Free Republic

Sen. Rand Paul says potential White House rival Jeb Bush was inarticulate when he described immigrants who come to the United States illegally as committing an "act of love." In an interview that aired Sunday, Paul said that those immigrants "are not bad people" but added the United States "can't invite the whole world" inside its borders....

BRIDGEPORT -- A Moroccan national who allegedly plotted to turn a radio-controlled model airplane into a drone-like flying bomb and crash it into a school and a Connecticut federal building was arrested Monday by FBI agents. Wires and tools were found in the High Ridge Drive apartment where El Mehdi Semlali Fahti, 27, had been living since January with an individual he met while incarcerated in Virginia, according to the FBI. It was not known if any explosives were found. Fahti told an undercover agent in five recorded conversations that he studied the bomb attack operation for months, and had...

Evolve, adapt or die. That is the fate of our current Republican party. We must evolve as a party and find a way to attract millennials to the conservative movement or we will never succeed in realizing our ideals of individual freedom and freedom from government interference. Initially, I received criticism from political pundits for speaking to non-traditional audiences. I was told it was a waste of time to reach out to these audiences, specifically students from both Howard University and University of California, Berkeley. My response is this: I have never been one to watch the world go by...

MOORPARK (CBSLA.com) — A 2-year-old Moorpark boy is the latest to be diagnosed with a mysterious polio-like illness. When Lucian Olivera was 11 months, he had an ear infection. Then, he couldn’t stand or use his legs. For months, doctors didn’t know what was wrong. “I felt helpless. It was extremely frustrating. It was hard to sit and not be able to help him,” Olivera’s mother, Erin, said. On Friday, the family went to Stanford University, where it was confirmed Olivera had the polio-like syndrome. “You don’t realize what you have until something goes really, really wrong,” Erin said. So...

Data from the Polaris Project and other research studies indicate human trafficking in Virginia primarily takes place in the urban areas of state. Studies suggest northern Virginia, Richmond and the Hampton Roads region experience the most trafficking. The Virginia Free Citizen reached out to local law enforcement officials in these areas to investigate the presence of human trafficking in Virginia and their anti-human trafficking efforts. Last week we reported on Virginia’s statewide efforts. Northern Virginia Human Trafficking Task Force Receives $1 Million Grant to Combat Human Trafficking Detective Bill Woolf, with the Fairfax County Police Department, said human trafficking is...

PEOPLE FROM all over Philadelphia came together Saturday to tell their stories about gentrification at the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia. Organizers had issued fliers calling for an "emergency town hall" to confront a "crisis facing black Philadelphia: the demise of our neighborhoods." In gentrification, some neighborhoods are targeted for revitalization - but the new development leads to huge rent or property-tax increases that often force longtime residents out.

WASHINGTON (CBS / AP) — Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer asked the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday to initiate a formal investigation into what has caused polio-like paralysis in about 20 children in California over the past 18 months. Boxer said “we need answers” in her letter to CDC Director Thomas Frieden. In particular, she wants the agency to look into whether the illness can be traced to a virus or environmental factors. She also wants to know whether the agency is aware of similar reports of paralysis nationwide...

Mass immigration has left Britain an "unrecognisable" country that many people would not want to leave to their children and grandchildren, Nigel Farage has said. In one of his strongest attacks on immigration policy, he said the arrival of migrants has some British people feeling that parts of the country are now alien to them. The UK Independence Party leader said parts of the country had been "taken over" by foreigners and told how he caught a recent commuter train from London to Kent and had to wait for several stops before he heard English being spoken.

Rick Perry admitted at the RGA today that he was very troubled by Obama’s tone today addressing the National Governors Association: I don’t mind telling you I was a bit troubled today by the tone of the president. …For the president of the United States to look Democrat and Republican governors in the eye and to say ‘I do not trust you to make decisions in your state about issues of education, about transportation infrastructure…’ – that is really troubling. Perry went on to say that Obama was going to hollow out the National Guard and warned the state governors...

<p>It was a mere two days after the 2012 election, and the shock of defeat had barely worn off when the Republican Party’s answer suddenly became clear, and it was Marco Rubio. The announcement came in a column, portentously titled “The Way Forward,” by Charles Krauthammer, the operative-pundit, Fox News panelist, and columnist whom a National Review cover story had deemed the leader of the opposition to President Obama. The party’s predicament could be solved, Krauthammer announced, with “a single policy change: border fence plus amnesty.” Then, having softened on immigration and thus endeared itself to Latinos, the party need only elevate the handsome, right-wing young senator to the top of its ticket. “Imagine Marco Rubio advancing such a policy on the road to 2016,” rhapsodized Krauthammer. “It would transform the landscape.”</p>

Just a few weeks ago, 11-month-old Shaista was pulling herself up, giggling as she took her first wobbly steps with the helping hand of her teenage mother. Then the polio virus struck and Shaista was no longer able to stand, her legs buckling beneath her weight. Today, her mother cries a lot and wonders what will become of her daughter in Pakistan’s male-dominated society, where a woman’s value is often measured by the quality of her husband. […] Fresh cases of polio—traced through genetic sequencing to the Pakistani strain of the disease—are showing up in countries that were previously polio-free,...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., delivered a stark demographic warning to his party on Saturday, predicting that Texas – a sizable electoral prize that Republicans cannot afford to lose in national elections – may tilt Democratic within 10 years if the GOP doesn’t broaden its appeal. “What I do believe is Texas is going to be a Democrat state within 10 years if we don’t change,” Paul told the Harris County Republican Party on Saturday, according to Politico. “That means we evolve, it doesn’t mean we give up on what we believe in, but it means we have to be a...

Cops bloodied an 84-year-old man and put him in the hospital Sunday when he jaywalked at an Upper West Side intersection and didn’t appear to understand their orders to stop, witnesses said. Kang Wong was strolling north on Broadway and crossing 96th Street at around 5 p.m., when an officer told him to halt because he had walked against the light. Police were targeting jaywalkers in the area following the third pedestrian fatality this month around West 96th Street. Wong, who lives a block away, appeared to not understand the cop, the witnesses said. “The guy didn’t seem to speak...

Border: A federal judge finds that the Department of Homeland Security, instead of arresting cartel members and the clients who pay them to smuggle children into the U.S., helps the drug lords complete the transactions. Former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano once proclaimed the U.S. border to be as secure as it has ever been. Yet her department has been found by Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Texas to have actively undermined that security by enabling drug cartels engaged in the lucrative smuggling of children. The case before Judge Hanen — United...

Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) executive director Mark Krikorian said on Thursday that House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is by far the most open borders-minded member of the U.S. Congress—even more so than Democrats like Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who is aggressively and publicly calling for President Barack Obama to halt deportations of illegal aliens. "Paul Ryan is probably the most ideologically committed open-borders person in Congress. I would say even more than the Democrats,” Krikorian said in an interview with American Family Radio’s Sandy Rios, One News Now reports. One News Now’s Chad Groening added that...

Stung by conservative backlash earlier this year, Marco Rubio has spent months seemingly trying to convince skeptical fellow Republicans that he's more than just the Florida senator who championed comprehensive immigration reform. He joined the drive to defund President Barack Obama's health care law, though his voice grew softer as the resulting government shutdown and his party sank in polls. He then turned to championing social issues like legislative prayer. On Saturday, Rubio will deliver the keynote address at a fundraiser for the Florida Family Policy Council, an evangelical group that led the successful 2008 effort to ban gay marriage...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Deadly diseases, once nearly wiped out, are making a frightening comeback in Maryland and across the country. Now — a warning that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are putting others at risk. Linh Bui explores an alarming and controversial trend. Measles, mumps, whooping cough — all deadly diseases. Until recently — virtually eliminated thanks to vaccines that prevent kids from getting sick. But now doctors see an alarming trend — more and more people are coming down with these diseases. “Kids die from measles on a regular basis. Kids are in hospitals and can die from...

'Three killed' in Norway bus hijack Breaking news Three people have been killed in the hijacking of a bus in Norway, media reports say. The suspect, a man in his 50s of foreign origin, has been arrested, police told Norway's TV2 news channel. The man was said to have been armed with a knife. There were no immediate details of the number of injured. The attack - which was initially reported as a traffic accident - took place around 17:30 local time (GMT) in the central town of Ardal.

Terrorism expert Matthew Levitt writes that an increasing number of U.S. prison inmates have tattoos that are pro-Hezbollah or are in Farsi, the language spoken in Iran. … “Law enforcement officials across the Southwest are reporting a rise in imprisoned gang members with Farsi tattoos” and some express loyalty to Hezbollah. … Hezbollah’s business relationship with Mexican drug cartels is seen as a driving force behind the phenomenon. …

Several weeks ago I posted a piece on FrontPage Mag entitled “The Muslims Are Coming!” about a recent documentary following a troupe of Muslim standup comics as they toured the country, enlightening all the middle-American clods who have somehow gotten the crazy impression that Islam poses a threat. I harshly attacked this concept; my take was that the world has an Islam problem, not an Islamophobia problem, and that claiming otherwise and slapping a happy face on the issue is insulting and pointless. The film’s producer and co-director Dean Obeidallah, who is also one of the featured comedians, unsurprisingly took...