Free Republic

Over the past two weeks, the GOP primary race has become a contest between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the two frontrunners in both national polls and in the state Iowa. The pair will stand next to each other at tonight's GOP primary debate in South Carolina, positioned center stage as a result of their standing in the polls. The contest between them is tonight's main event. The Trump/Cruz squabble is mind-numbingly stupid at almost every level. It is not a contest of ideas or policies, but a battle of attitude and insult, of culture-war positioning and social media put-downs....

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is planning to expand a program to let would-be illegal aliens from Central America apply for refugee status before they attempt to come to the U.S., Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday.</p> <p>The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees will now conduct initial screenings to see whether would-be illegal aliens from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala may qualify as refugees eligible to come to the United States legally.</p>

Thursday on MSNBC following FBN's broadcast of the Republican presidential debate, Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe attacked Sen. Ted Cruz , one of the participants in last night debate, for his stated on reasoning for his eligibility to run for president of the United States. According to Tribe, Cruz applies a double standard to his interpretation of the Constitution, to which he deemed Cruz to be a "constitutional opportunist" and a "hypocrite." "I've done a lot of historical research on it, and so have a lot of other people, and the best evidence seems to be that what they...

The best feature of Thursday night's Republican presidential debate was the small number of contestants taking part in it. There. I said it. We're no longer subjected to cattle-call debates with 10 candidates squabbling over seconds of airtime. Now it’s only seven, and there are opportunities for more substantial discussions. And as such, the performances are getting sharper, and better. So here are a few observations from the Fox Business debate: THE STANDINGS Here's how they came out: 1. Ted Cruz: Cruz opened the debate knocking the issue of the loan he took out to fund his 2012 Senate campaign...

A year after an American contractor was found dead in Saudi Arabia, his family doesn’t buy a police account indicating he killed himself, and they fear the case has been closed. Christopher Cramer, of Milford, was found dead Jan. 15, 2015, beneath the third-floor balcony of the Sahara Makarim Hotel in Tabuk. He had texted a friend earlier that day saying he thought something bad was going to happen to him and asking that the State Department be contacted.

Bad mojo here for center-righties and Trump/Cruz-haters, not because adding Graham’s three voters to Jeb’s total will make Jeb a contender but because it suggests the 40-car pile-up in the moderate lane won’t be sorted anytime soon. Graham could have tried to winnow the field in his own small way by backing Rubio or Christie, the two strongest center-right candidates in New Hampshire, and signaling to the rest of the establishment that it’s time to unite. Instead this guy’s propping up lost-cause Jeb Bush, which will encourage Bush voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina to dig in rather...

Antonio Cromartie has made a career out of shutting down wide receivers. But it seems nothing can shut down the Jets cornerback’s off-the-field game — not even a vasectomy. The father of 10 — who once struggled to name all of his children on TV — has impregnated his wife with twins despite undergoing the sterilization procedure in 2011. “The failure rate can depend on how you do the procedure,” says Dr. Harry Fisch, a clinical professor of urology at Weill Cornell. SNIP A vasectomy can also fail soon after surgery.

Link to corporate site, listing of stores to close.

The penultimate Republican debate prior to the Iowa caucuses contained plenty of fireworks, a plethora of great moments, and Governor John Kasich (R-OH) air chopping pineapples. There were winners, there were losers, and there were also-rans. It was, in short, the most telling debate thus far in the campaign.

It would be worse than the financial crisis. You don't have to listen very hard to hear the bears growling on Wall Street, London, or Paris, these days. Indeed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down another 300 points on Wednesday to just under 16,200. With the U.S. stock market sagging, oil off to its worst start ever, and the China's economy continuing to deteriorate, bearish analysts have a wealth of evidence to point to. And they don't come much more bearish than Albert Edwards, strategist at Societe Generale. He's not had much nice to say about the global economy...

Our military and allies are highly trained lean green fighting machine. They train for thousands of hours on prepping, locating concealment areas, avenues of approach, to deploying and launching their weapons. But, once in a while a team may experience that holy sh!t moment, like this French Canadian team. This French Canadian team is sporting a Javelin Anti-Tank gun. The team was in process to get their shot off, but a holy sh!t moment came up. A dud ensued when the rocket/missile was launched and landed several feet in front of them. See the anti-tank team reaction here.

Shake Shack announced Thursday it's expanding the release of a popular fried chicken sandwich to its menu nationwide. The Chick’n Shack debuts after the restaurant tested the sandwich this summer at its Brooklyn, N.Y. locations.

Senator under fire for 'natural-born citizen' standard. Sen. Ted Cruz isn't the only Republican candidate fighting off accusations about his birth status and whether he qualifies for the presidency - Sen. Marco Rubio is actually facing a lawsuit on the same. Michael Voeltz, a Fort Lauderdale resident, filed a suit against Rubio, alleging the Florida senator - who's coming in third in national polls, behind Cruz and first-place Donald Trump - fails to comply with the Supreme Court definition of "natural-born citizen," Breitbart reported. Rubio's campaign responded with a request for the court to dismiss the "birther" claims. "Rubio filed...

Water leak in spacesuit. Happening live.

Two former U.S. attorneys said the FBI will likely reach a determination in the next few months in its investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server, and based on publicly available evidence said the bureau could have a strong criminal case. "I expect the FBI to conclude the investigation within 60 to 90 days and make a recommendation to the Justice Department, and I believe they will recommend a series of charges involving the classified information," said Joseph DiGenova, who was U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia during the Reagan administration. The FBI has been investigating whether classified information...

The last 12 months have not been kind to WalMart. When the world's largest retailer bowed to pressure to raise wages for its lowest-paid employees, the living wage crowd cheered. In short order, it became apparent that the reverberations from the $1.5 billion endeavor would spell trouble for the company. When a series of ill-fated efforts to squeeze the supply chain failed to plug the gap, the company resorted to store closures (or "plumbing" as WalMart calls it), job cuts in Bentonville, and reduced hours. Finally, in October, WalMart threw in the towel and cut guidance. Its shares plunged. Now,...

When word arrived in April of 2015 that Shake Shack, that burger-scented, milkshake-flavored, obsessed-over eatery from the other coast would soon arrive in Southern California, some fast-foodies had to think that it was an April Fool's Joke of some sort. The joke was on nobody, however, and the ketchup was on the fries, for Shake Shack really and truly had sights set on West Hollywood, and Glendale, for down-the-road openings. Those debuts are still-down-the-road-ish, but take happy heart, downtowners, for you're about to get the third SoCal Shake Shack at 801 Hill Street.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, European gardens and gender bias were discussed in a recent Modern Language Association (MLA) panel at their annual convention held this year in Austin, Texas. The panel was entitled, "Bootstrapping Broads: On the Work of Writing Labor." Gretchen Murphy, a professor of English at the University of Texas-Austin, spoke at length about Harriet Beecher Stowe and her experience in 19th Century England. She saw Stowe as "a female celebrity" in her time, but restricted in what she could do and saw because Stowe was "reproducing the vision of elite British philanthropists," hinting at the common feminist term,...

Donald Trump has done it again. The Drudge post-debate survey shows he won going away with more than 54% and beat Ted Cruz by about 19 points. The internal results of the Drudge Report’s on line one vote per person survey show Texas Senator Ted Cruz barely pulled out his home state 46/44 over Trump. The follow numbers appear on twitter but it was not possible to find an individual link for the data on a state by state basis. Those who want to draw some comfort from telling themselves that these numbers are suspect are welcome to do so;...

The toughest debates are the ones early in the cycle. By the time you get to the sixth, as the GOP candidates did last night, it gets a lot easier. They know the rhythms of their opponents - what they're likely to say and how they're likely to say it. They know their own riffs, having been on the campaign trail for many months. They have a better sense of how long the ordeal will be and, so, pace themselves better. The leaders still hate them because things can go wrong. But the trailers, while not exactly looking forward to...