Free Republic

WASHINGTON - The pack of little-known Republican presidential candidates grew larger this week, raising this unasked question: Do any of them believe they have a serious chance of winning the nomination and the presidency in a political process that usually rewards high-profile figures who are widely known among the broad base of their party? There are exceptions to this rule, but more often than not, people with White House ambitions who have beaten the competition and won the highest office in the land had been working toward it for a long time. Consider Ronald Reagan who devoted years to the...

<p>The cartel violence that has gripped Mexico in recent weeks is alarming to many in the country who are accustomed to shootouts in more remote outposts like Guerrero or the states that border the United States. But the Western state where federal forces have been waging an all-out war against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is home to the country's second-largest city, Guadalajara, and home to key industrial and economic sectors.</p>

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new mercury pollution regulations that took effect last month opened the flood gates for a new multi-billion-dollar energy industry that has investors scrambling to get in on second-generation technology poised for massive revenue gains. When the EPA measures to curb mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants over 25 megawatts took effect on 16 April, it wasn’t only environmentalists who were popping the champagne corks—technology companies specializing in mercury remediation broke out the glasses as well. After all, the new regulations created a $2 billion-a-year, federally mandated business for them virtually overnight. These Federal regulations add...

Fresh off the heels of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo’s embrace a philosophy that would result in the elimination of federal protections on “hate speech” (he mistakenly believed that those protections had been eliminated over a half-century ago by the Supreme Court), Barack Obama’s likely successor as America’s leading Democrat has embraced the cause of restricting free speech. In her dogged quest to sate her restless left-flank, Hillary Clinton has endorsed the notion that the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC can only be reversed by passing an amendment to the Constitution. The Court determined in Citizens United...

As a true bellwether state, New Hampshire arguably deserves its status as the first in the nation primary state. In the last 36 years, only in 2004 have New Hampshire’s general election voters failed to back the ultimate presidential election winner. What’s more, the margin of victory enjoyed by the winner of the Granite State’s electoral votes often closely mirrors the national vote. New Hampshire’s voters truly have their finger on the political pulse. And that’s why the results of the latest Dartmouth University survey should be a source of concern for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Dartmouth pollsters took an...

The Legacy Lives On! Mark’s Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation “Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” --Mark Levin in Liberty and Tyranny Welcome to “The Levin Lounge”… Step in and have a virtual FRink.Taking the country by storm, one radio station at a time – and kicking the BUTTS of the competition! Welcome all, to the most FUN LIVE THREAD on FreeRepublic.com! You can call Mark’s show: 1-877-381-3811

An investigation of the group began in late January when various law enforcement agencies across Southern California received mailed letters from the “Masonic Fraternal Police Department” advising that David Henry had been elected the MFPD’s chief, according to a Sheriff’s Department’s news release. The letters “immediately created suspicion and confusion within the law enforcement community,” the release said. A short time after the letters arrived, law enforcement began getting calls from someone identifying himself as “Chief Deputy Director Brandon Kiel,” who asked to meet with the head of the department, the release stated. ... The group, which claimed to be...

Free Republic is apparently closely monitored as an information source. A little while ago I did a google search, "Did Baltimore Officers request medical assistance for Gray during transport?" As I scrolled down the page, Free Republic caught my eye. It was my own post from an earlier thread citing theconservativetreehouse.com site that has audio of transmissions between officers, dispatch and EMTs while they were transporting Gray. This information completely blows the case that the prosecutor filed against the officers out of the water. I wanted to see if anyone else has reported this information. As far as I can...

Writing on Twitter, Herzog asserted that "the government is irresponsible, unstable, ungovernable. It is a government of national failure. A government of extortion, narrow and weak, that will not promote a thing, and will soon be replaced by an alternative of hope and responsibility."

The NYPD is investigating a restaurant beatdown as a possible hate crime after wild video taken at the Chelsea eatery shows an attacker smash a wooden chair over a gay couple, knocking them both to the ground, witnesses and cops said. According to DNAinfo.com, which first reported on the assault, the beating came after the attacker lobbed several gay slurs at the couple, identified by the website as Jonathan Snipes, 32, and his 25-year-old boyfriend, Ethan York-Adams. "These guys attacked us specifically because they knew we weren't their type of people," Snipes told DNA. "It was disgusting. It was awful.”...

Link below per rules

Appearing on CNN Wednesday morning, former Baltimore Deputy State’s Attorney Page Croyder blasted current State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby‘s charges against the six officers allegedly involved in Freddie Gray‘s mid-April death. “Any prosecutor interested in the truth and in justice would have used all the tools at her disposal to find them. Ms. Mosby ignored them,” Croyder wrote in a Tuesday op-ed for the Baltimore Sun. “She has one of the most experienced homicide prosecutors in the state of Maryland as chief of her homicide unit, but did not ask him to investigate. She had the police report all of one...

A man snorkeling in the Colorado River near the Arizona and California border sent authorities on a hunt after he alerted them to what appeared to be "skeletal remains" at the bottom of the river. After he called police in Arizona, authorities launched a search for the remains on Monday, and divers from the Buckskin Fire Department swam down to investigate. To everyone's surprise -- and relief -- the skeletons, seated comfortably in lawn chairs, turned out to be fake, police said. They were even wearing sunglasses and were placed in a way as though they were having a tea...

(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama said at a Democratic National Committee dinner held at a private residence in New York City on Monday night that he intends to get as much done as possible before he leaves office in January 2017.“Now, I intend to get as much done in the next 22 months as possible,” Obama said. “As you’ve noticed, I've been pretty busy--and I will continue to be. And I'm hopeful that we may find some opportunities for collaboration with the Republican Congress--or example, on trade. Hopefully, on infrastructure. There may be some things where there’s some convergence....

Full Title: The Wrong Kind of Rights: Same-Sex Marriage, Third-Party Reproduction, and the Sexualization of Children In our culture, there is a chasm between two irreconcilable conceptions of the meaning and purpose of human sexuality and equality. For children most of all, the wrong kind of sexuality and equality has devastating effects. “No sex! No sex was used to produce this child!” That was the proud proclamation made by one of the girl’s two “fathers” as she was hoisted up high and shown off to a group of us at the sexuality studies conference I was attending. When I first...

In a 25-minute interview on Arabic satellite TV with Dr. Mona Roman, Coptic Christian Bishop Agathon fully exposed the plight of his Christian flock in Minya, Egypt—a region that has a large Coptic minority that is steadily under attack.

Hillary Clinton: We knew her as a grim, charmless harridan; a pear-shaped harpy. Now, after reading Peter Schweizer's new book, Clinton Cash (HarperCollins, New York, May 2015), we see the ultimate Hillary, one of the world's truly scary women. Think Lady Macbeth, Messalina, Evita. Add Bill to the sordid picture and you have Bonnie and Clyde -- elected to high office, and lionized all over the world. We know about Hillary's thousands of missing e-mails and unaccountable donors. What may be less known is how the Clinton double-scam works. Take, first of all, the so-called Clinton Foundation, whose stated purpose...

As Tim Taylor notes, the U.S. net international investment position — the difference between US assets abroad and foreign claims on the US — has moved substantially deeper into the red in recent years: But why? You might be tempted to say that it’s obvious: we’ve been running big budget deficits, borrowing the money from foreigners, so of course our debt to those foreigners is surging. But that story implicitly requires a surge in the trade deficit (or more precisely the current account deficit, which includes investment income), which hasn’t happened. In fact, current account deficits have been small compared...

Already, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cleanup plan for the Ganges river has come in for criticism from various quarters. The sharpest censure came recently from India’s Supreme Court, which observed that the government’s action plan may not result in a clean Ganges “even after 200 years.” The apex court has ordered the government to provide a cleanup plan with stages and a schedule. Promises to clean the Ganges figured in Modi’s election speeches and in his party’s election manifesto. Soon after coming to power in May, he signaled that the Ganges would be a priority by creating a Ministry for...

Liberals claim to be the world's boldest defenders of freedom of expression, which is, of course, nonsense. Here's another canard: Liberals also claim to be the most offended against anyone "blaming the victim." What liberals possess is an ideological system which identifies favored groups as victims and supports squelching the free speech of anyone challenging them. One of those favored groups is Muslims. Over the weekend, the American Freedom Defense Initiative held the Muhammad cartoon contest in Dallas, obviously a provocative event. But it wasn't meant to result in two Islamic extremists showing up with assault rifles, later shot to...