Free Republic

GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday announced that he will run for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio in 2016, teeing up a possible intra-party fight for the Florida GOP that some Republicans fear could weaken them ahead of a competitive general election. “As a candidate for Senate, I look forward to offering reforms based on limited government principles that will make our country stronger and more prosperous," DeSantis said in a statement to the Associated Press. "I see a bright future for Florida and for America and my campaign will be about the ideas and...

Every home schooling parent has been asked the S-Question: “What about socialization?” The implications (real or imagined) of the question are less than flattering: Students who attend schools outside the home are socialized better because they spend so much time with their immature peers, whereas students who attend school within the home are poorly socialized because they spend so much time with their mature parents. Home school families do not interact with one another. Socialization that occurs on the soccer field, during debate rounds, and in church doesn’t count (or is somehow inferior). Students who attend school outside the...

Just something I’ve been thinking about, sitting here playing with the RSLC’s new 2016 electoral map widget and drinking heavily. “Create Your Own Path to 270 Map,” the widget beckons. Yeah, go ahead. You go find yourself a path to 270.Here’s what I’ve got.Each blue state you see there has been blue in every presidential election since 1992, with the sole exception of New Mexico — which has been blue in every election since 1992 except for 2004. Obama won the state by 10 points three years ago against Romney and by 15 points seven years ago against McCain;...

Megyn just gave a very compelling opening that pushed back successfully against the media critics of the Garland Texas event.

Jim Wright, a driven Texas Democrat who rose to the pinnacle of congressional power before ethics charges forced his resignation as speaker of the House in 1989, died on Wednesday in Fort Worth. He was 92.

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ JAVELIN LAUNCHED Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Matthew Bottomley fires a FGM-148 Javelin on Camp Pendleton, CA, May 23, 2014. Bottomley is assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and is preparing for his upcoming deployment by employing multiple weapon systems with different support teams. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Ismael E. Ortega Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. BLACK SEA TRANSIT The USS Vella Gulf transits the...

(From left) Reverend Jesse Jackson, US actor Danny Glover, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Sir Hilary Beckles, were among the speakers at the event.NEW YORK, USA (CMC) — An international conference on reparations has ended here with a call for Caribbean governments to proceed urgently with the recommendation that the slave-owning and slave-trading European nations be invited to attend an inter-governmental reparatory justice summit in 2015. In addition, delegates also agreed to organise two global reparations summits, the first in 2016 to be held in the Caribbean and another in 2017 in Europe. Don Rojas, the...

Dorin Cioba the leader of three million Roma around the world, landed in Israel on Wednesday. Roma are widely known as Gypsies. On his first visit to Israel, Cioba, who is president of the International Romani Union, plans to visit the Roma community in Jerusalem as well as the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. The photographer Roni Ben-Ari invited Cioaba to Israel for the opening of her exhibit that documents the life of Gypsies in the city of Lugoj, Romania. The exhibit opens on Thursday at the Museum of Israeli Art in Ramat Gan. "This is the first time that I...

Big Bird almost had a seat on the doomed Challenger space shuttle which exploded just seconds after take-off in 1986, killing seven people onboard, a documentary on the beloved "Sesame Street" character has revealed. "It made my scalp crawl to think I was supposed to be on that," Caroll Spinney, the man who has donned the 8-foot-2 yellow bird costume since 1969, recalled. NASA had initially wanted Spinney to be sent into space to get children more excited about its space program, according to the film "I Am Bird Bird."

Baltimore police have continually said their initial reasoning for suspecting Freddie Gray of suspicious activity was his immediate running from police when bicycle officers made eye contact. However, no-one has revealed he ran into a building. State Attorney Marilyn Mosby referenced the chase in her charging details: Mosby Said: “On April, 12 2015 between 8:45 and 9:15 a.m., near the corner of North Avenue and Mount Street. Lt. Brian Rice of the Baltimore Police Department while on bike patrol with Officer Garrett Miller and Edward Nero made eye contact with Freddie Carlos Gray Jr.” “Having made eye contact with Mr....

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder will not run for president in 2016, according to two sources familiar with his planning. Snyder, a Republican who was first elected in 2010, has been traveling across the country in recent weeks but has decided against a White House bid. One source close Snyder said he’d expressed concern about the time commitment needed for a national campaign. “He is concerned about solving the problems in Michigan and the time commitment needed for out-of-state travel,” one source said. A Snyder spokesman declined to comment. The decision comes one day after a Snyder-backed ballot initiative, which would...

MEET THE VAGINA VOTERS: The women voting for Hillary because she’s a woman are setting feminism back a hundred years. “I intend to vote with my vagina.” Have you ever read a more squirm-inducing sentence than that? It appeared in a pro-Hillary piece in Dame magazine, written by a person with a vagina who intends to vote for Clinton because she also has a vagina. Let’s leave aside the unfortunate image conjured up by that sentence (“You can hold a pencil with that thing?!”) The bigger problem with such unabashed declarations of “vagina voting” is that they confirm the descent...

RUSH: The media's breathlessly waiting on the White House response to the new developments to the Texas terror attack, is because they haven't called it a terror attack yet. Or maybe they have in the last few moments, but from the moment this happened, they said, "Wait a minute, now, we can't jump the gun on this." BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Speaking of the White House reaction to terrorism, let me get back to this. Just a couple of points on this. Did you see yesterday where Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, said that the Garland, Texas, attack "appears to...

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents who left a 23-year-old UC San Diego student locked in a holding cell for five days without food or water received only light punishments, according to the Justice Department. In a Friday letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), the Justice Department revealed that, of the six DEA agents involved in the near-fatal incident, four received letters of reprimand and two were given week-long suspensions without pay. In 2012, DEA agents detained University of California San Diego student Daniel Chong following a raid on his friend’s house, where Chong had gone to smoke marijuana....

IT WAS LATE SATURDAY, about 9 p.m., when James Hall double-parked in front of his home in West Philly. He had just gotten back from a shopping trip with his two daughters, his fiancee, Lakisha Robinson, and Robinson's daughter, Aniyah Curry. The group was getting ready to go back out, Robinson said yesterday, so Hall left the car's hazard lights on as he ran inside to grab something. He'd only be gone for a few minutes, he told the others. But in that short span, the family was nearly torn apart by a careless punk in a black sedan.

The tower of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge is seen in San Francisco on Feb. 2, 2015. New tests indicate that saltwater may be seeping into the tower foundation, threatening steel rods that anchor the structure.

RUSH: In Baltimore we've got some great audio sound bites coming. The former state attorney, who used to do the job before Marilyn Mosby, went on CNN this morning about a quarter 'til 12, less than a half hour ago, and just made mincemeat out of Mosby and the entire process that has been used to arrive at charges for these cops. The infobabe and the Ken doll anchor over at CNN were beside themselves, and they kept trying to trip this woman up. She would make an assertion -- you'll hear it coming up in a moment -- "What...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown took a sarcastic approach to critics of his $15 million twin tunnel plan Wednesday, saying unless they have invested a million hours working on the problem as his staff has, they should "shut up." The Democratic governor made the comments while speaking to officials from California water agencies, who have widely varying views on the project. He said he asked his "water man" how many hours have been invested on efforts to build tunnels to send water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the answer was 1 million. "Until you put a million hours into...

That's how it looked like just after the Second World War in Berlin! Fascinating moving pictures in color show the situation of the city in summer 1945, just after the Second World War and the capitulation of Germany. Daily life after years of war. Pictures from the destroyed city, the Reichstag, Brandenburger Tor, Adlon, Führerbunker, Unter den Linden, rubble women working in the streets, the tram is running again. A collage of archive material produced by: Kronos Media

Defense files motion for independent examination of Freddie Gray’s knife.[NOTE: This post has been updated with a relevant statement released yesterday from Prosecutor Mosby’s office, and embedded at the bottom of this post.]As Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby continues her efforts to convict six police officers of serious felonies–including depraved-heart second degree murder and multiple counts of manslaughter–in the death of Freddie Gray continue, those charges are already being subject to challenge, and looking increasingly vulnerable. The Baltimore Sun reports that the defense attorney for Edward Nero, one of the officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, has filed a motion...