Free Republic

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is under consideration for attorney general in Donald Trump's administration, a Bloomberg News reporter tweeted Tuesday night.  SCOOP: Trump is discussing TED CRUZ for AG — Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) November 16, 2016 Cruz was seen earlier in the day visiting Trump Tower in Manhattan, where Trump's transition team is talking about Cabinet level positions.Trump himself tweeted about 30 minutes after Jacobs announced her "scoop," saying he alone knows who will get job offers.  Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions. I am the only one who knows who...

President Obama lamented the rancorous, divided state of U.S. politics in a wide-ranging interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson. In the unusual discussion, Obama revealed some of his longstanding frustrations with politics while asking the Iowa author questions about her family, her Christian faith and writings. “How do you reconcile the idea of faith being really important to you and you caring a lot about taking faith seriously with the fact that, at least in our democracy and our civic discourse, it seems as if folks who take religion the most seriously sometimes are also those who are suspicious...

The current frontrunner for the nomination, who got where he is by demanding that the border be closed to Mexican rapists and that all illegals who are already here be deported, is okay with Luis Gutierrez’s friend running the House? Huh. What makes this doubly weird is that Trump has attacked Ryan in the past for trying to lead on entitlement reform, especially Medicare reform, instead of insisting that Obama do it. Normally I’d chalk it up to a would-be president not wanting to get on the wrong side of a would-be Speaker whom he might have to work...

A federal court ruled Friday that President Obama’s regulation to protect small waterways from pollution cannot be enforced nationwide. In a 2-1 ruling, the Cincinnati-based Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit delivered a stinging defeat to Obama’s most ambitious effort to keep streams and wetlands clean, saying it looks likely that the rule, dubbed Waters of the United States, is illegal. “We conclude that petitioners have demonstrated a substantial possibility of success on the merits of their claims,” the judges wrote in their decision, explaining that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new guidelines for determining whether water is subject...

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said on Thursday he will stay in the top post in the House of Representatives until his successor is elected, adding that he would announce the date of that vote later. "We will announce the date for this election at a later date, and I’m confident we will elect a new speaker in the coming weeks," the Ohio Republican said in a statement released after the surprise withdrawal of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy from the race.

Joe Biden has been making his 2016 deliberations all about his late son since August. Aug. 1, to be exact — the day renowned Hillary Clinton-critic Maureen Dowd published a column that marked a turning point in the presidential speculation. According to multiple sources, it was Biden himself who talked to her, painting a tragic portrait of a dying son, Beau’s face partially paralyzed, sitting his father down and trying to make him promise to run for president because "the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.” It...

A law enforcement official has identified the gunman as Chris Harper Mercer, 26, and said he had three weapons, handguns and at least one long gun. It was not clear whether he fired them all. Law enforcement officials said he lived in the Roseburg area, and they said one witness said that he asked about peoples’ religions before he began firing.

I know some of you guys worry that I’ll be trolling you with “Romney 2016?” posts right up until the hour the polls open next November, but I promise you this:You’re right. I will be.Skip to 9:30 below for a choice snippet from Ann’s interview with Brian Kilmeade this morning. The magic is back: “All I can say is, we are in New York City, Mitt’s been with me a lot today, over the last few days and we have been walking the streets and people are screaming out there windows, I mean people on the street, people stop...

“We would have grave concerns,” he added, “should Russia strike areas where ISIL- and Al-Qaeda-affiliated targets are not operating.”New from the AFP: Russia is striking areas where ISIS and Al Qaeda aren’t operating. Russia’s air strikes in Syria on Wednesday targeted opposition forces and not Islamic State jihadists, a US defense official said, contradicting Russian claims.“We have not seen any strikes against ISIL, what we have seen is strikes against Syrian opposition,” the official said, referring to the Islamic State group…Russian warplanes carried out strikes in Homs province, US officials said, while a Syrian security source and state media...

Pope Francis met with Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis during the pope’s visit to the United States, the Vatican confirmed on Wednesday morning. Rev. Manuel Dorantes, a spokesman for the Vatican, said to The Washington Post, “I do not deny that the meeting took place, but I have no comments to add.” The meeting between Davis, who went to jail for six days after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and the pope was announced late Tuesday by Liberty Counsel, a religious freedom nonprofit that is representing the elected Rowan County clerk in her ongoing legal struggles. Liberty...

Teenage clockmaker invited to Qatar by an organization linked to the terror group. September 30, 2015 Arnold Ahlert    The story of Ahmed Mohamed, the Dallas schoolboy made famous by the reaction to his arrest for bringing a homemade clock that resembled a suitcase bomb to school, has taken another curious turn. According to the Dallas Morning News, Ahmed and his family have accepted an invitation extended by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development to visit Qatar. Their sister institution, the Qatar Foundation International (QFI) was founded by Sheikh bin Al Thani, who also created Al Jazeera. QFI has links to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)....

Stunning pictures are coming out of Mecca, which, if genuine, reveal a stunning level of brutal disregard for human life. Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit picked up the story, as revealed by tweets from Tarek Fatah:   Pictures emerge of #Saudi officials bulldozing bodies of dead #Hajj pilgrims like garbage & dumping them into a pile. pic.twitter.com/6uKtbuF9Rm— Tarek Fatah (@TarekFatah) September 26, 2015

How low will she go? We already know that the Clinton Foundation has rather…uh…lax standards when it comes to accepting massive donations. But now Hillary Clinton has attended a campaign fundraiser at the home of a convicted drug dealer. Anita Kumar of McClatchy writes: Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, attended a fundraiser in New York hosted by John Zaccaro, convicted on felony drug charges after he sold cocaine to an undercover cop. The 1988 conviction of the son of unsuccessful Democratic vice presidential candidate Gerraldine Ferraro was reported in numerous publications at the time....

Donald Trump said Sunday in an interview with CBS that ballooning CEO pay is “a total and complete joke,” sounding a populist tone as he continues to stir up the Republican base in his run for president. “It does bug me. It’s very hard if you have a free enterprise system to do anything about that,” the Republican presidential frontrunner told CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday when asked about CEO pay. “You know the boards of companies are supposed to do it but I know companies very well and the CEO puts in all his friends…and they get whatever they...

The secretary of the Navy has insulted a Marine task force by questioning the integrity of their gender-integration study that was released last week. A summary of data showed that “mixed-gender teams completed tasks more slowly and shot with less accuracy, and that women sustained injuries at more than twice the rate of their male counterparts.”It took the Marine Corps nine months and $36 million to discover that all-male ground combat units were faster, more lethal and less inclined to get injured than units with mixed genders. The task force came to the conclusion that the inclusion of women...

Plenty of state school systems are struggling with ways to not only keep up with national mandates and restrictions, but to boost their graduation rates so they can maintain their funding and reduce criticism from the public. California seems to have come up a rather unique, back door approach to the problem. You could always take tens of thousands of former high school students who flunked out and simply give them a diploma anyway. (Daily Caller) The state of California is poised to award thousands of high school degrees to dropouts by passing a new law retroactively removing the...

LONDON — A veteran anti-war campaigner known for his unapologetically socialist views has won a landslide victory to lead Britain's opposition Labour Party — an outcome that delighted supporters and dismayed others who never imagined he could be elected. The overwhelming support for far-left lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn, 66, was one of the biggest shake-ups in British politics in decades. His win Saturday marks a sharp left turn for his party — and will significantly challenge the tone of mainstream British politics, which is now dominated by Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives. "It's certainly the most high-profile position an overt socialist...

There’s definitely an immigration crisis going on, but it’s not just the one in Syria. We’re also not talking about America’s southern border, nor even the Canadians. (But don’t get too comfortable… you can never trust the Canadians.) No, this crisis is taking place on Oregon’s southern border where they are being invaded by unwelcome immigrants from California. And now some of the residents are taking action. (Yahoo News) Portlanders have had it with those board shorts and kale smoothies, and now they’re rising up to stick it to the Californians-literally. According to the Oregonian, upset citizens are placing...

Profiles in Courage Media Edition, or just the realities of campaign coverage? NBC News broadcast a 15-minute interview by Andrea Mitchell of Hillary Clinton, who offered her usual denials on the e-mail scandal and refused to apologize for using a secret server to thwart legitimate oversight over her office. Almost as soon as the interview aired, more problems emerged for her narrative, including the fact that she was paying a State Department IT specialist off the books to maintain the server without ever disclosing that fact. Despite her denials, the CIA and the NGA both verified that two e-mails...

We already knew that Barack Obama won the fight over the Congressional disapproval of his deal with Iran. Last week, when Barbara Mikulski became the 34th vote in favor of the deal, that took the veto override off the table — even if that had been a long shot at best in the House already. In quick succession, seven more Democrats quickly followed suit, and now Obama has enough to filibuster a disapproval bill, according to the AP’s tally: Three undecided senators announced their support for the deal in quick succession — bringing supporters to 41 votes. That’s enough...