Free Republic

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential contender Ben Carson has maintained a business relationship with a close friend convicted of defrauding insurance companies and testified on his behalf, even as the candidate has called for such crimes to be punished harshly.</p>

Ben Carson made massive real estate profits from ties with convicted felon who defrauded insurance companies while he was a dentist Carson and his wife reap a windfall of between $200,000 and $2 million annually from investing with Alfonso Costa, a disgraced former dentist Costa pleaded guilty to health care fraud in 2008 for phony billings in his oral surgery practice, and Carson helped him win a sentence with no jail time Carson's 2013 book lays out a more draconian punishment for people convicted of defrauding the government through medical billings He recommended 'loss of one's medical license for life,...

The decor at Ben Carson’s home in Maryland shows that Donald Trump may not have the biggest ego among the Republican candidates. On display are awards, certificates, medals, and a painting of himself with Jesus

The day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968, Ben Carson’s black classmates unleashed their anger and grief on white students who were a minority at Detroit’s Southwestern High. Mr. Carson, then a junior with a key to a biology lab where he worked part time, told The Wall Street Journal last month that he protected a few white students from the attacks by hiding them there. It is a dramatic account of courage and kindness, and it couldn’t be confirmed in interviews with a half-dozen of Mr. Carson’s classmates and his high school physics teacher. The...

A national poll released by Fox News this week asked Republican voters who they'd support with and without Carson in the race. Without Carson, Trump gains 8 percentage points, Marco Rubio gains 5, and Cruz gains 3: Sans Carson, Trump goes from 26 to 34% Cruz goes from 11 to 14% Rubio goes from 11 to 16%

Politico has rewritten the headline, lede, and several portions of the text of an article accusing Ben Carson of "fabricating" part of his personal biography involving the Military Academy at West Point. The story, bearing the byline of reporter Kyle Cheney, now omits the original version's declarations that Carson's statements were false or fraudulent, as seen in an archive of the article.

The craziest thing about the Republican presidential contest isn't that Donald Trump is in the lead. It's that Dr. Ben Carson — who truly seems to have lost his mind — is in second place and gaining fast. Trump may be a blowhard, but Carson has proved himself to be a crackpot of the first order. Of all the GOP contenders, he's the scariest. I say this as a longtime admirer of Carson for his stellar medical career. As the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Carson not only saved lives in the operating room but also inspired...