Free Republic

In the first major press conference since his stunning primary victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) on June 10, Virginia's 7th Congressional District Republican nominee Dave Brat focused on the unifying "mainstream American principles we all believe in." Speaking outside his Glenn Allen headquarters in suburban Richmond Thursday morning, Brat noted that his supporters, volunteers, and campaign staffers "are coming from all corners of the Republican party and beyond. We've got long-time Republicans of all stripes. We have Tea Partiers, independents, and libertarians on board." "This is precisely what this campaign is all about from the beginning. We're...

News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch Rupert Murdoch said his "heart sank" after he learned of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's stunning Republican primary loss last week, because he believes Congress needs to tackle the issue of immigration reform this year. Murdoch, the chair of News Corp., has an op-ed in Thursday's Wall Street Journal in which he argued immigration reform "can't wait." After Cantor's loss, immigration reform was almost universally pronounced dead as a possibility this year, as it was perceived to be one of the issues on which Cantor lost favor with his Republican constituents. But Murdoch,...

Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is many things, but circumspect is apparently not one of them. Schweitzer, a Democrat who's said he's mulling a presidential bid in 2016, offered a colorful appraisal of Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the soon-to-be former House majority leader who was defeated in a primary election last week. "Don't hold this against me, but I'm going to blurt it out. How do I say this...men in the South, they are a little effeminate," Schweitzer told National Journal's Marin Cogan in an interview the night of the election. "They just have effeminate mannerisms. If you were just...

The nation of Sweden is demanding that the Obama administration act to deny copyright status to the Minnesota Vikings, claiming the name demeans its citizens and all other Scandinavians. “We can no longer tolerate the use of this disgusting epithet by an American football team,” said Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Milkquist in a letter to President Obama “First of all, ‘football’ means ‘soccer,’ Milkquist wrote. “I realize that this is an unrelated matter, but it really pisses people off in Europe. You only use your foot occasionally in football, whereas in soccer the foot is the only thing you can...

A post-election survey found that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) support for amnesty legislation influenced a majority of voters who ousted him last week in Virginia's seventh congressional district primary that blindsided the mainstream media and rocked establishment Washington.

Lawrenceville, Virginia’s 1,500 residents have just learned how progressives operate. The impoverished and majority black community had no say when the head of the Health and Human Services green lighted the transport of 500 illegal immigrant kids up to age 17 from shelters in the Southwest to St. Paul’s College in the southern Virginia town.Officials of St. Paul’s, a historically black college shut down last year, agreed on June 13 to house the kids for at least five months. Federal government personnel toured the “quaint campus” the day before signing a contract. The $100,000 per month taxpayer-funded bribe the HHS...

In a defiant statement issued Wednesday, the Washington Redskins said the team would appeal the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's decision to revoke the trademark to the team's name and logo on the grounds that they are offensive to Native Americans. The professional football team added that in the meantime, the ruling would have "no effect at all" on its trademark rights while the case is on appeal. The press release even put that in boldface and underlined it. "We are confident we will prevail once again, and that the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s divided ruling will be overturned...

Hard-working Virginians deserve access to affordable health care. This may be Virginia's last chance to expand Medicaid. Contact Gov. McAuliffe today and urge him to veto the state budget! Gov. McAuliffe has a tough decision to make before this Sunday at midnight: whether to sign or veto the state budget. Why? Because state legislators sent the governor a budget that does not include expanding Medicaid for hard-working Virginians who earn up to $16,000 a year. These 400,000 Virginians are our friends, neighbors, family. Many are age 50-64, struggling in jobs without health benefits. They are counting on state lawmakers to...

Yesterday Equality Virginia was honored to receive a proclamation from Governor Terry McAuliffe that recognizes June 2014 as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride month. The proclamation noted that the Commonwealth celebrates its diverse LGBT community, is dedicated to fostering acceptance and preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and that LGBT Virginians contribute to a stronger Commonwealth. We couldn't agree more; and will continue to work towards that ideal. The support we have received from the Governor has been invaluable. He understands that fairness and inclusion are important to Virginia's families and to the commonwealth as a...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the Redskins' trademarks. The petitioners, consisting of five Native Americans, sought to cancel the trademarks based on a section of the Trademark Act that "prohibits registration of marks that may disparage persons or bring them into contempt or disrepute."

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Patent Office ruled Wednesday that the Washington Redskins nickname is "disparaging of Native Americans" and that the team's federal trademarks for the name must be canceled. The 2-1 ruling comes after a campaign to change the name has gained momentum over the past year. The team doesn't immediately lose trademark protection and is allowed to retain it during an appeal.

The Eric Cantor debacle in Virginia last week demanded a storyline, which was no heavy lifting. In the GOP primary a political newbie had wiped the floor with the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Bring on the analysts to find the narrative in the rebuke administered, a rather remote if hard-working political power broker linked more frequently -- here comes the dichotomy -- with Wall Street than Main Street. Cantor, on these terms, updated Cardinal Wolsey's Shakespearean lament from "Henry VIII": "Had I but served my district with half the zeal/I served the Chamber of Commerce...

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Dom Giordano spoke with reporter Sharyl Attkisson about an announcement from the House Ways and Means Committee that the IRS reported losing all of Lois Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011. Lerner was formerly the head of the IRS division on tax-exempt organizations, and Republicans charge she oversaw the targeting of conservative political groups for excess scrutiny in their application for tax-exempt status. Attkisson said there should be procedures in place to prevent something like this from happening. “These emails are not stored on a signal server or a single computer, so if there were a crash...

The Obama administration’s plan to temporarily shelter hundreds of illegal minors at Saint Paul’s College, Lawrenceville, Virginia is on hold.....the White House has continued to see its efforts to house the children throughout the country be thwarted by local opposition. As many as 500 children were to start arriving at a recently closed historically black college. But HHS' plans were stymied, at least temporarily, after town and county officials objected to the short notice and complete lack of community input. “We were stunned,” said Robert F. Pecht III, president of the Lawrenceville Town Council, who learned of the plan Friday...

A plan to house about 500 [illegal aliens] immigrant 'children' at Saint Paul’s College in Lawrenceville was put on hold Monday amid protests from local officials and Rep. Robert Hurt, R-5th, the congressman representing the area. A public hearing will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Brunswick High School auditorium to gain community input, said Kenneth J. Wolfe, spokesman for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. Representatives from the administration will attend the hearing, he said.

It’s now clear why the primary defeat of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, came so completely out of the blue last week: Beltway blindness that put a focus on fund-raising, power-brokering and partisan back-and-forth created a reality distortion field that obscured the will of the people. But that affliction was not Mr. Cantor’s alone; it is shared by the political press. Reporters and commentators might want to pause and wipe the egg off their faces before they go on camera to cluck-cluck about how Mr. Cantor, Republican of Virginia, missed signs of the insurgency that took him out. There...

The progressive Nation, offers up an interesting analysis of the Cantor defeat on Tuesday. They rightly recognize that Dave Brat is a different type of small government candidate and that he may be part of a group coming up in politics right now which is legitimately anti-crony capitalist. We’ll see how Brat does, but at this moment the American political calculus has changed fundamentally for the better. (From The Nation) In his new book, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State (Nation Books), Ralph Nader argues that there are many issues on which an anti-corporate left and...

The Legacy Lives On! Mark’s Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation “Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” --Mark Levin in Liberty and TyrannyWelcome to “The Levin Lounge”… Step in and have a virtual FRink.Taking the country by storm, one radio station at a time – and kicking the BUTTS of the competition! Welcome all, to the most FUN LIVE THREAD on FreeRepublic.com! You can call Mark’s show: 1-877-381-3811

-snip- Cantor was fairly placid during his appearance on ABC’s “This Week” and in an earlier interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” but bristled when ABC correspondent asked him about Ingraham.Cantor zeroed in on Ingraham’s charge that he was “two-faced” and a “phony” on the issue of immigration reform because he touted himself as an opponent of amnesty but also worked on legislation to grant legal status to young illegal immigrants.Ingraham joked that Cantor should have been traded to the Taliban in exchange for American POW Bowe Bergdahl, who is accused of deserting his combat post in Afghanistan.“That suggestion...

Outgoing Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told ABC's Jonathan Karl that he was "absolutely" shocked by his primary loss this week to Tea Party challenger David Brat, a defeat that has sent shockwaves through Washington as the man seen as a possible heir to Speaker John Boehner was dethroned. "Absolutely…I don't think anybody in the country thought that the outcome would be what it was. And, you know, I just am a believer, as I said that night, and subsequently, that there are some things that happen for a reason and we may not be able to really discern...