Free Republic

SOURCE DOCUMENT FEBRUARY 16--Presidential contender Donald Trump, who has vowed to stanch the flow of narcotics and criminals entering the U.S. from Mexico, once wrote to a judge urging leniency for a friend who was convicted of distributing kilos of cocaine that had been smuggled into the country from Colombia, court records show. In advance of Joseph Weichselbaum’s November 1987 sentencing by a U.S. District Court judge, Trump wrote that the drug trafficker was “conscientious, forthright, diligent and a credit to the community.” At the time Trump wrote his character reference letter, Weichselbaum, then in his mid-40s, was already a...

...In the tweet, Sasse takes issue with how Trump "brags" about "many affairs." That's up for debate, including whether Trump had more than one affair. Trump wrote that he once considered an open marriage with his first wife, and in his book "The Art of the Comeback" he said: "If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller." Trump has also said: "I have too much respect for women in general, but if I did [write about my love life], the world would...

"Vice President [Dick] Cheney came up to see the Republicans yesterday. You can always tell when the Republicans are getting restless, because the Vice President’s motorcade pulls into the Capitol, and Darth Vader emerges," Hillary Clinton said just now (video) at a $100-a-head fundraiser at town hall near New York's Times Square, referring to Cheney's efforts shore up Republican congressional support for the Iraq war.

“Obama Just Got Less ‘Brown’ Friendly,” reads the Indian American blog Sepia Mutiny. The US-India Political Action Community, having elicited one tepid pseudo-apology from the Barack Obama campaign, then demanded an acceptably contrite expression of contrition. Barack Obama’s macaca moment is hardly the campaign killer that George Allen’s proved to be, but the spectacle of a Kenyan Kansan would-be president deflecting criticism from pro-trade Indian Americans is at least more interesting. Last week, Obama’s campaign sent out a not-for-attribution memo to media professionals, slamming Hillary Clinton for courting Indians and the Indian American Community. The dossier, delicately titled “Hillary Clinton...

Former President Ronald Reagan "set a standard for exploiting white anger and resentment rarely seen since George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door," writes Time magazine's Jack White. In "Lott, Reagan and Republican Racism," Time reports that if the GOP wants to attract black voters, as White argues, "it must confront the legacy not only of Trent Lott, but also of former President Reagan." In one of the sleaziest attempts yet to use the Trent Lott controversy to wage the leftists' latest race war against the GOP, White writes that it is with Reagan that "the Republicans' selective memory...