Free Republic

There’s a lot of talk about optics in politics, and generally speaking, I am wildly opposed to the notion of optics. Optics refers to how one is viewed by the general public, how one’s actions are perceived. Optics are, in essence, a manipulation of perception. In my opinion, the top priority on a politician’s mind should not be optics, but actions. Actions–if they are driven by noble intent–should speak for themselves. Action should not require extra manufacturing. However, there is something to be said about making sure one’s actions are not perceived negatively, thus undermining one’s entire political philosophy.We have...

Howdy everyone!! We're loading up the FReepercampmobile today and will be departing for Texas this afternoon. God willing, we will arrive McAllen Texas sometime Thursday night and will plant our flag at our border encampment on the American bank of the Rio Grande River!! We had planned this expedition several weeks ago and were intending to urge Governor Perry to call out the Texas Guard and or Texas militia units at his disposal and also to learn first hand what's happening at the border and to protest the government's lawless actions there. The president will not secure the border, will...

On July 3, 2014, Texas Governor Rick Perry told Members of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security that urgent federal action was required to stem the humanitarian and national security crises unfolding along the Texas-Mexico border. After almost three weeks of inaction by the Obama administration, yesterday, Gov. Perry directed Texas Adjutant General John Nichols to immediately begin preparations for the deployment of up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the U.S. – Mexico border. These troops will support the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) ongoing law enforcement surge, Operation Strong Safety, which is focused on combatting criminal...

Texas Governor Rick Perry announced Monday afternoon that he is sending 1,000 members of the Texas National Guard to the U.S.-Mexican border. “Over the years I have repeatedly called on the federal government to live up to its responsibility of protecting this great nation by securing the border,” said Perry, who added that he will “not stand idly by while our citizens are under assault and little children from Central America are detained in squalor.” Under assault might be an understatement. According to Perry, more than 203,000 illegal aliens responsible for committing more than 640,000 crimes, including 3000 homicides, have...

Southwest Key Programs is the largest provider of services to unaccompanied children in the United States. The group has illegal child units in seven states.An Austin-based company has received over $120 million so far this year to shelter illegal immigrant children.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) KEYE TV reported: More than $100 million of federal grant money this year has gone to an Austin based company that runs unaccompanied minor shelters across the country. Its website says Southwest Key Programs is the largest provider of services to unaccompanied children in the United States. Their headquarters is in Austin, Texas. A brief online description details the...

VIDEO: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on Sending the National Guard to the Border Watch our interview with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott from tonight’s ON THE RECORD and sound off!See the Video Here

I find it interesting that all of Texas' Most Wanted criminals are categorized as "White." Gotta boost those crime numbers!

Mexico’s Secretariat of the Interior is set to implement restrictions. MEXICO.- La Bestia, the train that hundreds of Central Americans travel on top of and in between its wagons on their journey through Mexico to the U.S. border, may no longer be used for this purpose. According to Mexico’s Secretariat of the Interior, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, measures are being taken to restrict non-permitted use of the train. La Bestia has already claimed the lives of many migrants riding on it, and has also resulted in hundreds of injuries (including dismemberment) to those who have fallen off it. In an...

http://new.livestream.com/accounts/4773527/events/3206474 Live coverage of Texas Governor's Press Conference.

Former Congressman Ron Paul defended the Russian government on Sunday and slammed Western leaders for spreading "propaganda" after a Malaysian Airlines plane was allegedly shot down by Kremlin-backed separatists in Ukraine. "Western politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster. It had to be Russia; it had to be Putin, they said," the former presidential candidate wrote. "While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event, there are a few things they will not report." One of those unreported things, Paul claimed in his weekly "Texas Straight Talk" column, was the...

The political arm of the Planned Parenthood abortion business says it will spend as much as $3 million in Texas to elect pro-abortion gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis and other pro-abortion candidates. Cecile Richards, the president of America’s biggest abortion corporation was in the Lone State State to push her plan. Cecile Richards, president of the national advocacy group Planned Parenthood Votes, said the effort aims to draw differences between Democrat Wendy Davis and Republican Greg Abbott, the state attorney general, in the campaign for governor. wendydavis12“When women have a chance to know the difference between candidates, they won’t vote for...

FALFURRIAS, Texas—Two Americans were killed in the Israeli war against Hamas on Saturday. One of the men was a Texan with dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. The two were killed when an APC they were riding in was struck by a Hamas anti-tank weapon. The Texan was identified as Sean Carmeli, according to an article on the website JPUPDATES. The other American was identified Max Steinberg. The identities of the men were confirmed by a government official who spoke to Breitbart Texas on condition of anonymity. Carmeli was from the town of South Padre, Texas, according to his Facebook page. He attended...

Gov. Rick Perry is expected to announce Monday that he will activate up to 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to the Rio Grande Valley, state Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen, confirmed Sunday night. Perry wants these troops to bolster the work already being done with a surge of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, said Hinojosa's spokesperson, Jennifer Saenz, who added that the governor gave the Rio Grande Valley delegation notice prior to the planned 2 p.m. announcement on border security......... In Iowa on Sunday, Perry told a small group at a VFW hall that if President Barack Obama fails...

Gov. Rick Perry to deploy 1,000 National Guard troops to RGV Texas Gov. Rick Perry plans to announce he will activate the Texas National Guard at a news conference Monday in Austin, said state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen. Hinojosa did not have details of the effort, but an internal memo from another state official’s office said the governor planned to call about 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to the Rio Grande Valley — at a cost of about $12 million per month. The memo was provided to The Monitor on the condition of anonymity because the information is...

Calling all citizens and patriots! Protest Obama's lawlessness on the border! Prepare to defend the border, repel invaders!! Obama's continuing lawlessness is totally out of control and is now threatening our very existence as a free Republic. Not only is he not securing the border, he's doing the exact opposite. They tried getting a "Dream Act" through the congress to give amnesty to young illegal aliens, but it was rejected by the representatives of we the people in congress, so the president has unconstitutionally "passed" his own "Dream Act" and is now enforcing it rather than the immigration laws legally...

Migrant Crisis Expands North From Border, Into Arid Texas Wilderness By MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKE 70 miles north of the border, a Texas county finds itself overwhelmed by 911 calls from lost migrants Since 2009, Texas' Brooks County has found the bodies of more than 400 immigrants Daniel Zamarripa loaded his police dog into the back of his patrol car and set out to track his quarry — immigrants circumventing the local Border Patrol checkpoint. Zamarripa, 27, is one of 15 reserve deputies brought in to assist the Brooks County Sheriff's Office, whose four deputies have lately found themselves overwhelmed by 911...

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says Russian President Vladimir Putin bears direct responsibility for the downing of the passenger jet over eastern Ukraine last week. “I think Putin is responsible and complicit for what happened,” Rep. Michael T. McCaul, Texas Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I believe that we are — Mr. Putin is — returning to a Cold War mentality.” “We’re seeing that happen with Crimea being annexed, we’re seeing that happen with the Russian-speaking peoples in Ukraine and all throughout the Baltic states now where I think his long-term strategy is to...

We had about a hundred people present at our anti-illegal alien protest in Sacramento today. We had people representing Oath Keepers, Overpasses for America, Free Republic and other groups, including a contingent of volunteers from the Bolinas Border Patrol. There was only one counter protester that I'm aware of and in the end she gave in and took up an American flag and a "Secure the Borders" sign. I overheard her say, "OMG, I've always been a flaming liberal and now I'm a member of the tea party!" But she was also an admitted lunatic and possibly an escapee from...

Heritage Action called for the end of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, making an argument that dovetails with legislation offered by Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) as a solution to the border crisis.The Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano denounced the program in a Thursday op-ed.  ’The president’s 2012 policy for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, regardless of the Oval Office’s intent, sets a precedent that encourages further unlawful migration, particularly among minors,” Carafano wrote. ”It leaves those in the program mired in uncertainty as to their future status. It resolves nothing, encourages the problem to grow and is a detriment...

Should the Democrats nominate Elizabeth Warren for President in 2016, as a draft-Warren movement, some liberal pundits and enthusiasts at this week’s Netroots Nation convention believe? Should Republicans nominate Ted Cruz, who has kept his options open with frequent trips to Iowa and New Hampshire? In some ways, Cruz and Warren are mirror images, and the cases for and against them are surprisingly similar. But there are also some critical differences.Before 2008, the idea of a presidential contest between two first-term Senators in their (by then) fourth year in Washington would have seemed ridiculous; in 1988, Dan Quayle was roundly...

First those Texans took our jobs. Then they took our money. Well, to be precise, Mexican Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna’s leg. A group of Illinois soldiers stole it fair and square – back in 1845. During the U.S. war with Mexico, Santa Anna skedaddled from the battle on a donkey and left his prosthetic leg behind in a carriage along with a bag of gold and a freshly cooked chicken. A group of Illinois soldiers ate the chicken, gave the Army the gold and kept the leg. One of the soldiers traveled about Illinois charging 10 cents for...

The number of Americans who see illegal immigration as the nation's most pressing problem has spiked from 3 per cent to 17 per cent since May, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. That percentage now tops government corruption, the U.S. economy, jobs, health care and every other hot-button issue, driven by a flood of tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children pouring across the U.S.-Mexico border. 'We are all connected. We can't just build a wall or a fence and say no more,' Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis tweeted on Tuesday. 'This is America. Our doors are open.' The...

Kgb USA Inc. has informed the Texas Workforce Commission that it plans to carry out a “mass layoff” in San Antonio. The call center company, which does business as Conduit Global, expects to eliminate 225 positions by Aug. 31. Conduit Global officials say the layoffs are a result of an unexpected cancellation of services by one of the company’s clients. Conduit Global notes in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) letter filed with the Texas Workforce Commission that it is hopeful the layoffs can be minimized by the “potential award of a large customer care contract.” If a...

Today at the Mexican Consulate just south of downtown Houston a protest against the illegal alien border surge was staged by concerned patriots. Apparently the word got out to the opposition forces. There were 25 to 30 illegals and associated supporters there as well. Our side numbered from 40 to 50 while I was on site. We were staged on opposite sides of the street. The illegals (they proclaimed themselves so, chanting "undocumented and unafraid") had a small public address system and had a designated wise-ass on the mike leading chants and taunts which actually were pretty comedic. The...

Has Bolinas gone Tea Party? That’s what one nationally known uber conservative seems to think—as Free Republic founder Jim Robinson claimed recently that residents of the quirky beachfront enclave had enlisted in the ranks of the Texas border militias on the patrol for illegals. Robinson, writing on the Free Republic website last week about “defend(ing) the border” to “protest Obama’s lawless open borders policies,” name checked the hippy-ish coastal community in his fight to protect America from, if recent headlines are any indication, thousands of desperate children fleeing poverty in the Hispanic third world. “We have independent units from the...

We round up our 25 favorite films set in Texas. If you’ve seen them, maybe it's time to see them again. If you haven’t seen them, what are you waiting for?

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) has been begging the federal government for years to secure America’s southern border. Now, as America faces what some are calling an “invasion” of illegal aliens, Perry said the time may come that Texas is forced to secure its roughly 1,200 mile border with Mexico with or without the federal government’s help. “We’ve been able to shut down illegal activities in certain sectors with our different operations that we’ve had,” Perry said on The Glenn Beck Program Thursday. “But I think there’s a point in time where you say, ‘You know what? This 1,200 mile border has to...

Dear Mr. (my name): There is a crisis brewing that disproportionately impacts border cities, putting a strain on their physical infrastructure. Sharing the physical burden of housing so many people relieves the immediate pressure on a handful of cities. We have a professional responsibility to assist other municipalities, just as we would in the aftermath of a natural disaster. There is a growing humanitarian need. We have a personal responsibility to assist human beings in distress. These are not undocumented workers flooding here to take low paying jobs. These are children, some as young as 2 or 3 years of...

As I’ve noted here before, the current crisis of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has had one upside. It has forced the actual GOP stance on immigration out into the open, increasingly boxing Republicans into a position where their main solution to the broader immigration crisis is effectively advocating for maximum deportations from the interior, including of the DREAMers. Now, as the battle over the crisis continues to roil the political landscape, the point is being underscored by none other than Ted Cruz: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz plans to take a hard-line stand that could rile up conservatives just as...

The other day at the Texas driver’s license center, while paying for my required in-person renewal, the clerk said it was time to take my fingerprints. What? Really. Quietly, earlier this year, the Texas Department of Public Safety began requiring full sets of fingerprints from everyone who obtains a new driver’s license or photo identification card. Until now, if a person never got arrested, most likely his or her fingerprints would never get recorded and placed in a government database. [] The new fingerprinting program is only one aspect of the state’s 21st-century security system. Since 2010, Texas has used...

How do you fault a guy for wanting to help feed the flurry of new house guests Democrats like Obama have dropped off in our homes? If you’re a bleeding-heart, anti-hunting liberal, you may have a conflict of interest, but fans were crystal clear about where they stood when rocker Ted Nugent made this offer on Twitter Wednesday: Ted Nugent ✔ @TedNugent sending tons of pure nutritious venison to the kids at the border 8:55 AM - 16 Jul 2014 306 Retweets 329 favorites Richbirdhunter @Richbirdhunter @TedNugent That's good send them home with a full belly 8:58 AM - 16...

Employees at Dell Services offices in Plano will be affected by global layoffs that parent company Dell Inc. is undergoing, but the number of pink slips the Round Rock-based tech giant will pass out in North Texas is not yet clear. Dell workers were to be notified Wednesday of layoffs across the globe, including at Dell Services offices in Plano. A statement put out by Dell confirmed the layoffs but declined to give the number of workers that the computer firm will cut. Dell has about 2,500 employees in North Texas and about 16,500 statewide.

MCALLEN, Texas--A federal judge denied bond for a husband and wife accused of kidnapping an illegal immigrant from Honduras and threatening her family with decapitating her or selling her off to a brothel if they didn’t pay a ransom. On Tuesday, 31-year-old Juan Carlos Rosales and his wife 34 year-old Maria Cruz Sanchez went before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dorina Ramos who told them that since the two Mexican nationals were in the country illegally they weren’t eligible to be released on bond. Federal agents from McAllen, Texas arrested the two last week following a call from U.S. Homeland Security Investigations...

ANSON, Texas - A never-opened, $35 million, 1,112-bed Texas prison facility in Jones County is being discussed as a possibility to house unaccompanied immigrant children. On Wednesday, Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin confirmed federal authorities have inquired about putting undocumented children in the facility originally built to treat state prisoners for drug addiction. A deal has yet to be struck and may never come to fruition, Spurgin said during a telephone interview Wednesday. “(Jones County facility) has been mentioned but nothing has been formalized or finalized,” Spurgin said. “It’s just providing information at this point.” Large numbers of children are...

We have an immigration problem along our southern border, mostly with the Texas portion. The border is leaking like a sieve, with hundreds of children fleeing Central America and the drug induced bloodshed that has moved recently from Mexico down to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. A child has a higher chance of being killed in Central America than they do in Chicago’s South Side. Who are buying the drugs that are causing all the violence in Central America? Americans are. So if we want to stop the influx of children from Central America we need to do something about...

Vocal conservative commentator and former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, will share her take on women’s leadership issues during a visit to the Permian Basin next year. The John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute’s Distinguished Lecture Series is bringing Palin to the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center on Feb. 12 at 7 p.m. The lecture, “Groundbreakers, mavericks and trailblazers: How women are showing 21st century leadership,” is free and open to the public. “What better example than Sarah Palin to come to us to talk about typical challenges and barriers, and how to break them down and show the example of...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)STARR COUNTY - La Grulla police found a member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang among several illegal immigrants. A La Grulla police officer pulled over a vehicle after a traffic violation. The officer discovered several undocumented immigrants. The officer said he was shocked to find a member of the hyper-violent gang among the immigrants. He said the 26-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador was covered in tattoos linking him to the criminal organization. The traffic stop happened on Military Road. "I observed that the rear passenger had some tattoos on his elbow. Once I confronted him about them, he...

Lawmakers and top military officials on Wednesday expressed fears that friction with Russia could someday leave the United States without the power to launch rockets into space. Reliance on a single Russian engine to launch many critical military satellites could come back to haunt the U.S., officials said, if tensions between the two nations continue to rise. “If you consider space a national security priority, then you absolutely have to consider assured access to space a national security priority,” Gen. William Shelton, commander of the Air Force’s space command, testified in a joint Senate committee hearing on Wednesday. “Given that...

LUBBOCK, Texas—An illegal immigrant who was released by U.S. authorities with a Notice to Appear has been arrested for the alleged murder of a woman and kidnapping of children on U.S. soil. The alleged crimes occurred after the man was released. The man, Pedro Alberto Monterroso-Navas, entered the U.S. illegally with children and turned himself in to U.S. Border Patrol agents. He was processed and released, as are all illegal immigrants who come as unaccompanied minors or incomplete family units from Central America. The alien is from Honduras. The arrest was first reported by the Associated Press (AP), but Breitbart...

WORCESTER — Worcester County Sheriff Lewis Evangelidis is joining five other sheriffs from across the country on a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border this week to find out what's happening regarding the influx of thousands of unaccompanied youths and other undocumented immigrants from Central America. Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson, whose facility is also a federal detention center and has housed some undocumented immigrants, is among the sheriffs who will embark on the "fact-finding" mission. "The issue is to find out what is happening on the border. We did finally get confirmation that there have been people relocated to Massachusetts,"...

Just happened on FOX 4 Dallas News with Clay Jenkins saying 25,000 illegal children will flow through Dallas County at appx. 5:10 CDT FOX 4 newscast.

A key House Democrat on immigration reform is slamming a bipartisan bill that would make it eaiser to deport child immigrants from Central American countries who are crossing the border illegally. “This is not the middle ground, this is the deportation-only agenda dressed up in sheep’s clothing," Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said of the bill introduced by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). "More of the same is not a solution,” he said. Gutierrez had already expressed opposition to the Cornyn-Cuellar proposal at a press briefing on Friday in which he and his colleages from the Congressional...

PARKER COUNTY — A Parker County family and Sheriff Larry Fowler blame lax border security for a frightening crime. On Saturday morning, 35-year-old Israel Andrade allegedly broke into a home in Springtown by crawling through a window. The sheriff’s office said Andrade has been deported to Mexico four times, starting in 2003. "My daughter ran into our room screaming, 'Mom! Mom! Mom! Someone's in the house!" said the mother of a nine-year-old girl. We’re not identifying the family because of the age of the victim and the nature of the crime. The woman's daughter said she woke up to a...

Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), who along with other lawmakers met with leaders of Central America over the weekend, said that those officials “want their children back.” “This is not an immigration problem, this is a crisis,” Granger said on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday after she concluded the trip. “What we should be dealing with is this crisis and not blaming either Congress or these countries.” Granger, who is chair the House group working to address the immigration crisis, met with President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez and President of Guatemala Otto Pérez Molina. “We found out that the president and...

This might be some background reading on this: FoxNews: California expected to set mandatory water curbs for first time Over one hundred years ago, folks in California were planning their future by planning on aquaducts. Occasionally, Louisiana has too much water (flooding) and Texas too little. The key number in all of this is that Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas is at about 400-500 feet above sea level. That means an aquaduct system could be built such there could be four to five stations that raise the water 100 feet or more. Louisiana has a number of river systems (besides the Mississippi...

Border Patrol agents are dropping off undocumented immigrants at bus stations and now at airports. Some said those who crossed illegally into the U.S are able to purchase plane tickets and board flights without a picture I.D as required for everyone else. National Border Patrol Council said while they are unaware of immigrants boarding planes without identification in the Rio Grande Valley. A union representative out of the Laredo sector told us that it is happening in Laredo and it’s happening quite often. We spoke to National Border Patrol Council #2455 in Laredo, and what they told us was shocking....

An Urdu-to-English dictionary was not something Mike Vickers expected to find on the rocky earth underneath the cattle fencing around his 1,000-acre Texas ranch. Yet there it was — dropped, Vickers guesses, when its carrier got zapped by his fence’s electricity, and adding yet another dimension to the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, where tens of thousands of people have been flooding into the United States. Vickers’ property line runs along Highway 281, just 4 1/2 miles north from the Falfurrias Border Patrol station. The station itself is about 70 miles north of the Rio Grande, the first highway checkpoint...

_____Expected to Have Lifelong Complications A Border Patrol agent from the Laredo, Texas, Sector has been hospitalized for seven days with bacterial pneumonia, which the agent contracted while processing illegal immigrants, officials from National Border Patrol Council 2455 tell National Review Online. Agent Jarrad Seely, vice president of NBPC 2455, says the agent is expected to have chronic asthmatic symptoms for life, according to information relayed by the agent. The illness has so swollen the agent’s throat that it’s difficult for the agent to speak, Seely says. “It’s a very traumatic experience for [the agent] and [the agent’s] family,” he...

Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, came down firmly on the hawkish side of the Republican national security debate Saturday, saying "isolationist" figures like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., are "blind" to the threat posed by terrorism. "I can understand the emotions behind isolationism," Perry wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post. "Many people are tired of war, and the urge to pull back is a natural, human reaction. Unfortunately, we live in a world where isolationist policies would only endanger our national security even further."

Attorney General Eric Holder insists that the the Obama administration is enforcing the country’s immigration laws, as a flood of illegal-immigrant children from Central America pour across the southern border. “Yes, the immigration laws are being enforced,” Holder told ABC correspondent Pierre Thomas in an interview airing on ABC’s This Week Sunday.