Free Republic

POLITICS Donald Trump Throws Gasoline On Tire Fire That Is No Labels It fell to Martin O'Malley to call bulls**t on this. Go figure. 5 hours ago Jason Linkins 'Eat The Press' Columnist, The Huffington Post No Labels, an organization that mulches private equity donor money in the name of getting politicians to hug, held a ceremony in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Monday to reveal which of the 2016 presidential candidates had agreed to make the organization's "Problem Solver Promise." As many could have predicted, but only I did, one of the candidates that made the promise was passel of...

Washington (CNN)Rand Paul will boycott Thursday night's Republican primary debate in South Carolina after being relegated from the main stage, he said on Monday. "I won't participate in anything that's not first tier because we have a first tier campaign," the Kentucky senator told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. snip "It's a mistake because the thing is we actually have been in the top five or six in most of the recent polls. In fact, last week in a national poll we were just one point out of fourth place. So I think it's a mistake to try to exclude me from...

Republican presidential hopefuls Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina will not be joining their rivals on the main stage Thursday evening for the first GOP primary debate of 2016. Paul, who has been polling around 3 percent nationally, confirmed to CNN's Wolf Blitzer minutes before Fox Business Network announced the lineup Monday that he failed to qualify for the sixth GOP debate in North Charleston, S.C. Fiorina, who's at 2 percent support in RealClearPolitics' national polling average, has also been axed from the prime-time event. The former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard participated in the first undercard debate of the election cycle,...

In the speech that he addressed on January 11 to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, with a large section focused on migrants, Pope Francis has not said a word about China. But we know that this great country is in the foreground in the attention of Francis, which he remembers the impetuous response to a reporter's question: "If you go to China? Tomorrow!". In mid-October a Vatican delegation went to Beijing. And it transpired that he discussed the procedures for the appointment of bishops, whose recent settlements have taken place almost all to the will of the...

Conservative pundit and radio host among throng of social conservatives backing Texas senator's bid. In the race for the Republican nomination for the presidency, it appears Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is sweeping the board when it comes to the endorsements of social conservatives. And one of those names on the ever-growing list being compiled by the Cruz campaign is conservative pundit and radio host Linda Harvey. Harvey recently received a great deal of attention after she wrote a column lamenting that too many corporations had adopted pro-LGBT policies. On Monday, Harvey was one of several Ohio-based religious conservatives who announced...

Shipyards in China will continue to lag behind their foreign rivals as cumbersome financing conditions and prolonged excess capacity continue to crimp industry profits and push smaller shipyards out, experts said. Zhoushan Intermediate People’s Court announced last week that it had accepted an application from Zhejiang Shipping Group Co to liquidate its subsidiary Wuzhou Shipbuilding and Maintenance Co, making it the first State-owned shipyard to go bankrupt since 2005. Rough seas ahead for struggling shipyards in China Zhejiang Shipping said that the shipyard’s bankruptcy was due to its massive debt burden of 911 million yuan ($140 million), including payment in...

ISIS has issued a handbook for Muslims in the West. The essence of the instruction booklet is emphasizing the necessity to blend in with the western way of life and to avoid ‘looking like a Muslim’ and pretend to be Christian as to stay under the radar. Pay close attention. This is the key to understanding the enemy and their tactics. From Pamela Geller: The media and the Democrats are deliberately misleading the public. You must educate yourself and those around you. Share this article on Facebook, Twitter, email. Build our army. The Islamic State is telling Muslims who plan...

A 2-year-old girl suffered minor injuries after an armed robber knocked over her stroller, snatched a tablet computer from her tiny hands and stole a purse from a woman pushing her in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, police said Monday.

When a dolphin died in New Jersey's South River last year, Carly Sitrin wanted to know what killed it. So she filed a public record request to the NJ Department of Agriculture in order to get the necropsy results. The DOA finally responded last week with the weird decision to deny the release of the record on grounds of medical privacy. The response reads in part: "We are in receipt of your request for information (#W101407) under the auspices of the State’s Open Public Records Act (O.P.R.A.). Specifically, you requested any and all reports associated with the necropsy of the...

Records of all the officers involved in the Laquan McDonald shooting case could be destroyed by 2019 if the city of Chicago enforces the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) contract. Section 8.4 of the police union contract calls for all misconduct files to be destroyed five years after the date of the incident. "Does that say that these police officers can go to another jurisdiction and not have their past practices looked at?" asks Renell Perry, of the NAACP. The NAACP joins a number of organizations asking for the records to be preserved. To prevent the destruction of records dating...

Cologne, Germany, Jan 11, 2016 / 03:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A week after hundreds were attacked in Cologne on New Year's Eve, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising and president of the German Conference of Catholic Bishops, condemned the attacks in a press release and called for more vigilance in the future. "(T)he excesses in Cologne and other large cities are deeply disturbing for our society and can in no way be tolerated," Marx said. "We need accurate information and a clear response from the authorities." Over 500 criminal complaints - about 40 percent of which involve allegations...

Monday, January 11, 2016 The Tribal War with Islam Posted by Daniel Greenfield All wars are wars of equals. That's true in the sense that each side attacks the other in terms of how it defines itself as an entity. States try to destroy other states. Religions fight other religions. Ethnic groups and races engage in genocide. They do this even when the other side does not see itself in the same terms. The United States tried to fight guerrillas and terrorists as if they were modern states with their own industrial military organizations protecting their industrial core. This tactic...

America's air traffic control towers suffer from a stunning lack of diversity--that's the official position of the Obama Administration's FAA, which quietly moved to abolish merit-based testing for air traffic controllers two years ago in an attempt to boost the number of women and minorities in the career field. Blacks and Hispanics apparently don't score as high on the Air Traffic Selection and Training (AT-SAT) exam, the test the FAA once used to judge an applicant's job knowledge. That's not really a shocker, considering the fact that blacks and Hispanics score lower on every standardized test known to man, including...

Clinton, O'Malley and Sanders take the stage live from Iowa to discuss where they stand on the issues that matter to young, diverse America. Including: social justice, immigration, education, health care, and the economy. The Forum is moderated by FUSION anchors Jorge Ramos and Alicia Menendez as well as FUSION contributor Akilah Hughes and New York Magazine Writer-at-Large Rembert Browne.

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General and constitutional law attorney Thomas H. Dupree appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show to answer whether Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is eligible to be president of the United States. Controversy surrounding Sen. Cruz's eligibility arose when business mogul Donald Trump questioned Sen. Cruz's status as a natural born citizen. When asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer whether Sen. Cruz is a natural born citizen, Trump responded, "I don't know, to be honest." Constitutional law attorney Thomas Dupree, however, says, "[T]here is no question whatsoever that Ted Cruz is constitutionally eligible to serve as president of...

Is Hillary Clinton panicking? We've seen the polls showing the Iowa race closing to within the margin of error, and Hillary losing in New Hampshire. But could Clinton's internal polling be looking even more calamitous? The question arises because Hillary is suddenly trying to rival Bernie Sanders in rich-bashing. Nine months after announcing her candidacy, Clinton suddenly called into Chris Hayes' MSNBC show tonight to announce her proposal for "a new fair share surcharge." C'mon Hillary. You only talked about "multimillionaires." Really wanna be like Bernie? Gotta kvetch about "billionaires"—with a bona fide Brooklyn accent. View the video here.

Personally, I was shocked when the "queen of conservatism" came out for Donald Trump. Phyllis Schafly has been a conservative icon for so long, and even though I've disagreed with her a couple times in the recent past, I was flabbergasted that she would pick somebody who openly declares that he doesn't see his need of asking God's forgiveness for anything. I realize she predicated her choice on what he claims to be his stand on immigrants, and how he says he will deal with the illegals. However, has she been listening to him or just reading what she wants...

Paleontologists have discovered the fossil remains of the world’s biggest ocean-dwelling crocodile buried on the edge of the Sahara, a creature that was twice the size of anything seen today. Named Machimosaurus rex, this croc would have weighed in at least 6,600 pounds and been around 32 feet long. Other than its size, it would have looked much like a modern day crocodile except for its narrow snout – which was designed to allow it swim in the ocean.

As Syrian “rapefugees” show their appreciation to Europe, it’s a good time to remember Glenn Beck plotted to smuggle in tens of thousands of refugees into the United States. (SNIP) " And if they want to say, ‘Now you can’t bring those people in, now you can’t, that’s somehow illegal, we’ll put you in jail’ – I will so gladly grace a jail for the justice cause of saving people’s lives. I don’t need your permission at all to do the right thing! " But what about vetting? Won’t some of the refugees be ISIS and/or sexual predators? Don’t worry,...

It's hard to see this as anything but pure spite towards Cruz, of which there's plenty in Paulworld, for surpassing him as the "conservatarian" choice in the primary. In theory, I guess, raising enough doubt about Cruz's eligibility could cause some libertarians and "constitutionalists" to run away from Cruz and back to Paul, but how much is that worth to Paul? Five percent, maybe? He goes from an also-ran in the low single-digits to an also-ran in the high single-digits while potentially tipping the race to in Iowa to Trump, the least libertarian candidate in the race. And meanwhile Paul...