Free Republic

It’s an industry trade show like Comic-Con, but also a feel-good festival à la Burning Man. It’s got Super Bowlesque hoopla, and for activists on the right, the annual meeting is the get-together in Washington. Thousands of conservatives will gather Wednesday for the weeklong Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where presidential hopefuls Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and others will try to woo their base in the lead-up to 2016. The event, long held at Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel, was moved by organizers to the recently built Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland—a Democratic stronghold,...

Ted Cruz came to Jacksonville Friday night and called out Jeb Bush on Common Core. More so than most of the other Republicans testing the waters for 2016, Cruz has taken shots at Bush over Common Core. But this time Cruz fired away at Bush in his own backyard. Cruz said he and Bush had “significant policy disagreements” on Common Core and would not weigh in if the former Florida governor was a conservative, saying that was something voters had to decide for themselves. Of course, Cruz also touched on other topics -- repeal Obamacare, get rid of the IRS...

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson pushed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) through Congress, a $1 billion program to help poor students and less fortunate school districts. When he signed the bill into law on April 11, 1965, LBJ stated that he believed that “no law I have signed or will ever sign means more to the future of America.” If he meant a bleaker future, his prediction has certainly come true. Even before the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the federal government had been worming its way into the education systems of the individual states. In...

Common Core education standards are riling the conservative base, and as the 2016 Republican presidential field takes shape, the standards -- seen by right wing activists as a federal overreach and a threat to parental rights -- are poised to play a big role in the GOP nominating process. That's doubly true in Iowa, where the kinds of Republican voters most vehemently opposed to Common Core -- evangelical Christians, home-schooling advocates, states-rights conservatives -- exert considerable influence over the state's first-in-the-nation presidential caucus."Voters are very closely viewing it as a litmus test," Tamara Scott, a policy adviser and lobbyist with...

Education policy is taking top priority in state legislatures across the nation. Education funding formulas, opportunity scholarships, educational savings accounts and charter school reforms are just a few of the policy issues being discussed and debated. However, while all of these policy issues are imperative to the advancement of educational freedom, the Common Core State Standard Initiative (CCSSI) is quickly becoming the top concern for state legislators. The first installment, seen in the video above, was presented by Mike Petrilli from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Neal McCluskey from the Cato Institute and moderated by Jonathan Butcher from the Goldwater...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is hands down the conservative frontrunner in the 2016 Republican presidential primary race, has quickly jumped out in front of all of the other potential Republican presidential candidates in fundraising and grassroots outreach. But before Bush can claim the 2016 GOP nomination for president, Jeb first needs to try to win over the Republican conservative base. Grassroots conservatives do not want Bush as the GOP nominee for president because they feel that he is too soft on immigration reform, as well as being the most outspoken supporter and promoter of national education standards, better...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush may find out that Wall Street money will not buy him the love of GOP primary voters like it does mainstream media elites who are rushing to cast him as the 2016 frontrunner. As soon as Mitt Romney announced that he would not make a third White House run, the mainstream press immediately anointed Bush as the clear Republican 2016 frontrunner. They made their pronouncements even though Bush had not yet proven with his speeches that he can be a successful candidate in the digital age and neither had the best ground game nor the...

State schools Superintendent Diane Douglas lashed out at Gov. Doug Ducey after he overturned her attempted firing of two state Board of Education employees, accusing him of infringing on her statutory and constitutional duties and of surrounding himself with a cabal of Common Core supporters.Douglas asserted that she has the right to hire or fire Board of Education employees. She noted that a law says the Board of Education can hire staff “on the recommendation” of the superintendent of public instruction. “Governor Ducey apparently views himself as both governor and superintendent of Schools,” Douglas said in a press statement.On Wednesday,...

The Republican establishment in Mississippi must wish state Sen. Chris McDaniel was in Washington. Instead, he’s a conservative force in Jackson, and just helped lead the attack against some misleading legislation about Common Core. The political establishment in Mississippi put forward a piece of legislation through former Senate Education Committee chairman state Sen. Videt Carmichael—a close ally of former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s—that purported to kill Common Core in Mississippi. “Basically, Common Core is gone if you pass this,” Carmichael said about his bill—according to the Jackson Clarion Ledger—while it was being considered in his old Education Committee, now chaired...

Former governor and likely 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush hosted an Education Summit in Tallahassee, FL Tuesday, where he struggled desperately to avoid uttering the word “common” and “core”. (SNIP) Bush: As long as they’re state-driven, and they’re high, and they’re assessed faithfully, is what is the cor– the hallmark– [chokes] excuse me, hallmark of a reform agenda.

A father in Seminole County, Florida, is raising concerns after he discovered a lesson on Islam in his son’s 10th-grade history textbook, a book that is also used by school districts across the state. In an interview with WFTV, the father, Ron Wagner, read from his son’s history book: “There is no god, but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.” Wagner also claimed that students were told to “recite this prayer as the first Pillar of Islam, off of the board at the teacher’s instruction.” Wager said he’s not a religious man, but making such a heavily religious lesson “mandatory...

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has unveiled a 42-page proposal to reform American education at the national level, one of the clearest signs yet that he is laying the groundwork to jump into the 2016 presidential primary. At the heart of his proposal is a total repudiation of Common Core, as well as a general rollback of federal authority, increased school choice options for parents and greater administrative freedom for educators. Jindal revealed his plan at a breakfast Monday morning hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. The actual proposal takes the form of a policy paper released through America Next, Jindal’s...

When the dupes and useful idiots were told by Obama that he would “fundamentally transform” America, they applauded like seals with no interest whatsoever what he meant by the term. Every time the man who was referred to as “The One,” by Democrats, said the word “change,” the progressive sycophants in the audience would go into fainting spells, slobbering all over themselves. With each passing day, we’re learning just what “fundamental transformation” meant. Ron Wagner, who said he admittedly doesn’t normally pay as much attention to his son’s school assignments as he should, just happened to read from his son’s...

Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future promotes Common Core and is hosting an education conference TODAY. Keeping the Promise: A Florida Education Summit is convening top Florida policymakers and education stakeholders for a conversation about accountability and choice, two of the most important factors for unlocking student potential. Tuesday, February 10, 2015 from 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM (EST) The Alumni Center at Florida State University 1030 West Tennessee Street Tallahassee, Florida http://www.eventbrite.com/e/keeping-the-promise-a-florida-education-summit-registration-15357014243

Conservatives have been fighting Common Core national education standards for two years at the state level, but a massive bill steamrolling through Congress has the potential to cement some of the most despised elements of Common Core into federal law. The re-authorization and rewriting of No Child Left Behind – also known as ESEA, or the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 – has been placed on a fast track in the House and Senate. The remaking of No Child Left Behind will chart the course of the federal role in education for years to come. Sen. Lamar Alexander,...

Keeping the Promise: A Florida Education Summit is convening top Florida policymakers and education stakeholders for a conversation about accountability and choice, two of the most important factors for unlocking student potential. Tuesday, February 10, 2015 from 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM (EST) The Alumni Center at Florida State University 1030 West Tennessee Street Tallahassee, Florida

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, looks increasingly like he will enter the 2016 presidential contest, even as he gets ready to hit Florida, home state of two other likely Republican candidates: former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla., and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Cruz appeared on ABC News‘ “This Week" on Sunday and said he was looking at running in 2016 and stressed his disagreement with Bush on immigration, even as he offered him some kind words. “Jeb Bush is a good man,” Cruz said. “He's a good governor. I respect him “If he chooses to run, it certainly looks like...

Terrified witnesses babble confused stories. Many claim that Edzilla has stupid, bloodshot eyes. He seems shortsighted, barely able to focus on anything beyond his own ravenous appetite for demolition. Sometimes he sways in one spot like a heroin addict waiting for a fix. Sometimes he lurches like a drunk, and marches through a structure as if he never noticed it. A dark ray shoots from Edzilla's forehead, rendering logic impossible. His breath is an electromagnetic pulse that makes the stupidest sophistry seems to be one of life's obvious truths. He hates coherent thinking and will screech until he overwhelms it...

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Louisiana Governor and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal is continuing to voice his growing outrage over the Common Core state education standards, which the federal government played an influential role in encouraging most states to adopt. Speaking at a Thursday luncheon at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. hosted by the American Principles Project, a conservative organization rallying opposition to Common Core, Jindal argued that the Common Core standards stand against American values and causes local communities to lose...

Jeb Bush made a series of astonishing remarks about immigration Wednesday. Actually, his comments were not so much about immigration as they were about illegal aliens. First he said he wanted to repopulate Detroit with illegal aliens. It just seems to me that maybe if you open up our doors in a fair way and unleashed the spirit of peoples' hard work, Detroit could become in really short order, one of the great American cities again," Bush said then. "Now it would look different, it wouldn't be Polish...But it would be just as powerful, just as exciting, just as dynamic....