Free Republic

The resignation on Tuesday of McKinney, Texas policeman Eric Casebolt after the widespread viewing of a video showing Casebolt drawing his gun and brutalizing a teenager outside a pool party may not be enough to bring justice, suggests Judge Andrew Napolitano. Napolitano, in a Fox Business interview, argues that it would be proper to prosecute Casebolt. Reviewing the video footage, Napolitano explains to host Stuart Varney that Casebolt, who Napolitano calls a “hothead,” appears to have committed an illegal assault: Varney: The police officer could be guilty of a crime? Napolitano: Oh sure, it’s an assault for him to pull...

Jeb Bush began a talk the other day by addressing the issue of his brother George, noted architect of the Iraq war, and he did not shrink from the challenge. "I can't deny the fact that I love my family," announced Jeb. So if you suspected that the Bush Thanksgivings in Kennebunkport resemble "August: Osage County" -- with lots of screaming, sobbing and clawing -- you probably feel pretty silly right now. On a more pertinent question -- whether the war was a wise idea -- the answer is not so clear. The former governor of Florida first said that,...

Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan. Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda. Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.

Lots of people in the Republican party are fed up with Sen. Ted Cruz, but Sen. Rand Paul is the guy who is doing something about it. On Monday, the conservative news website, Breitbart News, published an op-ed by Paul, where the senator from Kentucky took Cruz to task -- without ever actually naming the guy who may be beloved by the Tea Party conservatives, but has earned some pretty impressive dislike from the elected members of his own party -- for his hijinks that Paul said have encouraged divisions within the party: "I don't claim to be the next...

Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul will host a meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus next week to discuss criminal justice reform. The libertarian-leaning senator from Kentucky has long been an outspoken advocate for changing how the American criminal system prosecutes and sentences. Now he’s teaming up with Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), and other black lawmakers, to craft a strategy for advancing legislation as law enforcement issues have taken center stage following the death of several unarmed black men at the hands of police. “Not only is Senator Paul the [S]enate co-sponsor of the Justice Safety Valve Act, which...

Reverend Al Sharpton ✔ @TheRevAl I am in Senate Dining Room having breakfast meeting with Sen. Rand Paul. We don't agree on much but he is an interesting guy.

According to one of the tea party's leading voices, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), who is being challenged by conservative Matt Bevin in Kentucky's Senate GOP primary, is not an "Arlen Specter" Republican."It's not like we're talking about Arlen Specter here," said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in an interview with The Washington Post. "Senator McConnell has a longstanding conservative record and for an opponent to beat him, they'll have to prove somehow that he's not a conservative."Specter, the late Pennsylvania senator who left the GOP for the Democratic Party in 2009, was a villain-like figure to many on the...

For now, senators say it’s not a problem that one of the most powerful Republicans in D.C. already has a likely presidential candidate. “I work with Sen. McConnell on stuff, I make sure he knows what I’m doing to try and get it across the finish line,” Paul said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made no secret that he’ll support his fellow Kentuckian, Sen. Rand Paul, should Paul run for president in 2016. And Paul has also made no secret that he very, very likely will do just that. But there’s a lot of time between now and the...

Kentucky is one place in America where a tea-party firebrand and a Republican from the governance wing amicably meet.For two Republican senators from the same state, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell could not be more mismatched. Senator Paul is a man in a hurry, with presidential stars in his eyes after a mere four years of serving Kentucky in Washington. The loquacious libertarian is a darling of young conservatives – a relaxed jeans-and-boots kind of guy. Senator McConnell, after three patient decades in office, has finally reached his dream job of Senate majority leader. A man of few words, he’s...

Rand Paul enjoys talking a big game about being a fundamental change agent in Washington. He likes to line up for publicity stunts like filing a lawsuit against the NSA which will almost certainly be dismissed (and send out handy list-building emails based on these publicity stunts), or staging an almost completely pointless filibuster on drones, but  when it comes to actual accomplishments that have changed the way things are done in Washington or even within the Senate GOP caucus, Paul’s cabinet is pretty empty. One area where Rand Paul might actually do some real good would be to help...

The editor of Breitbart Unmasked, a site that I enjoy immensely and find informative, recently told me that supporting Rand Paul disqualifies a person from being labeled a progressive. My rebuttal was that he might be right. However, I also mentioned that Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia agreed with my latest Congress Blog piece. In the article, I explain why Rand Paul is correct in questioning the legality of President Obama's troop deployments. Sadly, people at UC Berkeley are more interested in protesting Bill Maher than condemning a conflict George McGovern stated weakens our country in the same manner...

Businessman Matt Bevin is the guy some see moving up in the Kentucky GOP governor's primary. Bevin also challenged now-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a primary last year. These two things are not distinct from one another. Now that Bevin's chances appear to be on the rise in the May 19 primary (thanks to Agriculture Commissioner James Comer's problems), here comes Team McConnell to knock him down a peg or two. And boy do they. Here is top McConnell aide Josh Holmes on Bevin in a new Lousiville Courier-Journal story: Josh Holmes, McConnell's former chief of staff and...

<p>Interesting, not because it’s a surprise that Ron Paul’s son feels this way — remember this? — but because this is a subject that every Republican in the field, Rand included, would probably prefer to avoid during the primaries.</p> <p>Or am I wrong about that? Could this be a smart play for Paul, especially given how it’ll make Jeb Bush squirm?</p>

Republican Sen. Rand Paul is standing by his statement that most vaccinations should be "voluntary," telling CNBC that a parent's choice not to vaccinate a child is "an issue of freedom." In an interview with the network Monday, Paul said that vaccines are "a good thing" but that parents "should have some input" into whether or not their children must get them. And he gave credence to the idea - disputed by the majority of the scientific community - that vaccination can lead to mental disabilities. "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound...

If Ron Paul weren’t Ron Paul, I’d assume this denunciation was just a stunt orchestrated by him and Rand to put some foreign-policy distance between them before the primaries. Are you a mainstream conservative worried that President Rand would be too much like Ron in office? Well, here you go. Let your conscience be eased. The nation’s most famous isolationist thinks his boy’s a bit of a warmonger. But c’mon. With the possible exception of his vote for the Afghanistan AUMF in 2001, has Ron Paul ever endorsed a position that he didn’t sincerely hold? Of course he thinks the...

AUSTIN - Well, this could make for an awkward conversation at Thanksgiving dinner. Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Saturday dismissed as a "joke" the demand by U.S. senators of his party that they must approve a potential agreement over the Middle East country's nuclear capabilities. "I strongly disagree with the motivation of that statement made by so many members of Congress, especially in the Senate," Paul said at a conference on liberty at the University of Texas at Austin, presumably referring to an open letter senators sent to Iranian officials describing any deal not approved by them as...

Sen. Rand Paul’s campaign for the presidency is not more than a few days old and already his mercurial father, former Rep. Ron Paul, himself a former presidential candidate, is starting to make trouble for his son. According to a Saturday story in the Houston Chronicle, the elder Paul called the famous letter that 47 Republican senators, including the younger Paul, sent to the Iranian mullahs “a joke.” The letter informed the Iranian leadership that any agreement that they reached with President Obama concerning Iran’s nuclear bomb program would not outlast the Obama presidency lacking congressional ratification.

AUSTIN ...Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Saturday dismissed as a "joke" the demand by U.S. senators of his party that they must approve a potential agreement over the Middle East country's nuclear capabilities. "I strongly disagree with the motivation of that statement made by so many members of Congress, especially in the Senate," Paul said at a conference on liberty at the University of Texas at Austin, presumably referring to an open letter senators sent to Iranian officials describing any deal not approved by them as informal..... "They're out to stop peace," he said. "They're terrified that peace...

“The difference is purely in implementation. If you had a philosophical discussion on what the world should look like, there would be no difference.”(AUDIO-AT-LINK) Rand Paul’s brother says that when it comes to ideology, there’s “no difference” between his brother, the Kentucky senator and Republican presidential candidate, and his father, the former congressman and three-time presidential candidate. Ronnie Paul, the eldest son of the former congressman and sometimes-surrogate for his brother, was speaking with libertarian podcaster Israel Anderson. He said that both his brother and father held the same beliefs, there’s just a difference in the implementation of how to...

Republican Sen. Rand Paul split with senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to vote for a healthcare bill Tuesday night that will add about half a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next several decades.Paul sided with the overwhelming majority of senators and representatives who voted for the bill, in a decision almost certain to come up in the primary race, where he is currently joined by Cruz and Rubio.The “doc-fix” bill solves a recurring problem in the way Medicare payments are made to doctors, extends a children’s health insurance program, and requires higher-income seniors to pay higher...