Free Republic

Prominent Republicans around the country, including several who advise Gov. George W. Bush, say they are worried that his candidacy has floundered in recent weeks, allowing Vice President Al Gore to build on his velocity from the Democratic convention in a way that they never expected. While none of these Republicans expressed panic and all said that Mr. Bush could reverse the trend, they acknowledged puzzlement, frustration and even some distress about the strides that Mr. Gore has made, a degree of progress that they said went beyond an inevitable tightening in polls. ''There's no doubt about it: There's real...

Chalk it up to a small world or to a tangled web, but Uranium One, the Russian-owned uranium mining company at the center of a recent scandal involving the Clintons and a close Canadian business partner, has lobbied the State Department through a firm co-founded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign chairman. Senate records show that The Podesta Group has lobbied the State Department on behalf of Uranium One — once in 2012, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, and once in 2015. Uranium One paid The Podesta Group $40,000 to lobby the State Department, the Senate, the National...

MOSCOW — Russia agreed on Tuesday to build two new nuclear power reactors in Iran, with a possibility of six more after that, in a deal that greatly expands nuclear cooperation between the two countries. The agreement shows that Russia is pressing ahead with its own vision for ensuring that Iran does not build nuclear weapons, by supplying civilian power technology that will operate under international monitoring. The approach won acceptance from the International Atomic Energy Agency and, grudgingly, from the Bush administration over the last decade as Russia completed Iran’s first civilian nuclear plant, at Bushehr on the Persian...

A vice president is never more important than at the instant of being chosen, because the choice tells you so much about the person who does the picking. When the doors are closed, George W. Bush doesn't have to listen to advice or stroke Republican egos; he can say what he pleases. John McCain? asked a friend. Gimme a break, said Bush. Ohio Congressman John Kasich, Bush argued, isn't ready for the job. Pro-choice Pennsylvanian Tom Ridge might cost him too many pro-life votes in states where a point or two will make the difference. And it has been clear...

TRENTON, Nov. 29— Democrats today abandoned their effort to keep Christine Todd Whitman from becoming governor of New Jersey, acknowledging that they had found no proof that she won the election because of efforts to suppress minority voting. From the start the Democrats had acknowledged that their civil suit was a long shot with only the slimmest of chances of preventing the Jan. 18 inauguration of the first woman ever elected Governor of New Jersey. Still the decision to back off from the suit, a week before a judge was scheduled to rule, was important both legally and politically for...

A time Machine Flashback To 1977. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLakMvb1US0

Amid rising concerns of politically motivated violence on college campuses, one college professor wants to see Republicans executed and has declared so publicly. Professor John Griffin of the Art Institute of Washington posted on Facebook that House Republicans “should be lined up and shot” for passing the American Health Care Act to reform Obamacare. Anthony Gockowski of Campus Reform has the story: “They should be lined up and shot,” Professor John Griffin posted to his Facebook, according to a screenshot of the post obtained by Campus Reform, even clarifying that he wasn’t being hyperbolic, saying “that’s not hyperbole; blood is...

Russia and the United States Should Cooperate “It’s very hard to solve the problem of ISIS. It’s like cancer. It can be treated at one stage, but not at another. “ISIS understands the Europeans and America, and Russia, and China, the civilized world we might say, is in a state of fierce internal competition. They chose this historical moment.” Fight ISIS, Not Assad “Not one change of government in this situation will solve anything. In the process of change, the internal conflicts will intensify. Regarding the Western approach of trying to defeat both President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the...

At a media availability in Chicago, GOP Presidential candidate Ted Cruz blamed Donald Trump for the violence and protests that occurred earlier in the day at a Donald Trump rally at the University of Illinois-Chicago. The rally had to be cancelled due to safety concerns.

California State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Léon (D-Los Angeles) said last Tuesday that “half his family” was in the country illegally, using false documents, and eligible for deportation under President Trump’s new executive order against “sanctuary” jurisdictions. De Léon, who introduced the bill, made his remarks at a hearing in Sacramento on SB54, the bill to make California a “Sanctuary State.” He said (at 1:27:34 in the video that follows): … I can tell you half of my family would be eligible for deportation under [President Donald Trump’s] executive order, because if they got a false Social Security...

Mark Levin: "Bill O'Reilly doesn't know what the hell he's talking about"

Hillary Clinton's running mate is predicting Democrats will go "nuclear" if Republicans try to stonewall a potential Supreme Court nominee by Clinton. Tim Kaine on Friday said he believes Senate Democrats will change the chamber's rules if they run into GOP obstruction in 2017. Kaine, however, said Friday that there's a "significant likelihood" that Garland will get confirmed this year.

Antonin Scalia responded to questions from committee members about his views regarding such topics as federal-state relationships, the Constitution, death penalty, abortion, national security versus individual rights, original intent, independent agencies versus executive branch agencies, court disciplinary structure, legislative veto, bill history, economic deregulation, affirmative action, committee reports, and executive privilege.

Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said he is confident that he has laid the groundwork for Democrats to nuke the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees if they win back the Senate in November. Envisioning Hillary Clinton in the White House and Democrats controlling the Senate, Reid warned that if a Senate Republican minority block her Supreme Court nominee, he is confident the party won't hesitate to change the filibuster rules again. Such a move would be an extension of what Reid did in 2013 when he was still majority leader, eliminating filibusters (with a simple majority vote) on...

What is Democratic socialism? Bernie Sanders, often criticized for endorsing this political philosophy, explained that his view is in sync with America’s development. He also called for shifting foreign policy and creating a “new NATO” including Russia. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) spoke in front of an auditorium full of supporters at Georgetown University on Thursday, arguing that his endorsement of the much-vaunted political philosophy of democratic socialism makes him the genuine heir to long-held traditions of the Democratic Party, not a radical. In doing this, he invoked the name of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Sanders said initiated programs to...

Happy St. Patty’s Day via Islam Is Ireland’s Fastest Growing Religion. h/t TROP The Republic of Ireland may be intimately associated with the Roman Catholic Church, but the fastest-growing faith on the emerald isle is Islam — at such a rapid rate that Muslims are projected to replace Protestantism as the second-most popular religion by the year 2043. Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reported that between 1991 and 2011, the percentage of Irish residents who were Muslim jumped from 0.1 percent to 1 percent (equating to about 49,000 people). By 2020, Ireland’s Islamic population will more than double to at least...

President Barack Obama plans to replace a "batch" of U.S. Attorneys in the next few weeks and more prosecutors thereafter, according to Attorney General Eric Holder. "I expect that we’ll have an announcement in the next couple of weeks with regard to our first batch of U.S attorneys," Holder said Thursday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing which stretched out over most of the day due to breaks for members' votes. "One of the things that we didn’t want to do was to disrupt the continuity of the offices and pull people out of positions where we thought there might...

The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday. Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations...

Blast from the past. So which candidate has the love and ties for Russia? Nyet, not Trump. HRC urged Congress to revoke the human rights restrictions under the guise of helping U.S. cos. - at roughly same timme UraniumOne was changing to Russian control and the Clinton Foundation received its $145M quid pro quo. Will Sessions recuse himself from this too?

After then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed she met with former President Bill Clinton on a plane last June, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) dismissed calls for an independent prosecutor to take over the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Today, however, Schumer called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign and demanded a special prosecutor because of a report Sessions had met with the Russian Ambassador in 2016, something he did not disclose during his confirmation hearings. Sessions denies the report and says he “never met with any Russian officials to discuss the issues of the (Trump presidential) campaign.” […] “She’s an honorable...