Free Republic

The Marion County Board of Commissioners voted to remove Marcel “Butch” Verrando from the Marion County Industrial Development Authority on Tuesday afternoon after a television reporter brought to their attention that Verrando had posted racially offensive remarks on Marion County Political Forum’s Facebook page. Verrando, one of the founders of Tea Party Solutions in Ocala, Tuesday morning wrote on Facebook, “My experience was that the only time a black guy applied for work it was because they were on probation and HAD to have a real job.”

A group of conservative lawyers who have been investigating the origins of the IRS scandal for the past year-and-a-half say they’ve uncovered the real roots of the IRS scandal — and they’ll surprise both liberals and conservatives alike. The group, Cause of Action, which has subpoenaed thousands of pages of documents from the agency and is still embroiled in litigation with it, says the targeting of conservative groups resulted as much from IRS personnel merely following the instructions laid out in their employee handbook, the Internal Revenue Manual, as from any political bias at the top. When the scandal broke...

I didn't envy Ismael Ozanne in the least when he took the podium for his news conference this last Tuesday. The Dane County district attorney looked visibly nervous, dabbing sweat from his face several times over the course of the long, detailed speech that led to his eventual rationale for and decision not to press criminal charges against Madison police officer Matt Kenny in the shooting death of biracial teenager Tony Robinson. Ozanne is himself biracial, his mother a black woman who was involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Ozanne become the first...

House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) said Thursday that he does not support an idea backed by Senate Republican leadership to temporarily extend ObamaCare subsidies if the Supreme Court cripples the law. "I don't think that I would be able to be supportive of continuing the subsidies beyond what the Court would allow," Price told The Hill. A plan from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to continue the subsidies until 2017 has been co-sponsored by Senate Republican leaders. Price is one of the most prominent Republicans to come out against the idea. The idea behind the temporary continuation is that...

Release dull, ultra-sanitized, uncontroversial autobiography that folks will own but never read. Check. Buy and memorize The Quotable Ronald Reagan. Check.Lose the beer gut. Camouflage the bald spot. Hire writers to concoct explanation for all that weed smoked in high school? Check. Check. Check.It is now safe to enter the Republican primary. But there is still one major problem left: the current state of the Republican party. Tea Partiers, evangelicals, establishment RINOs, Libertarians, neocon foreign policy hawks, and moderates. According to Dr. Stella Rouse, associate professor and Director of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of...

On April 17, New Hampshire hosted a Republican Leadership Summit, which drew GOP presidential hopefuls and over 500 Republican activists. The horse-and-buggy show highlighted and defined the 2016 Republican field. Covering all 19 prospective candidates was a stretch, but I will share my insights on a few here. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: My Wisconsin skeet-shooter friend Margaret claims Walker is a "good man." Is that enough though to win the presidency? Billionaire election investor David Koch seems to think Walker will be the nominee. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) almost ruined the governor's reputation by saying, "I don't...

Russ Feingold, the only US senator who voted against the 2001 Patriot Act, has announced he will launch a campaign to regain his seat in 2016. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, lost a re-election bid in 2010 to Ron Johnson, a Tea Party Republican. Feingold had served three terms. In a video released on Thursday and first obtained by the Huffington Post, Feingold says that “billionaires and big corporations are calling the shots” and “we need to get started fixing all this”. “Let’s fight together for change,” Feingold says. “That means helping to bring back to the US Senate strong independence,...

And now Mike Huckabee, the Gomer Pyle of unadulterated hatred masquerading as good ol' religion, has, again, joined the Republican race for the presidency. Distressed because of the success Ted Cruz has had making inroads to the virulent right wing religious/racist base of the Christian Right, Huckabee made sure to fluff his announcement with the prerequisite xenophobia necessary to show he's still The One. A little mention of the evils of Islam here, a little homophobic red meat there- Huck's on the move to shore up those right wing evangelical votes. The problem is that Huckabee's all hat and no...

Pamela Geller endorsed Ted Cruz for President Sunday, but hardly anyone noticed. The activist and outspoken critic of Islamic extremists made the endorsement in a Sunday blog post titled "Ted Cruz on Jihad in Texas: ‘Thankfully one police officer helped them meet their virgins.’” Though that headline doesn't offer a clue about her decision to back the Senator from Texas in the 2016 election, she didn't bury the political lede. Here are her first two paragraphs: I endorse Cruz for 2016. The media is going to try to use this against him. But they have been thoroughly discredited in the...

Review of "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission" by Charles Murray.BY THE PEOPLE: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission By Charles Murray Crown Forum. 319 pages. $27. From the tea party to Occupy Wall Street to #BlackLivesMatter, America has spent much of this young century questioning its premises. And as the battles over federal spending, economic inequality and racial injustice continue, Charles Murray comes forward to identify another threat to the nation’s purpose and self-image: the rise of the regulatory state, a rapacious shadow government that has left us “at the end of the American project as the founders intended it.”...

Scott Walker said in 2008 that the government "needs to do more to give people freedom back" by fighting the "poverty pimps in our society," referring to government officials and community-based organizations that, he said, use poverty for political power. ...

* Fiorina claims in Rising to the Challenge that John McCain asked her to help Palin 'get up to speed on the economic issues facing the country' * 'I never did get the chance to fulfill Senator McCain's request ... although I made numerous requests to meet with her during the campaign' * To this day Fiorina, a contender for the 2016 GOP nomination, says she still hasn't met the Tea Party superstar * Palin endorsed Fiorina in 2010 when she was competing in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in California, but it was via Facebook * A...

When the Tea Party began in 2009, even those of us at the heart of the movement couldn’t have predicted how it would permanently alter America’s political landscape. Just six years later, it’s undeniably at the heart of American politics in spite of countless attacks from the political establishment and from the national media. Because of the Tea Party’s strength and influence, candidates who call themselves conservative must prove their bona fides to successfully court any grassroots support at all. Sen. Ted Cruz is a great example. Clearly a Tea Party favorite, Cruz has stood strong in the Senate for...

Good morning Austin: Today’s question. Who is more populist – Bernie Sanders or Ted Cruz? Bernie, right?I mean his campaign is all about – all about – wealth and income inequality and breaking up the incredible concentration of American wealth in the hands of a tiny few. He’s so far left in the Democratic Party that he’s not even actually a member of the Democratic Party. At a time when Democrats are afraid of being called “liberal,” he’s proud to call himself a socialist. He’s running against the Koch Brothers and Cruz is a creature of the Kochs. So, no...

Seasoned conservatives celebrated when Ted Cruz announced his bid for presidency. Mr. Cruz is the Tea Party's favorite candidate and he is despised by liberals. Ted Cruz refuses to set aside his belief in traditional values to appease "moderates" and "swing voters". Ted Cruz knows that we need to look to our freedom loving, Christian past to get this nation back on track. The sad thing is that Rand Paul also announced he will run. Mr. Paul is one of these "libertarians". Even the word itself, "libertarian" sounds too much like liberal. Rand Paul is liberal on social issues such...

If you read anything tonight, read this. Some protestors in Baltimore are receiving a lot of criticism from conservatives for the way that they are expressing themselves. I find it interesting that one of the most conservative & most vocal groups, the Tea Party libertarians, are named after an event where colonists destroyed property in Boston in order to make a point about their rights. I find it very interesting that these same conservatives celebrate our violent succession from the motherland, & throw elaborate celebrations on the 4th of July to mark the day of our independence. I've not once...

A government watchdog says the IRS has taken significant steps to stop agents from targeting political groups based on their names and policy positions. The agency’s inspector general says the IRS is doing a better job processing applications for tax-exempt status. In a report issued Thursday, he says the IRS has eliminated intrusive, unnecessary questions, and is processing applications faster. …

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is putting a lot of emphasis on Iowa in his presidential campaign, is continuing to notch endorsements from some well-known activists in the state. Former Secretary of State Matt Schultz told the Quad-City Times on Wednesday he is endorsing Cruz for president. "I’m looking for somebody who’s going to stand up and fight for our country, and he gives me hope we can turn things around," said Schultz, who is now the Madison County Attorney. "He's not going to back down from a fight." In a letter to two dozen members of the Cruz...

An inspector general investigating the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups has found thousands of emails from Lois Lerner, the agency official at the center of that controversy, according to committees involved in the probe. Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) said it found roughly 6,400 emails either to or from Lerner from between 2004 and 2013 that it didn’t think the IRS had turned over to lawmakers, the congressional committees said. The committees have yet to examine the emails, aides on Capitol Hill said. The IRS said last year that Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011, leaving it...

You're invited to join the Tyranny Response Team and other real Tea Party folks at our final FREEP in defense of 2,000 years of real Christian marriage. This will be held in front of the Supreme Court of the United States on Tuesday, April 27, 2015 from 9:00am until 12:00 noon. Media inquiries, call 1-202-288-8011 Simple rules of conduct are: no violence, no racism, no profanity, obey the law and treat uniformed law enforcement officials with respect.