Free Republic

It's amusing to watch people latch onto something that they think is full of red meat and beat their heads against the wall pontificating on it, when there's just no "there" there. This is one of those times. Let's take the base argument: Trump University was a "per-se" fraud because it wasn't an accredited school. Ok, fair enough -- and the name was changed to the Trump Entrepreneurship Institute [TEI] following NY State having a hissy fit over the name. But folks -- that's a naming dispute, not a dispute over the substance of the material. Schneiderman has his own...

Here's why Santorum thinks Cruz is falling behind in the race. In an interview with me on SiriusXM Progress at the Conservative Political Action Conference, former senator Rick Santorum said he believes that Sen. Ted Cruz isn't doing better in the GOP presidential primary and caucus races because Cruz "is not the kind of conservative that Mike Huckabee and I were." Santorum says he believes Cruz isn't conservative enough when it comes to social issues. This, even though Cruz has loudly promoted anti-LGBT religious liberty laws, spoken at a virulently anti-gay conference last fall (which Rachel Maddow dubbed a "'kill...

NEW ORLEANS (CNN) - More than two dozen protesters chanting "black lives matter" disrupted Donald Trump's rally here on Friday, linking arms and resisting security personnel trying to eject them from the venue. The protests come after a week of intense scrutiny directed at Trump after the Republican presidential front-runner was asked to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and several white supremacist groups. Trump declined to disavow Duke's support and that of white supremacist groups, including the KKK, during a CNN interview on Sunday, but later tweeted his rejection of Duke, a position...

A Broward judge on Friday struck down a Hollywood voter's attempt to remove Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio from the Republican presidential primary ballot. Michael Voeltz, 54, filed a lawsuit seeking to declare Cruz and Rubio ineligible for the presidency because, Voeltz argued, they are not natural-born citizens. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father, while Rubio was born in Miami to Cuban immigrants who later became citizens. Both men, Voeltz argued, benefited from laws that made them citizens without putting them through a legal naturalization process. Voeltz, who represented himself and is not...

Lindsey Graham has had some harsh words for Donald Trump, but that doesn't mean he thinks a brokered convention would be fair to the Republican frontrunner. In an interview with former Obama adviser David Axelrod on his podcast "The Axe Files," Graham said a fractured nomination process also wouldn't be good for the GOP. "If he got two-thirds of what he needs, which I think he's well on his way to doing, for us to steal from him is not going to help the party," he said in the interview, which was recorded before Trump's Super Tuesday rout and Mitt...

The truth sets us free...

In theory, Ted Cruz's best states are behind him. But at the Detroit debate, Cruz was clearly the class of the field and it's clear that no one should count him out as the delegate race moves into its next phase. The delegate math is complicated, but the basic gist goes something like this: Donald Trump has a commanding lead at the moment, but it is not a given that he will reach the 1,237 threshold he needs to clinch a majority. Simply put, Trump has failed to break through the ceiling of support he's held since New Hampshire even...

The results of last night's Super Tuesday primary elections would have, in a normal Republican Primary cycle, made Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee for President and most certainly driven the also-rans, Dr. Ben Carson and Ohio Governor John Kasich from the race. But in case you hadn't noticed, this isn't a normal Republican Primary election cycle. Normally in Republican politics the stronger a candidate for the nomination gets the more the self-interested powerbrokers in the professional political class come around to supporting him. However, this year the GOP appears to be fracturing into three segments: the "vote for Trump...

THE Australian Labor Party has launched an internal investigation after claims paid election staff sent to work on the presidential campaign may have breached US law. Four ALP election staff were sent to America last month and paid $60 per day to observe and work on the campaign for Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders. Under US law foreign volunteers cannot be paid or receive any benefits, however three volunteers have been caught on camera admitting they received a daily allowance, flights and accommodation form the Labor Party. ALP National Secretary George Wright denied the party had broken any laws but a...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-02/republican-elites-harden-to-trump-as-voters-flock-to-him

Civil rights leader Ben Jealous early Wednesday compared Hillary Clinton's Democratic presidential campaign to Mitt Romney's unsuccessful White House bid in 2012. "She's looking a lot like Mitt Romney did last time around," he told host Chris Jansing on MSNBC's "The Place for Politics 2016."Jealous said the former secretary of State is an "establishment candidate who looks like she should be the president and it's her turn." "Frankly, she has to earn it," the former NAACP president added. "I don't want to see the black vote taken for granted. I don't want to see any vote taken for granted. We...

The supporters of Donald Trump believe he might awaken a sleeping giant -- a cohort of white working-class voters that will propel him to the presidency. His more politically-minded opponents insist he will summon a colossal electoral disaster on Republicans that will not only secure the presidency for the Democrats but lose the GOP the House and Senate. I'll let the Trumpkins make the case for their man. I want to look at the potential for Republican disaster here. John McCain got roughly 60 million votes in 2008. Mitt Romney got roughly 61 million in 2012. Barack Obama secured 70...

A letter in the Financial Times Tuesday attracted attention online because it was written by a liberal couple who said they were considering voting for Donald Trump, even though they are "not the sans-culottes you see as the prototypical Trump voter." In the letter, Jon and Elsa Sands, who describe themselves as socially liberal affluent Americans, believe Trump is the only option even as they compare voting for him to voting for a "tameable Hitler in 1933." The letter reads: Sir, My wife and I are affluent Americans with postgraduate degrees. We are socially liberal and fiscally mildly conservative. We...

A Black Lives Matter protester was escorted out of a $500 per person Hillary Clinton fundraiser on Wednesday after she interrupted the Democratic presidential candidate's speech, which was being held at the home of a Charleston, South Carolina attorney. Video from the incident shows Clinton supporters hissing at the activist, Ashley Williams, while others call her protest "inappropriate." The encounter took place several days before Clinton faces Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the South Carolina primary. Williams told the Huffington Post that she and another activist donated the $500 it cost to attend the event in order to confront Clinton...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/01/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-black-voters-primary-elections-2016-column/81150932/

ATLANTA — He tapped voter anger to emerge from a primary field full of experienced Republican officeholders. A political outsider, he had a name most voters recognized, a business background fused to a populist message and, given that he was funding his own campaign, a self-avowed freedom from lobbyists and special interests. Over the course of the year, Trump contributed more than $1 million to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, but it was Perdue’s race that captured his interest — an interest that was less about 2014 than 2016. In Perdue’s Senate strategy, Trump saw the makings of a White...

Another person has entered the race for the 43rd Legislative District House seat. And if voted in, that person hopes to make history. Danni Askini has announced her intention to run for the 43rd Legislative District -- an area that covers much of Seattle's popular neighborhoods, including downtown, First Hill, Capitol Hill, South Lake Union, Eastlake, Wallingford, and Ballard. She announced Tuesday her intention to run for the position that will be left vacant as current State Rep. Brady Walkinshaw moves on to run for the US House of Representatives. If Askini wins, it could place a unique voice in...

An Open Letter to Virginia Republicans: Trump Victory Catastrophic for our Republican Party Never before have I grabbed a word like catastrophic to make a political point. It's like pulling a fire alarm; if you do it, there had better be a fire. There is a fire and it's raging within our Republican party. I am convinced that if Donald Trump becomes our nominee, the harm done to our party would be nothing short of catastrophic. I reject Trump as our nominee based on his judgment, temperament and character, all of which point to a reckless, embarrassing and ultimately dangerous...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel offered up a warning Monday to Donald Trump after the Republican presidential front-runner failed to denounce an implicit endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. "I think playing with dark forces [will] come back to haunt you," Emanuel said after casting his vote on the first day of in-person voting in Illinois. "This is not a joke." When asked whether Democrats should underestimate Trump, Emanuel gave what he called a larger statement on the issue. "Donald Trump, in 'The Apprentice' show, that was kind of a faux reality show, where you auditioned for a job,"...

Bernie Sanders, having just finished two rallies in Texas with crowds larger than Hillary Clinton could ever dream of -- a 10,000-person rally in Austin and an 8,000-person one in Dallas -- called Clinton to concede the South Carolina primary and got on a plane bound for Minnesota, a state whose Super Tuesday vote the media hasn't bothered to poll, but which Bernie Sanders is likely to win. If he listened to any of the coverage of his dramatic defeat in the Palmetto State while en-route to Rochester, he probably wondered at its accuracy and cogency. Here's five reasons he'd...