Free Republic

Oregon Treasurer and Portland mayoral candidate Ted Wheeler issued a statement last week noting that the state pension fund’s investment returns were 2.1% in 2015. That beat the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and topped the performance of 88% of comparable institutional investment funds. What Wheeler’s statement didn’t mention was that investment returns for the year still fell 5.6 percentage points below the system’s 7.75% assumed rate of return for 2015. That’s terrible news for public employers and taxpayers. It means the pension system’s unfunded liability just increased by another 20% — growing from $18 billion at the end of...

"Trump bankrolled politicians to steamroll the little guy, a pattern of sleaze stretching back decades. Worse? Trump still supports eminent domain today." Who knew such a wonky topic would find its way into political attacks in the Republican presidential race? An ad released this week by Ted Cruz's presidential campaign lodged a renewed attack on Donald Trump's support for eminent domain and alleged use of the government's powers for private gain, to bully an elderly woman out of her home. There are two problematic aspects of this ad: the misleading headlines that accompany the narration and the cherry-picked footage of...

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump says he does not agree with comments from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia questioning the efficacy of affirmative action. "I don't like what he said, no, I don’t like what he said. I heard him, I was like, 'Let me read it again,' because I actually read it in print, and I’m going, I read a lot of stuff, and I’m going, 'Woah,'" Trump said in an interview televised Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." The billionaire said he thought Scalia's comments were "very tough to the African-American community." Trump, who has supported affirmative...

<p>Donald Trump says a lot of things. We've become all too used to that now. Some of these things should probably be taken with a grain of salt - "Only Rosie O'Donnell" comes to mind - but some deserve to be analyzed more closely.</p>

This was in an interview this morning with Dana Bash on CNN. See link for the video.

On @FaceTheNation, Trump said he has ordered his campaign to put its anti-Cruz ad back on the air in South Carolina, per a transcript. Trump on anti-Cruz ad in S.C.: "I pulled it down because I wanted to be nice. ... I saw him do a negative ad on me, I said put it back up."

In response to fears that his expansive plans for government will be prohibitively expensive, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (S-Vt) argued that "abolishing money will go a long way toward making government more efficient." "If people would only stop to consider how time-consuming it is to have to keep track of the flow of money they'd understand the tremendous efficiencies that will be achieved once we do away with it," Sanders imagined. "For the individual, all the headaches entailed in managing money—having it on hand, balancing a checkbook, paying bills—will be eliminated. If you need something you'll just go...

For being so smart, as you say you are, Mr. Trump, you sure are ignorant of what's really going on in the political sphere On Thursday, Donald Trump tweeted what amounts to his analysis of the latest five years of the Tea Party movement: “Remember, it was the Republican Party, with the help of Conservatives, that made so many promises to their base, BUT DIDN’T KEEP THEM! Hi DT” (February 11, 2016, 10:14 am) Sorry, Mr. Trump, I don’t remember it that way. It was the Republican leadership in the House and Senate that BLOCKED the efforts of conservatives and...

The opening questions of the CBS Republican debate naturally surrounded the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, with Donald Trump being the first up to bat. Responding to the question of appointing Justice Scalia's replacement, Trump said he believed Obama would pick a successor within the remaining 11 months of his presidency- and if Trump were in the president's shoes, he would do the same. Nevertheless, Trump had some advice to those interested in protecting Scalia's legacy of conservatism: "Delay, delay, delay." Watch below.

During tonight's CBS Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump was the only candidate to address the news that Carrier will be sending hundreds of American jobs to Mexico. The GOP frontrunner said that under a President Trump, Carrier would stay and "build in the United States because we are killing ourselves with trade pacts that are no good for us and no good for our workers." Video footage emerged yesterday, which went viral, capturing the anger and heartache of 1,400 Indianapolis workers who were informed that they soon would be out of work, as their company will be sending their jobs...

During the Republican debate on Saturday night, Donald Trump floated two names as potential nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court: Judge Diane S. Sykes and Judge Bill Pryor. “We could have a Diane Sykes or a Bill Pryor, we have some fantastic people,” Trump told the audience. Both judges are well-known conservatives serving on the federal level. Who is Diane S. Sykes? Sykes is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She was nominated by George W. Bush and confirmed in 2004. She went to Northwestern University and attended Marquette University Law School....

Donald Trump has rolled out a hard-hitting and emotional TV ad in South Carolina that shows how African-Americans are suffering from illegal immigration.

GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), following the tragic death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, pledged to honor his name by asking his followers to help prevent Barack Obama from nominating his replacement to the nation’s highest court.

I would like to offer my sincerest condolences to the Scalia family after the passing of Justice Scalia. Justice Scalia was a remarkable person and a brilliant Supreme Court Justice, one of the best of all time. His career was defined by his reverence for the Constitution and his legacy of protecting Americans' most cherished freedoms. He was a Justice who did not believe in legislating from the bench and he is a person whom I held in the highest regard and will always greatly respect his intelligence and conviction to uphold the Constitution of our country. My thoughts and...

The last time there was a vacancy during a presidential election year was 1968, when Earl Warren decided to retire and Lyndon Johnson tried to elevate Abe Fortas to fill his seat. A great political firestorm occurred. It was decided that whoever was elected in November would appoint the successor. Nixon ended up appointing Warren Burger to replace Earl Warren.

On Monday, grassroots Republican favorite Donald Trump repeated the phrase when an audience member called Ted Cruz a "p----." He came to this conclusion after determining that Cruz wasn't sufficiently gung-ho about waterboarding possible terrorists. Asked to define conservatism at the last Republican debate, Trump stated, "I think it's a person who doesn't want to take overly risks. I think that's a good thing." On Tuesday, establishment Republican favorite columnist David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column called "I Miss Barack Obama." In it, he pilloried Senators Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and lamented that...

One of the cornerstones of Donald Trump's campaign has been the fact that millions of jobs have been lost to overseas industries because it is often too expensive to do business in America anymore. Many liberals have criticized Trump for these statements, but the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Ford's latest production move showed that Trump was exactly right. Ford planned to build a new assembly plant in Mexico in order to produce 500,000 more vehicles in Mexico than it currently does. Last year Ford's Mexican output was 433,000 vehicles, which translates to about 14 percent of its total...

Ohio Gov. John Kasich seized second place in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday evening, in a race Donald Trump had dominated since the fall. But others had also spent time in the second place slot behind Trump, including former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina after her strong undercard debate performance in September; and Dr. Ben Carson, who was in second for much of the autumn, but finished in last place on Tuesday evening. What happened? A look at the RealClearPolitics averages allows us to pinpoint the exact moment when Carson began to fade, never to recover: Nov. 13, 2015....

According to the New Hampshire exit polls, a full 66% of Republican voters back a “ban on Muslims from entering the U.S.” This obviously is good news for Donald Trump, who proposed a temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the country until our government is in a better position to avoid another Sacramento terror attack. The female jihadist who committed that terror attack was here on a fiancée visa. By all accounts, Trump made this proposal based only on his instincts, not any kind of focus group polling. Every other candidate in the Republican primary disagreed with the proposal, many...

Via the Weekly Standard, he's not saying anything here that he hasn't said before. He supports immigration reform, but not comprehensive immigration reform - only a piecemeal security-first approach will work, the same view now taken by Marco Rubio. But Cruz fans who haven't paid attention to him on this issue may assume, incorrectly but understandably, that he naturally takes the most conservative position that an electable Republican presidential candidate can take. Not so: It's Scott Walker(!) who's staked out the right side of the field by demanding that American wages be a variable when considering target numbers for legal...