Free Republic

INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, Fla. -- Just as they have for millions of years, sea turtles by the thousands made their labored crawl from the ocean to U.S. beaches to lay their eggs over the past several months. This year, record nesting was found in Florida and elsewhere despite growing concern about threats from climate change. In Florida, preliminary state statistics show more than 133,840 loggerhead turtle nests, breaking a record set in 2016. Same for green turtles, where the estimate of at least 76,500 nests is well above the previous mark set in 2017. High sea turtle nest numbers also...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Florida utilities would gradually increase their electricity to 100% renewable by 2050 under a proposed rule unveiled Thursday by the state’s agriculture commissioner. The proposed rule is an outgrowth of a lengthy court battle involving dozens of young people who claim Florida is violating their constitutional rights by continuing to promote use of fossil fuels that drive climate change. Similar lawsuits have been filed in other states. The rule announced by Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democratic candidate for governor this year, came following pressure from young people represented by the nonprofit Our Children’s Trust...

My friend Alex, a prominent Republican political consultant, emailed a group of us this morning to make sure we read Curt Anderson’s attack on Ted Cruz in the Politico before we tuned into the Sunday shows.Like my friend Alex, Curt Anderson is a Republican political consultant. He worked for Haley Barbour at the RNC. He’s worked for Mitch McConnell, Elizabeth Dole, and John Thune. He worked for Mitt Romney in 2008, then he worked for Herman Cain in 2011, who accused Curt wrongly of leaking the sexual harassment stories after Curt left to work for Rick Perry. Again, wrongly. In...

I know a televangelist candidate when I see one. To hear the pundits and experts in Washington tell it, the problem with Ted Cruz is that he doesn't play well with others in the Senate, he's too hardheaded and doesn't compromise. In other words, he's exactly what the Republican primary voters want. On this score, I side with the Republican primary voters. If Cruz's problem is that he is a conservative who has no regard for senatorial decorum and fights too hard for the right things, I'm all in. But there is a far bigger problem with Cruz: Donald Trump...

UPDATE -Mayor Emanuel is denying he is involved in anyway with the exchange of information regarding Cain's sexual harassment accusers. Herman Cain's campaign is revealing suspicions about who is behind the story regarding the former unidentified employees who accused Mr. Cain of sexual harassment in the late 1990's. According to a source who is friends with the Cain campaign, not only is the Rick Perry campaign involved but also the Mayor of Chicago and former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is likely involved with the sexual harassment accuser attacks. A friend of the Cain campaign believes a...

Via the Right Scoop. I’m picturing Mark Block, who kinda sorta cleared Anderson a few hours ago, smoking two at a time while listening to this. The most interesting bit comes near the end, when Cain retreats ever so slightly from his claim yesterday that he told Anderson about the harassment claims when Anderson worked for him in 2004. Now, he says, he’s “almost certain” that he told him. He does make a good point in noting that any political consultant worth his salt would have probed the candidate about skeletons in his closet in order to craft damage control...

Over the last 12 hours, the Cain controversy took a lurch toward complete farce with the Cain campaign accusing, with no evidence, the Perry campaign and specifically Curt Anderson, with leaking the story. As a theory, this at least make sense: Perry needs Cain to deflate, and one interpretation of Perry’s strange New Hampshire speech is that it was an over-the-top attempt to demonstrate the liveliness and personality that has helped Cain steal most of Perry’s support. But the Cain campaign seems only to be making a wild guess about Anderson. Incredibly enough, Cain himself made the accusation and then...

Herman Cain accused a former consultant to his unsuccessful 2004 Senate campaign, Curt Anderson, of leaking damaging information about past sexual harassment allegations against Cain. Anderson, who is now an adviser to Rick Perry, denied the charge in an email to POLITICO's Jonathan Martin: "I’ve known Herman Cain for about 7 years. I was one of several consultants on his Senate race in 2004 and was proud to help him. I'd never heard any of these allegations until I read them in Politico, nor does anything I read in the press change my opinion that Herman is an upstanding man...