Free Republic

Gov. John Kasich defended Monday his support of an immigration overhaul that includes the legalization of nonviolent illegal immigrants, telling supporters on the eve of the Ohio primary that it is unrealistic to think that the federal government is going to boot illegal immigrants out of the country. The issue of illegal immigration has been a dividing line in the GOP presidential campaign, including here in Ohio, where businessman Donald Trump has vowed to finish the fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border and make the Mexican government pay for it, and promised to make people living in the country illegally to...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote: “Let’s not mince words, Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.” I cited a long list of incidents in which he targeted women, Latinos, African Americans, Muslims, Asians and the disabled. Here’s what I heard back from Trump’s defenders: “Let’s not mince words,” somebody tweeted under the name Helios Megistos. “Milbank is an anti-white parasite and a bigoted kike supremacist.” “[Trump] may well be a bigot and a racist,” one Michael Banfield wrote me via email. “But one thing is certain: The only thing missing from your photo is a [vulgar word...

A new Fox News poll finds 50 percent of voters favor Trump’s ban, while 46 percent are opposed. However, when Trump’s name is removed from the question, support for the plan goes up five points and opposition goes down six: 55 percent favor the unnamed proposal, while 40 percent oppose it. So while voters favor the “Trump” ban by a 4-point margin -- that increases to 15 points when the same ban is not associated with Trump. There are stunning shifts in the responses among Democrats: 45 percent favor banning Muslims if Trump’s name is not mentioned, yet when the...

he day after a horrific shooting spree by what appears to be a radicalized Muslim man and his partner in San Bernardino, California, Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged to a group of Muslim activists that she would take aggressive action against anyone who used "anti-Muslim rhetoric" that "edges toward violence." Speaking to the audience at the Muslim Advocate's 10th anniversary dinner Thursday, Lynch said her "greatest fear" is the "incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric" in America and vowed to prosecute any guilty of what she deemed violence-inspiring speech. "The fear that you have just mentioned is in fact my...

Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump has not faded in the fall, as Republican professionals hoped, but has his biggest lead yet and support from more than a third of GOP voters, according to a CNN/ORC poll released just 58 days before the Iowa presidential caucuses. Trump has 36 percent support, 9 percent higher than he had in October more than double the 16 percent backing for ultraconservative Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, his closest competitor. In particular, Trump is a runaway choice of GOP voters surveyed who do not have college degrees, his support rising above 40 percent. Ben Carson...

The question that continues to nag at everyone in the immigration debate is what to do with the 11-12 million illegal aliens who are already in the country. (Some estimates run that number up to as many as 30 million.) Ted Cruz outlined his approach to this problem on Hugh Hewitt's radio program on Monday night. It essentially involves voluntary self-repatriation. Here's what Cruz said: "Once we secure the border, you stop filling the boat that's sinking, a number of people start to go home voluntarily every year to be with their families. That population will start shrinking. After that,...

The best part is when she asks the obvious follow-up -- is a path to legalization "amnesty"? -- and he won't even make eye contact. There's a spectrum of answers to this question on the right, of course: 1. Amnesty is citizenship without preconditions. That's the strictest definition, and naturally the one preferred by Beltway Republicans like Marco Rubio in his Gang of Eight days. (Marco Rubio circa 2010 had a different view.) As long as you're forcing illegals to jump through some sort of hoop, be it learning English, paying back taxes, going to the back of the line,...

CNN)A German special forces unit arrested two men in a Berlin raid Thursday who are accused of plotting "a significant criminal act against state security," according to Berlin authorities. The two men were arrested in the Britz section of the German capital after a search was conducted on an Islamic cultural center, police said.

The New York Times opined Thursday that Sen. Bernie Sanders has the right idea on immigration, and that most Republicans support a plan that gone "well beyond the usual nativist bigotry." "Republican presidential candidates are arguing, in all seriousness, about sealing the border with fantastical 2,000-mile fences and weaponized drones; merging state, local and federal authorities and private prisons into one all-seeing immigration police state; forcibly registering American Muslims; mass-deporting 11 million Mexicans and others in a 21st century Trail of Tears; and turning away thousands of refugees fleeing war and terrorism in the Middle East," the Times said. The...

Most Americans agree with Donald Trump -- the illegal aliens have to go. Head 'em up, move 'em out. A new Fox News poll shows 52 percent of the nation favors deporting the millions of illegals back to their home countries. Republicans and Democrats support Mr. Trump’s plan. But the numbers among Republicans are astronomical. Seventy percent agree with Mr. Trump -- a super-majority. So why does the Republican establishment continue to support pro-amnesty candidates? Jeb Bush accused Mr. Trump of preying on people's deep-seated fears. “This whole idea of preying on people’s deep-seated fears of what the future looks...

It's always the things you don't expect that get you. After banking scandals, currency issues, and a Greek/Portugese/Spanish debt crisis just about every six months, the economic and political partnership that is the European Union seems much more likely to fall apart for an entirely different reason after all. That reason is ISIS. This is a political nightmare for the statist bureaucrats who have been working for decades to reduce true representative democracy all for the goal of a unified and monolithic economic entity without worrying about being hindered by annoying little things like the will of the people. Before...

President Obama wants more Syrian Muslim refugees in the West. Speaking in Turkey on Monday, Obama explained that the West needed to open its heart to Muslim refugees, who after all were fleeing from terrorism in the Middle East to the safe and warm arms of the West. Meanwhile, Obama continued to maintain that Islamic radicalism presents no threat to the world.

Donald Trump, speaking at a rally on Saturday in Beaumont, Texas, suggested that fewer people would have been killed had more civilians been armed. "When you look at Paris, toughest gun laws in the world, nobody had guns but the bad guys," he said. "Nobody had guns. And they were just shooting them one by one, and then they broke in and had a big shootout and ultimately killed the terrorists. And I will tell you what--you can say what you want, if they had guns, if our people had guns, if they were allowed to carry, it would have...

AS PARIS BURNED, UK MUSLIMS TOLD TO "STRUGGLE" FOR ISLAMIC STATE IN UNPRECEDENTED ISLAMIST SHOW OF FORCE At the “Quiz a Muslim” event held last night in the Corn Exchange in Bedford, panelists called British values "junk", demanded that Muslims should "define" British law, and ominously, appeared to suggest Muslims were at war with the British.The event was organised and chaired by Bedford-born blogger Dilly Hussain; an avid Islamist and a supporter of a global Islamic caliphate.Mr Hussain described the event as "sort of like an Islamic Question time" - except during Question Time, there are usually disagreements. This event saw an all-male panel of...

In the Reuters/Ipsos 5-day tracking poll that samples 534 Republicans, over the last week, Donald Trump has surged to a massive national lead in the GOP presidential primary. Currently, the billionaire businessman sits at 42% with likely Republican primary voters. His closest competitor is Ben Carson, who sits at just below 25%.Last week both men were pretty much tied up at around 25%. That is a 17 point surge for Trump.Among all Republicans, Trumps enjoys a 34% to 20% lead over Carson.Reuters adds that this “is also bad news for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is widely considered to be...

Germany's interior minister on Saturday made a plea against linking the terror attacks in Paris to the record influx of asylum seekers into Europe."I would like to make this urgent plea to avoid drawing such swift links to the situation surrounding refugees," Thomas de Maiziere said, noting that there have already been "appalling scales of attacks against asylum seekers and asylum seeker shelters".Besides beefing up police presence and border controls, the minister said after a crisis cabinet meeting that security forces will also keep a close watch on far-right extremists.

Mexican-American students at a school in Morgan Hill, California have feigned outrage because a group of students outfitted themselves in bandannas and t-shirts designed with the American flag on them on Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday. Unfortunately, these students have demonstrated they are more American than Mexican, even though they would like us to believe otherwise. Cinco de Mayo is not even considered a national holiday in Mexico, it's a regional holiday mostly celebrated in the state of Puebla, which means there are Mexicans, who actually live in the country, who don't necessarily celebrate it. Americans for some reason...