Free Republic

To date, five congressmen from Texas have resigned instead of seeking re-election in 2020. Their resignations signal two things from GOP leadership. The first is the realization that Texas is now lost. The second is that this loss is due entirely to the changing demographics resulting from legal and illegal immigration. The five congressmen that have resigned are Bill Flores (17th), Will Hurd (23rd), Pete Olson (22nd), Kenny Marchant (24th), and Mike Conaway (11th). Of these five, Congressman Conaway is unique in that his district will likely remain red for some time. He has not faced an opponent in numerous...

Updated Sept. 11, 2019 | President Donald Trump is reshaping the federal judiciary at a staggering rate with the help of Republican Senate leaders with 150 judges confirmed, including two Supreme Court justices. Appointment Scorecard Circuit Courts of Appeals 4* vacant seats 6 pending nominations 43 confirmed judges U.S. District Courts 91 vacant seats 47 pending nominations 105 confirmed judges In his first two years, Trump appointed more judges to the appellate bench than any of the previous five presidents, according to a report by Lambda Legal, tapping dozens of conservative lawyers for influential seats on U.S. circuit courts around...

Former Vice President Joe Biden stood at center stage Thursday night, leading in the polls and earning the most attention from ABC’s debate moderators and his rivals alike. But Biden acted less like the front-runner than Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the candidate emerging as Biden’s chief rival from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. While many of the other candidates competed for audience attention with practiced zingers and dad jokes, Warren once again set much of the early agenda, defending her "Medicare for All" health care plan and swatting away the few attacks that came her way.

Georgia U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson returned to his beloved Senate this week for the first time since announcing his retirement armed with a secret plan. The three-term Republican, who over two decades on Capitol Hill has honed a reputation as an affable dealmaker, is determined to pull off one last major bipartisan policy coup before his Dec. 31 departure date. On which thorny policy issue, he refused to say.“I’m getting close to something I can tell you about, that I’ve been working on for some time,” Isakson said with a grin on Monday evening. “I’m not quite there yet.”

Beto O'Rourke did something new for a major Democratic presidential candidate at Thursday night's debate when he said, very clearly and without any prevarication, that he'd take "weapons of war" and certain guns away from law-abiding Americans. "Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We're not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore," said O'Rourke, a former congressman from El Paso, Texas, who has re-created his presidential campaign around the issue of gun control after a mass shooting last month in his hometown. O'Rourke is one of three Democrats, along with Sens....

"Some 161 service men and women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 4 ½ years -- a little less than three deaths per month. They are tragedies, and we mourn, as we should, with medals and flags and honors. Yet across the nation 20 veterans take their own lives every day, on average. “Every day.” "In Alabama in 2016 – one year alone – 128 veterans took their own lives. And hundreds more live on the streets across Alabama. “We salute our fallen heroes, and ignore them on our park benches.” - John Archibald Our Alabama’s...

The Democrat primary has devolved into an extremism arms race to see who can adopt the most radical position. Last week’s winner, despite steep competition, was Elizabeth Warren, who tweeted out, “On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands.  And I will ban fracking — everywhere.”  Sundance covered ten negative effects of this action at Conservative Treehouse.  The bottom line is that it would take a sledgehammer to the U.S. economy while tipping the geopolitical map in favor of...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by George Orwell. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. George Orwell, himself a socialist, has written with great accuracy the effects of Deep State-controlled collectivist propaganda and the dystopia that results. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle into the white squares on...

"...any group that separates from the Catholic Church would cease to be Catholic - even if they called themselves Catholic." Writing about Pope Francis’ reforms to the annulment process, Maguire predicted: Catholicism is going the way of its parent, Judaism. In Judaism there are Reform as well as Conservative and Orthodox communities. This arrangement is not yet formalized in Catholicism, but the outlines of a similar broadening are in place …. While conservative and orthodox Catholics welcome this annulment concession by the Vatican, reform Catholics don’t need it. Their consciences are their Vatican. Reform Catholics, whose numbers are swelling, are...

Police in Minneapolis have arrested more than a dozen suspected gang members, some as young as 13, accused of preying on drunk people and robbing them of their cellphones and valuables in a series of violent attacks.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said Thursday that he's planning to withhold his endorsement in the 2020 race both in the primary and in the general election, underscoring the uneasy relationship between the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee and the leader of his party. "I'm not planning on endorsing in the presidential race," Romney, who has periodically sparred with Trump, told CNN in the Capitol. "At this stage, I'm not planning on endorsing in the primary or in the general."

Eddie Money, the prolific singer and songwriter whose songs “Baby Hold On,” “Two Tickets to Paradise,” “Shakin'” and “Take Me Home Tonight” soundtracked popular music in the 1980s, died Friday (Sept. 13). He was 70. A statement provided by his family reads: “The Money Family regrets to announce that Eddie passed away peacefully early this morning. It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to our loving husband and father. We cannot imagine our world without him. We are grateful that he will live on forever through his music.” Money recently revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage...

Most of the elements are now in place for a decisive electoral victory for the current president, and a clear mandate to drain the swamp of all that he ran against. It is aberrant that with the economy performing at historic levels, and international relations steadied and easing toward a more satisfactory relationship with China and North Korea, the president’s approval ratings are in the upper forties rather than the low sixties. He is about where President Obama was at this point in his presidency, but Obama had not been successful; all he had done was Obamacare, and it was...

Eddie Money, the prolific singer and songwriter whose songs “Baby Hold On,” “Two Tickets to Paradise,” “Shakin'” and “Take Me Home Tonight” soundtracked popular music in the 1980s, died Friday (Sept. 13). He was 70. A statement provided by his family reads: “The Money Family regrets to announce that Eddie passed away peacefully early this morning. It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to our loving husband and father. We cannot imagine our world without him. We are grateful that he will live on forever through his music.” Money recently revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage...

Democratic primary season continues to plod along, and the Democratic National Committee (with help from the broadcast networks) is doing its part to whittle the historically-large field down to a more palatable size. Tonight, ten Democrats will participate in the ABC News debate, down from 26 candidates who entered the primary with Oval Office ambitions. However, unbeknownst to most voters, there’s a 27th candidate lurking in the wings. And despite not qualifying for the September 12 debate - or even declaring her intention to run for president - her stock is rising. That candidate is Hillary Clinton. Wait, Didn't Clinton...

Oklahoma passed Constitutional Carry in December of 2018. The law was vetoed by Governor Mary Fallin. The legislature passed the bill again, in 2019. The statute was signed into law on 27 February, 2019, by Governor Kevin Stitt. The law restores the right to carry arms in most public places, openly or concealed, without a government permit. It is essentially what the state of law was in 1789, when the Constitution was ratified, and the modern United States came into existence. The Oklahoma legislature adjourned on 24 May, 2019. According to Ballotpedia, a referendum, called a veto referendum, could...

Today's post is in honor of Staff Sgt. William R. Squier, Jr. who was killed by enemy small-arms fire on this date in 1969 in Binh Thuan province, Republic of Vietnam. The 20-year-old native of Brownell, Ks. had been in Vietnam for 17 months and was assigned to "C" Company Rangers, 75th Infantry. 1814: Unable to break the strong American defensive lines around Baltimore after a series of attacks, British troops return to their ships. Meanwhile, Vice Adm. Alexander Cochrane's fleet begins a 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry, which guards the entrance to Baltimore harbor. The ships fire their cannons...

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was fed up Friday morning over the Democratic presidential candidates spending too much time at Thursday night’s debate “quibbling” over minor health care policy differences. The “Morning Joe” host said he was “astounded” to see the candidates, for a large portion of the first hour, “pounding each other on technocratic niceties” related to their health care plans, while ignoring the big picture. […] Scarborough concluded by saying that pitching “Medicare-for-All’ to the American people is a “waste of time” because it will never pass in Congress after the election. “Barack Obama basically had to use every...

Amazon-owned Whole Foods will be withdrawing medical benefits for hundreds of its part-time workers starting Jan. 1, 2020, the company said Thursday. In the past, employees needed to work at least 20 hours a week to buy into the health-care plan. Now they will need to work at least 30 hours. Less than 2% of its workforce, or 1,900 employees, will no longer be eligible for medical coverage, under the new policy, the company said.

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