Free Republic

Making sense of the 2016 Republican primary is a task best left to future historians, but here’s one rough measure of how crazy things have become: Results of one hotly contested primary in March are still being disputed. And the fight has gotten so bitter that negative campaign ads are being run on the radio—not against one of the GOP candidates but against one of the lowly 2,472 elected delegates tasked with going to the Republican convention and voting for the party nominee. The story involves a multigenerational rivalry between two Republican powerbrokers from Michigan, and at stake are six...

Let’s Create a Real Palestinian State It’s not a nightmare if you can make it come true. April 14, 2016 Daniel Greenfield    Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. A Palestinian state has never existed during any period in human history. Let’s change that. The United States has spent billions of dollars trying to create a Palestinian state. It’s time that we finally got our money’s worth. We’ve been putting money in the broken Palestinian slot machine in the metaphorical Palestinian casino (the real one was...

ISIS is operating a camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, according to Judicial Watch sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector. The exact location where the terrorist group has established its base is around eight miles from the U.S. border in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Another ISIS cell to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas, targets the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming for easy access to the United States, the same knowledgeable...

Overshadowed by the United States’ extension of the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and the Production Tax Credit (PTC) last year, Mexico’s cornerstone Energy Transition Law is quickly yielding results, lifting the lid on a renewable market primed for take off. On March 29, Mexico concluded its first long-term power auction since more fully deregulating its electricity sector in 2013. The auction, it should be noted, was a smashing success, generating 227 bids from 69 tenderers. State-owned Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) – the still dominant player in the sector and the sole buyer for this first go-round – awarded contracts...

Last month, two men were caught on video climbing over the border wall with Mexico and into the United States, carrying with them two large back packs apparently loaded with illegal drugs. The climbers, who were also caught on government surveillance approaching the wall in Mexico before even setting foot on it, easily scaled down into the U.S. within a few yards of not one, but three U.S. Border Patrol vehicles. The Border Patrol officers, although clearly aware of the illegal fence climbers, did nothing. The men re-scaled the wall back into Mexico only after realizing a media crew was...

The Libertarian Party might get more votes this year. Before the primaries, Time Magazine, frequent pusher of trends that do not exist, put Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ken.) on its cover and called him the "most interesting man in politics." Then Paul fizzled, and pundits said the "libertarian moment," if there ever was one, had ended. But Sen. Paul never ran as a libertarian. He ran as a libertarian-ish Republican, and he wasn't particularly convincing when he got to speak in debates. Americans were unimpressed. But now that, according to ElectionBettingOdds.com, the presidential race will be a choice between Donald Trump...

Drug cartels continue to operate with almost complete impunity in this border city. Most recently the Gulf Cartel was able to use heavy machinery to take down a series of police video cameras; one of the cameras was right outside of the local Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office. The Mexican government set up a large number of surveillance cameras throughout the border city of Reynosa last year in what they called a new attempt to curb the activities of organized crime. By then, the Gulf Cartel had their surveillance network in place for years. Through the use of strategically placed cartel...

It was just a matter of time before Pemex, Mexico’s chronically indebted state-owned oil giant, began dragging down the national economy it had almost single handedly sustained for over 75 years. The company has been bleeding losses for 13 straight quarters. As of December 31, it had $114.3 billion in assets and $180.6 billion in liabilities, a good chunk of it denominated in dollars, leaving a gaping hole of $66.3 billion (negative equity), after having been strip-mined over the decades by its owner, the government. And given these losses and the equity hole, new credit is becoming harder to come...

Just moments before Attorney General Eric Holder was voted in contempt of Congress by Republicans and Democrats in June 2012 , President Obama asserted executive privilege over thousands of documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. Holder was held in contempt for stonewalling and failing to turn over the documents to the House Oversight Committee. Obama granted the executive privilege request despite claiming to have no knowledge about Operation Fast and Furious when it was active from 2009-2010. Now after years of court battles and a federal judge striking down the executive privilege assertion, Obama has finally agreed turned them...

On Tuesday Donald Trump announced he would force Mexico to pay for a border wall by threatening to cut off billions of dollars in remittances sent by immigrants living in the United States. Later that day Barack Obama took time to scold Donald Trump on his plan to cut off remittances to Mexico until they fork over the funds to pay for a border wall. Of course, Barack Obama is wrong about this, too. The US already cuts off remittance payments to Somalia. "Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Congress passed stricter money-laundering regulations, which caused several large U.S. banks...

Mexico's government on Tuesday unexpectedly changed two of its top officials responsible for U.S. relations, citing concerns about an increasingly anti-Mexican climate across the border. Carlos Sada, previously the consul in Los Angeles, was named ambassador to the United States while Paulo Carreno, one of President Enrique Pena Nieto's communications chiefs, was appointed the deputy foreign minister for North America. Sada replaces Miguel Basanez Ebergeny who has only been in his position for seven months. Sada has 'broad experience in consular work and in the protection of the rights of Mexicans in North America,' the Mexican Foreign Ministry said in...

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox tweeted a selfie of himself smiling in Cancun, telling GOP frontrunner Donald Trump “YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE” in his latest rage against the billionaire and his plan to halt uncontrolled illegal immigration from Mexico. Trump,this beautiful Cancun. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. pic.twitter.com/jyJi5Nc7h8 — Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) April 7, 2016 The viral tweet topped off a fresh Fox Twitter rant the former president typed in English. Pathetic,Trump suffers from, disruptive narcissist personality. Which means,the belive that he is special and unique. — Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) April 7, 2016 Trumps narcisism means he needs,excessive...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz often tells supporters about his Supreme Court win against the federal government in 2008, defending Texas' right to execute a Mexican man for murder, as evidence of his conservative and anti-establishment credentials. But there is one part of the story that goes untold. The Medellin v. Texas case, decided when Cruz was the state's solicitor general, set the stage for years of diplomatic tension between the United States and its southern neighbor.

Mexico’s fourth largest political party, the Nueva Alianza party, is running a new television ad demanding respect from Donald Trump – by calling him a faggot according to Blabbeando writer Andrés Duque. In the spot, a young man addresses the camera to express frustration with anti-Mexican comments from the American presidential candidate. The man dedicates a common homophobic soccer chant to Trump as the camera pans out to a crowd of people in bleachers who all shout, “Heeeeey puto!” The phrase is commonly translated as “Hey faggot!”

Two years ago, Ford successfully fought efforts by Tesla Motors to register the name "Model E" for what we now know as the Tesla Model 3, unveiled last week to great fanfare. Now it appears that the Detroit automaker may plan to use that name itself on a dedicated vehicle coming in 2019 that will be offered as a hybrid, a battery-electric car, and a plug-in hybrid. If that lineup sounds slightly familiar, it should: it's the same suite of versions that will be offered in the 2017 Hyundai Ioniq. Adding battery-electric versions of dedicated green vehicles seems to be...

MEXICO CITY — The rise of Donald Trump and the anti-immigrant wave he is riding in his presidential primary campaign have alarmed the Mexican government so much that it has reshuffled top diplomats and, according to officials, adopted a new strategy — to defend the image of Mexicans abroad. Trump has consistently targeted the United States’ southern neighbor, calling Mexican border-crossers “rapists” and criminals and threatening to cut off the money they send home to their families unless Mexico pays for a border wall. But for months, the Mexican government has opted to remain quiet, with a few high-profile exceptions,...

A former Mexican president and previous critic of Donald Trump heaped new criticisms against the Republican presidential candidate late Wednesday. Vicente Fox Quesada tweeted out a string of attacks against the GOP front-runner, bashing Trump's immigration stances and calling him a "looser." "Trump is a looser, in business and in campaigning. He will never make it. He only is increasing hate ,violence. How can people stand him?" Quesada wrote. The former Mexican leader bashed Trump's plans to build a wall on the southern border, claiming the U.S. would not "survive enclosed in 4 walls."

Amid the discord ignited by Donald Trump’s idea to block money transfers to Mexico until it funds a wall it’s important to note that a U.S. government program is largely responsible for the billions in remittances flowing south of the border from illegal immigrants. The program is called “Directo a Mexico” (Direct to Mexico) and the Federal Reserve, the government agency that serves as the nation’s central bank, launched it nearly a decade ago. Judicial Watch investigated the outrageous taxpayer-subsidized initiative and obtained government records back in 2006. It was created by President George W. Bush following the 2001 U.S.-Mexico...

The Republican front-runner has released new details on his plan. Here’s an attempt to take it, and his foreign policy, seriously. Maybe it’s because Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexican border has more than doubled in height over the course of his presidential campaign, theoretically soaring past the Berlin Wall and Great Wall of China. Maybe it’s because Mexico’s former president said he wouldn’t pay for “that (expletive) wall.” Maybe it’s because the idea has been reduced to a call-and-response mantra at rallies. Whatever the explanation, Trump’s critics tend to dismiss his pledge to make Mexico “pay for the...

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Tuesday applauded Donald Trump’s suggestion that the United States force Mexico to pay for a wall along its border by threatening to block remittances sent by undocumented immigrants to their families back home. “I suspect that a good chunk of that is laundered drug money,” the Iowa representative said in a Newsmax interview. King is an immigration hardliner infamous for his 2013 claim that undocumented immigrants have “calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” Even though King serves as the national co-chair for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’s...