Free Republic

National Republicans are pulling the plug on Mark Sanford’s suddenly besieged congressional campaign, POLITICO has learned — a potentially fatal blow to the former South Carolina governor’s dramatic comeback bid. Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's (R) ex-wife is accusing him of trespassing at her home and the two are due in court two days after his congressional election, according to a report from the Associated Press. According to court documents obtained by the AP, Jenny Sanford, the state's former first lady, caught him leaving her home in early February while using his cell phone as a flashlight and filed a complaint the next day. The couple divorced after he publicly admitted to an extramarital affair in 2009 and, according to their divorce settlement, aren't allowed to enter each other's...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor attempted to project a softer Republican tone on immigration during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, but indicated there is a ways to go until Republicans and Democrats agree on an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, endorsed a path to citizenship for DREAMers, the undocumented young people brought to the United States as children.

In the close-knit world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, community members know the modesty rules as well as Wall Street bankers who show up for work in a Brooks Brothers suit. Women wear long skirts and long-sleeved, high-necked blouses on the street; men do not wear Bermuda shorts in summer. Schools prescribe the color and thickness of girls’ stockings. The rules are spoken and unspoken, enforced by social pressure but also, in ways that some find increasingly disturbing, by the modesty committees. Their power is evident in the fact that of the half dozen women’s clothing stores along Lee Avenue, only one...

A working group of senators from both parties is nearing agreement on broad principles for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, representing the most substantive bipartisan effort toward major legislation in years. The three Democrats and three Republicans, who have been meeting quietly in recent months, plan to announce a final agreement as early as next Friday.

An unlicensed therapist who was a prominent member of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn was sentenced on Tuesday to 103 years in prison for repeatedly sexually abusing a young woman, beginning the attacks when she was 12. Mr. Hynes has said he believes the case may be a turning point for ultra-Orthodox victims of sexual abuse. In addition to convicting Mr. Weberman, his office also charged seven Hasidic men with bribery and intimidation of Mr. Weberman’s victim, who testified over four days. Prosecutors say they know of more victims who were too afraid to testify. “If there is one...

"The new electorate is more Hispanic, more black, contains more East Asians, has sprinklings of Arabs and Muslims and South Asians; all of these constituencies voted heavily for Obama. More generally, both Hispanics and Asians have for many years supported Democratic politicians for local offices. In the ’90s National Review turned its powerful polemical guns on an immigration system which, in the editors’ minds, was destined to overwhelm the voting base of the Republican Party and replace a perfectly good existing American people with a new one. National Review supported such measures as Proposition 187, California’s controversial effort to push...

Freshman Republican Rep. Allen West (Fla.) lost to Democrat Patrick Murphy in one of the closest, nastiest races in the nation, according to MSNBC election projections.

CBS News) New Jersey Governor Chris Christie spoke to "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which made landfall near Atlantic City, N.J. and wreaked havoc statewide. "The state of New Jersey took it in the neck worse than any other state," Christie said of the storm's effects. "It's going to take us a while to dig out from under it, but we will dig out from under it," he added. Christie called the level of cooperation between the local, state and federal governments "excellent" and praised President Obama's involvement. "I was on the phone for...

AURORA, COLO. -- Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan is planning to tell poor voters they would be better off if he and Mitt Romney win the White House and will urge middle-class and independent voters to consider whether they want another four years like the past ones under President Barack Obama. Ryan, in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday afternoon at Cleveland State University, was set to promise to Americans most in need that a Romney-Ryan administration would protect safety-net programs for them while overhauling benefits for wealthier Americans who might not necessarily need Social Security in their later years.

STAFFORD, Va. — Just outside the gates of the storied Quantico Marine Base, George Allen, the Republican nominee for a Senate seat from Virginia, sat down in the offices of a moving van company with more than a dozen defense contractors from his state last Monday to listen to them fret over government spending cuts. Scott Hirons’s small software firm will probably have to shrink to five employees from 15 by the end of October if nothing is done to head off automatic, across-the-board defense cuts, he said. The cuts will not begin until January, if ever, but the threat...

Texas is asking the federal government to waive requirements associated with No Child Left Behind, the signature package of education reforms championed by former President (and former Texas Governor) George W. Bush. The announcement comes after more than half of Texas schools failed to meet the annually escalating standards last school year. In a message on the Texas Education Agency website, the new Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams announces plans to submit requests to the U.S. Department of Education waiving provisions in 2001’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, as well as parts of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act....

Former President George W. Bush will not attend the Republican convention next month in Tampa, POLITICO has learned. “President Bush was grateful for the invitation to the Republican National Convention,” Bush spokesman Freddy Ford wrote in an e-mail. “He supports Governor Romney and wants him to succeed. President Bush is confident that Mitt Romney will be a great President. But he’s still enjoying his time off the political stage and respectfully declined the invitation to go to Tampa.” Asked if the former president had been invited to only attend or whether he was also asked to speak, Ford said the...

A new survey of American politics by the British polling firm YouGov highlights a familiar pattern in US deficit politics: YouGov asked: "Which of the following would you support as ways to reduce the nation's budget deficit?" They altered the rules of polling slightly, however, to deny respondents a "don't know" answer. Respondents had to answer something, either yes or no. Denied the "don't know" exit, Democrats favored higher taxes on the wealthy, 77.2%, and cuts in military spending, 46%. Democrats intensely opposed cuts in Medicare and Social Security, only about 5% in favor of either. Just 14% of Democrat...

One day last summer, Anne and her husband, Miguel, took their 9-year-old son, Michael, to a Florida elementary school for the first day of what the family chose to call “summer camp.” For years, Anne and Miguel have struggled to understand their eldest son, an elegant boy with high-planed cheeks, wide eyes and curly light brown hair, whose periodic rages alternate with moments of chilly detachment. Michael’s eight-week program was, in reality, a highly structured psychological study — less summer camp than camp of last resort.

The first shock came when Mordechai Jungreis learned that his mentally disabled teenage son was being molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse in Brooklyn. The second came after Mr. Jungreis complained, and the man accused of the abuse was arrested. Their communities, headed by dynastic leaders called rebbes, strive to preserve their centuries-old customs by resisting the contaminating influences of the outside world. While some ultra-Orthodox rabbis now argue that a child molester should be reported to the police, others strictly adhere to an ancient prohibition against mesirah, the turning in of a Jew to non-Jewish authorities, and consider publicly...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Highlighting the fiscal problems posed by growing health costs and an aging population, the trustees of Medicare estimated Monday that the program will only be able to pay a portion of promised benefits starting in 2024. That's the same year the trustees had estimated a year ago. Every year the Medicare trustees, who also oversee Social Security, release an annual report on both programs' long-term financial outlook. Unless Congress makes changes to Medicare, or overall health costs come down, Medicare will only be able to pay 87% of expected costs by 2024 and 67% by 2050....

SAN DIEGO – Authorities arrested a woman Tuesday for investigation of murder after finding a body in their search for the missing wife of a U.S. Marine. The body has not yet been identified as 22-year-old Brittany Killgore, who has been missing since Friday night, San Diego County sheriff's Capt. Duncan Frasier said. Police provided no details on a possible motive or any evidence that led to the arrest. Police arrested 27-year-old Jessica Lynn Lopez at a motel in San Diego. She was under guard at University of California, San Diego Medical Center with unspecified injuries. Frasier said she would...

President Bush's list of domestic accomplishments is already pretty thin. No Child Left Behind is now universally despised among conservative activists. Medicare Part D epitomized Bush's big spending ways and arguably paved the way for Obamacare. And even Bush's tax cuts are looking to be pretty temporary in nature. The one saving grace Bush still has on the domestic front is the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito have so far proved to be good reliable conservative votes. But all that may change after Obamacare hits the Supreme Court. Almost everybody assumes that Justices Clarence Thomas,...