Free Republic

Morton Blackwell, the conservative icon who founded the Leadership Institute in 1979 and is a longtime Republican National Committeeman representing Virginia, has endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for president. The announcement came in the form of a letter from Blackwell, addressed to fellow conservatives, in an email sent out Friday by the Cuccinelli Compass, a regular grassroots update provided by former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and paid for by the Liberty Now PAC. "In the past several weeks, the presidential contest has clarified. I have decided to endorse Ted Cruz and to urge other serious conservatives to join me...

Nobody expects Chris Christie to win Iowa, but he does have an ace card up his sleeve: The tacit support of longtime moderate Gov. Terry Branstad, whose vast political network remains the state's most coveted human resource. Christie's goal in Iowa, according to multiple people familiar with his plans, is to do better than expected by taking votes away from Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio -- his chief competitors in the Republican primary's crowded establishment lane. Beating Bush and giving a scare to Rubio, the thinking inside his orbit goes, would give the New Jersey governor a head of steam...

On New Year’s Eve, at least 80 women in the German city of Cologne were harassed, robbed and assaulted by a group of up to 1,000 men, who are said to have been of Arab or North African appearance, in what may have been coordinated attacks. Two women have reported being raped. Others have been left with injuries and scars. It must have been terrifying, and will have a permanent impact on some of the victims. The incident has received widespread media attention. Yet some on social media and blogging sites have accused feminists of ignoring or downplaying the event...

The US government privately accepts that Bashar Assad will still be in power when Barack Obama leaves the White House, according to a leaked internal document. A timeline prepared for American officials and obtained by the Associated Press offers March 2017 as the earliest possible date for Mr Assad to give up his position as president and for his inner circle to leave. That would be more than five years after Mr Obama first called for the Syrian president to quit, and two months after the American president steps down. The State Department said on Wednesday the timeline was prepared...

Weighing on the controversy over whether Canadian-born Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is eligible to be president, his fellow senator Rand Paul said Sunday that it would be "extraordinary" to have a president born outside of the U.S. "He would be the first president not born in the United States. And so that alone would be extraordinary. And so people have to decide for their own minds whether it makes a difference where someone is born," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday. ... Paul predicted Sunday that Democrats would challenge Cruz's eligibility and that it would ultimately have...

Attacks on women in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s Eve have prompted more than 600 criminal complaints, with police suspicion resting on asylum seekers, putting pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel and her open door migrant policy. The attacks, mostly targeting women and ranging from theft to sexual molestation, have prompted a highly-charged debate in Germany about its welcoming stance for refugees and migrants, more than one million of whom arrived last year. The sudden nature of the violent attacks and the fact that they stretched from Hamburg to Frankfurt prompted Germany’s justice minister Heiko Maas to speculate...

Question: What is the history of the Iowa caucus system? How did it originate in place of normal voting at the polls like the rest of the country has done since its founding? My speculation is that it is social event in the dead of winter in an area of the country where people would have stayed cooped up on the farm, IOW and excuse to get out of the house and have a party. But that's just a guess. I've searched on google and the results are too cluttered with political stories to ferret out and answer. Thank-you for...

Candidates who get their funding from corporate contributors and donors who support other candidates will answer to the people who "throw the dollars at their campaigns," GOP candidate Mike Huckabee said Friday, while accusing fellow candidate Ted Cruz of changing his position on a number of issues. He insisted he wasn't suggesting that Cruz is lacking convictions, but told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" that the Texas Republican has changed his position on a number of issues. Candidates who get their funding from corporate contributors and donors who support other candidates will answer to the people who "throw the dollars at...

New polling data from Reuters finds a nationwide toss-up 2016 contest between GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton - but he's beating her by 20 points, 46 percent to 26 percent, among white working-class voters.

ince Planned Parenthood’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton, many of the abortion group’s supporters have been in disbelief. Planned Parenthood’s Facebook page continues to fill with incensed expressions of outrage – not from pro-lifers, but from PP’s own former supporters. Many are assuring Planned Parenthood that they will no longer send donations, and that they are “unliking” PP’s Facebook page or unsubscribing from PP emails. Women and men are expressing anger over their general sentiment that Hillary Clinton has oppressed vulnerable women. They are telling PP that the endorsement is evidence of cronyism and corruption, and some are even agreeing that...

A U.S. Muslim woman who was ejected from a Donald Trump rally in South Carolina while engaging in a silent protest said on Saturday she wanted to make the Republican presidential candidate's backers recognize they are supporting "hateful rhetoric."

"Why not rally around me? Why not rally around Rick Santorum?" Mike Huckabee said Thursday that it's "rather childish" for Ted Cruz to suggest candidates drop out of the race to ensure the conservative voice isn't splintered. Iowa radio host Simon Conway said Cruz's warning that a split in the conservative vote would allowing a moderate Republican to win the nomination could be directed at Huckabee and Santorum. Huckabee replied, "Well, I mean, that is certainly something he is going to want to say, but my question would be, why not rally around me? Why not rally around Rick Santorum?"...

January 11, 2016 Monday of the First Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 1 Sm 1:1-8 There was a certain man from Ramathaim, Elkanah by name,a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim.He was the son of Jeroham, son of Elihu,son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.He had two wives, one named Hannah, the other Peninnah;Peninnah had children, but Hannah was childless.This man regularly went on pilgrimage from his cityto worship the LORD of hosts and to sacrifice to him at Shiloh,where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas,were ministering as priests of the LORD.When the day came...

This video has appeared on the Internet and will probably be taken down before long. In it, you can see a screaming German woman being dragged into a dark place in the Cologne subway station by a huge mob of Islamic and North African rapists. Not for the squeamish, but this needs to be seen. The MSM wants to hide this so we do not see what the refugees really are. This is our future if Hillary gets in. Obama has already let in nearly a million of this vermin. Watch this video and weep for Germany.CLICK HERE IF YOU...

Chinese stocks opened lower Monday, moving deeper into negative territory after a brutal first week of the year. The Shanghai Composite fell 2.4% at the open, and the Shenzhen Composite dropped 3.2%.

Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned...

Saw this series during the holidays, and am currently rewatching it. It is obviously one side of a story, and lacking the other narrative is incomplete. That said, I am somewhat, actually more than somewhat ,disturbed with the interrogations of young Mr. Dassey He has been under lock and key from the moment he was pulled from class in 2006. "What happened to her head Brendan?" Uh, he cut her hair?

President Barack Obama has vetoed the reconciliation bill that would de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business, which was caught selling the body parts of aborted babies. Hearings have exposed how the abortion company likely violated federal laws to sell the body parts. The measure also repealed the abortion-funding Obamacare legislation and Obama cited that as the primary reason for vetoing the overall bill. In a statement, Obama said Obamacare “is working,” slamming the bill because it would “reverse the significant progress we have made in improving health care in America.” “The Affordable Care Act includes a set of fairer rules...

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a candidate for U.S. Senate, on Sunday sharply criticized the armed activists occupying a remote national wildlife refuge in Oregon, calling the protestors “crazy” and their actions “obnoxious.”

An email hidden from public view for three years reveals a rescue attempt was interrupted. The military offered to deploy Special Forces to Benghazi during the assault, long before the attackers killed CIA contractors and former Navy Seals Glen Doherty and Ty Woods. Three and a half hours into the eight-hour long siege, the military's Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash emails top State Department officials: "we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak. They include a SOF [Special Operations Forces] element that was in Croatia."