Free Republic

How will the details revealed by Marianne Gingrich regarding her former husband’s personal life – and Newt Gingrich’s defiant response – play out among the GOP presidential primary electorate? But it’s worth keeping in mind that even before Marianne Gingrich went public, Newt Gingrich was already facing tough odds when it comes to his support among women nationally — a factor that underscores the argument made by his GOP rivals against his electability in the fall. There typically tends to be a gender gap in presidential general elections, as women vote more Democratic than men. But a CNN/Time/Opinion Research survey...

It is profoundly disconcerting to read media reports of the unseemly competition between the US and Western governments to curry favor with the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of its electoral victory in Egypt. There are chilling parallels between such behavior and the disastrous European policy of appeasing the Nazis which paved the way for World War II. What those attempting to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood fail to comprehend is that this organization represents one of the most fanatical and dangerous of the radical Islamist groups in the region, with a dark record of violence and terrorism imbedded in its...

A father has told a court he was only doing his duty as a Muslim by handing out leaflets calling for gay people to be executed. Kabir Ahmed, 28, said he handed a leaflet called Death Penalty? to a policeman and stuffed them through letterboxes across Derby because he was spreading the word of God as taught by Islam. He said: 'My intention was to do my duty as a Muslim, to inform people of God’s word and to give the message on what God says about homosexuality.' Married Ahmed, who has a nine-month-old daughter, is on trial with four...

ISLAMIC communities in Perth’s south-eastern suburbs are looking forward to having a local place of worship. City of Gosnells councillors voted last month to approve a development company’s proposal to build a mosque in Southern River and it has gone to the WA Planning Commission for final approval. At the corner of Southern River Road and Leslie Street, it will have a prayer hall, conference room and car park. Islamic Association of Southern Districts secretary Matthew (Suleyman) Foster said it would be the only mosque between Welshpool and Rockingham. He said Muslims in Gosnells, Thornlie and Canning Vale were presently...

NAIROBI, Kenya — An increasingly vocal Islamist group says its leader has been appointed to represent an al-Qaida-linked Somali militia in Kenya, a development that underscores the dangers Kenya faces from Somalia’s insurgency. The statement by the Kenya-based Muslim Youth Center came amid a flurry of warnings from embassies about planned terror attacks in Kenya. The Somali militant group al-Shabab has promised to attack Kenya for its decision to send troops to Somalia in October. The Muslim Youth Center was named in a United Nations report last year for recruiting, fundraising, and running training and orientation events for al-Shabab. An...

Crime rates in the Arab sector are a cause for concern as Ministry of Public Security figures reveal that in 2011 Arabs were involved in 67% of the murder cases and 70% of attempted murder cases. In efforts to fight the soaring crime rates, Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch will on Sunday present ministers with a perennial plan to improve personal and community security within the Arab sector. The data also revealed that Arabs were involved in 38% of aggravated assault cases as well as 36% of robbery cases and 52% of arson incidents. Nevertheless, the crime rates referring to...

NAIROBI, Kenya –Far from the world media’s gaze in remote islands off the eastern coast of Africa, church buildings are razed and Christians are ostracized and imprisoned for their faith – leaving one with a skin disease. On Tanzania’s island of Zanzibar, in one week-long stretch last month Muslim extremists destroyed two church buildings, Christian leaders said. The extremists torched the building of the Pentecostal Evangelical Fellowship of Africa in Mtufani Mwera, about 12 kilometers (seven miles) from Zanzibar town, at 7 p.m. on Dec. 3, said Pastor Julius Makoho. Damages were estimated at 1.5 million Tanzania shillings (US$9,350). “When...

Wisconsin Democrats have announced they will submit the petition signatures in their effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker next Tuesday, January 17 — with a massive drop-off of boxes at the state’s election administration agency, the Government Accountability Board: Julie Wells, the Janesville grandmother and factory worker who triggered the recall, will be joined by volunteers from Wisconsin’s 72 counties, who will load scores of boxes from a truck dubbed the “Forward Flyer” into GAB offices. Also present and available to the media will be representatives from the recall efforts against four Republican senators. Back in mid-December, the Dems announced...

WASHINGTON -- Tensions between the rich and poor are increasing and at their most intense level in nearly a quarter-century, a new survey shows. Americans now see more social conflict over wealth inequality than over the hot-button topics of immigration, race relations and age. The survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center highlights U.S. perceptions of the economic divide, an issue that has moved to the forefront in the 2012 presidential campaign amid stubbornly high unemployment, increasing poverty and protests by the Occupy movement.

Wednesday the United States Supreme Court delivered a knockout blow to the White House in the cause of religious liberty. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a unanimous court swatted away the government’s claim that the Lutheran Church did not have the right to fire a “minister of religion” who, after six years of Lutheran religious training had been commissioned as a minister, upon election by her congregation. The fired minister -- who also taught secular subjects -- claimed discrimination in employment. The Obama administration, always looking for opportunities to undermine the bedrock of First Amendment religious liberty, eagerly agreed....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court rejected on Monday a free-speech challenge to the longtime ban on campaign contributions by foreign citizens who temporarily live and work in the United States. The justices affirmed a ruling by a three-judge federal panel that upheld the ban adopted by Congress to keep foreigners from financially influencing U.S. elections. The court's last federal campaign finance law ruling was in January 2010, when it gave corporations the free-speech right to spend freely to support or oppose candidates. PresidentBarack Obama and fellow Democrats in Congress criticized that ruling while Republicans praised it. The new challenge...

On MSNBC just now, South Carolina Democratic chair Dick Harpootlian painted Republican voters there as potentially refusing to vote for a Mormon, while trying to make it so. From memory: It does not bother me that he may believe the Garden of Eden is in Missouri, but it may bother them. This is an ugly card and I hope...

On Fox & Friends this morning, Newt Gingrich fought back against Rush Limbaugh's criticism of his rhetoric on Bain Capital. FOX HOST STEVE DOOCY: I was driving around yesterday in my car, and I was listening to Rush Limbaugh, and he was talking about you and how you're going after Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. And he said that you're using the language of the Left to beat up on Romney over Bain. He said it makes him uncomfortable because that's what the Left will do if Romney is the nominee. GINGRICH: Well, I don't think I'm using the language...

What do conservatives stand for? What do conservatives believe in? Those seem like simple questions, and as a conservative, I can tell you exactly what I stand for and believe. The problem comes from what I'm hearing from our GOP presidential candidates who call themselves conservative. In their quest for the Republican nomination, it seems these "conservatives" will embrace any idea in order to attack another candidate. The latest is an assault on capitalism... yes, capitalism! What's next? Supporting higher taxes and bigger government? As noted in a story on CNSNews.com, GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney is under attack by...

NASHUA, New Hampshire – Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Monday the US should use surgical strikes like those employed by Israel against Syrian and Iraqi nuclear facilities to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Santorum told more than 100 New Hampshire voters gathered in a Salem Elks Lodge on the last day before the nation’s first-in-the-nation GOP primary Tuesday that as president he would first implement more sanctions, covert operations and assistance for pro-democracy forces. But, he continued, if that doesn’t work, “then we set a deadline and we say if you don’t meet that deadline and open...

Newt Gingrich has ramped up his attacks on Mitt Romney as a heartless leveraged buyout executive for his years at Bain Capital, asking reporters in Manchester on Monday, “Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money? Or is that, somehow, a little bit of a flawed system?” But Mr. Gingrich was himself on an advisory board for a major investment firm that had a similar business model, Forstmann Little, a pioneering private equity firm co-founded in 1978 by Theodore J. Forstmann...

After Rick Santorum​’s surprising show in Iowa, he may be the only candidate standing between Mitt Romney​ and the Republican nomination. But there is no contest between the two as to which demonstrates a more realistic understanding of the threat of jihad and Islamic supremacism. In that arena, Santorum wins hands down. “Jihadism is evil and we need to say what it is,” Santorum said last March. “We need to define it and say what it is. And it is evil. Sharia law is incompatible with American jurisprudence and our Constitution.” He added correctly, and in sharp contrast to the...

The last two presidential election cycles have revealed a stinking hypocrisy in conservatives: They profess their love of capitalism and entrepreneurship, but when offered a real capitalist and entrepreneur, they go, “Eek, a mouse!” And they tear him down in proud social-democrat fashion. In the off season, they sound like Friedrich Hayek. When the game is on, they sound like Huey Long, Bella Abzug, or Bob Shrum. Last time around, Mike Huckabee said Romney “looks like the guy who laid you off.” Conservatives reacted like this was the greatest mot since Voltaire or something. To me, Romney looked like someone...

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — A Las Vegas billionaire has contributed $5 million to an independent group backing Newt Gingrich, breathing new life into the former House Speaker's struggling campaign for the GOP presidential nomination and casting renewed attention on the role of such groups in the 2012 contest. A person familiar with the development said Sheldon Adelson, a casino mogul and longtime donor to Republican candidates, made the contribution Friday to Winning Our Future, a super PAC run by Gingrich allies. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said...

Attacks on Christians are surging in Kenya, and analysts say Islamic radicals are putting a bull’s-eye on the community. International Christian Concern’s Middle East specialist Aidan Clay says he recently visited a victim of a Somali mob attack in Kenya. “When I saw him a month after the incident, he was still badly bruised, could hardly see out of his right eye which was black, and was missing teeth,” Clay said. Clay said the attacks are getting more frequent and more intense. “Recently, there has been a slight surge of violence targeting Christians inside Kenya, provoked mainly by Somali Muslims,...