Free Republic

The fight heats up Texas Sen. Ted Cruz returned fire on establishment Republicans Thursday, including former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, who suggested that Cruz would fare worse in a general election than Donald Trump. Speaking to reporters following a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Cruz said Dole, among others, were looking to continue the "cronyism" and "corruption" of Washington. "If you think of the last time we beat the Washington cartel it was 1980, it was the Reagan revolution, where millions of Americans rose up," Cruz said. "And I would note that Mr. Dole then opposed Reagan, and said we...

... Beltway Republicans say they consider Donald Trump the lesser of two evils. Cruz wears their loathing as a badge of honor...

Opinion Journal’s Mary Kissel and Crime Research Center President John Lott on President Obama’s gun control measures.

Americans are increasingly convinced that owning a gun makes them safer. A new Rasmussen poll found that an overwhelming majority of Americans (68 percent) "feel safer in a neighborhood where guns are allowed." And a series of polls by Gallup, the Pew Research Center, and ABC News and The Washington Post show similar results. But it isn't just what people say. They are clearly putting more stock in self-defense. Since 2007, the number of concealed-handgun permits has soared from 4.6 million to 12.8 million. A new study by the Crime Prevention Research Center finds that a record 1.7 million permits...

When you watch the news after the latest big shooting, there's a good chance you'll come across John Lott. The 57-year-old economist has made more than 100 media appearances over the past two years, from friendly conversations on Fox News to heated debates on MSNBC and CNN. After nine churchgoers were gunned down in Charleston, South Carolina, he went on Sean Hannity's show and criticized President Obama for spreading "clearly false" information about gun violence. Following the recent mass shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, his op-ed asking "Why should we make it easy for killers to attack our military?" was among...

Americans are increasingly convinced that owning a gun makes them safer. A new Rasmussen poll found that an overwhelming majority of Americans (68%) "feel safer in a neighborhood where guns are allowed." And a series of polls by Gallup, the Pew Research Center and ABC News and The Washington Post show similar results. But it isn't just what people say. They are clearly putting more stock in self-defense. Since 2007, the number of concealed-handgun permits has soared, from 4.6 million to 12.8 million. A new study by the Crime Prevention Research Center finds that a record 1.7 million permits have...

John Lott talked about the new study put out by Pew Research Center which finds that support for gun rights have increased and, for the first time, protecting gun rights is more important than controlling ownership. He responded to telephone calls and electronic communications, including a telephone line reserved for gun owners.

Here’s an article, in where Dr. John R. Lott Jr., eviscerates Harvard Professor David Hemenway’s survey of cherry picked authors. That of course lead to the conclusion that guns are bad. It’s what these people do. No matter real credible research, and the longstanding Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is an obvious social utility of the people. I wonder why gun prohibitionists think the Second Amendment was created to begin with. It’s in the Bill of Rights. Even still, they love to refer to guns as if being deprived of arms, is some sort of benefit.

Just when you thought the Mississippi Republican Party could not get any more hypocritical than they already are, they surprise us again! The Mississippi GOP, in a posting on Facebook, attacked Travis Childers and Rickey Cole for taking a page from the liberal playbook – the class card. President Obama knew “hope” and “change” would not “win him a second term, so he used class envy to play on the worst instincts of his voters.” So now Childers and Cole are doing likewise, they tell us. Democrats “love playing the ‘rich versus poor’ game. That’s a great political tactic, but...

Gazprombank GPB (OJSC), a Russian bank targeted with sanctions by President Obama over the Ukraine crisis, has hired two former U.S. senators to lobby against those sanctions, according to a new disclosure filed with the Senate. Gazprombank is controlled by Russia’s state-owned energy company Gazprom, the country’s largest gas producer; it supplies about a third of Europe’s natural gas. In a filing submitted Friday and effective that day, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and former Senator John Breaux, D-La., are listed as the main lobbyists under the Gazprombank account for the firm Squire Patton Boggs, lobbying on “banking...

ver the last four years, I have lived with the constant threat from a stalker – a stalker who is now in jail for the third time for violating a restraining order. Every day I live with these questions: What if today is the day that my stalker posts bail? What if today is the day that he discovers my parents’ new address? What if I go to a lecture on campus and he shows up there? I feel that I have no control over my life. My family was forced to move. I have had stay indoors, keep drapes...

Former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) says Mississippi Republicans may need a regime change after the damaging primary fight between Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and state Sen. Chris McDaniel. “This has shown the fissures that are there and I do think the party leaders – it may cause the need for some change in the party leadership,” Lott, now the co-chairman of Squire Patton Boggs' public policy practice, told The Hill during a wide-ranging interview at the firm's Washington office. He warned that the Mississippi establishment is ignoring the Tea Party wing of the GOP at their own peril. “If they...

Is there an epidemic of school shootings? Parents are understandably fearful, but their fear is unjustified. Schools are relatively safe places, and they have gotten much safer. While even one death is too many, the number of children killed in school shootings has declined over the last couple of decades. The drop is even larger than the overall decline in the murder rate.

Thad Cochran is getting his butt kicked in Mississippi by conservative challenger Chris McDaniel. That has sent the NRSC and its friends into a tailspin and they are desperate to tar and feather Chris McDaniel. Some freak in Mississippi has handed them their latest tool. By willfully ignoring the real timeline and facts, the NRSC wishes to drag Chris McDaniel into scandal and, they no doubt hope, down in the polls. It is an open secret in Mississippi that Thad Cochran’s wife is in a nursing home. I have known it for some time, which is why RedState has not...

The godfather of Mississippi's largest and most powerful industry – one that has longed push for more lenient immigration law's to help provide cheap labor – is Sen. Thad Cochran's fundraising chairman, the Daily Caller's Neil Munro writes in a richly reported piece. Joe Sanderson, the owner of Sanderson Farms, the third largest chicken processor nationwide, is a longtime ally of lobbyist and former Gov. Haley Barbour now helping Cochran's reelection efforts.

Saying his victory "would send a shockwave through the incumbent class," Talk radio host Laura Ingraham endorsed state senator Chris McDaniel Tuesday in his bid against incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran, citing his early adoption of a new anti-amnesty pledge. Monday, McDaneil signed an immigration pledge the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), raising the importance of the issue in the bloody primary battle in Mississippi.

Four years after Farrah Fawcett’s death, her alma mater and her former partner, Ryan O’Neal, went to court over an Andy Warhol painting of the blond pop icon. In December a jury settled the case, but it had no hope of deciding on the question at the heart of the dispute: Whom did Farrah really love? It was a Monday morning in mid-December at the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the day of closing arguments in the matter of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System v. Ryan O’Neal, and the show was just minutes from getting...

even during the temporary and partial government shutdown, we are spending more than when President Obama took office. . . . .

Former Democratic pollster and Fox News contributor, Pat Caddell, appeared on Fox News Channel over the weekend where he alleged that there is a White House-led cover-up of the details surrounding the Benghazi attacks. Furthermore, he added, that cover-up of information regarding the White House’s response to that attack is being aided by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). “We have John Boehner, who has been purposely suppressing anything about Benghazi because he knew what we found out this week,” Caddell alleged. “And he approved it.”

Courts are being dumbed down because politicians are trying to keep the smartest and most persuasive judges off the bench, argues conservative economist John Lott in his recently released book, ”Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Justices Off the Bench.” “While confirmations have been getting tougher for all the nominees, smarter, more influential nominees have had the hardest time getting confirmed,” Lott told The Daily Caller in an interview about his book. “There is a simple reason for this. Judges who understand the law and are articulate may be able to convince other judges hearing cases to...