Free Republic

“Recycled.” Not the “new blood” the GOP needs. A man who “had his shot.” A “terrible candidate.” A Republican backlash against Mitt Romney that had been simmering for days boiled over on Wednesday as conservatives across the GOP spectrum panned the prospect of another presidential bid by the former Massachusetts governor and two-time loser on the national stage.

EXCLUSIVE: Snake Plissken is back! Fox has emerged from competitive bidding and closed a deal to remake the 1981 John Carpenter-directed cult classic Escape From New York. Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman’s The Picture Company will produce. The original was released by Avco Embassy, and the rights were owned by Studiocanal. Carpenter will be an executive producer and will exert creative influence over the project. Fox’s Mike Ireland brought it in and will steer. The hope is to reinvent the property with an eye toward launching a new franchise.

There are similarities and some stark differences between the debut of the fourth season of HBO’s Girls on Sunday and the Season 3 launch last year. In the similarities category, series creator Lena Dunham was up for Golden Globes awards both this year and last year with no wins either time. In both cases, Girls debuted against the Golden Globes. In the difference category, last year saw the Season 3 of Girls premiering at 10 PM after the debut of the heavily promoted True Detective. That wasn’t the case this year and it showed – with Girls as well as...

Caesars Entertainment Corp. ’s largest unit is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection as soon as Thursday, the final gambit of a years long attempt to salvage a soured buyout. Caesars Entertainment Operating Co.’s Chapter 11 filing would launch the final stage of Apollo Global Management LLC’s effort to save some of its $1.7 billion investment in the company, which it took private in 2008 with fellow buyout firm TPG.

In 1999, the Indian Army fought a three-month-long undeclared war with Pakistan. It was also the combat debut of India’s new Insas battle rifle. The Insas is a very bad rifle. During the conflict—waged over the disputed and mountainous Kargil district in the province of Kashmir—the Indian troops’ rifles jammed up, and their cheap, 20-round plastic magazines cracked in the cold weather.

Senate Republicans are willing to use a vital spending bill to fight President Obama on immigration. But not as hard as their House colleagues would like. The House will vote Wednesday to stop funding for Obama's executive action deferring deportations for 5 million undocumented immigrants as part of a measure to fund the Homeland Security Department. Then it will be the Senate's turn, and some House Republicans are already worried about what that chamber will do. "You rarely see this kind of unity from our conference on anything," Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona told National Journal, "and you're seeing incredible...

The Russian billionaire who owns the Brooklyn Nets has decided to sell the NBA team amid concerns about its financial losses and performance on court, according to reports. Mikhail Prokhorov, 49, has apparently retained investment adviser Evercore Partners to sell his share of the basketball franchise, which he bought for a staggering $223million in May 2010. The businessman, who is worth an estimated $11.1billion, currently holds 80 per cent of the Nets, as well as 45 per cent of the Barclays Center, the club's two-and-a-half-year-old arena in New York. Of these, only the team is for sale, two sources close...

Over lunch one day, a co-worker grumbled about something being "v. annoying." It took a second for me to understand what the quick, consonant blip pre-adjective was, and when my brain processed it, I realized something: Yet again, we'd contextualized Internet slang into a colloquialism. Or was it as new-fangled as it seemed? OMG, after all, the classic abbreviation—used by squealing pre-teens, shocked parents, and everyone in between to evoke a three-syllabic exclamation of emotions ranging from surprise to ironic excitement—was one of the original text acronyms to be translated from cellphone screen to language (remember those "scandalous" Gossip Girl...

A Republican amendment that could leave hundreds of thousands of young immigrants open to deportations is running into stiff opposition in the House – a rare show of rank-and-file rebellion over the leadership’s catering to the right. The measure – which would kill the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program – is scheduled to come to the House floor Wednesday as part of a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security through the end of September. But more than a dozen House Republicans have told the GOP whip operation that they will not vote for the amendment, according to...

The 2012 Republican nominee for president holds a leads a broad field of GOP potential contenders in the Townhall/Gravis poll conducted Jan. 5-7 among 404 registered Republican voters queried. Note: the polls were conducted using IVR technology and weighted by historical voting demographics. Former Massachusetts governor W. Mitt Romney has never left the hearts and minds of Republican voters and he will hold the dominant position in the race for the 2016 presidential nomination until the other candidates spin up their own campaigns, said Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Marketing, a Florida-based pollster and call center that executed...

A bipartisan group of six senators — including Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), the Gang of Eight member mulling a run for president — released the first bipartisan immigration bill of the new Congress, in the form of legislation to expand high-tech visas and green cards for immigrants. “Our bill is a commonsense, bipartisan approach to help ensure that those who have come here to be educated in high-tech fields are able to stay with their families and contribute to the economy and our society,” said Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), who headed up the effort. “I’m...

Dubai leapfrogged Heathrow to become the world's busiest airport for international passengers in 2014, the head of the Gulf hub said on Monday. Dubai International airport dealt with about 71m international passengers in 2014, according to chief executive Paul Griffiths, surpassing the 68.1 million that passed through Heathrow. "Heathrow is losing a lot of traffic to Dubai because we're able to cater for the connections that Heathrow no longer has the capacity to service," said Mr Griffiths, referring to how the UK's largest airport is operating at near full capacity on its two runways.

Al Jazeera America’s inevitable collapse has begun with the elimination of all of its morning programming. Instead of producing its own programming, the basement-rated cable news network will simply re-broadcast Al Jazeera programs from its parent studio in Qatar. Also canceled is the late morning program, “Consider This With Antonio Mora.” Mediabistro reports that behind-the-scenes staffers will be reassigned and “the fate of on-air talent is unclear.” Variety, however, reports that primetime anchors Ali Velshi and Joie Chen will have less airtime and mid-to-late afternoon programming is also on the chopping block.

Mitt Romney is moving quickly to reassemble his national political network, spending the weekend and Monday calling former aides, donors and other supporters — as well as onetime foes such as Newt Gingrich. Romney’s message was that he is serious about making a 2016 presidential bid. He told one senior Republican he “almost certainly will” run in what would be his third campaign for the White House, this person said. His aggressive outreach over the past three days indicates that Romney’s declaration of interest to a group of donors in New York Friday was more than the release of a...

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in 2012, told NBC News in an interview Monday that he will not seek the presidency in 2016. "I have decided that I am not going to run for president in 2016," Ryan said in a phone interview, noting that he is "at peace" with the decision he made "weeks ago" to forgo a bid for the White House.

Days before Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers even suited up for a recent game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, an Irishman named Nigel Eccles had collected millions of dollars from people betting on Rodgers’ All-Pro arm. By noon on game day he was raking in $30,000 per minute. By the time Rodgers took his first snap, Eccles had collected $18 million. The action was happening far from the Vegas Strip or a Costa Rican website out of reach of U.S. law enforcement. Eccles’ company, FanDuel, is situated above a storefront in New York City’s Union Square, and its business...

Five years ago this week a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Port-Au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, all-but obliterating the city in the process. The tremor, the strongest to hit the island since 1770, killed 300,000, left 1.5million homeless and destroyed 60 per cent of the country's government buildings - including the National Palace. But despite £8.6billion being handed over in donations and foreign aid since the crisis began, much of the country still lies in ruins or is waiting to be rebuilt.

An enormous impact crater thought to have been created by a meteorite the size of a house smashing into Earth has been discovered in the Antarctic ice sheet. Scientists conducting a routine aerial research flight above East Antarctica noticed a strange ring-like structure in the normally flat and featureless ice. It appeared to be a series of broken 'icebergs' surrounded by a 2km (1.24 miles) wide circular scar, surrounded by a few other smaller circular scars in the ice.

Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney have much in common. Both were pragmatic as governors, mild-mannered as candidates and more comfortable balancing budgets at their desks than clinking glasses at a political dinner. The two Republican leaders’ personal rapport is cordial. But they are hardly chummy — and at moments their relationship has been strained, with each man’s intertwined political network carrying some grievances with the other’s. As Bush, 61, and Romney, 67, explore presidential campaigns in 2016, they are like boxers warming up for what could become a brutal bout, sizing each other up and mulling whether or when to...

Jeb Bush once called for building prisons and emphasizing “punishment over therapy” for juvenile offenders. Today, he supports reforming the criminal justice system, arguing that incarceration can harden low-level lawbreakers into career criminals. In the past, he stressed using deportation to rid the United States of unauthorized immigrants. These days, he describes crossing the border illegally as “an act of love” by migrant parents and supports a path to citizenship for those who have done so. He used to emphasize the rights of big landowners who felt cheated by environmental programs. Now, he is a champion of state-sponsored conservation, celebrated...