Free Republic

PARRISH, Fla. (WFLA) —It was a nightmare before Christmas for Parrish parents after their son was flown 1,200 miles south to Puerto Rico instead of 1,000 miles north to Cleveland. Logan Lose, 16, waved goodbye to his family last Friday at Tampa International Airport and headed to his flight to visit his mom for the holidays. When he got to the gate, he saw other passengers boarding and got in line. His father, Ryan said the Frontier Airlines boarding agent checked his son’s baggage, looked at his boarding pass on his phone and told him he could get on the...

Building more walls between the United States and Mexico will not boost border security, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said Tuesday. The Texas Republican toured the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge and visited Anzalduas Park during an all-day visit to the Rio Grande Valley. Cornyn also met with Mission Mayor Norberto "Beto" Salinas, McAllen Mayor Jim Darling, Superintendent of Bridges Rigo Villarreal and Chief Patrol Agent Manuel Padilla, who heads the Rio Grande Valley Sector. Cornyn brought Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, along for a firsthand look at trade and security issues. Asked about the border wall -- a hot topic during the Republican...

The super PAC supporting Jeb Bush for president has produced a 15-minute documentary about the candidate, his platform and his record as Florida governor, according to The New York Times. Interviews with Bush and his wife Columba are featured in Right to Rise's documentary, according to the report, which will first be released Saturday online.

GOP House leaders are preparing a huge appropriations bill for a vote next week — and top GOP legislators want to include a rider that could allow employers to replace at least 100,000 blue-collar Americans with up to 264,000 foreign temporary H-2B workers. The plan would actually cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, because the unemployed Americans workers won’t pay taxes, but would get unemployment checks and welfare aid from the taxpayers. The GOP’s pink-slip plan would also cut the wages of many other American workers before the 2016 election. That’s because the foreign temps hold down the normal...

Jeb Bush admitted Monday his views on immigration may not be "mainstream" in the Republican Party. But he praised the "vitality" of a multicultural society as other GOP presidential candidates find themselves in trouble over comments about minorities. "If we embrace a set of shared values, then it shouldn't matter if you have a 'z' at the end of your name, or your accent might be different, 'cause guess what? There are people in this country, that have accents different from mine and mine's different from theirs. It doesn't matter," Bush said to a roomful of Hispanics. The former Florida...

Donald Trump has promised that he will ease burdens on the middle class by going after “the hedge-fund guys,” who, he believes, do not pay enough in taxes. “They’re making a tremendous amount of money — they have to pay taxes,” he says. Because the one thing in which Trump is consistent is his vagueness, it is not 100 percent clear whether what he is talking about is the so-called carried-interest loophole, which is very much on the minds of people with economic-policy views similar to Trump’s — meaning Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton and other cookie-cutter progressives...

The American legal system is in real trouble. Many solutions have been offered-limitations on tort damage awards, restrictions of intellectual property rights, limits on class action suits, increases and decreases in various criminal penalties, and even changes in the Senate confirmation procedure for Supreme Court Justices. Many of the reforms sought do not address the fundamental issues involved, and therefore will ultimately fail. But how does one decide whether a particular reform is appropriate? To establish and preserve a free society, citizens must recognize, as the foundation of that society, the principle of individual rights. Rights are "the concept that...