Free Republic

With Wisconsin’s new legislative district maps nearly finalized, up to four incumbent Democrat lawmakers are preparing to move into newly redrawn majority-minority districts to insure they can retain their power in the state capitol. Mapmakers have updated or created several districts in the cities of Milwaukee and Racine that contain majority populations of minority ethnic and racial groups. The Federal Voting Rights Act requires states to insure that minorities have proportional representation in state legislative bodies. Compliance with this mandate means states must create legislative districts where the majority demographic is comprised of racial minorities. Democrat lawmakers Rep. Cory Mason...

<p>I'm officialy endorsing Newt Gingrich for president today. Was going to wait until after Florida, but see no reason to delay. We need Newt to win in South Carolina and Florida to stop any possible momentum building up for the establishment big government, statist, abortionist RINO!!</p>

Barring any weekend surprises, it looks like Wildrose leader Danielle Smith will be Alberta's next premier. Several polls have come out over the past 72 hours putting Smith's upstart Wildrose Alliance ahead of the governing Progressive Conservatives both in terms of popular vote and seat distribution in the provincial election. -excerpt- Regionally, according to the Abacus poll, the Wildrose Party has a commanding lead in Calgary with 44 per cent support followed by the PCs at 29 per cent, the Liberals at 13 per cent, and the NDP at 12 per cent. In Edmonton, the PCs continue to lead with...

Onslaught of Union Funded Attack Ads Hit Gov. Walker! . The public employee unions have pledged to spent $60 million on their RECALL effort to viciously attack Gov. Walker and distort the truth about the success of his governorship.  In fact, they just dropped half a million dollars on TV ads this week alone! . . Gov. Scott Walker is Under Attack by a Barrage of Negative Union Ads and Needs our Support Today . With the June 5th RECALL election just around the corner, we need your support to defend Gov. Walker and combat the well-funded mudslinging from the...

It has become a cliché for politicians who want to provide some sort of pathway to U.S. citizenship to the estimated 11.2 million illegal aliens living in the United States to say that these illegal aliens will need to “go to the back of the line” first. However, there are already about 150 million adults living in countries around the world who would migrate to the United States if they could, according to a Gallup survey released on Friday. That does not count any children these 150 million would-be immigrants might want to bring with them to the United States....

8 pm has just passed in France, and all the polls are now closed, which means official preliminary data is now allowed - the first results from IPSOS are in, and are as follows: Francois Hollande: 28.4% (28.8% latest) - with victory virtually assured in the runoff round on May 6, it is now Hollande's election to lose. Could he? Yes - read here how Sarkozy can still catch up per DB. Nicholas Sarkozy: 25.5% (26.1% latest) - make the runoff round Marine Le Pen: 20.0% (18.5% latest) - extreme right: much better than expected as nationalism is back with...

President Obama’s re-election campaign is straining to raise the huge sums it is counting on to run against Mitt Romney, with sharp dropoffs in donations from nearly every major industry forcing it to rely more than ever on small contributions and a relative handful of major donors. From Wall Street to Hollywood, from doctors and lawyers, the traditional big sources of campaign cash are not delivering for the Obama campaign as they did four years ago. The falloff has left his fund-raising totals running behind where they were at the same point in 2008 — though well ahead of Mr....

...[S]ome Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate said they'd favor the concept of a federal law requiring even Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. Now, the state's Catholic bishops are objecting. ...[They] issued a statement expressing their dismay after all five Democratic candidates said during Sunday's "Face the State" debate that they would support legislation forcing Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. "If it is their [the candidates'] position that our hospitals should be forced by law or regulations to provide abortions in spite of our teaching, it is unfortunate to note their readiness to violate religious liberty"... Here are some excerpts of...

Mitt Romney is dominating in northeastern states conducting primaries Tuesday, particularly since Rick Santorum has left the race, observers note. Santorum, who announced he was suspending his campaign two weeks ago, had seen his once-huge lead in Pennsylvania shrink steadily and had said winning the Keystone State was key to his campaign continuing. That said, Romney was expected to claim a huge number of delegates from Delaware, Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island, even with Santorum in the race. Nothing's happened to change that expectation, except to possibly solidify it. RealClearPolitics.com's delegate count showed Romney with 656, Santorum with 272,...

.Gov. Brian Schweitzer, talking Friday to a national news website, said Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney might shy from talking about his family’s Mexican roots because they came from a “polygamy commune” in Mexico. Schweitzer made the remark in an interview with The Daily Beast, a news and opinion website, after being asked whether Montana might be a swing state during this year’s 2012 election. According to The Daily Beast, Schweitzer said Montana likely would vote for Romney, but that Romney, a Mormon, might have trouble nationally because his father, George Romney, was “born on a polygamy commune in Mexico.”...

Chuck Colson, a Watergate-era “hatchet man” for President Richard Nixon who became an influential evangelical leader after serving time in prison, died Saturday afternoon, according to his website. He was 80. Colson suffered a brain hemorrhage in late March. Colson was the first Nixon aide to be convicted of Watergate-related charges in the 1972 scandal. After a short prison sentence, he reinvented himself as a Christian leader and founded Prison Fellowship, which calls itself “the world’s largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families,” with a presence in 113 countries. According to his official biography, Colson “admits he was guilty...

Maybe others can answer more concisely, but I believe we need a place where like-minded traditional conservatives can meet to discuss and advocate for our pro-life, pro-liberty, pro-constitution, pro-traditional American conservative values, principles and causes--without being hounded and attacked by leftists, "moderates" and other naysayers, doubters, doom & gloomers, malcontents or trolls who would either outright destroy our liberty and our way of life, surrender it, or otherwise nibble away at it in bits and bites. Free Republic has been just that for fifteen years!! We wholeheartedly and steadfastly believe in and defend our founding principles and our traditional American...

The Adelson family continues to be the major benefactor behind the super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich's candidacy, Winning Our Future. While Nevada casino mogul Sheldon Adelson - who has donated $7.5 million to the group - did not give more in March, his wife Dr. Miriam Adelson contributed an additional $5 million last month, according to a report filed late Friday night with the Federal Election Commission. All totaled she has given $12.5 million and the family has given more than $20 million. The family's contributions to Winning Our Future are a major reason the group has been able to...

A couple of things are certain: DeeDee and Trayvon did not talk for 400 minutes on 2/26 the day he was shot. DeeDee did not go to the hospital on 3/2 and 3/3 and that was NOT the reason for not attending the viewing or memorial. DeeDee and Trayvon were not Boyfriend/Girlfriend. They were close, platonic best friends. DeeDee was not devastated, destroyed, or an emotional wreck. She was sad that her best friend was shot. She notified others, including her cousin who is also a prolific tweeter, but did not know immediately who Trayvon was. DeeDee did not miss...

A piñata shaped like a white woman was strung up to a tree at the University of Memphis, then African-American students took turns beating it with a stick. Where is Al Sharpton when you need him? Isn’t this a shocking case of racism? No, actually it isn’t. Turns out the students involved were mere grade school kids, brought on campus for a special “Luau” party sponsored by the university. The piñata was supposed to represent a hula dancer. “We want to assure our community that no racial or gender animosity was intended,” said a university spokesperson. At worst, this...

Earlier this year, entrepreneur and X-Prize impresario Peter Diamandis hinted he was about to unveil something amazing: a startup that will mine asteroids for precious metals. “Since my childhood I’ve wanted to do one thing, be an asteroid miner,” Diamandis told Forbes. “So stay tuned on that one.”

President Barack Obama was briefed on a former provincial police chief's overnight stay in a U.S. consulate in China in February while it was in progress or soon after it ended, a senior administration official said Friday, shedding new light on how significantly the U.S. viewed the encounter at the time. The 30-hour visit to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu by Wang Lijun, who had just been relieved of his job as police chief, rapidly spurred controversy in China and came just a week before Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to become China's next leader, paid a visit...

SEOUL: North Korea has apparently completed preparations for a third nuclear test, possibly within two weeks, after firing a long-range rocket this month, a newspaper report said on Saturday. South Korea's Chosun Ilbo said the information came from a government source. It relates to preparations for a test in the northeastern town of Punggye-ri, where the North carried out two previous nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

Barack Obama's reelection campaign has released the most recent list of names of fundraising bundlers. On that list is Jon Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey and embattled money man, the former head of MF Global: Corzine, according to the Obama campaign, has once again helped raise more than $500,000. (He was likewise named a bundler in January, when the Obama campaign last released the names of their money men.)

PEORIA, Illinois – After a fiery homily last weekend urging the faithful to oppose [Alleged] President Obama’s “radical pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda” at the ballot box in November, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria has been hit with an IRS complaint from a national secularist lobby group. At a gathering of Catholic men on Saturday, the Illinois prelate had slammed Obama’s mandate forcing religious employers to cover contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs. The unprecedented attack on religious freedom, he said, signaled that the president “seems intent on following a similar path” as past dictators such as Hitler, Stalin, and Otto...