Free Republic

Garry Kasparov, a Russian pro-democracy leader, has apparently been taking a lot of heat from Bernie Sanders supporters who think they know more about socialism than he does. His response: How are you all going to “lecture me”?

CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Donald Trump's presidential campaign has all but thrown in the towel in Wyoming ahead of Saturday's Republican convention. The billionaire businessman's campaign made a conscious decision not to commit resources to Wyoming, according to Alan Cobb, a senior Trump adviser. Trump picked only up a single delegate in last month's Wyoming county conventions while rival Ted Cruz scored nine. There are 14 more delegates at stake at this weekend's state convention. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press from the convention site in Casper, Cobb said Friday that he expects Cruz to sweep what remains of...

If you’ve ever paid taxes, you probably agree that the tax code is entirely too complicated. To that end, you would probably also enjoy having a simple, easy-to-understand one-page form that you can fill out in about ten minutes and be done with your taxes. For what it’s worth, the Tax Man agrees with you. I don’t have many nice things to say about IRS Commissioner John Koskinen (in fact, Congress should impeach him…), but when asked at a Congressional hearing this week about the flat tax, this was his response: Clearly, if you had a two-page form or a...

Obamacare's financial stability remains in question as insurance companies warn that the health exchange marketplaces are on the verge of collapse. A shortage of healthy young people signing up for Obamacare in the marketplaces is driving the cost of subsidizing sicker people through the roof for insurance companies, The Hill reports. Insurers are losing money, and some are suggesting that they will cut their losses and pull out of the marketplace altogether.

Despite Hillary’s recent “equal pay” rhetoric, the Clinton Foundation reportedly pays female executives 38 percent less than male counterparts, according to the foundation’s tax forms. The Daily Caller reports: The foundation’s 2013 IRS form 990 reveals that nearly three times as many men as women occupy the executive suites at the Little Rock, Arkansas-based foundation. On average, top male executives at the foundation earn $109,000 more than the top female executives with positions in the C-suite.

There is no shortage of conservative legislation being signed in Mississippi. Last week, Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law a bill protecting religious individuals from being forced to violate their conscience. This week, the Mississippi governor signed a law reaffirming the 2nd Amendment by permitting church members to carry firearms in church. The Church Protection Act, Politico reports, allows trained members of a church congregation to carry weapons into their house of worship for protection. It does not require those individuals to hold a permit to carry holstered weapons.

Loretta Lynch’s penchant for stealing the property of innocent people under the guise of civil asset forfeiture is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ideological activism from the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice. One of the DOJ’s lesser known programs is Operation Choke Point, a secretive program established in 2013 ostensibly to crack down on money laundering schemes. It works by investigating, and sometimes cutting off access to, banking services for businesses believed to be “high risk” or of “reputational risk.” What these terms of art actually mean is completely in the eye of the beholder,...

As the race between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz becomes more acrimonious, many people are naturally attracted to a fresh alternative. John Kasich has the benefit of being so irrelevant he can’t even win a congressional district, much less a full state. And precisely because he’s been so irrelevant, few have bothered to expose his true record. As we are learning throughout this primary season, the Republican Party is divided and diverse. But the common denominator between all Republicans is that they want to move in a new direction, far away from the Obama agenda. What is clear about John...

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are planning to speak tonight on the floor of the House of Representatives to demand that articles of impeachment for IRS Commissioner John Koskinen be brought to a vote. The Daily Signal was first to report the story. The leader of the House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan (R-OH, A Liberty Score®), told Conservative Review, “John Koskinen had four duties to fulfill as IRS commissioner after the targeting scandal, and he failed each one. He had the duty to preserve evidence, but under his watch and with multiple subpoenas and a preservation order in place,...

The recent spat in the Senate reminds me of Russia. On any given day it is hard to tell whether Russia is being run by an authoritarian or an outright dictator. Vladimir Putin fools few into believing Russia is a constitutional republic led by a freely elected President. Instead, Putin has changed the rules and exploited every loophole to defy his constitution to remain in power. In America, we believe in term limits; our commander-in-chief is only permitted to rule for two four-year terms. Term limits prevent any one person from accumulating too much destructive power; in fact, term limits...

The Cruz campaign's latest radio ad rips Bill DeBlasio following the New York City mayor's attacks on Ted Cruz. "DeBlasio's socialist policies are tearing the city apart," the narrator states before systematically ripping apart DeBlasio's record as mayor. "He treats cops like criminals and criminals like freedom fighters," the ad continues.

Donald Trump is not the only one who has ground game problems. In multiple states, John Kasich is facing challenges fielding full slates of delegates, especially where they are elected on the ballot. This includes New Jersey, where an administrative court just ruled that close to 30 percent of the signatures on a district delegate petition form are invalid. Kasich’s delegation made the ballot by one vote, and the administrative court ruling has been appealed to the lieutenant governor. If the appeal is successful, and Kasich won New Jersey, he would lose three delegates due to a lacking ground game....

Now that it looks like the GOP nomination won't be decided until a contested convention in Cleveland, Donald Trump and his supporters assert that the whole system is undemocratic. But if democracy was organized to give everyone a fair and equal shot to impress voters with their knowledge and experience, then our system has been rigged for Trump for the last nine months. The media -- not just the liberal media, but some "conservative" media, too -- have been the gale-force wind beneath Trump's wings. On the nightly news shows on ABC, CBS and NBC, Trump has far outpaced anyone...

WASHINGTON — One is a steady 16-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, a well-connected elder in the Grand Old Party. The other is an energetic bomb thrower who in four short years has positioned himself as the only thing standing between the Republican presidential nomination and Donald Trump. Together, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. That means regularly working together in the best interests of their state. For years, their detached relationship has been little more than the subject of Capitol Hill gossip. Yet now, with their party at a crossroads and the presidential nomination...

On tonight's episode of LevinTV Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Mark Levin in a wide ranging interview. The two touched on a host of topics, including Rubio's future political plans, his foreign policy vision, and who he thinks should be the president. When Levin asked Rubio who he would be supporting for the corner office, Rubio said that his delegates are bound on the first ballot. He added that on subsequent ballots, "I hope that they'll nominate a conservative." Rubio added, "the only one[presidential candidate] that fits that criteria is Ted Cruz."

In yet another act of gross exaggeration, Donald Trump’s newly-appointed convention manager Paul Manafort accused the Cruz campaign of engaging in “Gestapo tactics” to win GOP delegates. Let’s, if possible, put aside how loathsome it is that the Trump campaign would accuse another Republican of doing anything close to what Hitler’s secret police did to the Jews. Trump ought to consider what his own campaign is doing. Whose campaign is charging Cruz with false crimes at every opportunity? That would be Trump’s. Whose convention manager says angry voters should “visit the hotel rooms” of delegates who may not support Trump...

Sen. Ted Cruz said on Tuesday that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie got trapped in his "own private hell" by endorsing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. In a Tuesday interview with Glenn Beck, the conservative commentator who has endorsed the senator for president, Cruz expressed sympathy for the governor, saying that he looked like he wanted to scream when he stood behind Trump at a rally in March.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are definitely onto something. The top 10 states with the brightest economic future are all solidly Republican or leaning that way. These states have the common denominator of less taxation and government spending, right to work labor laws, and efforts to curtail out-of-control pension costs. The bottom states reflect the opposite prognosis and are almost all solidly Democratic. A study released today by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) looked at 15 variables such as income tax rates, property tax burden, workers’ compensation costs, minimum wage levels and state/local debt to compile its yearly “Rich...

Several top Republicans are planning to skip the party's national convention in July in fear a chaotic convention will damage the party, according to a CNN report. Apparently many House and Senate Republicans think it smarter to spend time with voters in their home-states than to be associated with the drama of the presidential nomination. An anonymous top GOP party leader even told CNN that he and others have advised rank-and-file members to avoid the convention and instead hold events in their home districts during that time.

On Tuesday’s radio program, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin chastised Donald Trump for insisting that the Republican “primary system is rigged.” The system is not rigged, Levin said, and yet Mr. Trump sounds like an entitled liberal demanding delegates from Colorado without having put in the work to win them. It sounds like Mr. Trump is demanding “delegate welfare,” said Levin. The delegate appointment rules in most of these primaries have been established for nearly a century. In Colorado, for example, the rules for this primary process have been in place since 1912. “Has the system been corrupt for 100...