Free Republic

With a single phrase of compassion for immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Jeb Bush has prompted questions about his viability as a potential presidential contender and underscored how divisive the immigration issue remains for the Republican Party. The former Florida governor sparked a conservative furor this week when he described illegal immigration in an interview as an “act of love” by people trying to provide for their families. Backing Bush are some of the GOP’s most powerful insiders and financiers, who are hoping the party can woo Hispanic voters and rebound from Mitt Romney’s damaging “self-deportation” rhetoric in 2012. “The...

Bill O’Reilly weighed in on immigration reform in tonight’s Talking Points Memo, arguing that a hard-line stance by the GOP will help Democrats. […] “The Republican Party must compromise on the immigration issue or it will lose the presidency again in 2016,” O’Reilly said. He noted that Mitt Romney only got 27 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012. “If that happens again, you can say hello to President Hillary Clinton,” he said. …

Finally, today, we get at least an attempt at an explanation of President Obama’s dead-of-night decision on December 16 to grant Interpol — the international police force — immunity from American law. (See here and here.) Unfortunately, in the habit to which we’ve grown accustomed, the Obama administration itself didn’t provide the explanation. It comes from Interpol’s secretary general, Ron Noble, via an informative report by Valerie Richardson at Human Events. (Ms. Richardson, who quotes from my posts in her story, was good enough to call me for comment; I regret that, because of the press of other business, I...

How does one define terrorism? When drafting my Goals on the Global War on Terror document, that definition needed to be done and to separate terrorism and give it a more coherent view as to what it is all about. Well, looking at the major goals across terrorist organizations, as opposed to standard Nation based insurgencies, the broad swath of terrorist organizations have no standard set of goals, save that they are international in flavor. Islamofascist types seek to install a Caliphate, while the old fashioned Communist International version would prefer that sort of system and your plain old narcotics...