Free Republic

If President Obama means what he says about wanting an immigration system that reflects American values, helps the economy and taps the yearnings of millions of Americans-in-waiting, he is going to have to do something about it — soon and on his own. It has been frustrating to watch his yes-we-can promises on immigration reform fade to protestations of impotence and the blaming of others. All Mr. Obama has been saying lately is: No, in fact, we can’t, because Republicans and the law won’t let me. Mr. Obama is correct when he complains that long-term immigration repairs have been throttled...

A half-dozen years ago, Brendan Eich donated $1,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that set out to ban same-sex marriage. It passed with 52 percent of the vote, but was later overturned by the courts. I hated and opposed that ballot initiative. That same year, in fact, I spent more time arguing in favor of gay marriage than any other issue. In private, I tried to persuade various family members and acquaintances that they ought to cast ballots against Proposition 8. At Culture11, a now-defunct web magazine where I worked, my boss Joe Carter and...

Who has been defecating on children's slides in Ypsilanti’s Prospect Park for the past five to six months? Ypsilanti police and city officials are hunting for the person officials have described as the “mystery pooper” as warmer weather approaches. Officials have discovered feces on the slides so frequently that police installed a hidden camera to try to capture an image of the act. Council Member Pete Murdock, who is also the head of the Friends of Prospect Park, described the act as “weird and deliberate.” He said he first received a call about the issue more than five months ago...

Immigration reform advocates are fond of citing broad support for their cause. But in fact the coalition behind the Senate Gang of Eight comprehensive reform bill is fragile and loosely cobbled together. How could Big Labor and the Chamber of Commerce and the tech world and Big Agriculture all unite behind one bill? Very tentatively. It wouldn't take much to break the coalition apart. And if that happens, the effort to enact comprehensive immigration reform could blow up, not just for the moment, but for some time to come. And there are signs that is exactly what is occurring now....

Legislators never received ethics training about "gun running or other such sordid activities," California state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg noted during house debate Friday over whether to suspend three senators who have been accused of crimes including corruption, perjury and conspiracy to traffic weapons.

BARACK OBAMA may recall a tricky moment when he first met King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia five years ago. Bending to shake hands with the octogenarian monarch, the taller American appeared to bow deeply. Republican snipers in America gleefully blasted the president for “kowtowing” to rich Arabs. Such protocols should run more smoothly when Mr Obama heads to Saudi Arabia on March 28th for his second time in office. Unfortunately, however, relations between the two countries have seldom been more awkward. Their close alliance dates to the end of the second world war, when an ailing Franklin Roosevelt met Saudi...

The Missouri state auditor’s post has been a launching pad for politicians with higher aspirations like Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and former GOP Sen. Kit Bond. But this year, Democrats concede they won’t field a serious candidate against incumbent Republican Auditor Tom Schweich — sparking questions about the strength of the party’s bench in the red-trending swing state. Schweich may also be using his position to mount a bid for higher office in 2016, making Democrats’ historic failure to recruit an opponent for Schweich even more costly. “The reality is we believed we had...

A day after his stunning arrest on corruption charges, State Sen. Leland Yee withdrew from the Secretary of State's race. His attorney, Paul DeMeester, made the announcement about the withdrawal during a brief Thursday press conference in front of the federal building. Yee notified current Secretary of State Debra Bowen of the decision in a brief letter. "I hereby withdraw my candidacy for election of Secretary of State, effective immediately," said Yee in the letter, which ends "With best regards." State Sen. Leland Yee leaves Federal Court in San Francisco, Calif., after posting $500,000 bail Wednesday March 26, 2014, following...

As details of state Sen. Leland Yee’s alleged crimes trickled out, advocates associated with gun-rights groups jumped on the possible ironies. An affidavit filed in federal court in San Francisco by FBI Special Agent Emmanuel V. Pascua said there was probable cause to believe that Yee had conducted various crimes, such as engaging in a conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and illegally import firearms. Yet Yee, a prominent figure in California's Democratic legislative majority, had crusaded against guns and violent video games for years. The criminal complaint revealed Wednesday stated that Yee sought donations in return for connecting...

When it comes to green gentry liberalism, think of an Americanized version of the PBS hit—where everyone knows his or her place, and our betters look best. Last week was a good week for natural gas, but a bad one for green gentry liberalism. John Podesta, a veteran of the Clinton White House who is once again a presidential adviser, tried to explain some energy facts of life to the true-believing liberal base. Still, it’s unclear if Podesta’s intended audience was listening, and that willful blindness may cost the Democrats control of the Senate. Podesta warned that opposition to natural...

A revolution is about to come to the most unlikely of places: those hundreds, maybe thousands, of USB ports scattered throughout your company. This revolution will be all about power distribution and management, the stuff that only interests IT infrastructure staff. But there are wider implications that should make the entire IT organization take notice. The specification for USB Power Delivery (USB PD) was released nearly two years ago, but devices designed around this standard will only start to appear later this year. The new spec turns the capabilities of the USB port on their head. What was a data...

Fred Phelps Sr., the former head of the Westboro Baptist Church, died late Wednesday night, according to a family member. Phelps' son, Timothy told 13 News that his father died just before midnight. Timothy Pheps works at the Shawnee Co. Jail. Ironically, another son who is a member of the church, attorney Jonathan Phelps told us Thursday morning, "Pastor Phelps is doing just fine." That, of course, could have been a spiritual reference. Over the weekend, we learned that Phelps was reportedly "on the edge of death." In a statement on his Facebook page, Nathan Phelps, who has been estranged...

Embattled Washington Mayor Vincent Gray called in a notorious predecessor, Marion Barry, to prop up his reelection campaign Wednesday afternoon. Gray got exactly what he deserved. “Vince Gray,” Barry told a modest crowd in a church basement in Southeast Washington, “is a leader with a solid crack record.” The self-proclaimed mayor for life caught this Freudian slip. “Track record,” he corrected. Barry, now a 78-year-old City Council member in failing health, is, famously, the one with the crack record. Gray’s problems are of the campaign-finance variety. His lawyer has said he expects the mayor to be indicted in a federal...

BERKELEY, Calif. — Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Wednesday that President Barack Obama should be particularly wary of domestic spying, given the government’s history of eavesdropping on civil rights leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., injecting the issue of race into the contentious debate over surveillance. “I find it ironic that the first African-American president has without compunction allowed this vast exercise of raw power by the NSA,” Paul said in an address at the University of California, Berkeley. “Certainly J. Edgar Hoover’s illegal spying on Martin Luther King and others in the civil rights movement should give...

The Kansas City Zoo will again review its policies after a frightening spasm of violence Tuesday afternoon that included shots fired in the parking lot. There were no reported gunshot injuries, but zoo officials want to avoid having the animal park gain a reputation for being unsafe on days when it is open for free to residents of Jackson and Clay counties. Tuesday’s disturbances followed another incident on a free day last April when a police officer breaking up a fight in the parking lot got a bloody nose. In both cases, the free admission drew crowds that were too...

The Supreme Court ruled in the 2008 case D.C. v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess weapons—or at least commonly used weapons—in the home. In 2010's McDonald v. Chicago, the Court found that states and localities were also barred from violating that right. But those landmark rulings left unsettled a host of important questions about how, when, and why the government can regulate or restrict gun rights. "The Second Amendment right is not unlimited," Justice Antonin Scalia cautioned in the majority opinion in Heller. "It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon...

Democrats can’t even agree whether Obamacare was the reason for their crushing loss in a Florida special election Tuesday. Now picture how their messaging plan for the health care law is shaping up for 2014. Republican lobbyist David Jolly’s victory over Democrat Alex Sink has many Democrats privately worried and publicly split about how to talk about Obamacare. (Also on POLITICO: Full health care policy coverage) A few Democrats are advocating a drastic rhetorical shift to the left, by criticizing their own party for not going far enough when it passed the law in 2010. Other Democrats plan to sharply...

In 1968, when Roger Ailes was not the all-powerful maestro of Fox News but just a whip-smart 20-something trying to make Richard Nixon look good in staged television town halls, he told a young journalist named Joe McGinniss, “This is the beginning of a whole new concept. This is it. This is the way they’ll be elected forevermore. The next guys up will have to be performers.” Indeed, Nixon’s presidential campaign set the standard of scripted salesmanship and calculated image-making for all contests to come — and to it we owe much of the stilted version of pseudo-reality that defines...

Over the past six months or so, a huge amount of attention has been paid to government snooping, and the bulk collection and storage of vast amounts of raw data in the name of national security. What most of you don't know, or are just beginning to realize, is that a much greater and more immediate threat to your privacy is coming from thousands of companies you've probably never heard of, in the name of commerce. They're called data brokers, and they are collecting, analyzing and packaging some of our most sensitive personal information and selling it as a commodity...to...

The California gun store that put the nation’s first smart gun on sale is facing a furious backlash from customers and gun rights advocates who fear the new technology will encroach on their Second Amendment rights if it becomes mandated. Attacks in online forums and social networks against the Oak Tree Gun Club have prompted the store to back away from any association with the Armatix iP1 smart gun. The protests threaten the nascent smart gun industry, which received a jolt of support recently when a group of Silicon Valley investors offered a $1 million prize for promising new technology....