Free Republic

Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chair, is strongly considering a bid for U.S. Senate, calculating that having Hillary Clinton at the top of the 2016 ticket would help lift her candidacy in a year-of-the-woman campaign. Driving Wasserman Schultz’s interest: the increasing likelihood that Sen. Marco Rubio will run for the White House and that he ultimately won’t seek reelection in 2016, Democratic insiders familiar with her thinking say.

I need to mention a fact that many freepers will find painful and upsetting. In the 20th Century, Country Club Republicans had greater influence in selecting Republican nominees for President, than grassroots Republicans. There are only 2 notable exceptions when the establishment candidate did not win - 1964 and 1980. In 1964, the Republican establishment was deeply divided. Three Republican candidates from extremely wealthy, Old Money, WASP families were on the ballot. They were Governor Nelson Rockefeller from New York, Governor William Scranton from Pennsylvania, and former Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. from Massachusetts. Lodge did not formally enter the...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is hands down the conservative frontrunner in the 2016 Republican presidential primary race, has quickly jumped out in front of all of the other potential Republican presidential candidates in fundraising and grassroots outreach. But before Bush can claim the 2016 GOP nomination for president, Jeb first needs to try to win over the Republican conservative base. Grassroots conservatives do not want Bush as the GOP nominee for president because they feel that he is too soft on immigration reform, as well as being the most outspoken supporter and promoter of national education standards, better...

Markets are allowed their petty indiscretions, of course. But these petty indiscretions seem to be piling up. Bloomberg last week drew attention to the fact that shares of The Grilled Cheese Truck Inc. had commenced trading on the OTCQX marketplace under the ticker GRLD: “Let’s look at the fundamentals of the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based company. Based on the 18 million shares outstanding and a recent stock price of $6 the company has a market value of about $108 million. No matter how much you like grilled cheese… I can’t see this as a reasonable valuation. “If you go to the...

A leading Republican consultant has ranked the top 10 presidential candidates for 2016 while claiming that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has about the same odds of winning the party’s nomination as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, The Washington Post reported. The unnamed strategist divided the GOP race for 2016 into "four lanes" — establishment, tea party, social conservative and libertarian, according to the newspaper. Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are the leading candidates in establishment, the largest lane, while former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is battling it out with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum...

The West Oaks Mall in Ocoee, Florida was the scene of a St. Valentine’s Day riot by nearly one thousand middle and high school students, several of them armed, who stormed a movie theater at the mall and then looted a nearby gas station Police reported gun shots were fired in the air by the ‘teens’, but that no one was wounded. Estimates of the size of the mob range from around 800 to 900. Only one person was reported to be arrested. WESH-TV in Orlando, Florida reported on the riot. “Investigators said about 800 teens tried to rush into...

There was a chaotic scene at an Ocoee movie theater, after deputies said hundreds of teens stormed the building, trying to get in for free. Deputies told Local 6 it happened Saturday night at the AMC Theater at the West Oaks Mall.

OCOEE -- Gunfire erupted late Saturday night at the West Oaks Mall as hundreds of teenagers rushed the mall's movie theater. Ocoee police were called to the mall to help control a large, hostile crowd. Orange County deputies said 800-900 middle school and high school students tried to rush into the theater without paying. Ocoee police said 200-300 made it inside. Police said the juveniles and young adults were causing a disturbance in the food court and movie theater area of the mall. Police said a large group rushed into the theater and continued causing a disturbance there. Orange County...

ORLANDO, FL — Deputies and state regulators aggressively raided Orlando-area barbershops, roughing up innocent staff and handcuffing them on the floor in an effort to check if the barbers had acquired government permission to legally cut hair. A series of these raids has recently come to light, one of which is making its way through the litigation process in the federal court system. This was the raid of the Strictly Skills barbershop in Pine Hills, Florida, in which government agents warrantlessly stormed in the establishment with as many as 25 customers and 6 staff members present.

The debut edition of our leader board of the Republicans most likely to win the presidential nomination, based on what we know now, shows the field may not be as big as most people think. 1) JEB BUSH (age 62, to Hillary’s 67): He’s got money, momentum, Florida, big ideas. His surprise, early signal that he’s running is THE PLAY OF THE CAMPAIGN so far — pushing OUT Mitt and perhaps Christie by freezing or stealing their money and talent. Jeb will be first Republican to $100 million by a mile. Now, watch for the use of overwhelming force to...

Using Agitprop and elements of the Delphi propaganda method (3), lethal Home Owners Associations (HOAs) are moving north out of huge Miami-Fort Lauderdale territories up along Florida’s I-95 corridor to take over more and more personal property rights of unsuspecting homeowners in gated, HOA communities. And the effects are not pretty! “Resetting the default position. . .exploits the structure of the choice to encourage a more desirable option,” says Cass R. Sunstein, author of the book NUDGE. (1) Employed by the Obama Administration as a regulatory czar, it was Sunstein’s job to have the American people do what the government...

Senator Ted Cruz, the boat-rocking limited government constitutional conservative Senator from Texas, provided another one of his patented cross examinations of a smoke-blowing government official at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz, the son of legal immigrants from Cuba, asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about border security measures – the so-called “triggers” – contained in the “Gang of Eight's” immigration bill. Specifically, Senator Cruz asked, “If there are no objective metrics, if it is simply the subjective assessment of a host of factors, how can we have any confidence that the border will be secured and that any...

Andrew Johnson of NRO reports that in 2002, as executive of Milwaukee County, Scott Walker signed a resolution that expressed support for “comprehensive immigration reform” that will “provide greater opportunity for undocumented working immigrants to obtain legal residency.” The author of the resolution says that Walker definitely supported it. Having signed it, he should be presumed to have supported, in any case. Will this news harm Walker’s chances of becoming the GOP presidential nominee? Standing alone, it shouldn’t. It’s one thing to sign a non-bonding resolution passed by the legislature in favor of “greater opportunity” for legal residency. It’s quite...

A state-level campaign to rein in the federal government by calling an unprecedented convention to amend the U.S. Constitution is gaining steam, picking up support from two high-profile Republicans as more states explore the idea. Coburn, a legendary government-waste watchdog, announced this week that he has joined the effort by becoming a senior adviser for the group Convention of States Action, which wants states, not just Congress, to pass constitutional amendments. Article V of the Constitution states amendments can be ratified either by Congress or by states if two-thirds of them petition Congress to call a convention. Then, any amendment...

ACTION: Contact your Senators and urge them to cosponsor S. 477, the Firearms Manufacturers and Dealers Protection Act of 2015. Operation Choke Point a Threat to the Second Amendment About a year ago, the Second Amendment community was rocked by news that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had teamed up with Attorney General Eric Holder to utterly destroy firearms manufacturers and dealers by cutting off all credit and banking relationships with them.For its part, the FDIC categorized gun and ammunition sales as a "high-risk business," lumping it in with drug dealers, pornographers, and Ponzi scheme operators -- all of...

Florida Student Told No 'God Bless America' In Morning Announcements By Letitia Stein TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida high school told a student this week to stop adding the phrase "God bless America" when reading scripted morning announcements, drawing protests and irate phone calls from around the nation, school officials said on Friday. The principal at Yulee High School, located in north Florida near Jacksonville, asked the student to stick to the script after receiving a six-page letter on Monday from the American Humanist Association, a group that describes itself as advocating for humanists, atheists and secular governance. The...

Check out the size of this goliath grouper gathering of the coast of Florida. That is a lot of really big fish. It’s definitely not news that the goliath grouper population in Florida has been steadily on the rise over the past decade. The multitude of groupers is the cause of great concern within the angling community, as there are no natural enemies of the patriarch of the grouper family.

Republicans voice support for Netanyahu congressional speech Top Republican leaders took to public and private channels Thursday to expose a coordinated campaign by the Obama administration to attack Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his acceptance of an invitation to speak before Congress, according to conversations with multiple lawmakers and leading pro-Israel insiders. The statements, many of which were obtained by the Washington Free Beacon in conversations with leaders in Congress, come in the aftermath of a widely cited New York Times report in which Obama administration officials accused Netanyahu of breaking diplomatic protocol by agreeing to speak before receiving...

Jeb Bush’s money juggernaut is far eclipsing the efforts of his would-be rivals for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, putting his two political committees on pace to amass an unprecedented sum of tens of millions of dollars by early spring. The former Florida governor’s overwhelming dominance in the race to line up financial backers has come at a speed that has impressed longtime Republican money players, who say wealthy party backers have rapidly migrated to Bush since 2012 nominee Mitt Romney decided against another White House run two weeks ago.

House Speaker John Boehner’s on-staff amnesty advocate Becky Tallent is in talks with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s potential presidential campaign for a job, meaning if she takes it she’d leave Boehner’s office. Tallent is former chief of staff to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)—having personally crafted the amnesty bill McCain and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) introduced in the twilight years of the George W. Bush administration—and then also worked on immigration policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Jeb’s team is looking to hire Rebecca for policy,” a former George W. Bush White House aide told Breitbart News. “The...