Free Republic

He may still be down in the polls, but the latest reminder of GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush's financial prowess arrived on Monday. Right to Rise USA, the super PAC backing the former Florida governor's presidential bid, said it has reserved roughly $10.8 million in advertising time in seven states holding primaries or caucuses in March. The group has raised more than $100 million to back Bush's bid and is already spending nearly $18 million on television, radio and Internet advertising in the first four states holding contests.

PYONGYANG, North Korea,- North Korea announced food scientists have achieved a major scientific breakthrough: a "suave" liquor that "causes no hangover." The state-run Pyongyang Times said in an English-language report that scientists with the Taedonggang Foodstuff Factory altered the recipe for the ginseng-based Koryo liquor to eliminate the morning-after hangover effects of consuming alcohol. The report said researchers found the hangover was eliminated by "using the boiled and scorched glutinous rice instead of sugar" to cover the bitter taste of the ginseng. "Koryo Liquor, which is made of six-year-old Kaesong Koryo insam, known as being highest in medicinal effect, and...

It is hard to overstate the significance of the latest revelations about the national security catastrophe caused by Hillary Clinton’s private email server.  The nation’s highest-level secrets were kept on an unsecure server that is believed to be have been hacked by multiple overseas parties. These revelations come from the nation’s Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough III, not some partisan.  He is a nonpolitical official who was confirmed by the Senate and entrusted with keeping our intelligence agencies honest.  For those readers who have not yet familiarized themselves with the revelations, Catherine Herridge’s exclusive report at Fox News...

In the process of granting review of the decision, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, invalidating the Obama administration’s immigration guidance granting de facto (albeit revocable) legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented residents of the United States, the Supreme Court unleashed a bombshell. Without any explicit request from the parties, the court (added the following question for review): “Whether the Guidance violates the Take Care Clause of the Constitution, Art. II, §3.” This is a stunning development. The clause states that “[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This is...

On Wednesday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, co-host Mika Brzezinski mocked the Democratic National Committee led by chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) for how the organization has handled the debate process.

The Washington Times and Liberty University were planning for a year. And then the Republican Party pulled the plug. More than a year ago, huddled in secret, the Republican National Committee began negotiations with conservative news organizations to wrest at least one presidential primary debate from the grip of the mainstream media. It was to be an event by and for the GOP's base, free of the constraints of a big network, to ensure candidates a forum to speak about conservative issues in a conservative frame for conservative voters. That debate would have happened this week at Liberty University with...

Does anyone remember the national debt? Judging from the presidential campaign so far, perhaps we should put the debt's image on a milk carton somewhere. In the last Republican debate, there was precisely one question on the debt -- and the candidates answered it by talking about their tax plans. That was far too typical. According to the FiveThirtyEight website, "the deficit" was mentioned an average of two times in the first five televised Republican debates (including the "undercard" debates) by all the candidates -- and the moderators -- combined. And "the national debt" was brought up an average of...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Paul (Paul's Letter to The Romans) 11 And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension...

Numbers from Friday’s jobs report underscores a persistent problem for the U.S. economy: Wages aren’t growing fast enough for most Americans. According to the data for December, the average wage for all workers grew at 2.5 percent over the last year, before accounting for inflation. Healthy wage growth would be somewhere in the range of 3.5-4 percent. How can we get to that level of wage growth? A number of proposals have been floated by economists and politicians across the political spectrum. But there’s one minor fix we can implement that could have major implications: allow workers who quit their...

Militants raided a university in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, timing their attack to a ceremony at the school to ensure maximum casualties. After security forces combed the campus block by block after the massacre, Mehmood Khan, provincial home minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said 19 civilians were killed, along with four terrorists. He expects the number of civilian deaths to increase. The attack took place at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Peshawar, less than 40 kilometers (25 miles) from where the Pakistan Taliban slayed 145 people, including 132 children, in a school attack in December 2014. It's unclear whether the group...

Why doesn't the establishment get behind Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) to stop Donald Trump? I've been asking this question for months. As I wrote back in December: The establishment can't stand Cruz because they believe he unfairly rips establishment Republicans for insufficient ideological purity. They think Cruz doesn't understand the necessary deals that must be cut in politics in order to "get things done"-they think he's more interested in posturing than in achieving practical policies to help Americans. They will have to put such concerns aside if they want to defeat Trump. It's clearer now than it was then that...

The Republican presidential frontrunner's vow to get Apple to "build their damn computers and things in this country" would lead to unrealistically high costs for you. ____________ Donald Trump's plan to "make America great again" may include getting you to fork over a whole lot more money for your next iPhone. After all, that would be the logical progression from the Republican presidential frontrunner's latest bold (crazy?) promise: Getting Apple to start manufacturing its products in the US instead of China. "We're going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other...

Where there are open flames, there will always be curious moths. Tonight, at a little after six o'clock, Sarah Palin will succumb at last to overwhelming temptation and sign up for Donald Trump's ever-glistering light show. And in that remarkable moment, the mask will fall off completely. If you are surprised by this development, you shouldn't be. Ours is an age in which politics and entertainment are melted together without opposition or disfavor; a silly, self-indulgent, shallow age in which Kanye West thinks he can be the president of the United States and the president of the United States thinks...

Before humans milked cows, herded goats or raised hogs, before they invented agriculture, or written language, before they had permanent homes, and most certainly before they had cats, they had dogs. Or dogs had them, depending on how you view the human-canine arrangement. But scientists are still debating exactly when and where the ancient bond originated. And a large new study being run out of the University of Oxford here, with collaborators around the world, may soon provide some answers.

In the middle of her rambling, barely coherent speech endorsing Donald Trump last night, Palin addressed the (obviously true) contention that Trump is not a conservative. She didn’t really address the contention with any evidence at all, other than to basically say, “What does the establishment know about conservatism?”

According to several recent studies, emergency room visits are surging for injuries stemming from what has been described as "distracted walking." Incidents of pedestrians with their eyes glued to the screens of their "smart phones" or tablets, tripping over curbs or walking off train platforms are becoming almost commonplace. The effects of a society overloaded with information, apps and various forms of electronic communication are manifest in more than just bumps and bruises. Our minds also are reeling from the flood of rapid-fire data and media consumption. People are finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on tasks requiring intellectual focus...

A group of gunmen shouting "Allahu Akhbar" stormed the Bacha Khan University in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, firing their weapons at students' heads and killing at least 20. Members of the Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack, Fox News reported. The news outlet also reported four of the gunmen had been killed by law enforcement.

Getting a job takes longer than ever, as employers ask more of candidates. It has never been easy to land a job, but a rise in hiring has added a new twist: Employers are taking nearly twice as long to hire people as they did several years ago. Companies need an average of 23 days to screen and hire new employees, up from 13 days in 2010, says Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at the jobs and recruiting site Glassdoor, based on a study of nearly 350,000 interview reviews by the site's users. Applicants run a gantlet of multiple interviews not...

The global financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, a leading monetary theorist has warned. "The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). "Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for...

One consistent idle daydream on the American right is somehow living outside of government. From Ayn Rand's "Galt's Gulch," where a bunch of plutocrats secede from America to gleefully watch society collapse without its job creators, to nutty Silicon Valley plans for "seasteading," somebody is always working on a government-free society. Over the last few years, many technology-minded thinkers and programmers have made such ideas a reality. Perhaps most notable is Bitcoin, the first fully decentralized currency and payment system. With big government interference all but impossible, surely this virtual money would be the dawn of a new age of...