Free Republic

Minutes after Macy's announced it was severing business ties with Donald Trump, the real-estate mogul and GOP presidential candidate said it was his decision to leave Macy's. Macy's and Trump cut ties in the days 700,000 people signed on to a petition calling for his ouster. "I have decided to terminate my relationship with Macy’s because of the pressure being put on them by outside sources," Trump said in a statement provided by his campaign. "While selling Trump ties and shirts at Macy’s is a small business in terms of dollar volume, my principles are far more important and therefore...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell concedes that there’s little congressional Republicans can do to fight the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide, though he predicted a flurry of litigation aimed at protecting “religious liberty” in light of the decision. The Kentucky Republican has been a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage, one of just six Senate Republicans to sign an amicus brief urging the high court to reject federal protection of same-sex marriage. And though he reiterated to Kentucky TV station WDRB on Tuesday evening that his position has not changed, he also said there is little that...

A recent draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal would give U.S. pharmaceutical firms unprecedented protections against competition from cheaper generic drugs, possibly transcending the patent protections in U.S. law. POLITICO has obtained a draft copy of TPP’s intellectual property chapter as it stood on May 11, at the start of the latest negotiating round in Guam. While U.S. trade officials would not confirm the authenticity of the document, they downplayed its importance, emphasizing that the terms of the deal are likely to change significantly as the talks enter their final stages. Those terms are still secret, but the public...

American media, I welcome you to the H-1B cesspool. After decades of neglect, I am happily surprised that Southern California Edison and Disney have drawn new attention to the H-1B program. I do have one nit to pick. Many of you are referring to "loopholes" and "abuse". That is entirely incorrect. Disney and SCE show that the H-1B program is working as it designed to work. You need to start looking deeper.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) met rancher Cliven Bundy on Monday, along with several dozen supporters and land rights activists during a presidential campaign swing through Nevada. The Associated Press reported the two met at a stop northeast of Las Vegas, where Paul fielded questions on public land control, a major issue in the state, where much land is owned by the federal government. "I think almost all land use issues and animal issues, endangered species issues, ought to be handled at the state level," Paul told the AP. "I think that the government shouldn't interfere with state decisions, so if...

Fund-raising is a family affair for former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. But not the whole family. Facing a Tuesday deadline to raise cash for the first quarter, Mr. Bush’s campaign has enlisted his wife, son and father to solicit donations from supporters in the last two days. There has been no such pitch, however, from the 43rd president, who is his brother. “It’s not the same as when I ran for office, now a single email can raise millions, and every fund-raising deadline is scrutinized,” his father, the first President Bush, wrote in an email. “That’s why Jeb needs...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has said that he supports Puerto Rico filing for bankruptcy in the face of the massive debt the Caribbean island is facing. When Bush visited Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory, on a campaign stop in April, he told a crowd that the public agencies in Puerto Rico should be able to seek bankruptcy under Chapter 9, according to the Puerto Rico Report.

The Washington Post has a story today about 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush's unfortunate habit of getting involved in business deals destined to crumble and make him look bad. The problem is widespread enough that his career is littered with a graveyard of hilariously halfhearted explanations for his mistakes from friends, staffers, and Bush himself. In 1998 — shortly before he became governor of Florida, Bush told the St. Petersburg Times, according to the Post, “I’m 45 years old. I have to have better radar.” Bush's running mate in his failed gubernatorial bid in 1994, Tom Feeney, argued that the...

Before he was elected governor of Florida in 1998, Jeb Bush "often benefited from his family connections and repeatedly put himself in situations that raised questions about his judgment and exposed him to reputational risk," report Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Tom Hamburger in The Washington Post, noting that five of Bush's business associates have been convicted of crimes. Bush, who cites his business experience to bolster his run for president, says that he was taken advantage of by unscrupulous businessmen and had no knowledge of wrongdoing. The Post found that Bush's intervention with federal officials helped one later-convicted fraudster get...

When Hillary Clinton issued a sweeping call for expanding and protecting voting rights, and called out Wisconsin and other states for passing discriminatory laws, Governor Scott Walker responded by blasting her views as “extreme” and “far outside the mainstream.” He defended his own record of cutting early voting days and implementing a strict voter ID law, saying these changes “make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.” But at a workshop held in Milwaukee in early June, state government employees struggled to explain the byzantine voting restrictions to a crowd of poll workers and community activists. Under Wisconsin’s voter...

Now that you’ve created the next great app and your investment in your startup is worth a billion dollars, at least on paper, it’s time for a really difficult challenge: how to cash out without paying capital gains taxes anywhere in the world? With no U.S. or Puerto Rican tax on much investment income of new residents, U.S. citizens now can pay zero tax on capital gains. For several hundred affluent Americans over the last couple of years (including Toby Neugebauer, a key financier to Ted Cruz) the answer has been to establish a principal residence in Puerto Rico, and...

... [Ann Coulter] was riding high, perhaps the most famous polemicist of her day, the scourge of liberals everywhere and the fantasy of young conservative men's dreams. And then suddenly, she was nowhere. After having been relegated to a "debate" with her friend Mickey Kaus the year before, she was excluded from CPAC in 2015 where she'd been featured for 17 years. It seems that conservative organizations have been trying to have her dropped for a while but friends in high places had intervened. But the planners had had enough. She was very bitter about it, telling the Washington Examiner,...

...The Constitution is silent on the question of marriage because marriage has always been a local issue. Our founding fathers went to the local courthouse to be married, not to Washington, D.C. I’ve often said I don’t want my guns or my marriage registered in Washington. Those who disagree with the recent Supreme Court ruling argue that the court should not overturn the will of legislative majorities. Those who favor the Supreme Court ruling argue that the 14th Amendment protects rights from legislative majorities. Do consenting adults have a right to contract with other consenting adults? Supporters of the Supreme...

SpaceX just failed at its third attempt..

House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) this past week again showed he will punish conservative House members for not supporting deals he strikes with President Obama and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). This does not bode well for the package of immigration bills to be debated on the House floor sometime after the July Fourth recess. House Republicans have been writing and “marking up” more than a dozen immigration bills over the past year, and Republican leaders have been promising a “package of little bills” as an alternative to the “comprehensive” bills favored by the amnesty lobby.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, found little love in the press Tuesday after he reversed course on his previous support for a bill that would grant President Obama "Fast Track" authority to approve major international trade bills The 2016 Republican presidential candidate said in an op-ed that he changed his previous position on Congress' Trade Promotion Authority because the legislation had become too enmeshed in backroom deals and corruption. Both left- and right-leaning media immediately branded his announcement as an all-too-obvious political flip-flop.

Texas Senator and Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz said 2 Supreme Court rulings were so wrong they constitute one of the “darkest periods” in US history. I can not even begin to understand the blinders you’d need to wear to make such a callous statement as this. Slavery. Lynchings. Trail of Tears. Triangle shirtwaste factory. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. My Lai. Kent State. 9/11. Hurricane Katrina. When we first learned about Abu Ghrab. 115 migrants dead in the Texas borderlands in 2014. Even Charleston just last week. These were dark days folks. People dying is a dark day. People dying because we killed...

RED OAK, Iowa — Sen. Ted Cruz wound his way through the small towns and rolling hills of western Iowa last week, doing the gruntwork of retail campaigning: shaking hands, posing for photos, giving stump speechesand, most importantly: making entreaties for support in a state that could determine the trajectory of his presidential campaign. “Whether we win or lose, this race will be decided by the men and women gathered here,” he said last Friday to a group of mostly older people sitting on folding chairs in a conference room. Iowa’s first-in-the nation caucuses are often a high-stakes event for...

Steve Malzberg invited Rep. Steve King onto his Newsmax program on Friday to discuss issues ranging from the church shooting in Charleston, which King blamed on prescription medication, to undocumented immigrants, whom he said have killed “multiples of the victims of the September 11 attacks,” to Caitlyn Jenner, whom he said illustrates “how far this society has gone from rational thought.”

MOSCOW, June 16 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday Russia's nuclear arsenal would be would increase by 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2015. Speaking at Army-2015 Expo, an international military trade show near Moscow, Putin said the new missiles could "overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems," adding a new long-range early-warning radar "to monitor in the western direction" was also being prepared. It was a reference to plans by NATO to permanently place troops and heavy armaments in Poland, a Russian neighbor and former Warsaw Pact country. In reference to apparent plans to reinforce NATO's...