement startup. Brigade's CEO Matt Mahan also joined the conversation along with the San Francisco Chronicle's political reporter Carla Marinucci. "Some people might be thinking what the hell is...

As many of you know, I'm a big fan of Ted Cruz, but when he does something wrong, it's important to call him on it. In this case he, along with Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, voted for a bill that will effectively allow the President to lift sanctions on Iran. Normally, here's how treaties work: the President negotiates a treaty with another country, like the deal he is negotiating with Iran over its nuclear weapons development. Once the treaty is negotiated, it's submitted to the Senate. Two thirds of the Senate has to vote to approve, or ratify, the...

Mark Levin believes blackmail or something may be going behind the scenes in the Senate. Here’s why: NATIONAL REVIEW – The rumors began trickling in about a week before the scheduled vote on April 23: Republican leadership was quietly pushing senators to pull support for subpoenaing Congress’s fraudulent application to the District of Columbia’s health exchange — the document that facilitated Congress’s “exemption” from Obamacare by allowing lawmakers and staffers to keep their employer subsidies. The application said Congress employed just 45 people. Names were faked; one employee was listed as “First Last,” another simply as “Congress.” To Small Business...

[SNIP] ".........While the joke goes that every senator looks in the mirror each morning and sees a potential occupant of the Oval Office, senators do have automatic fund-raising bases and little difficulty attracting the spotlight. Still, since 1960, only two — John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Barack Obama of Illinois — have risen directly to the White House.... [SNIP] ....For now, Republican Senate colleagues are optimistic about the presidential aspirants’ ability to make it back to Washington for crucial votes, and about the party leadership’s willingness to try to work around their campaign schedules, when possible. “Remember when Obama...

Prominent voices in conservative media have already begun deciding on favorites in the Republican presidential primary. Most of the candidates and potential candidates have received at least some praise from influential voices in the right-leaning news media, but since the start of 2015, there have been clear signs of who is warming up to who. After Sen. Marco Rubio announced his candidacy in mid-April, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, representing the corporate pro-immigration wing of the GOP, sang the Florida freshman's praises in ways unfelt by others in the field. "The senator … has the rhetorical gifts to make...

Iran -a country floating on sea of petroleum- only ever pursued nuclear technology for military purposes- and any intellectually-honest person can tell you that. There exists no reason this otherwise 2nd-or-3rd rate country needs nuclear anything (supplied by the world's devil-on-the-shoulder, Russia) when they could fuel conventional power plants for next to nothing...  On the other hand, you've got the Rand Pauls of the world: somewhat like the Soviets, he increasingly finds the truth doesn't fit reality as purported by his political world view (in his case, pacifism). That means he has to make arguments that twist him into a pretzel and make...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., urged his fellow Republicans Saturday to become the "party of civil rights" by embracing limits on the courts and law enforcement. It was both good policy and good politics, he argued, and would fill a vacancy created by Democrats turning away from these issues. Paul, a 2016 presidential hopeful, made the case for this during a speech to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, a major gathering of socially-conservative voters in the key early primary state. He began by noting that the GOP had lost Iowa in the last two presidential elections and said it needs...

About three weeks ago I had already grown Officially Tired of Election 2016, so I imagine the next year and a half will be torture for me. If there is any real difference between Republicans and Democrats, it is only in the sense that there are different types of cancer. The only official candidate for the Democrats so far is a white suspected lesbian and erstwhile Tammy Wynette impersonator who has a steely fanged vagina that at any moment threatens to chomp through her pantsuit and devour the world. Her target demographic, obviously, is chicks.

Why Did Paul Get Arrested at Philippi, and What Can a Sometimes Timid Church Learn From It? By: Msgr. Charles PopeThere is a story of St. Paul’s arrest, beating, and imprisonment at Philippi that serves as a kind of metaphor for the radical nature of true Christianity and why it so perturbs many in this world. The Christian faith, its message, and the transformation it can effect can be very unsettling to a world that figuratively and literally “banks on” sin. Let’s consider this lesser- known story of Paul and see what it ought to mean for us if we take the Christian...

There are not many people who once fought on the same side as Fidel Castro and are now heroes to American social conservatives. But that is exactly the trajectory taken by Rafael Cruz, father of 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). The elder Cruz now regrets his fight on the side of the pro-Castro rebels in his native Cuba, ascribing it to dislike of Castro’s arch-enemy, U.S.-backed President Fulgencio Batista, rather than any sympathy for Communism. Rafael has travelled a complicated path in the United States, encompassing two divorces, business reversals and a second career as a preacher. But...

Talk radio host and author of “The Liberty Amendments,” Mark Levin said that the GOP field has a group of young conservatives that included, but was not limited to, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, who were “smarter, wiser, quicker on their feet, more principled than any group of young conservatives seeking the presidency I’ve seen since Reagan” on Wednesday.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul split with senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to vote for a healthcare bill Tuesday night that will add about half a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next several decades.Paul sided with the overwhelming majority of senators and representatives who voted for the bill, in a decision almost certain to come up in the primary race, where he is currently joined by Cruz and Rubio.The “doc-fix” bill solves a recurring problem in the way Medicare payments are made to doctors, extends a children’s health insurance program, and requires higher-income seniors to pay higher...

"........The Wisconsin governor leads in the latest Fox News poll..,leads in most Iowa polling and is either tied or ahead in New Hampshire.Even with Paul,Cruz,Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee all at or near double digits,Walker is within 1.2 percentage points of Bush in the RealClearPolitics polling average.And even that is mainly attributable to an ABC News/Washington Post poll that has Bush up by a bigger margin than any other recent survey.Since his announcement,Cruz has been pretty consistently been polling in the double digits.PublicPolicyPolling found his national support exploding from 5 percent to 16 percent.What if that happens to Rubio and...