Free Republic

For the 45th annual Earth Day on Wednesday, President Obama will elevate global warming to the top of the list of environmental threats currently facing Americans, in a speech at the Everglades National Park. The trip, his first to the fragile but vital "river of grass" that, following decades of human interference now occupies a fraction of its former sprawling range in southern Florida, also comes with a heavy dose of politics. Winning the state will be key for any presidential candidate in the 2016 race, and two leading contenders for the Republican nomination, former governor Jeb Bush Senator Marco...

Sitting between a billionaire Republican donor and a TV news titan at the ultimate party for influencers, I picked up a few political tips. And I met some of the most powerful women in the universe. My hat goes off to Nancy Gibbs and her colleagues at TIME, who managed to assemble the most eclectic group of influential people one can imagine last night in New York City as part of their celebration of this year’s TIME 100. I found myself sandwiched between billionaire David Koch and Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly while watching Tim McGraw perform in a tuxedo...

If Bill Clinton had a chief political goal in his two terms as president, it was to win working-class whites and restore the Democratic Party as the home for their concerns. To that end, Clinton and his allies were enthusiastic supporters of legislation such as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994,the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996,and the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996—laws that spoke to the cultural concerns of lower-income whites.Clinton didn’t succeed in luring working-class whites back,but he stopped the bleeding,strengthening Democrats in Rust Belt and mid-Atlantic states, where they...

KEENE, N.H. — Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has vowed to be 
“accessible” to New Hampshire voters, left many of her rain-soaked supporters here high and dry when she sped in and out of a public meeting without so much as a hello. “It should have been 
advertised that we’re not allowed to see her,” said Keene resident Michelle Isabelle. “People are the ones that are voting for her, so if she’s running and not meeting people, then what’s the sense of coming here?” Isabelle said. “I really believe in her but I’m ... actually perturbed right now.”...

During his initial debut, Scott Walker seemed to have a shaky grasp of national and international issues. Then again that wasn’t surprising since he had been busy with a tough fight in his own state. Before Walker had come out with the usual GOP expert class stuff. Now Walker seems to be figuring out that the party needs a populist. That’s what he brought to the table in Wisconsin. And he’s infuriating all the right people...... The GOP expert class reacted to the heretical notion that American policy should benefit… Americans with a thorough freakout......... Suggesting that immigration policy should...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s newfound skepticism of legal immigration levels is a potential turning point in the still nascent presidential race, potentially dragging the Republican Party further to the right than Mitt Romney’s hardline immigration platform in 2012. “In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying – the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages,” Walker said Monday in an interview with Glenn Beck. “It is a fundamentally lost issue by many...

John Doe laws dating back to the 19th century in Wisconsin allow DAs to hold secret panels, compel people to give testimony and turn over documents. To take advantage of the loopholes was Prosecutor John Chisholm, a partisan hack who had a vendetta against Scott Walker. The corruption extends to judges, police officers, lawyers and to at least one newspaper, the Journal Sentinel. In a September 9, 2014 article, former Milwaukee police officer Michael Lutz, who for several months served as an unpaid special prosecutor in Chisholm’s office, said that Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm, a Democrat, told him in...

Gov. Scott Walker is set to serve as the keynote speaker for a voucher school summit next month in New Orleans. The American Federation for Children announced Tuesday that Walker would speak May 18 at the opening lunch for the summit. "Gov. Scott Walker is a tremendous leader who has been a relentless advocate for educational choice," Betsy DeVos, chairwoman of the group's board of directors, said in a release..... Walker's latest two-year budget plan, which is currently being considered by the Legislature's powerful budget committee, would expand school vouchers statewide.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Some truly outrageous things that have gone on in the state of Wisconsin that have happened at the same time as -- and as part of -- the effort to destroy Scott Walker. A similar effort, almost identical effort was made to destroy anybody and everybody who supported him and vote for him or donated money to him. This effort was conducted by law enforcement! Think of it this way: What do you think the greatest fear of the innocent is if law enforcement comes calling? Have you ever thought about this? Maybe some of you have...

MADISON, Wis. – Of all of the frightening accounts of government abuses in Wisconsin’s political John Doe investigation, David French’s description in National Review of the early-morning raid on Cindy Archer’s home may be the most stunning. But there are two nearly forgettable lines in French’s retelling of the raid that reveal volumes about the secret investigations aimed at bringing down Wisconsin’s conservative activist community. Archer, French writes, “looked outside and saw a person who appeared to be a reporter. Someone had tipped him off.” Supporters of the Democrat-launched political John Doe probes into conservatives have argued secrecy is key...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely 2016 GOP presidential candidate, is marching forward with his bold new pro-American worker immigration policy. He’s not afraid to push for a legal immigration system that doesn’t box out American workers with a massive influx of inexpensive foreign labor. After first rolling out his new ideas on Glenn Beck’s radio program on Monday, Walker appeared on Fox News’ Megyn Kelly’s show to further elaborate on how he hopes to protect Americans economically from special interests pushing for a massive influx in cheap foreign labor from around the world.... [HUGE SNIP] In addition to the...

As I noted a week or so ago, Scott Walker has begun to talk about immigration in terms of American wages, the only candidate in the GOP field to do so. He reinforced the message on the Glenn Beck show the other day (note the Jeff Sessions name-check): In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying — the next president and the next congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages, because the more I’ve talked to folks,...

The Post reports that Walker now says, “In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying … the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, protecting American workers and American wages.” He went on to cite favorably Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on the subject. The notion that legal immigration hurts the economy and native workers has been rebutted repeatedly and is widely disparaged by a host of pro-growth conservatives and scholars.....AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for Walker’s Our American Revival PAC, tells...

The road to the White House... which began 160 years ago in Ystradyfodwg: Ancestry expert traces Hillary's roots to impoverished mining family from tiny parish in the Welsh Valleys As she kicks off her bid to enter the White House, Hillary Clinton could claim that her path to the presidency began some 160 years ago in the little-known Welsh parish of Ystradyfodwg – if she can pronounce it, that is. For while the US Democrat has long spoken of her British ancestry, it appears most versions of the Rodham family tree have been drawn incorrectly due to a mix-up over...

"....This development, perhaps one of if not the biggest of the 2016 presidential campaign so far, comes as Walker has taken a commanding lead in polls in all three of the first GOP primary states: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The reason why this development is so significant is that the two establishment-backed candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, both have an in-depth understanding of the immigration issue and come down on the side that supports special interests’ desire for a massive increase in legal immigration that hurts American workers. Meanwhile, Sens. Ted Cruz...

The financial portfolio of Hillary Clinton, her family and the Clinton Foundation is under new scrutiny, worrying some Democrats, as the former secretary of State begins her 2016 campaign. The New York Times fired the starting pistol on another round of stories about the Clinton finances with a story on Monday morning describing a forthcoming book, Clinton Cash, by Peter Schweizer, a fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution. The Times called the tome “the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.” The book’s allegations were summed up in the author’s own words: “We...

Megyn Kelly interviewed governor Scott Walker on her show last night and covered a wide variety of topics. The first subject was Hillary Clinton, who Walker suggested is out of touch with the American people. Other topics included Walker’s strategy for winning independent voters in Wisconsin, the GOP’s prospects for 2016 and immigration. Here’s the video:

The career assassination of Cornel West: A messy intellectual divorce reveals layers of broken heart — and to what end? Independent of one’s stance on the rift between Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West — a rift years in the making and now clearly delineated in the form of Dyson’s essay on West in the New Republic, “The Ghost of Cornel West” — this has all the hallmarks of a messy divorce between two public, black intellectuals who were, perhaps, better served keeping things offline. Maybe try to squash their beef in the privacy of an on-campus office or in...

......Each candidate [Walker, Perry, Bush, Christie], sometimes in nearly identical language, told the audience of activists gathered in Nashua this weekend that they should be considered for the presidency because they didn’t just talk about conservative ideas, they had put them into practice as governors. Perry made the case most powerfully: >>>The next president of the United States really needs to be someone who has deep experience as an executive. And I’m talking about things you just can't learn with a book, things you can’t just learn sitting down. Because I’ll give you some examples. They didn’t hand me a...

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Seven years ago, the last time Hillary Clinton came to this state trying to be president, a woman asked her a question here in a coffee shop. “How do you do it?” Marianne Pernold Young said. It felt at first like a friendly throwaway. It wasn’t. It cut to the core for Clinton. Her eyes got teary. Her voice got shaky. Her answer, uncharacteristically emotional, made news, but the trigger was the question. It was the key question back then. It is the key question still now. “I wanted to know her,” Young said Monday afternoon at...