Free Republic

A man pleaded guilty Wednesday to first-degree murder in the rape and beating death last summer of a 93-year-old Omaha woman, in a deal that spared him the death penalty. Sergio Martinez-Perez, 20, entered the plea in Douglas County District Court and was immediately sentenced to life in prison. The public defender for Perez did not immediately return a message left Wednesday seeking comment. Police said Perez broke into the south Omaha home that Louise Sollowin had lived in for 70 years in the early hours of July 21, and severely beat her and raped her. Sollowin had grown up...

Nebraska GOP Senate nominee Ben Sasse may not see himself as an establishment slayer, but Nebraska's primary voters may have given him a dominating 27-point victory on Tuesday to send a message to the Washington Republican establishment. At the beginning of the year, Shane Osborn's internal polling still showed him with 39 percent of the vote, while Sasse and Sid Dinsdale had 7 percent each. Sasse's internal polling had him trailing by as much as 37 points last year. By February, however, the race was a dead heat, according to a poll by Harper Polling. Sasse closed the gap and...

When it comes to Congressman Lee Terry’s re-election push, Dan Frei is pushing back. Only hours after his badly underfunded bid to unseat Terry in Tuesday’s Republican primary came up just short on votes but long on attaboys, Frei tells Nebraska Watchdog he’s keeping his distance. “I do not have an endorsement for Congressman Terry,” says Frei who was also a no-show at the GOP’s post-election unity breakfast in Lincoln. Despite ponying up $900,000 to Frei’s $40,000, Terry, an 8-term incumbent, managed a meager six-point win.

Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz claimed his first victory in the battle to control the Republican Party on Tuesday night when his two candidates in Nebraska won their primary elections.Cruz endorsed gubernatorial candidate Pete Ricketts and Senate candidate Ben Sasse won their respective primary races, positioning Cruz as kingmaker in November.'Ben Sasse’s decisive victory in Nebraska tonight is a clear indication that the grassroots are rising up to Make DC Listen. They’re rising up to take our country back,' Cruz posted to his Facebook. Ted Cruz, left, campaigns in Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday, May 9, for Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete...

The Tea Party, left for dead by the mainstream media only a week ago, roared back to life on Tuesday with two big Republican primary victories in Nebraska and West Virginia. All eyes now turn to Mississippi's June 3 Republican U.S. Senate primary between establishment incumbent Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Tea Party-backed state senator Chris McDaniel as the next big test of the Tea Party's ability to win elections. In Nebraska, the Republican U.S. Senate primary race that many thought had tightened into a three way race turned into a romp for Tea Party-backed Ben Sasse, who easily won with...

The victory notched by tea party Republicans in the Nebraska Senate race was modest, but they'll take it in a season that has yielded few bright spots so far. Ben Sasse won the GOP nomination for the seat being vacated by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb. Sasse was the closest thing to a tea party candidate in the three-man race, largely because he feuded last fall with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the epitome of establishment Republicanism. But Sasse is hardly the out-of-right-field firebrand that some tea partyers cherish. A college president with degrees from Harvard and Yale, he worked for...

"Faith first, government second for GOP candidate," blares a teaser headline on MSNBC.com. They say that like it's a bad thing. Of course, to MSNBC it is, when religious freedom objections stand opposed to ObamaCare, so MSNBC.com writer Morgan Whitaker sought to explain to Lean Forward partisans all the ways that Ben Sasse is supposedly a danger to civil society, including a ludicrous suggestion that his views could allow for establishment of Sharia law (excerpt below; emphasis mine):

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: It was last Thursday that the media was saying the Tea Party was dead because a Tea Party in a primary in North Carolina was defeated. So the media was in a celebratory mood. Tea Party's done for. Ted Cruz, bye-bye. Mike Lee, bye-bye. Marco Rubio, bye-bye. Not so fast. Greetings, and welcome back. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh here at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. Phone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. Ben Sasse won the Republican primary in Lincoln, Nebraska, in Nebraska yesterday. And...

Omaha businessman Pete Ricketts won the Republican nomination for governor of Nebraska in Tuesday's primary, squeaking by state Attorney General Jon Bruning. Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Ricketts speaks in Lincoln, Neb., Tuesday, May 13, 2014, after winning his party's primary election. A crowd of Republican candidates jockeyed to succeed Nebraska's outgoing governor and senior U.S. senator in a busy primary election where voters also were set to select nominees for three other vacant offices. (AP Photo) Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Ricketts speaks in Lincoln, Neb., Tuesday, May 13, 2014, after winning his party's primary election. (AP Photo) With all precincts...

With decisive primary victories by U.S. Senate candidate Ben Sasse in Nebraska and U.S. House candidate Alex Mooney in West Virginia, the establishment’s dream of electing more status quo-supporting candidates has been stopped after just one week. Sasse and Mooney, both fine conservative candidates, ran smart races and closed strong. When Thom Tillis won the U.S. Senate primary in North Carolina last week (which took millions in establishment funds to make happen), D.C. elites, along with the mainstream media, were giddy as they wrote a seemingly never-ending stream of conservative candidate obituaries. I was entertained by the tone of the...

One small governor's race has turned into a cattle call for potential 2016 presidential candidates: Nebraska. Specifically, one candidate in the Cornhusker State is getting outsized attention from talked-about Republican presidential contenders. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, 2012 vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas have all endorsed Omaha businessman Pete Ricketts ahead of Tuesday's primary. As potential candidates work to woo Republican mega-donors, the contest offers presidential contenders entrée with a billionaire sugar daddy of the most literal variety: Joe Ricketts, the TD Ameritrade-founding, Chicago Cubs-owning billionaire who also happens to be...

Midland University President Ben Sasse on Tuesday won the Republican nomination to replace retiring Sen. Mike Johanns (R) this year. Democrats won’t contest the state this fall, making Sasse virtually a senator-in-waiting. But before jumping to conclusions that the tea party beat the establishment, note that Sasse doesn’t fit neatly into the outsider construct. Here are 14 things to know about Sasse, a candidate with an unusually diverse resume that includes time working within the system: 1. He’s a fifth-generation Nebraskan, but he spent much of his career in Boston, Austin and Washington, D.C. Sasse attended high school in Fremont,...

Ben Sasse wins the Nebraska Primary!

Ben Sasse 27,204 Sid Dinsdale 16.218 Shane Osborn 14,424

The Keystone XL pipeline may be stalled, but it's pumping a steady flow of cash into Washington — where inertia is a multibillion-dollar industry. The pipeline debate has become a money-making machine for lobbyists, advertisers, NGOs and political fundraisers in the U.S. capital, where tens of millions of dollars are being spent on the issue. The spending deluge will continue indefinitely, thanks to the two latest non-developments: the Obama administration has delayed a decision on the pipeline, and a congressional effort to speed up the process appears to have collapsed this week. The Washington insider news outlet, Politico, described the...

Senate candidate Bart McLeay has distinguished himself in the campaign as being willing to go further in-depth with his answers than his opponents. For example, at the candidates’ debate held in Gering in January, McLeay was the only candidate to actually lay out an alternative to Obamacare. “Ben Sasse now says he’s the only one to propose an alternative to Obamacare,” McLeay said during a Wednesday visit to Lexington. “I told him at a debate in Hastings, ‘Ben, you must be forgetting about the debate in Gering.’”

With less than 48 hours before polls open for the Republican Senate primary in Nebraska, immigration has emerged as an issue of newfound importance in the race after former State Treasurer Shane Osborn signed a pledge from an anti-amnesty group and urged his opponent, university president Ben Sasse, to follow suit. The pledge, from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), asks candidates to vow to oppose amnesty, increases in legal immigration, and increases in the number of guest workers. Osborn, who is behind Sasse in the polls, signed the pledge Friday, saying he is a “proven conservative” on the...

A federal judge has rejected the challenge of a Nebraska prison inmate and his transgender fiancée to a voter-approved constitutional amendment that says marriage must be between a man and woman. Harold B. Wilson and Gracy Sedlak, formerly John Jirovsky, sued the Nebraska prison system and Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning in U.S. District Court in Omaha. In the suit, they sought to overturn Nebraska Initiative Measure 416 of 2000, saying their rights were being violated because they weren't allowed to marry the person of their choosing and weren't being treated equally to heterosexual couples who may be approved for...

Conservative Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse has opened up a 14-point lead in the latest poll before Tuesday's GOP primary. A Megellan Strategies survey of likely GOP primary voters, 92% of whom said they would definitely vote in the May 13 primary, found Sasse leading with 38%, while liberal Republican Sid Dinsdale is in second with 24%. Establishment Republican Shane Osborn, who is backed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), is in third with 20%. Sasse is endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), conservative talk radio host Mark Levin, the...

The Republican contest for the 2nd District House seat took a nasty turn Thursday as Rep. Lee Terry's opponent accused the eight-term congressman of lying on a campaign mailing. Terry's mailing, sent to voters earlier this week, displays a photo of GOP challenger Dan Frei between pictures of President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats. “Dan Frei supports spending your tax dollars to provide free health care for 11 million illegal immigrants,” Terry's mailing says.