Free Republic

Jeb Bush launched his presidential campaign's exploratory committee on December 16, 2014, the presumptive Republican nominee. He ended his campaign on February 20, 2016, a broken man. Bush's campaign (and the pro-Jeb super PAC Right to Rise) spent over $100 million on his campaign. He won no states. And for the last several months, he's been in the news mostly for all the wrong reasons: desperate donors, misspent money, jokes-that-aren't-really jokes. He's been a loser for almost as long as he was a presumptive winner. The slow, torturous twilight of Jeb's campaign offers a couple of lessons. For one thing,...

Following lengthy talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow today, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said the United States is not seeking regime change in Syria and that the U.S. and Russia see the conflict "fundamentally very similarly." "The United States and its partners are not seeking so-called regime change as it is known in Syria," Kerry said in a news conference inside the Kremlin, before immediately adding that the U.S. continues to believe that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has no possibility of remaining the country's leader in the future.

Jeb Bush doesn't understand how hoodies work. And for some reason, Jeb Bush believes, apparently, that publicly demonstrating his lack of understanding of hoodies with a SF-based tech company schwag hoodie will somehow benefit him in the polls. When the younger Bush brother came to San Francisco last July, the presidential hopeful made a concerted effort to show plugged-in San Franciscans that he, too, understood the disruptive power of technology. This manifested in predictable ways, such as when he hailed an Uber on his way to visit SF-based Thumbtack. He also, it seems, took advantage of the classic tech-job perk:...

It may be hard for Jon Stewart fans to imagine, but the beloved Daily Show host is "anything but warm and fuzzy," according to staffers quoted in Lisa Rogak’s new biography of the comedian, Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart. One tells the story of a time Stewart screamed in a producer's face and threw a newspaper at her, only to later apologize and explain, "Sorry, that's bad Jon. ... I try not to let him out." There are more such tales of Stewart's angry side in the book, Forbes reports, and Rogak notes, "I'm surprised that...

In an interview with Bloomberg TV from the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, former Vice President Al Gore claims American democracy has been "hacked." Gore also opined on former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently commenting that she regretted her decision in Bush v. Gore. "[America] has been hacked. That is a computer term when the operating system of a computer is taken over and the computer does things the owner does not want it to. That is what has been happening to American democracy. You have 90% of the people in favor of background checks for gun...

Keith Olbermann has burned a lot of bridges, but seems eager to build one back to ESPN. .... "After the dinner, at that point, there was no real appropriate place for Keith to come back, nor did I feel like I was prepared to bring him back," Skipper told the Times.

President Obama called to personally congratulate the crew behind NASA’s successful rover mission to Mars on Monday and asked them to inform him immediately if they made contact with Martians. “If in fact you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away,” he said. “I've got a lot of other things on my plate but I expect that would go to the top of the list. Even if they're just microbes that would be pretty exciting.” NASA live-streamed the president’s call to members of Curiosity's Mars rover team, located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “You've...

Cass Sunstein, Administrator of The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, uses the White House White Board to lay out the facts and show that we can protect health and safety while promoting economic goals as well. And he explains how people died via Bush's overly regulated two terms, destroying Clinton's lean government legacy.

Famed actor and comedian Bill Cosby on Thursday said people who are critical of President Obama are "acting like they have no idea what he inherited" at the White House. Cosby compared the first four years of Obama's presidency to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the king condemned to an eternity of rolling a rock up a hill only to have it fall back down to the bottom. "I see Obama as Sisyphus in the first four years. And nobody would speak about the size of the rock, or the elevation of the hill. All you hear people talk about...

Thank you to all you Newt zealots for breaking the link from Drudge. Your childish remarks had a negative effect on this great site, thank-you.

Did anyone see Pelosi speak today? If so, is it me or did she look like she was high on some kind of drug? I'm being serious here. She looked like she was wound up om something and her eyeballs looked like they were ready to pop from their sockets.

WASHINGTON -- Turns out President Obama would like a phone upgrade. The president, in an unscripted moment with donors in Chicago, was talking about the need to innovate in technology. "The Oval Office, I always thought I was going to have really cool phones and stuff," he said during a small fundraising event at a Chicago restaurant. "I'm like, c'mon guys, I'm the president of the United States. Where's the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn't happen." The president made his off-the-cuff remarks with donors as he took questions and after reporters had been...

WASHINGTON (CNN) - President Barack Obama returned early from a five-day trip to Latin America on Tuesday and discovered he was locked out. The problem started after somebody failed tell the staff that Obama was coming back to work. It caused the Commander and Chief trouble when trying to open the Oval office.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Will Muschamp spent part of his childhood in Gainesville, growing up just a few streets from Florida Field and cheering for the Gators. He left in the mid-80s, then returned as a player at Georgia and as an assistant coach with Auburn and LSU. He's back again - this time in a much different capacity. Muschamp, who agreed to a five-year contract worth $13.5 million to replace Urban Meyer, was formally introduced as Florida's new coach Tuesday. He took center stage for a 40-minute news conference filled with confidence, enthusiasm and witty one-liners. "University of Florida is...

It turns out being president is a lot harder than Barack Obama thought it was. After the biggest electoral defeat in 80 years, Obama packed up Air Force One and headed out for a political shellacking abroad. You'd be hard pressed to locate an accurate picture of world opinion regarding Obama's trip from our adoring media, so here are the highlights as reported by the foreign press. Nothing is more emblematic of the Obama Administration's tactful use of "smart power" than the front page of the Drudge Report the other day after Obama delivered his Jakarta speech. As reported by...

Poor Barack Obama. He can't take a simple bicycle ride without attracting criticism. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was photographed wearing a bike helmet while cycling in Chicago. Critics said he looked like a dork. Then last year, when he rode handsomely bare-headed down the paths of Martha's Vineyard, the safety lobby lambasted him for setting a dangerous example. So on last month's return to the island, the carefully helmeted president appeased those critics—only to reawaken charges that he looked like an unmanly wimp. Maybe next year he'll give up and leave the bike rides to the First Daughters. This...

President Barack Obama smiles as he tours POET Biorefining in Macon, Mo., Wednesday, April 28, 2010.… US President Barack Obama, seen here addressing workers at the Siemens Energy Inc. facility in Fort Madison, Iowa, reached out Tuesday to Americans yet to feel the nascent economic recovery, firing up the Democratic campaign to avoid a drubbing in November's mid-term polls.

San Antonio - A 29 year old man is in custody in connection with the shooting death of a teenager near Jefferson high school overnight, 1200 WOAI news reports. Police think the victim was shot 'accidentally' by a fellow gang member in a home in the 200 block of Thomas Jefferson. The unidentified teen was pronounced dead at the scene. A couple of hours later, detectives picked up Michael Juarez, 29, and charged him with manslaughter. Detectives say both Juarez and the victim were in the same dorky street gang, and the shooting may have been an 'accident.'

EXCERPTS "I'm no stranger to hard fought campaigns, but what we’ve seen in the past few days is way over the line and reminiscent of the dangerous atmosphere of Sarah Palin's 2008 campaign rallies," Kerry said Monday. "This is not how democracy works in Massachusetts." (snip) "Scott Brown needs to speak up and get his out of state tea party supporters under control," Kerry said. "In Massachusetts, we fight hard and win elections on the issues and on our differences, not with bullying and threats."