Free Republic

Judiciary Federal court: no liability for PA judge who made up criminal charge By Rachel MartinPublished April 13, 2015watchdog.org A federal court recently told a Lawrence County woman she’s simply out of luck and can’t sue local officials, including a Common Pleas judge who apparently made up a criminal charge that was used to place her on electronic monitoring. A judge has absolute civil immunity, even if the action “was in error, was done maliciously, or was in excess of his authority,” the three-judge panel ruled in its six-page opinion. Judge Thomas Piccione had ordered Lynn Van Tassel to report...

Pontiac, Ill. - I received a call last week from a guy asking if he and his fellows could get some media coverage for the local chapter of Guns Save Life. Though this is something we don’t typically do, I gave him the “We’ll look into it” line. Then there was this exchange: “I also have a birthday I want to put in the paper, but when I walked by your offices, I noticed a sign that said I was unwelcome.” Come again? What sign? “The sign with the handgun and the red cross through it — I’m unwelcome in...

Government documents obtained by a top "Inside the Beltway" watchdog group and released on Thursday reveal that Internal Revenue Service's Lois Lerner was strongly urged by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, her assistance in attacking certain non-profit political groups. The organizations they selected for targeting by Lerner were part of the Tea Party and conservative movements. Newly released documents revealed that Sen. Levin (left) and Sen. McCain both urged the IRS to target conservative groups in the wake of the Citizens United decision. The group that investigates and exposes government corruption, Judicial Watch, released newly acquired...

Senator Ted Cruz’s announcement he’s running for president during a March 23 speech at Virginia’s Liberty University made him the first candidate to declare his candidacy official in the 2016 cycle. Here are five things to know about Cruz and his presidential run: 1. He wanted to be the first candidate to announce because he thought it would bring him attention. Being first out of the gate, his campaign hopes, will catch the eyes of both high-engagement Republican primary voters and the media—and, in the process, might slow or stop Governor Scott Walker’s rapid rise. From The New York Times:...

TEA Party Nation take heart: If Ford Nation could surmount all odds including a mainstream media ganged up against them, so can you! Columnist/ author Arthur Weinreb’s book, Ford Nation: Why hundreds of thousands of Torontonians supported their conservative crack-smoking mayor, is the one book that lets out of the bag, a secret the mainstream media never wanted out in public. People the world over know the story of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, whose admission to crack smoking on one of his drunken stupors, took him viral as the quintessential ‘digital mayor’. Though not written as a how-to book, Weinreb’s...

Below are a few video clips as well as the transcript from Ted Cruz’s latest interview with CNBC’s John Harwood. After having watched and read all of it, I must say that Cruz did an excellent job refuting the liberal nonsense and making his case for what he believes. He even weighed in on Social Security and did a masterful job with it. Watch and read (transcripts DO NOT correspond to the videos so you should watch and read everything): Harwood: First of all, what happened to you in your childhood that you do not like guacamole avocado?Cruz: My Dad...

Yesterday Ed shared the news that the community of political experts was rather gobsmacked to find out that PACs associated with Texas Senator Ted Cruz had brought in a “record haul” in no time flat following his campaign announcement. While it would be lovely to pretend that money in politics doesn’t mean all that much and what really counts is grassroots support and a solid message, that’s simply not true. Does anyone really think Mitt Romney would have survived the 2012 fight without the mountains of cash behind him, both internally and through associated PACs? That’s a doubtful proposition at...

*Freshly minted 2016 GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul has a few good things going for him. He has talked back to the war hawks. He wants to radically rein in out of control intelligence spying. He wants to chip away at the draconian drug laws that still incarcerate mostly minorities for long stretches for petty drug crimes. This has brought lots of grumbles and raised eyebrows from GOP hard liners who say that he isn’t the right fit for the GOP trying desperately to take back the White House. But the one thing that Paul banks on to separate him...

“I think the biggest threats that they face may not be coming from Iran invading,” said Obama. “It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries.” While the president’s remarks were mostly overlooked by the U.S. and Western media, the comments received headline coverage in news outlets run by Iran and by the Hezbollah jihadist organization. Obama sat down Saturday with Times’ columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who asked about “protecting our Sunni Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia.” Obama explained he thinks “that our friends in the region, our traditional Sunni states, have some very real external threats, but they...

At almost the same time last week that the outgoing U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ronald Machen, gave Lois Lerner a get-out-of-jail free card over her contempt of Congress citation, the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service suffered a huge procedural loss in a court fight in Ohio. In litigation filed in 2013 by conservative organizations targeted by Lerner and her colleagues at the IRS, a federal judge granted a motion to compel and ordered the IRS to produce the names of the 298 targeted organizations identified by the IRS for the Treasury Inspector General. In 2013,...

Two peas in the tea party pod, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are actually looking to do opposite things as candidates for the presidency. Mr. Paul wants to expand the Republican brand, Mr. Cruz wants to narrow it.

HOUSTON, Texas — About six or seven hundred hardcore conservatives gathered outside the new Houston campaign headquarters for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) last Tuesday, an event at which he showed off his presidential prospects as the first declared candidate for 2016. Cruz, the true Washington outsider, has had a hugely successful first two weeks as the first declared candidate for the White House—raising millions of dollars, hiring key staff, and building a formidable operation, all while sticking true to his aggressive conservatism. Cruz has shaken up Washington, the political class, and the media establishment by essentially proving since his announcement...

Scandal: The Justice Department says Lois Lerner, who used her IRS office to target the Tea Party, didn't waive her Fifth Amendment rights before Congress and won't be prosecuted for contempt over her missing emails. Until former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is called to testify under oath before Congress about her multiple private email accounts on a personal server kept in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, she won't get a chance to plead the Fifth Amendment as former IRS official Lois Lerner did in May 2013 before the House Oversight Committee regarding her division's targeting of Tea Party groups.

It looks like Rand Paul will be announcing a presidential run tomorrow according to his new campaign video that says on April 7 a different kind of Republican will take on Washington:   Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has told her staff to be ready at any moment for a presidential campaign announcement: THE HILL – Most staffers hired for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have no idea when she’ll announce, according to a CNN report, but have been told that they must be ready to start their campaign roles at any moment — starting Monday. Until then, they are working out of...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Like many Iowa Republicans, bus driver Bill Jodeit yearns for another Ronald Reagan, a leader to unite the party’s many factions, deliver victory and restore America’s vigor and place in the world. And he may have found what he’s looking for in Ted Cruz. “What he represents, and what Reagan represented, was the shining city on the hill, the best of America. Reagan bombed Libya — he scared our enemies. Now we’ve got a president that’s scared to scare our enemies,” said Jodeit, 49. In week two of the Cruz presidential campaign, the 44-year-old Texas senator...

A federal judge has ordered the IRS to hand over a list of 298 Tea Party groups that were targeted by Obama the IRS for extra scrutiny in an effort to keep them from working against Obama in the 2012 election. This is an important development since the Tea Party groups are looking to be certified for a class action suit. That in itself is a big development for the groups but more importantly, once they are granted class action status, they can begin to ask for large quantities of emails, files and other evidence during the discovery phase.

Ted Cruz’s aggressive pursuit of the evangelical vote began with a deliberate choice of venue for his presidential announcement two weeks ago: Liberty University, which bills itself as the largest Christian university in the world. The Texas Republican senator’s strategic play for Christian conservatives comes into even sharper focus this weekend as he rolls out the first television ad of the 2016 race. Titled “Blessing,” the commercial is aimed directly at evangelical and social conservative voters in early voting states, timed for Easter weekend and slated to air during popular Christian-themed programming. It’s an exercise in narrowcasting that telegraphs exactly...

Lois Lerner didn’t care to speak when she was invited for tea before congressional committees, and it turns out that no charges will be filed against her over her shyness. But that may not be the end of the story for the IRS scandal. A judge in Ohio has consented to a request filed by representatives of several Tea Party groups which calls for the IRS to turn over the full list of conservative groups selected for extra special scrutiny when they filed for nonprofit status. A federal judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to hand over a...

Call me cra-cra . . . but I’m beginning to wonder if NFL Quarterback Cam Newton isn’t being deceived, duped, double-crossed, alas hoodwinked by Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson . . . . Might it be sportsfans the NFL owner’s round-table of fatcat aristocrats has determined the league doesn’t’ want this Black Superman as one of the premier faces of their gazillion dollar operation? Perhaps Jerry’s being “compensated” for more-or-less “tying” Cam’s hands . . . by giving him no legitimate hands to catch his strong-armed projectiles. Cam’s surrounded and protected by mediocrity and I wonder if that’s not by...

Frank Luntz points out from a Washington Post article that recent polling shows Ted Cruz has jumped over nearly the whole crowd of potential candidates, landing him in second place right now: That’s fantastic news. But it is still early so his complete campaign domination may still take a while to emerge.But for now, here’s a great clip of Ted Cruz in South Carolina from today. Listen to how he explains solving the border problem: