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Ted Cruz is breaking from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) about whether or not he would have ordered the U.S. military into its eight-year war in Iraq. “Knowing what we know now, of course we wouldn’t go into Iraq,” the Texas Republican told The Hill on Tuesday. “At the time, the intelligence reports indicated that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction that posed a significant national threat to this country. That’s the reason there was such widespread bipartisan support for going into Iraq,” he added. “We now know in hindsight, those intelligence reports were false.” “Without that predicate,...

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, facing opposition from some conservatives who say he supports amnesty, says undocumented workers should be able to earn legal status, “not necessarily citizenship.” Mr. Bush was seeking to clarify his immigration policy in an interview scheduled to air on Fox News Channel’s “The Kelly File,” on Monday evening, two days before a scheduled trip to Nevada, a swing state with a large Hispanic population. “The plan, in our book and the plan that I’ve suggested when I go out and speak, which is almost every day on the subject, I’m talking about a path...

This entire phony genre of journalism is now well beyond embarrassing. Do you know what a fact is? That’s easy. Of course you do. Fact is an objective truth not subject to interpretation or dispute. Water is liquid if it’s above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a fact. Thursday comes after Wednesday. That’s a fact. The address of the White House is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. People who deal in actual facts can recognize that an assertion is either fact-based or its not. It’s really not that complicated. That’s for normal people who understand what a fact is. But there are other...

YouTube Video The Oberlin College choir responds to the Christina Sommers controversy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats dealt President Barack Obama a stinging setback on trade Tuesday, blocking efforts to begin a full-blown debate on a top priority of his second term The president's supporters said they will try again, possibly starting in the House. But they couldn't sugar-coat a solid rebuke from the president's own party, led by some who served with him in the Senate.

The arrests are in connection with an April 22 incident in which Rick Fletcher was assaulted in front of his 45th Street home. Antoine Willie Lawson, 17, was indicted last week on charges of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault, robbery and theft of less than $1,000. County police on Tuesday announced the arrests of four other teenagers charged as adults, and an arrest warrant has been obtained for a 20-year-old man. Andrew Omar Allen, 15, has been charged with attempted first-degree murder, robbery and related charges. He is being held without bail at the Baltimore County Detention Center. Yahkeem Zavion...

. . . but there is less here than meets the eye. At first, the numbers seem alarming, and there is an alarming element to it. Since the last time such a poll was taken in 2008, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped from 78 percent to 70 percent. Yes, 70 percent is still an overwhelming majority, but an 8 percent drop in just seven years is pretty big. So how does one account for those one-time devoted followers of Jesus Christ suddenly abandoning the Kingdom of God? One doesn’t, because that’s not what’s really happened here....

The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho is warning that a south-central Idaho school district's dress code is unconstitutional and must be changed. The Cassia County School District is requiring all female students participating in the high school graduation to wear white or pastel dresses. Male graduating students must wear pants and a tie. ACLU Legal Director Richard Eppink says schools that make a distinction between boy and girl dress codes are enforcing gender-stereotyping policies, which violate the state and U.S. Constitution.

CEDAR RAPIDS — Caches of guns and ammunition bound for Beruit were secreted among boxes of goods collected in a clothing drive for Syria and Lebanon organized by a Cedar Rapids company, federal authorizes said Tuesday. Authorities said they intercepted two shipments and seized more than 152 firearms and ammunition. It was not disclosed who the weapons were intended for in Lebanon. Three Cedar Rapids men and a woman were taken into custody and were scheduled to appear in court Tuesday afternoon to face charges of conspiracy and knowingly shipping illegal weapons. The four, according to a federal affidavit, are...

For going on seven years we have learned three things about President Obama: 1) He loves the poor so much he continues to create more of them. 2) He loves the poor so much he does everything in his power to keep them poor. 3) He doesn’t see the opposition as loyal, but as bad players — his enemy. This is especially true of Fox News, which Obama ripped as anti-poor bigots during a Wednesday afternoon summit on poverty.

An incoming Boston University professor says she regrets racially charged tweets she made disparaging white men. Black professor Saida Grundy called "white college males" a "problem population" in a Twitter account that's now private. She also declared "white masculinity is THE problem for America's colleges." She says in a statement issued Tuesday she regrets that her passion led her to speak "indelicately."

Attacks on bloggers critical of Islam have taken on a disturbing regularity in Bangladesh, with yet another writer hacked to death Tuesday. Ananta Bijoy Das, 32, was killed Tuesday morning as he left his home on his way to work at a bank, police in the northeastern Bangladeshi city of Sylhet. Four masked men attacked him, hacking him to death with cleavers and machetes, said Sylhet Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kamrul Ahsan.

Birds are thought to have evolved from dinosaurs, but have very different jaws. Bird-like dinosaurs such as the velociraptor have two bones at the tip of their upper jaws. In birds, those bones are fused to form a beak. By blocking two proteins that are activated when chicken embryos grow their beaks, U.S. researchers caused their jaws to "revert" to a velociraptor-like snout. The changes were observed in chick embryos that developed until they were close to hatching. To their surprise, the birds' palates, on the roof of their mouths, also became dinosaur-like. "This was unexpected and demonstrates the way...

Modern persons have a problem with limits, three in fact. They want every good thing to be unlimitedly available for their desires, and scarcity is taken for a cause of fear and anxiety. Hence, “sustainability” is our new environmental shibboleth. They cannot perceive limits, in the sense of ends or purposes, and so they consider thinking about such things at worst as stupefying “imponderables” and at best as expressions of subjective taste. Hence, a Republican Senator doubts the legitimacy of funding the National Endowment for the Humanities “Big Questions” grants program, on the basis that nobody knows the meaning...

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

The winner and still champion: Ted Cruz, taking the first choice vote for the second month in a row. May’s vote total almost broke the 3000 ballot mark, or about twice April’s participation, but as you can see, the results remained very stable. Scott Walker remains the second choice and consensus choice leader. Thanks for participating!

“This is the fiercest struggle, the struggle that resists a man unto blood, wherein free will is tested as to the singleness of his love for the virtues….It is here that we manifest our patience, my beloved brethren, our struggle and our zeal. For this is the time of unseen martyrdom…” What is this struggle that St. Isaac speaks of and how can it be overcome? Is it some dread mysterious experience that only the very holy or only monastics or only spiritually advanced strugglers experience? No, not at all. St. Isaac names two specific areas or perhaps better, arenas,...

CEDAR RAPIDS — Caches of guns and ammunition bound for Beruit were secreted among boxes of goods collected in a clothing drive for Syria and Lebanon organized by a Cedar Rapids company, federal authorizes said Tuesday. Authorities said they intercepted two shipments and seized more than 152 firearms and ammunition. It was not disclosed who the weapons were intended for in Lebanon. Three Cedar Rapids men and a woman were taken into custody and were scheduled to appear in court Tuesday afternoon to face charges of conspiracy and knowingly shipping illegal weapons. The four, according to a federal affidavit, are...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie attempted to draw a bright line between himself and Jeb Bush on the Iraq War in a CNN interview on Tuesday, definitively stating that given the absence of weapons of mass destruction he wouldn't have authorized the war. "I think President [George W.] Bush made the best decision he could at the time, given that his intelligence community was telling him that there was (weapons of mass destruction) and that there were other threats right there in Iraq," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead." "But I don't think you can honestly say that...

The medical examiner has released the autopsy for a man shot and killed by a Tulsa County reserve deputy. Eric Courtney Harris' death is ruled a homicide by gunshot wound, the report states. Harris, 44, died April 2, 2015, after Reserve Deputy Bob Bates said he accidentally fired his gun instead of his Taser during an arrest. The report states Harris was shot in the right axilla or armpit. The bullet passed through his right rib cage to his left, fracturing ribs on both sides. Both lungs collapsed, the medical examiner's report states.