Free Republic

Good political ads create two reactions. They make voters stand up and cheer. Or they make them cringe and think, "That's gonna leave a mark.... aanndd I need to watch that again." Such is the nature of the ad Chris Christie dropped on Marco Rubio this evening. So grab some popcorn and a chair and watch "It's A Simple Question." For full disclosure, I am helping the Keep the Promise PAC team. Link to Ad Video Link to You Tube

http://www.wtsp.com/story/money/2016/02/05/scammers-target-supermarket-self-checkout-lines/79865294/

WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis. --It's a popular Wisconsin tourist destination, but police say it is also attractive to child predators. The Wisconsin Dells, billed as the Waterpark Capital of the World, boasts more than 4 million visitors each year. But it could also be swimming with unfavorable clientele. WISN 12 News obtained video from Lake Delton police showing Pedro Esquivias floating in a wave pool at Mt. Olympus. Police said he was targeting sisters that were 12 and 19 years old. They said when the big waves hit, so did he. Prosecutors charged him with felony sexual assault of a child....

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Eighty-two years after she was born to a teenage girl and put up for adoption, Betty Morrell finally has met her 96-year-old birth mother, thanks to the dogged persistence of her granddaughter during 20 years of searching. And as a bonus, she has forged a close friendship with a sister she never knew she had. "After my adoptive parents died, that's when I started looking," Betty Morrell said Thursday by phone from her home in Spring Hill, Florida. "Being that it was a closed adoption, it's like hitting a brick wall because you can't get any...

Link only, per agreement with Gannett

It is a mantra that has been repeated so many times it has become de facto reality in the minds of those who watch Marco Rubio's Super PAC, aka Fox News. "Marco Rubio is the most electable candidate and we absolutely must defeat Hillary. He's the one!," we are told incessantly by the smart "conservatives." Asserting one candidate is more electable than another is always a fool's errand. After all, this frantic concern of electability is what got us the nominations of Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. Moreover, with the most radical and unappealing pair of Democrat candidates...

Full Title: "Police probing radicalised teenager in Belgium find video of him and five Iraqi migrants gang-raping drunk girl who fell unconscious at a party":::One suspect told police: 'She can't complain. Women must obey men' Belgian police have seized a video which reportedly shows an unconscious girl being gang-raped by a group of Iraqi migrants. Officers investigating the radicalisation of a 14-year-old boy in Ostend discovered the footage on his mobile phone. The video is believed to show him and six other attackers laughing, singing and dancing around the victim who has passed out drunk at a party. The suspects...

Bill Gates is one of Americas greatest business geniuses. But when he turned to education, his magic touch vanished. He is now known as the man who squandered several billion dollars trying to foist Common Core on a combattive public. Indeed, Common Core is so unpopular that its very mention quickly doomed Jeb Bushs presidential campaign. Today, Donald Trump casually promises that he will get rid of it forever; and audiences cheer. Why Bill Gates felt he should promote this thing is a major mystery. Here is a possible theory. When a tycoon decides he wants to help public schools,...

A parent demanded that a book taught at his son's school which described the Second World War D-Day landings as an invasion be taken off the curriculum. A Berlin court disagreed. The history book taught in his son's school described the Normandy landings, in which the Allied forces made the biggest amphibious landing in history on France's Atlantic coast, as an "invasion". This was both inappropriate and an insult to the soldiers who died in the assault, said the Kreuzberg parent. The Allies could not be seen as invaders because they were liberating an occupied land, he argued. ...

Fact Check's Robert Farley looked into Ted Cruz's claim that Marco Rubio's immigration bill would have granted legal status (and work permits) to criminal aliens. Farley's piece, "Cruz Distorts Rubio's Immigration Stance," was picked up by USA Today and The Huffington Post among others. Farley concluded that, "one could argue that Rubio's plan would allow those convicted of some misdemeanor crimes to obtain legal residency, but Cruz's blanket claim that Rubio "advocates amnesty for criminals who are here illegally" omits the criminal exceptions that Rubio has outlined." Misdemeanors include all crimes punishable for not more than one year. S. 744...

Donald Trump, his aura of invincibility shattered by Iowa caucus voters he once called "stupid," is throwing a tantrum these days, convinced that Ted Cruz “cheated” and continues to maintain the untenable proposition that in any event he is a not eligible to be President of the United States. Cruz did not cheat in Iowa. Cruz supporters may have indeed cited to supporters of Dr. Ben Carson CNN news reports and tweets that Carson was skipping New Hampshire and South Carolina, so draw your own conclusions, but where were the Carson president captains to shepherd their flock? If you're a...

"If voters feel like things are coming to an end in this country without drastic action, they really do not have a choice between Rubio and Cruz. They have only Cruz." I have, since last September, written several times I think Campaign 2016 comes down to a race between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. The loss in Iowa after leading in the ten polls preceding the caucuses has taken the wind out of Donald Trump's sails. He is refusing to invest in New Hampshire and will not buy expansive data to micro-target voters. I suspect Christie, Bush, Kasich, and Fiorina...

The Iowa caucuses have solidified Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as two of the leading candidates in this cycle: Sanders is the democratic socialist channeling liberal disenchantment with the Goldman Sachs wing of the party, while Trump represents the frustration of Republican blue-collar, white, middle-class voters with global competition and immigration. Both of them are leading a revolt against their respective party elites. The similarities don't end there. You might think the two candidates have wildly different views on the signature domestic issue of the last six years: health care reform. But you'd be wrong. Sanders' plan, to the extent...

Why must some conservatives act like forsaken-liberal women or liberals who support the Washington Redskins? Honestly. No matter what they have going for them in other areas of life, some people just can't get enough betrayal or disappointment. It's really depressing listening to otherwise normal people jabber on about how the rest of us could give Marco Rubio a second chance - during the primary, no less. Why can't these people just accept that Rubio isn't the guy they want him to be? What drives this twisted compulsion to see Marco the way some conservatives can only wish that he...

Even Donald Trump thought so, at least before Ted Cruz slipped past him to top the Iowa polls. As recently as last August Trump was saying all the legal people he talked to vouched for Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be president. As ABC News reported The Donald’s flip-flop: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has reversed his position on Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for president, now saying his Canadian birthplace shouldn’t disqualify him.

I saw a woman leaving the YMCA recently with a baby strapped to her chest. She had a second, slightly larger baby in a stroller. And she had a tantrum-throwing three-year-old holding her hand. She was infested with small children. I couldn't help but stare... The three-year-old was trying to make a scene. I say "trying to make a scene" because he was waging war against his mother, and she was refusing to participate. With a steady gait and an even expression, she ignored him. It was the most spectacular moment in parenting I have ever seen. This woman, who...

Map shows home towns of U.S. presidents. Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics artist It's no surprise that all 44 presidents were born on U.S. soil: The requirement for a president to be a "natural born citizen" is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The current debate about what that means stems from the fact that there's no document trail to reveal what, exactly, the Constitution writers meant by that statement.Whatever your opinion may be, it is true that all of the presidents to date have been born in one of the 50 U.S. states. Live Science took a look at where...

Listening to these two old angry white hacks is very funny folks. No joke. They are really going at it....

The Iowa caucus results left me with some dark thoughts. While Ted Cruz won, second-place Donald Trump and third-place Marco Rubio are clearly the media's two favorite candidates, albeit in very different ways. Trump and Rubio. Just what the Republican Party needs: a choice between insulting Muslims at home and using military force against them abroad. This may be the most powerful case for conservatives to support Cruz: At least he would save us from Rubio and Trump. Hyperbolic, I know, especially since I do agree that assimilation has been a challenge in Western countries that have accepted large numbers...

What happens if you express a negative view of Islam? Ask Tommy RobinsonThe former leader of the English Defence League is now a national pariah. Perhaps he deserves it ~ or perhaps it should worry us all A few weeks back, Tommy Robinson, former leader of the English Defence League, sent me his self-published memoirs, called Enemy of the State. The book has been largely ignored by most of the established media, although has caused a bit of a stir among counter-Jihadist groups across Europe. I'd recommend people read it, although perhaps not for the reasons Tommy would like...