Free Republic

resident Obama is not only expected to close Guantanamo Bay, but rumor has it he is prepared to give our U.S. Naval Station in the region to Cuba. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce has prepared legislation to halt this potential dangerous transition. The United States Naval Station Guantanamo Bay Preservation Act would require the president to seek approval from Congress before making anymore dangerous decisions. “In just a few weeks, President Obama will meet with the communist government in Cuba.  The White House says our Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay is ‘sure’ to be a part of discussions. ...

The New York Times leaked off-the-record conversation with Donald Trump in January recently to Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed’s editor in chief Ben Smith wrote this week that Mr. Trump reportedly told the NY Times that his extreme position on deporting immigrants was fluid and developing. Senator Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio lashed out at Trump and immediately demanded that Donald Trump order the release of the off-the-record conversation.

Why I Changed My Mind and Joined the #NeverTrump Movement DAVID FRENCH March 2, 2016 Let me begin by saying that I was wrong. Weeks ago I said on a number of radio interviews that while I opposed Trump in the primary, I’d back him if he won the GOP nomination. I hadn’t yet seen — or had been unwilling to believe — the full extent of his contempt for the truth, his fondness for far-left conspiracy theories, and his sheer malice. When I saw Trump in full, my decision was easy: Never Trump. I have spent my entire adult...

Is Joe Scarborough having his Colonel Nicholson moment? That's what I wondered Monday morning as I watched the host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" insist that Donald Trump's inability and unwillingness to simply and plainly denounce the Ku Klux Klan in a Sunday CNN interview was "disqualifying." For those who might not have seen "The Bridge on the River Kwai," it's partly the story of British Lt. Col. Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness. Nicholson, a prisoner of war held by the Japanese, convinces himself that he and his men should help his captors build a strategically invaluable bridge over the Kwai...

If Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination, he’ll have undermined a lot of assumptions we once held about the GOP. He’ll have become the nominee despite neither being reliably conservative nor being very electable, supposedly the two things Republicans care most about. He’ll have done it with very little support from “party elites” (although with some recent exceptions like Chris Christie). He’ll have attacked the Republican Party’s three previous candidates — Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush — without many consequences. If a Trump nomination happens, it will imply that the Republican Party has been weakened and...

I disagree with those conservatives who say they will never, ever, ever, ever vote for Donald Trump should the GOP embrace his special brand of nonsense and nominate him, but I can't blame them. Hell, I'm about one more round of foolishness away from joining them. But not quite yet. Trump is the lesser of the candidates, lesser of the conservatives, but also the lesser of the two ancient socialist evils that the Democrats are eenie meenie miney moeing between. At least Trump pretends to embrace capitalism, of a sort. And at least he doesn't seem to hate America, just...

John Sununu, the former New Hampshire senator and John Kasich supporter, urged Republican voters to “choose the strongest nominee they can — someone who will win.” But he thinks Republicans may “look at alternatives” if “we have a nominee who is a disaster for the party.” On Breitbart News Daily, Stephen K. Bannon asked Sununu what he thought about the potential for a third party candidate should Trump become the nominee. Sununu cautioned that if Hillary Clinton is not defeated, she would continue Obama’s agenda, and would be able to appoint a Supreme Court nominee. “That is one of the...

For the last eight months or so, a significant portion of the Republican party's voters have been in thrall to a bizarre, Occupy-esque conspiracy theory, which holds as its central thesis that sabotage and pusillanimity are the root causes of the Right's recent woes. In this mistaken view, the conservative movement's failure to counter all of the Obama era's excesses is not the product of the crucial democratic and structural factors that prevent any one faction from ushering in substantial change, but of a lack of will or desire. Sure, the advocates of this view will concede, the shutdown of...

The phrase "follow the money" is supposed to help explain human behavior, especially in politics. So why has Donald Trump embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin? Why has he denied the evidence of Putin's killing of Russian journalists and dissidents? A savvy businessman, Trump is certainly not dumb. There must be something else to it. Reports dating back to 1987, during the time of the old Soviet Union, reveal that Trump has been seeking business in Russia and attempting to build a "Russian Trump Tower" in Moscow and perhaps other Russian cities. At this particular time in history, with Putin's cronies...

It looks like Rubio carried the state’s wealthy northern suburbs, and Trump took the rest. (SNIP) Rubio’s strongholds overlapped heavily with those that lifted Barack Obama to his second straight win in the state in his 2012 reelection race.

Marco Rubio supporter and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley not only went after Donald Trump on ABC’s This Week but took a shot at Chris Christie over his endorsement of The Donald. She told George Stephanopoulos, “Donald Trump is everything we hear and teach our kids not to do in kindergarten.”

Dear Donald Trump Fan, I'm going to tell you the truth, friend. You say you want the truth. You say you want someone who speaks boldly and brashly and bluntly and "tells it like it is" and so on. According to exit polls in South Carolina, voters who want a president who "tells it like it is" are an essential demographic for Trump, just as they're an essential demographic for Judge Judy and Dr. Phil. You say you want abrupt and matter-of-fact honesty, and you want it so much, you'll make a man president for it regardless of whether he...

He really steps in it at about the 3:15 mark. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nFeOsMGfi0&feature=player_embedded#at=348

President Barack Obama has announced that he intends to visit Cuba on his next international trip in March. The announcement has elicited expected a harsh reaction from Cuban Americans, including presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio. The prospect of an American president clinking glasses with the Castro brothers while the machinery of the Cuban police state continues unabated, filling prisons with political dissidents, is proving to be unedifying to many Americans who love freedom. But that disquiet is part of the reason Obama is going. He revels in i

COVINGTON, Ky. (Joe Webb) - Kentucky's registered Republicans will have to do a little extra work this election season, thanks to U.S. Senator Rand Paul. The Republican Party of Kentucky took the presidential primary off the May ballot so Senator Paul could legally run for both president and United States Senator. In March 2016, Kentucky Republicans will caucus to determine how candidates split up the 46 delegates to the Republican National Convention. "The caucuses are being held on March 5th which is a Saturday," said Kenton County Republican Chairman Greg Shumate. "They are being held statewide from 10 a.m. to...

Given their small numbers, occasional libertarian pandering to the “inside job” morons yields no theoretical benefit greater than a few additional comments on a YouTube video. Worse, they’ve actually made intelligent discussion more difficult. Questions about the government’s lack of readiness for 9/11, for example, now carry the unmistakable whiff of fringe kookiness. So do demands for basic government transparency, like calling for more of the 9/11 Commission report to be declassified. Mention this idea and some people will move away before you start ranting about the moon landing being fake. That’s too bad, because some accountability has been lost...

Echoing the recent sentiments of Steve Forbes, this week Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz told a group in New Hampshire: "Money is ... a unit of measurement. So, the reason why we see these rapid oscillations in commodities markets, it's because of unstable currencies. And it's why I think we should look at going toward rules-based money supply, ideally tied to gold, so you have stability." Perhaps this will trigger another flood of disagreement in the mainstream press, such as the recent New York Times item which reported that 40 out of 40 "leading economists" said that a gold standard...

The biggest problem with Rep. Paul's (R-Texas) latest comments on immigration is that they are NOT just some ad hoc thoughts tossed off carelessly at some speaking event. These are engraved in a brand new book. Until the release of the book, Liberty Defined, Dr. Paul had a mixed record in Congress and the fact that he had taken the NumbersUSA "No Amnesty" pledge at the end of his Presidential campaign in 2008. That had earned him a C-minus on our 2012 Presidential Hopefuls Immigration Stances Report Card. Not impressive, but the third best (behind Rep. Bachman with a B-minus...

This has been the most dramatic week in US/Iranian relations since 1979. Last weekend ten US Navy personnel were caught in Iranian waters, as the Pentagon kept changing its story on how they got there. It could have been a disaster for President Obama's big gamble on diplomacy over conflict with Iran. But after several rounds of telephone diplomacy between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif, the Iranian leadership - which we are told by the neocons is too irrational to even talk to - did a most rational thing: weighing the costs and...

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has picked up endorsements from six New Hampshire lawmakers who previously supported Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) presidential bid. From The New Hampshire Union Leader: The six state lawmakers endorsing Cruz are: Rep. Max Abramson of Seabrook, Rep. Eric Eastman of Nashua, Rep. Harold French of Franklin, Rep. Larry Gagne of Manchester, Rep. JR Hoell of Dunbarton, and Rep. Mark McLean of Manchester.