Free Republic

Staffers for former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign are working without pay, CBS News has learned. National Journal reported Monday that Perry's team in South Carolina was no longer being compensated by the campaign. "Pay is only one reason people do this," Katon Dawson, Perry's South Carolina state director, told National Journal. "We'll be able to live off the land for a while." But the problem isn't just limited to Perry's team in South Carolina. Jeff Miller, Perry's national campaign manager, told campaign staff on Friday that the only expenses moving forward would be for travel, a source close...

Republican presidential candidate and former Texas Governor Rick Perry stated that there are more ways to get things done other than a government shutdown during a discussion of Planned Parenthood on Tuesday’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast” on the Fox Business Network. “We’ve expanded the healthcare for women in the state of Texas through multiple ways. One of which is we’ve passed the most sweeping tort reform in the nation in 2003 that exploded access to healthcare. If you were a pregnant female along the Rio Grande, you had to leave your county to get that prenatal care, no longer is...

Monday on Fox Business Network’s “The Willis Report,” host Gerri Willis broke down the charitable spending of the Clinton Foundation. Willis said, “What if you were to analyze the Clinton Foundation like any charitable organization? That is a question that we’re asking tonight. Does the Clinton Foundation wisely spend charitable dollars? Well the experts weighed in. The answer is a resounding no. One expert even called it a slush fund for the Clintons. These are not politicos. These are charity experts.” “Charity Navigator, who we have on the show all the time, placed the Clinton Foundation on a watch list,”...

A top Democratic moneyman recruited by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign has put fundraising activities on hold, saying he can’t do it with a clear conscience because the former secretary of state has too many unanswered questions swirling around her. New York businessman Jon Cooper, who Team Clinton enlisted for its elite corps of early fundraisers known as “HillStarters,” said that he decided not to tap his donor network for Mrs. Clinton because she hasn’t provided enough answers about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation while she ran the State Department, her exclusive use of private email for official business...

Whenever a scandal with the capacity to deal serious damage to the White House’s credibility arises, you can be sure that the administration only just learned about it in the same way you did: Reading about it in the papers. It’s become clear that you can measure the potential political danger that any one controversy poses to the White House by administration officials’ willingness to feign ignorance and betrayal. It seems that the scandalous revelation that Hillary Clinton constructed her own unsecure email system that she used exclusively as secretary of state has joined the pantheon of controversies of which...

Keys’s research was seized on eagerly by the bansturbators of the Nanny State and their allies in the medical and food industries. From 1957 the American Heart Association began targeting animal fats as public enemy number one. In 1977, fat-avoidance became US government policy with the launch of the McGovern dietary guidelines. Britain later followed suit.

Mr. Nadhmi Auchi is a business partner of Syrian-born businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who has supported US Presidential candidate Barack Obama financially since his first run for the Illinois state senate in 1996.

Election 2016: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush embraces one-size-fits-all national education standards that would turn schools into re-education camps for the left. His decision could cause trouble with GOP primary voters. As is the tradition these days, Jeb Bush, brother of one former president and son of another, has announced via social media that he is preparing to run for president, setting the stage for another Bush-Clinton contest in 2016 should former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton get the Democratic nomination. To be the Republican nominee, Bush must run a gauntlet of primaries where he'll need to persuade Tea Party...

Nancy Pelosi insists she doesn’t gloat when House Republicans can’t shore up the votes among their own members to pass any number of critical bills, and it’s Democrats who get to swoop in and call themselves the heroes. “I would rather they did the responsible thing so we wouldn’t have to bail them out every time,” the California Democrat quipped of her GOP counterparts. But the minority leader, who sat for an interview in her Capitol Hill office with CQ Roll Call, must be feeling gratified. The government is on the precipice of a shutdown, and if Republicans can’t get...

With the runoff just two days away in Louisiana’s Senate race, the excitement of the final contest in the 2014 midterms is so thick one could cut it with a knife … at least on the GOP side. Since independent pollsters gave up on the finale of Mary Landrieu’s Senate career, Republican pollsters are the only ones taking surveys — or at least the only ones publishing the results. The Washington Examiner’s David Drucker takes a look at the latest results from WPA Opinion Research, working on behalf of the conservative group Independent Women’s Voice, and finds Bill Cassidy out...

Human Events-Gravis Marketing conducted a random survey of 643 likely voters regarding opinions of races in Louisiana. The poll carries a margin of error of 4%. The poll was conducted 11-12-2014-11-14-2014 The polls were conducted using automated telephone calls and weighted by anticipated voting demographics.

Many Democrats up for re-election next year have to find some way to defend their past support for ObamaCare. A new campaign spot for Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina hints at how some candidates might try to pull this off. **SNIP** The goal here seems to be to defend the law's more popular provisions without ever using the words "ObamaCare" or "Affordable Care Act." "The ad focuses on stressing Hagan's support of aspects of ObamaCare—without once mentioning the law by name," explains the Hill newspaper. Don't be surprised if other Democratic candidates, particularly in red states that President...

**SNIP** "Folks are now, I think in talking to members, more cautious with regard to dealing with the president," said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and one of the first leaders in his state to endorse Obama's presidential candidacy six year ago. Cummings, the White House's biggest defender in a Republican-controlled committee whose agenda is waging war against the administration over Benghazi, the IRS scandal, a gun-tracking operation and now health care, said he still thinks Obama is operating with integrity. But he noted that not all his Democratic colleagues agree. "They want...

The National Journal ranks U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., as No. 7 on its list of the 15 most vulnerable Senate seats. The Washington publication notes that fortunes have changed since Hagan and Gov. Bev Perdue were swept into office in 2008 on the Obama wave. Democrats are betting that voters will see the subsequent Republican revolution in North Carolina as overreaching, and that current frontrunner Thom Tillis, the speaker of the state House, will suffer for it. Just the opposite could be true. But, as the magazine points out, polls so far show voters don’t know much about Tillis.

Folks, if you have read me recently you know that I've said that you are the problem and that the reason this is true is that you won't go on strike, you won't picket DC and refuse to leave until the government stops stealing from you and debasing the currency, you won't reduce your spending and income to only that which provides necessities, and most of you go on to justify your behavior with "my kids (and/or family) deserve what I can provide." You're fools and I'm going to prove it. Further, I'm going to prove -- by arithmetic --...

A Post Election Toast: It is in the latter hours of election night when I pour three fingers of bourbon into a glass and stand next to the light switch, clicking the light on to commemorate the extraordinary beacon of freedom, personal responsibility, and economic liberty that for so long stood as the foundation of this great republic. Only to push down on it in sorrowful recognition that the glorious beacon has been effectively extinguished - not by its elected leader, but by the electors who care not for individual responsibility, liberty, or freedom. Tonight, as I turn the switch...

In Chapter VIII of “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Graham, Mr Toad is in prison, steeped in despair when the gaoler’s daughter brings him…..toast….

You need to read way, way, way down into this National Journal piece to find the key bit, but it’s worth it. Says Jay Cost, “I’ve never seen anybody bury a lede like Major Garrett here.” Let’s bring this treasure chest up to the surface: What also became clear after the dust began to settle from the rumble on Long Island was the electoral map has narrowed and Obama’s team, while conceding nothing publicly, is circling the wagons around Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Plouffe said that Obama remains strong in all four states, but he would not discuss...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows President Obama attracting support from 48% of voters nationwide, while Mitt Romney earns the vote from 46%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided. See daily tracking history. Four years ago today, Rasmussen Reports tracking showed Obama leading John McCain by a 51% to 45% margin. The numbers barely budged for the rest of the campaign season as Obama enjoyed a comfortable lead and stayed between 50% and 52% every day for the last 40 days. When “leaners” are included, it’s now Obama 49%,...