Free Republic

In the wake of the passage of CRomnibus –on the strength of GOP votes – the GOP leadership in Congress and the GOP establishment has been working overtime to rough up Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Utah Senator Mike Lee. A lot of the GOP is miffed that they have to serve alongside men of principle, this produces a Devil-Holy Water effect. They also realize based on the government shutdown… an act I’d contend mobilized the GOP base to come out and deliver a beating to the Democrats in November… and the forced vote on the Constitutionality of the Obama’s...

Destination weddings are all the rage. After all, why not attend a wedding in a beautiful location and stay a little longer for some extra rest and relaxation? According to an article published by WBTW.com, it looks like some tourists are doing the opposite. After flocking to Myrtle Beach, SC for a vacation, some foreign visitors have extended their stay indefinitely by marrying American citizens in exchange for money and a green card. (Instead of planning a destination wedding, they plan to commit wedding fraud.)

Shocking political news this morning! Jeb Bush has announced he is going to “actively explore” running for President. This, no doubt, comes as a huge shock and surprise to everyone. It was only a few days ago that the New York Times got wind of Bush’s super secret meeting with John McCain wherein they discussed how to make irrelevant the conservative base of the Republican Party. Funny how in politics super secret meetings somehow get discovered and splashed all over the New York Times. It’s as if someone planted the story. After McCain and Mitt Romney, party moderates, got trounced...

Who is in charge of our nation today in mid-December, 2014? The answer seems to be nobody. We have a lawless president and Attorney General, trying everything they can to control our lives; but last month’s election showed they are only able to present obstacles to our lives. Neither the House nor the Senate is in the hands of men who can make things happen. They are good at stopping things from happening and reacting to external events, but that’s not the same as being in control. The best estimate of what is going on is that events jumping off...

A sweeping Vatican investigation of Roman Catholic sisters in the United States that began five years ago amid criticism they had become secular and overly feminist ended up mostly praising nuns for their contributions to the church, a sign of the shift in tone under Pope Francis. The report released Tuesday praised the sisters, thanked them for their selfless work caring for the poor and promised to value their "feminine genius" more, while gently suggesting ways to survive amid a steep drop in their numbers. Given the criticism of American religious life that prompted the Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI...

Andrew Luck’s legend is growing. Sure, there’s buzz about how he has thrown for more yards in his first three seasons than anyone in NFL history. Or the fact he’s led the Indianapolis Colts to the playoffs in each of his NFL seasons, after clinching a spot this year with Sunday’s win. But among NFL players, the gossip around Luck concerns a peculiar brand of on-field chatter so confusing and brilliant that no one knows quite what to make of it. “In all the years I’ve played football I have never heard anything like it,” said Washington Redskins linebacker Ryan...

A court has ordered a postmortem on the body of politician Andreas Schockenhoff, a sharp critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, to squash rumors of foul play after his death on Saturday night. […] It had initially been reported that the 57-year-old Christian Democratic Union (CDU) MP had died of heart failure. Schockenhoff was coordinator of foreign policy towards Russia for the German government from 2006 until earlier this year. He was a hawkish voice in the debate over how to deal with Putin and often clashed with his successor Gernot Erler of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). …

The city of Scranton hiked property taxes 57% and garbage collection fees 69% to shore up a police and fire pension funds that will run out of money anyway, in 5 years and 2.5 years respectively. Amusingly (to outsiders) but certainly not to Scranton taxpayers, Scranton Pensions Increased as Much as 80 Percent as a result of inane mayoral promises. The 2011 court ruling that awarded huge raises and millions of dollars in back pay to Scranton firefighters and police officers was a windfall for retirees too, with some seeing a more than 80 percent hike in their pensions between...

The Obama administration is urging dismissal of a lawsuit that would dismantle the president's immigration program, an initiative designed to spare nearly 5 million people in the U.S. illegally from deportation. The case was brought by an Arizona sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who contends that President Barack Obama's program serves as a magnet for more illegal entries into the U.S. Arpaio says the new arrivals will commit crimes and thus burden his law enforcement resources. In a court filing late Monday, the Justice Department told U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell that the sheriff's theory is speculative and unsubstantiated and that Arpaio...

My recent interview with Bret Baier, and his new book "Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love"Gayle Trotter: I am speaking with Bret Baier, Fox News Chief Political Anchor, and anchor of the top-ranked evening news program, Special Report. Thank you for joining me, Bret. Bret Baier: Thanks Gayle, good to be here. GT: Bret wrote an awesome book called Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love, which chronicles his journey in his career and his family life. It is hilarious and vividly written, and it brought me to tears at least twice. Bret,...

"Always controversial, Julian Assange gave an interview in London, where he’s exiled in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he lambasted Hillary Clinton, who he called a “threat” to the resolution of his issues. Beyond delving on Hillary’s relationship with Google, Assange also said the search giant should be broken up by regulators due to its dominant position. Assange also spoke of a secret trove of Bank of America BAC +0.5% data he threatened to release three years ago, and of course touched on the situations of Edward Snowden, who’s pursuit by the U.S. government was larger than Osama Bin Laden’s, and...

The incredibly resourceful and brilliant unpaid blogger known only as “sundance” at TheConservativeTreehouse.com is doing it again. Just as she (or he) did in the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases, sundance is putting the professional media journalists to shame by methodically analyzing and exposing key details of the recent, still-smoldering Jessica Chambers murder caper in rural Panola County, Mississippi, apparently well before ordinary reporters or even police investigators have even begun to rub the sleep from their eyes. This time, probing deeply into the very disturbing mystery surrounding the gruesome torture and burning death last week of the blonde,...

Republican senators pounded Ted Cruz over the weekend, lashing him for his procedural tactics and ultimately voting in large numbers against his immigration gambit. Now, Cruz’s allies off Capitol Hill are looking for revenge. Conservative outside groups view Saturday’s vote as the first salvo in the GOP v. GOP purity wars that they hope to reignite in the beginning of the new Congress and in the run-up to the 2016 Senate races, when 24 Republican senators will be on the primary ballots. After being pummeled by the party establishment in the 2014 midterms, activist groups are looking at the fight...

The stunning 40% drop in the price of oil over the past few months has scrambled global economic forecasts, changed the geo-political landscape, and has severely pressured many energy sector investments. Economists are scratching their heads to determine if the drop is good or bad for the economy or whether cheap oil will add to or decrease unemployment, or complicate the global effort to "defeat" deflation. While all of these issues merit detailed discussions, the first question to address is if the steep drop is here to stay and whether energy prices will stay low enough, for long enough, to...

Jeb Bush is exploring a 2016 presidential bid. The former Florida governor said in a post on Facebook Tuesday that over the Thanksgiving holiday there was a lot of discussion about the future of the nation. “As a result of these conversations and thoughtful consideration of the kind of strong leadership I think America needs, I have decided to actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States,” Mr. Bush said. Mr. Bush said he plans to establish a Leader PAC next month to “help me facilitate conversations with citizens across America to discuss the most critical...

Call The Rush Limbaugh Show program line between 12 Noon & 3PM Eastern Time, at: 1-800-282-2882 E-mail Rush: ElRushbo@eibnet.com or Fax Rush at: 212-445-3963 Write a letter to Rush and mail it to: The Rush Limbaugh Show, 1270 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Join This Ping List Now! E-mail Rush: ElRushbo@eibnet.com Fax Rush at: 212-445-3963, Write a letter to Rush and mail it to: The Rush Limbaugh Show, 1270 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Join This Ping List Now! Click Here To Join This Ping List! AND NOW... amidst billowing clouds of fragrant,...

The notion that Jeb Bush is going to be the Republican presidential nominee is a fantasy nourished by the people who used to run the Republican Party. Bush has been out of a game that changed radically during the 12 years(!) since he last ran for office. He missed the transformation of his brother from Republican savior to squish; the rise of the tea party; the molding of his peer Mitt Romney into a movement conservative; and the ascendancy of a new generation of politicians — Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, among them — who have been...

Mitt Romney has become the acid reflux candidate: He just keeps coming back up. There has been poll after poll, story after story and now, over the weekend, a “Ready for Romney” website emerged that may or may not be serious. (I am guessing “Masochists for Mitt” was already taken.) The Mitt boomlet is driven by three major forces: First, the belief that the potential Republican field for 2016 is so weak — even though you can find more than a dozen reasonably serious candidates in it — that Mitt will rise head and shoulders above it. It’s the Simon...

Police can use evidence seized during a traffic stop even if it turns out the officers initially pulled a car over based on a misunderstanding of the law, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The 8-1 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts said that such a stop does not violate the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches. The ruling came in a North Carolina case in which a police officer pulled over Nicholas Heien’s car because the right brake light was out, although the left one still worked. A consensual search led to the discovery of cocaine in the trunk. A...

While Miami-Dade residents were strike recently with new, rare fee hikes on vital east-west arteries, Gov. Rick Scott was rewarding his farming regressive supporters with $9 million to build and urge their toll-free roads. So while down south we compensate a way, a folks adult north who minister reduction to state revenues get a giveaway ride. Poor timing? Irony? A giggle to go with a slap to a pockets of Miami-Dade’s toll-payers? The governor’s proclamation from Tallahassee was all those things — and came by approach of press releases finished with difference of regard from a prolonged register of who’s...