Free Republic

Sen. Ted Cruz (R. of Texas) on Wednesday commended Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for signing the state's controversial religious freedom law. 'Religious liberty is not some fringe view,' Cruz said. Sioux City, Iowa — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz says concern about religious freedom, awakened in the debate over a new Indiana law, could unite conservative Republicans and rally some Democrats to the GOP in 2016. Cruz told an audience Wednesday he could carry the banner for that cause in his GOP presidential campaign....

While reporting on Monday’s NBC Nightly News with the latest from the Iranian side of the international talks in Switzerland over their nuclear program, Ann Curry smeared U.S. conservatives by likening them to radical hardliners in Iran’s Islamic regime. After a report from chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell on the overall state of the talks as the Tuesday deadline approaches, interim anchor Lester Holt turned to Curry for “the latest on a tough situation facing Iranian negotiators having to convince hardliners in that country to go along with any deal.” Curry began her brief report by declaring that Monday...

This past weekend, word got out that Senator Marco Rubio had reserved the Freedom Tower in Miami, Florida, for an event, possibly to announce his 2016 presidential intentions. Those close to Rubio quickly tried to dispel the original Tampa Bay Times story as being false. Asked about reports he had booked the Freedom Tower in Miami on that date for an undisclosed event, Rubio said he had not reserved a specific site yet. Senator Rubio himself has been reaching out to long-time supporters and donors asking them if they could attend his April 13th event. Other staffers have been charged...

Sen. Ted Cruz has been making headlines on his trek to become the Republican nominee for the 2016 presidential election. Cruz’s tactics are abnormally overt for a potential candidate, spreading what can best be described as fire and brimstone political sermonizing across the country. His words and demeanor aren’t just authoritative or passionate, they’re practically ecclesiastical. This approach says a lot about the current dispositions and the potential future of the extreme conservative right. While Cruz’s strategy may seem off-putting and baffling to many, there is a carefully calculated set of tactics backing his words. His politicized, Baptist preacher shtick...

NEW YORK – Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas, stressed during a closed-door meeting with New York City Christian leaders earlier this week that for the first time in history an astounding 65 percent of Americans do not think that their children will have a better life than them. Cruz, who is the first in an expected crowded Republican field to officially launch a presidential campaign, said that this depressing outlook is unacceptable and that there is a need to restore hope for those who have lost their faith in America's leadership. "America wants to believe that America has...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) may be gaining ground as the conservative favorite for 2016. The Tea Party-affiliated Republican has long been one of the more vocal and intense individuals on the GOP’s side of the aisle. Many on the far right would be pleased to see him run, and he’s likely to have a flood of Tea Party support. “Many social conservatives feel their issues have been kicked to the side, and they are frustrated. Someone like Cruz taking the nomination in 2016 would give them a voice again. It’s still early, and there are many potential candidates that could...

When Ted Cruz officially stepped into the 2016 presidential ring this week the boo-birds attacked immediately. But it wasn't just the liberals of the mainstream media who threw bottles and chairs at the conservative Texan. It was Cruz's fellow Republicans. Is he qualified after only three years in the Senate? Where was he born again? Isn't he too aggressively Christian? Isn't he too conservative to win the general election? Shouldn't we nominate someone more moderate, someone who isn't hated by the MSM and wouldn't scare independents? Unfortunately, we're already heard lots of negative chatter - from Republicans - about...

Think politics does not play a part in hiring decisions at universities? Think again. Teresa Wagner, a conservative lawyer, has been in the center of a years-long legal battle with the University of Iowa’s Law School over their decision not to hire her because of her conservative political views. Legal Insurrection, a legal blog, explains her case here. She recently spoke at the conservative family think tank Family Research Council, where she once worked before moving to Iowa. wagner v jones frc event Wagner said that the Iowa law school has “50 tenure track faculty members and there [was] only...

Conservatives often find themselves at odds with the libertarian crowd. However, is that anger really warranted? As President Reagan once said, “If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.” True conservatives and libertarians, let’s not pretend there aren’t fakers on both side, all agree on the fundamentals: limited government, personal responsibility, and economic freedom. Neither group wants the government interfering in our daily lives and telling us what we can and cannot do. Now there may be slight disagreements on how that plays out in the policy arena, but we should not allow...

The temptation for many will be to cave or compromise. The temptation even for the faithful will be to retreat into our churches and cloisters. In 2004, same-sex “marriage” came to Massachusetts. Contrary to the claim that such laws would usher in an age of “tolerance,” the law immediately became a legal club to beat unwilling participants. Catholic charities bravely refused to place orphans in same-sex homes, because it was contrary to their mission. Unfortunately, they stopped doing adoptions in the state. This cannot be our precedent. What they should have done is to say, “We are called to place...

When I first started writing some 15 or so years ago, I was able to chide my fellow Democrats by reminding them that the Democrat Party of Bill and Hillary Clinton was not the party of their fathers and grandfathers. Of course that is still true, but I can’t throw rocks any more. The current GOP is certainly not the party of Ronald Reagan either. As we approach the 2016 presidential election year, there is a power struggle within the Democrat Party between the Clintonistas and those who feel Hillary is unelectable. But there is a much broader struggle between...

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (March 19, 2015) — Jeb Bush is betting his political future these days on the hope that pragmatism will trump conservative hostility in 2016. Fresh off his first public tours of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the Republican White House prospect has settled on an early approach for dealing with skeptics on the right, casting himself as a practical but "principled conservative," particularly when explaining his immigration and education positions that put him at odds with the GOP's most conservative factions. Bush often wraps his philosophy in scathing criticism of President Barack Obama. But the former...

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won re-election according to the latest vote counts, defeating not just his domestic leftist opposition, but the President of the United States in a public stand-off that had the President sending emissaries to Israel to try and oust Netanyahu. The victory represented a stunning turnaround for Netanyahu, whose Likud Party trailed significantly in the polls in the days leading up to the election.

Ed Miliband and David Cameron launched attacks on each other's character in angry Commons exchanges over televised election debates. The Labour leader accused the PM of "chickening out" of a debate with him, saying: "Like all bullies, when the heat is really on he runs for cover." Mr Cameron attacked Mr Miliband as "despicable and weak" for not ruling out a post-election deal with the SNP. It came amid a fresh effort to break the TV debate deadlock.

Politico scored a journalistic coup with its exclusive 2014 profile on Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the agency's targeting of conservative groups. But a former Illinois lawmaker who said Politico contacted him repeatedly that year with questions regarding claims he was targeted by Lerner in the mid-1990s has been left wondering why the news group chose to ignore his documented dealings with the former federal official. "I was shocked," Al Salvi told the Washington Examiner's media desk, describing what he characterizes as several "lengthy" interviews with Politico reporter Rachael Bade. Lerner went after his 1996...

The media have developed a predictable and equally annoying habit every presidential election cycle. We hear the Republicans are going to be crushed by pandering too much to conservatives. The Democrats are firmly moderate and need a push from the left so they don't forget their "compassion." So it was with Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter 35 years ago. So will it be in 2016, no matter who is nominated. Republican primary voters have nominated moderates in every election cycle since Reagan '88, but not because they are moderates. Instead, the moderates survive the usual conservative circular firing squad exercise;...

Conservatives don't like to talk about race. And there are some very good reasons why. The first is that the left constantly and spuriously plays the race card against the right. Conservatives spent decades saying that welfare hurt the very people it was supposed to help by disincentivizing work. They were accused of being racists for saying that — until conservatives passed welfare reform, which is now widely acknowledged as one of the most successful anti-poverty programs in recent decades. Conservatives spent decades saying that public housing hurt the very people it was supposed to help (and as someone who...

Conservatives are typically eager to disparage politicians and bureaucrats who conspire to seize wealth. So you'd think that they'd be outraged to learn that officials in one municipality treat residents as revenue sources rather than citizens. In this city, policymakers have made maximizing the intake of money their number one priority. They urge police to cite residents as aggressively as possible and evaluate their municipal court judge based on the fines that he levies. Challenges to the city's system are thwarted by a deliberately complicated thicket of rules and red tape. And violations of the Constitution are frequent and unpunished....

As the chart ... shows, Catholicism is the most common religious tradition in 17 states, while white evangelical Protestants are first in 15 states, mostly in the South. The religiously unaffiliated are the most common religious group in 13 states, mostly in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast. Three states are outliers: Utah, which is 56 percent Mormon, the largest percentage of one single religious tradition, and Iowa and North Dakota, where white mainline Protestants are the dominant religious tradition.

I was recently invited to make some remarks at a charity dinner for a cause that I strongly support. The organizers worried that, because their cause affected only Third World nations, they would have a hard time raising money from an American audience. Localism, it seemed, in everything from farm produce to charity giving, was the new vogue. People wanted to see their dollars at work locally rather than watch them disappear into the coffers of some international organization. Could I help them make the case for international giving? On the night of the dinner it occurred to me to...