Free Republic

Back when the Jeb Bush campaign for the Republican presidential nomination was still unofficial, the political press was busy churning out stories about how the former Florida governor was sewing up all the top talent in fundraising, strategy and policy. Bush, it seemed, was not only loading his team with top operatives, but like the Yankees in the George Steinbrenner years he was locking up extra talent just so nobody else could have it. In the rush, though, Bush apparently forgot to fill one vitally important position: Special Advisor for Saving Jeb Bush from Himself. The Bush campaign has, inexplicably,...

Former President George H.W. Bush has moderated his views on same-sex marriage since seeking the White House, according to a new biography. Bush said in his audio diary before his 1988 presidential campaign that Americans "didn't want same-sex marriage codified," according to The New York Times. But after he served as an official witness at a 2013 same-sex wedding, he sent his biographer, Jon Meacham, a note to clarify that his views had changed....

Salaries of federal employees continue to lag behind those of similar private-sector jobs by 35 percent on average, an advisory committee has said in presenting what amounts to the latest data point in a long-running debate over how the two sectors compare. The 34.92 percent "pay gap" reported Friday essentially duplicates the 35.37 and 35.28 percent numbers reported the last two years by the Federal Salary Council and is close to those of other recent years.... Under a 1990 law, the numbers are supposed to be used to virtually close the measured differences with private-sector pay. However, no administration or...

Ben Carson's woe-is-me whining about media scrutiny is more than just a sorry spectacle. It shows the extent to which a culture of victimization has infected the conservative movement. "There's no question I'm getting special scrutiny, because there are lot of people who are very threatened,” Carson said in a "Face the Nation" interview Sunday. "The whole point is to distract, distract the populace, distract me." That’s rich, given how Carson’s own mouth has proved to be such a powerful weapon of mass distraction. His "personal theory" that the pyramids of Egypt were built by the biblical patriarch Joseph as...

Encrypted email provider ProtonMail is still being hit by a DDoS attack from what appears to be a nation state, as well as a secondary and separate lower-level assault from an identified assailant. However, the service is now operating normally, it seems. Switzerland-based ProtonMail offers an encrypted webmail system able to withstand intelligence agency-level surveillance. However, since last Tuesday the company has continued to be hit by DDoS attacks from two attackers. Talking to The Register, ProtonMail CEO Andy Yen explained: "We have been attacked every day since 3 November, so we're now entering the sixth day of attacks." "There...

Several prominent US Senators and mayors have been outed as members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other racist groups by the hacktivist collective Anonymous, and the group hints that more politicians and public figures will be named in the near future. In a new post on document-dumping site pastebin, Anonymous names US Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), John Cornyn (R-Tx.), Dan Coats (R-In.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) as members of the KKK....

As President, Bill Clinton infuriated many in the gay community by signing into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which blocked federal recognition of same-sex marriages, and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which required gay members of the military to remain in the closet about their sexual orientation or be ejected from service. Arguably, Clinton didn't exactly have a lot of room to maneuver. DOMA passed by an overwhelming, veto-proof majority. While it was introduced by Republicans in 1996 (by Bob Barr, who would eventually run for president as a Libertarian Party candidate in 2008 and apologize for sponsoring the...

A few days after the CNBC presidential debate -- which the GOP campaigns called "horrendous," "stupid," and "ridiculous" -- the Republican National Committee has decided to suspend its plans to let NBC News host a debate on February 26.... Priebus also noted that the "moderators engaged in a series of 'gotcha' questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates. What took place Wednesday night was not an attempt to give the American people a greater understanding of our candidates' policies and ideas." He did not add that the American people would have also gained a fuller...

House Speaker John Boehner is looking to move a bill to lift the debt ceiling before he leaves Congress, a tactic aimed at helping his successor, according to multiple sources with knowledge of internal party planning. Timing has not been decided, but the Treasury Department says the nation's borrowing limit needs to be raised by Nov. 5, and Boehner (R-Ohio) would like to resolve the issue before a new speaker is sworn in. Boehner expects to step down Oct. 30. His office declined to comment for this story....