Free Republic

Major Japanese network showed the announcement of the presidential run by candidate Ted Cruz, did a great voice over, showed that the field has no clear front runner, and mentioned Cruz's trademark "Courageous Conservatism", in addition to his promised gutting of the unpopular Obamacare. All in all a fair clip.

Pretty damn impressive... Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 - May 2008, Cruz was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, the youngest Solicitor General in the entire country, not to mention the longest tenure in Texas history.  Partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice.  Cruz has authored 80+ SCOTUS briefs and presented 40+ oral arguments before The Court Cruz served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Cruz was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States Described as a 'superb' constitutional lawyer, the man's considerable skills and laser-like focus were...

The latest trend among leftists who were shocked by their defeat at the polls Tuesday is an apparently spontaneous campaign called “Don't Give,” which calls on people to stop donating to the poorer Israelis and the socio-economically weaker regions known as “the periphery,” because these Israelis insist on voting for Likud, in election after election. The campaign's name in Hebrew, Lo Latet, is a reference to Latet (“To Give”), a major charity group that collects donations for the needy. The campaign started as a Facebook trend, which gathered steam after it was reported about in the news, and has turned...

JERUSALEM — A Twitter hashtag campaign launched by Hamas on Friday to build support in the West seems to be backfiring with users mocking the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza. Hamas launched (hashtag)AskHamas on Friday. The campaign promised responses from the group’s leaders, or as they called it, “Truth from the mouth of the horse.” Some Twitter users swiftly responded with mockery.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is on an ambitious mission this spring to scoop up major GOP donors ahead of a likely presidential run and send the early message that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush doesn’t have a monopoly on the country’s deep-pocketed Republicans — and his backers say his plan is working. So far the expedition has been successful enough that Republicans not involved with his political effort have noticed, and several GOP operatives in Bush’s orbit conceded to CNN it’s clear a substantial chunk of GOP financiers have taken a liking to him. Walker’s PAC, Our...

We've turned Hillary Clinton into an Action Figure! We started with one simple goal; to make Hillary Clinton into an awesome iconic action figure. Basically, we're hoping to kick off some light-hearted excitement about her campaign and the amazingly cool prospect of America getting its first woman president. After months and months of work, we're all ready to go!

Prime Minister Netanyahu's latest campaign ad - as posted to his Facebook page - is quite well done. Let's go to the videotape.

It’s always a pleasure returning to the beautiful Lone Star State. This week I’m in Houston speaking with the industrious men and women of America’s oil patch at the North American Prospect Expo. These are the unsung heroes of our nation’s energy renaissance. In the brutal economic environment of the last six years, one sector had good news to report, and it came straight out of America’s oil patch. From 2007 to 2012, employment in the energy industry rose a dramatic 31.6 percent while employment nationwide fell 2.7 percent. U.S. oil production increased from 6.5 million barrels per day in...

Former state Sen. Leland Yee’s campaign committee for last year’s secretary of state race has spent $128,000 on attorney's fees since he was indicted on federal corruption charges, he reported this week. The practice is legal, but one ethics expert said it should be restricted. "Unfortunately California’s relatively weak restrictions on the use of surplus campaign funds mean that politicians can turn these accounts into personal slush funds," said Sarah Swanbeck, an advocate for the group Common Cause.

<p>Benedict Cumberbatch says he was an “idiot” to refer to non-white actors as “colored.” The Academy Award-nominated actor used the word on PBS talk show “Tavis Smiley” last week while discussing diversity in the entertainment industry. He said that “as far as colored actors go,” there were more opportunities in the U.S. than Britain, “and that’s something that needs to change.” British anti-racism charity Show Racism the Red Card said it welcomed Cumberbatch’s comments on diversity but felt the term he used was “outdated.” In a statement Monday, Cumberbatch apologized for his “thoughtless use of inappropriate language.”</p>

It doesn’t happen often in politics, but every once in a while, someone pulls back the green curtain on a time-honored exercise in democracy and reveals an uncomfortable truth. Such was the case in Des Moines on Saturday when the circus came to town in the form of a dozen potential Republican White House hopefuls and the masses of journalists already following their every move.

Mitt Romney’s opening pitch for a third shot at the White House left many Republicans scratching their heads, in part because his plans to fight poverty and tyranny seemed to borrow the lexicon of liberals like FDR, LBJ and Woodrow Wilson. With a full house of Republican National Committee members listening aboard the USS Midway in San Diego, Mr. Romney implored his party last week “to lift people out of poverty” and “to make the world safe.” The first phrase is a favorite of liberals who gush over Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs...

Team Ted Cruz is taking shape, and the Senate first-termer's presidential campaign could start before this spring. The Republican senator from Texas tentatively plans to fill senior campaign positions with the triumvirate he signed last summer to expand his political operation. At the top is Jeff Roe, whose organizational title is undefined but who would be the campaign’s chief strategic and logistics decision-maker. Jason Miller would shape and oversee campaign messaging; Lauren Lofstrom would direct fundraising. Cruz is in the process of “feeling out” additional campaign hires and prospective donors in preparation to join the field of 2016 candidates. If...

There is a reason why it is so difficult for two-term presidents to be succeeded by a member of their party. It has only happened once in the post-war era, and that was largely because George H. W. Bush was seen as the inheritor of a legacy of sustained economic growth and the beating back of Soviet communism. Democrats have reason to believe that the presidential electorate heavily favors Democratic candidates, but Hillary ClintonÂ’s quest to succeed Barack Obama in the Oval Office is unlikely to be as easy as BushÂ’s. Despite a belated spate of renewed economic growth,...

Since talking about it on Morning Joe earlier today, a few people have asked me to expound on my theory regarding what Jeb Bush would have to do to overcome the many challenges he would face on his way to the Republican nomination. It seems clear that Bush is hell-bent on not pandering to the base, so the obvious challenge he will have to overcome is winning a Republican primary while holding some positions (immigration reform, Common Core, etc.) which are anathema to the grassroots conservatives who will comprise a decent chunk of the primary electorate. The way to overcome...

For the past five years, a prominent Democratic operative who is a leading contender to manage a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign has maintained a private email listserv for friends and associates that carries a provocative name: the “Mook Mafia.” The listserv, which one member said reaches more than 150 fellow campaign veterans, has been a means for Robby Mook and a close friend Marlon Marshall to stay connected with many of the operatives who would likely populate a Democratic presidential campaign in 2016. Mook and Marshall have both been mentioned as possible Hillary Clinton campaign managers. Copies of a cache...

Looking back on the 2014 election cycle, I see two largely unnoticed turning points that worked against Democrats and in Republicans' favor. The first came in response to the October 2013 government shutdown. This was blamed, as shutdowns usually are, on Republicans, partly because of their skepticism about big government, and partly because media professionals tend to fault the GOP in any partisan fight. The shutdown occurred because about 40 Republican House members refused to support a continuing resolution funding the government without a proviso defunding Obamacare. Texas freshman Sen. Ted Cruz had been barnstorming the country arguing that this...

The “most expensive election in history.” Our democracy is being “bought and sold.” This election, “debased by money, shames us all.” These are some of the recent expressions of outrage about what the Center for Responsive Politicsestimates to have been $3.67 billion spent for federal offices during the 2014 midterms. Two days before the election on “Face the Nation,” CBS’s Bob Schieffer asked viewers to name one item whose costs have gone up as much over time as campaigns. That’s easy. While campaign spending soared to $3.67 billion this year from $1.6 billion in 1998, federal government spending rose 5%...

In the coming weeks, Hillary Rodham Clinton will stop delivering paid speeches. She will embark on an unofficial listening tour to gather ideas from the business community, union leaders and others. And she will seek advice from such far-flung advisers as an ad man in Austin, Tex., behind the iconic “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign and a leading strategist at a Boston-based public affairs consulting firm with ties to the Kennedys. The Democratic debacle in Tuesday’s midterm elections has put new urgency on Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to create a blueprint for a 2016 presidential candidacy, including exploring White Plains as...

President Barack Obama will remain at the White House on both Monday and Tuesday as voters head to the polls to determine whether to oust his political party from power in the Senate. A copy of his public schedule reveals that the president will return to Washington, D.C. tonight after campaign events in Connecticut and Pennsylvania and stay there through Election Day. Tomorrow Obama will sit down with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. The following day he'll take other meetings at the White House instead of barnstorming the country, campaigning for endangered Democrats. While the president will be out of...