Free Republic

A band of healthcare professionals and charities has warned political leaders that health and social care services are at “breaking point” following “an era of unprecedented austerity”. “Signs of a system buckling under the twin crises of rising demand and flatlining budgets are everywhere,” they claim, highlighting a shortage of GPs, over-stretched maternity services, A&E departments missing waiting times, delayed cancer referrals, and a lack of mental health beds, as well as crippling costs of social care and failing dementia services.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday slammed the Supreme Court for declining to hear appeals on lower court rulings that overturn same-sex marriage bans, calling the justices’ move “tragic and indefensible.” “By refusing to rule if the States can define marriage, the Supreme Court is abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution,” he said in a statement. “The fact that the Supreme Court Justices, without providing any explanation whatsoever, have permitted lower courts to strike down so many state marriage laws is astonishing.” On Monday, the Supreme Court decided not to hear challenges to lower court rulings on same-sex marriage...

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today issued the following statement regarding the Supreme Court’s decision to reject requests from five States to review state laws that prohibit same-sex marriage. “The Supreme Court’s decision to let rulings by lower court judges stand that redefine marriage is both tragic and indefensible,” said Sen. Cruz. “By refusing to rule if the States can define marriage, the Supreme Court is abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution. The fact that the Supreme Court Justices, without providing any explanation whatsoever, have permitted lower courts to strike down so many state marriage laws...

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for legal same-sex marriages in five more states. The court refused to hear cases from the states -- Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Indiana -- seeking to keep their same-sex marriage bans in place. Couples in some of those states began applying for marriage licenses just hours after the Supreme Court's decision. CNN affiliate WVEC in Norfolk, Virginia, captured a same-sex couple who rushed to fill out their marriage license documents. Officials in Virginia began issuing same-sex marriage licenses at 1 p.m. Monday. Tony London and Tim Bostic, two plaintiffs in Norfolk,...

Today the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review appeals from Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana and Wisconsin on the definition of marriage. This means that lower court rulings that struck down state marriage laws now will go into effect, forcing the redefinition of marriage in these states and potentially in other states in the 4th, 7th, and 10th circuits.This is an unfortunate setback for sound constitutional self-government and a setback for a healthy marriage culture.The truth of the matter is that the marriage laws in these five states—as in many states across our nation—are good laws that reflect the truth about...

Brethren, Peace to you all in Jesus Christ, our Supreme, Merciful Judge. This is in the news at this time: WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court has turned away appeals from five states seeking to prohibit same-sex marriages, paving the way for an immediate expansion of gay and lesbian unions. The justices on Monday did not comment in rejecting appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. The court's order immediately ends delays on marriage in those states. Couples in six other states should be able to get married in short order. That would make same-sex marriage legal in 30...

he Supreme Court has turned away appeals from five states seeking to prohibit same-sex marriages, paving the way for an immediate expansion of gay and lesbian unions. The justices on Monday did not comment in rejecting appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. The court's order immediately ends delays on marriage in those states. Couples in six other states should be able to get married in short order. That would make same-sex marriage legal in 30 states and the District of Columbia. But the justices have left unresolved for now the question of same-sex marriage nationwide.

A victory by Terri Lynn Land in Michigan’s Senate race in November is important to winning back Republican control of the chamber, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney told supporters during a GOP rally Thursday in his native state. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who lost the 2012 presidential race to Barack Obama, said it has been a tough time for the country since that election. “It’s time for him to apologize to America,” Romney said of Obama, speaking to several hundred GOP supporters. But, Romney said, “Help is on the way” in the person of Land, who “will make...

Washington -- Ted Nugent, known by now more for his outspoken political views than his career as a rock singer, is making waves with a new column wading into the debate around Ferguson Mo., and race. Nugent, riffing on the shooting of a Ferguson police officer who was investigating a break-in - an event unrelated to the death of Michael Brown - blamed "liberalism and their insane cult of denial" for a "plauge of black violence." "It is liberalism that engineered and created the very conditions that have decimated and destroyed black American families and their communities," he writes in...

So I've been catching up on all the latest accumulation of Washington wisdom — or, at least, all the wisdom that I can accumulate in a Twitter feed — and now I totally get why no one other than Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or the reincarnated Pat Buchanan can possibly win the Republican nomination in 2016. (Actually, Pat's alive and well — it's just that he's on the McLaughlin Group. My bad.) You see, the party's base voters — the ones who turn out to vote in primaries and caucuses — are too completely off the rails to nominate...

Despite his showing in polls of conservatives, it's not a done deal the Republican establishment is going to allow Ted Cruz the opportunity to mount a serious challenge in 2016 – if he chooses to run for the presidency.For the second straight year, the first-term senator from Texas won the presidential straw poll at the Values Voter Summit sponsored over the weekend by FRC Action, the legislative arm of Family Research Council. Cruz garnered 25 percent of the vote this year, with Dr. Ben Carson finishing second with almost 20 percent. Last year Cruz garnered 42 percent. Connie Mackey, president...

As scandal continues to envelop the Secret Service, InsideSources has learned of a security failure leading up to the 2012 election. Multiple sources inside the Romney presidential campaign confirm that a Secret Service agent provided details of President Obama’s schedule several days prior to the President’s campaign stops becoming public. While sources involved in other presidential campaigns tell InsideSources that Secret Service detail assigned to each campaign will sometimes disclose private and personal information about those they are assigned to protect to opposing campaign staff, this instance in particular is very revealing of failures inside the Secret Service. In the...

Mitt Romney is a great person and a decent politician, but he also embodies the deepest problems in the Republican Party. He shouldn't run for president. Republicans, if they want to control Congress or win the White House, need to become a Party of the People. Romney may be the worst possible man to take the GOP in that direction. Romney’s most telling moment in 2012 was when he told a crowd of rich donors that the 47 percent of the country that “pay no income tax” are unwinnable for Republicans, because they “are dependent upon government,” and “I'll never...

Scout’s honor: Not until today, having read the words of the man himself, have I sincerely believed he might run again. The RomneyWatch™ posts are fun to write but not because Mitt 2016 was a real thing — I thought. They were fun because it wasn’t a real thing. It was a way to collectively pretend-scare ourselves, like playing with a ouija board. Now, suddenly, I look down and the planchette is moving by itself. And it spells M-I-T-T. A recent column by the conservative pundit Byron York noted that Romney had kept in close contact with many of his...

Part of Mitt Romney's success in securing the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 bore out of the fact that he benefited from the spoils of a divided faction on the right. If Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were ever able to consolidate the sum of their supporters around one of them, Romney's path to victory could have faced great peril. This calculation is weighing heavy on the minds of social conservatives as they look for a horse to ride in 2016. With an adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz telling National Journal Monday the Texas freshman is "90 percent" likely to...

In recent days and weeks there has been renewed speculation that Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president will again be a candidate in 2016. There has been some talk about this for months, but it has grown louder in recent days. Yesterday, The Washington Post described Mr. Romney’s evolving potential candidacy as “The road from ‘I’m not doing it again’ to ‘Circumstances can change’ is paved with favorable polls, 2012 predictions that came true and public statements from supporters.” Last week in an article titled “Romney 2016 is Real,” The Washington Examiner wrote “Romney is talking with advisers,...

Two-time presidential loser Mitt Romney's sprawling network of consultants and aides is sitting tight, waiting for the former Massachusetts governor to decide whether he wants to run for president a third time. Romney, who until recently had long denied any true interest in another bid, is reportedly talking the idea over with his family. Ann Romney isn't exactly denying it. Former running mate Paul Ryan, thought to be a possible presidential contender himself, is almost encouraging it. And Romney himself declined to close the door on the possibility in an interview with Romneyphile Hugh Hewitt. As I write this, an...

I’ve been mostly ignoring the various “Romney 2016!” trial balloons floated by various parties over the last six months or so (including by some of my dear friends, alas), but now that someone as sober and well-informed as Byron York has weighed in with a “this could happen” column, it’s worth saying something about why the possibility keeps coming up. Part of the answer can be found in Henry Olsen’s helpful analysis, from earlier this year, of how exactly Republican presidential primaries tend to shake out. Olsen offered a four-group typology of G.O.P. primary voters — secular conservatives, religious conservatives,...

Probably not fatal to the GOP’s hopes of retaking this seat, but not helpful either. Per Becket Adams, since when do tea partiers describe rich people as “the one percent”? [Palin] is slated to appear at a Saturday event organized around [Rob] Maness’s “#OneofUs” campaign, a campaign intended to frame the candidate as an average Louisianan in contrast to the GOP front-runner in the race, Rep. Bill Cassidy, and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), both of whom Maness has characterized as out-of-touch Washington elites. “If you could sum up this campaign, it’s two of them vs. one of us,” a source...

Is Mitt Romney, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination and lost in 2008, ran again and won the nomination but lost the general election in 2012, really thinking about running yet again for president in 2016? Many Republicans have simply assumed not. Romney has seemed to discourage such talk in media appearances, and there has been a general belief that after losing as the party's nominee, the 67 year-old Romney would return to private life for good. That belief is wrong. Romney is talking with advisers, consulting with his family, keeping a close eye on the emerging '16 Republican...