Free Republic

With a name like Dixie Flags, you might think the San Antonio-based business would be the last place on earth that would banish Confederate flags — you would be wrong. After 57 years in a business started by his parents, Pete Van de Putte said that Dixie Flag will no longer make or sell the Confederate battle flag. In an interview with the San Antonio Express-News this week, Van de Putte says that in conversations with manufacturers and suppliers, they have all decided to stop making or shipping the controversial flag. “My official opinion is now that it is an offensive item and we...

Democrat Wendy Davis, who was at the receiving end of a double-digit pummeling in the 2014 Texas Governor’s race with Republican Greg Abbott, is attempting to launch a new career as a professional speaker. However, the speakers agency she is seeking to represent her has made comments that seem to indicate they are not entirely sold on her viability. Davis has a profile posted on the website of the American Program Bureau (APB), an agency that claims over fifty years’ experience and the “largest speaker roster in the industry.” Her profile describes her as “a vocal defender of women’s rights...

Before Wendy Davis ran what turned out to be an horrific campaign for Texas governor in 2014, she was launched by her 13-hour filibuster against a stringent abortion bill while wearing a pair of now-iconic pink sneakers. But in running for governor she gave up her state Senate seat, which was claimed by tea partier Konni Burton. On Tuesday Burton massively trolled Davis with some footwear of her own, brandishing on the first day of the Texas Legislature a pair of cowboy boots emblazoned with “Stand for Life”

If you're going to celebrate defeating Wendy Davis in a landslide and becoming the next Governor of the Lone Star State, you might as well live up to the motto, "Everything is bigger in Texas." To celebrate Greg Abbott's victory, four tons of brisket have been ordered for his inauguration party.  Everything's bigger in Texas: WFAA just reported that FOUR TONS of brisket have been ordered for the @GregAbbott_TX inauguration party.— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) January 5, 2015 Four tons is equivalent to 8,000 pounds. Notice how Abbott didn't mention where the brisket was ordered from, after all, that could start a...

Losing hurts. Wanting something to happen so badly you can’t imagine a world where it doesn’t only sets you up for demoralization, after which hopefully the passage of time can bring objectivity and introspection. It’s been almost two months since pro-abortion darling Wendy Davis lost her bid to become the next governor of Texas by a commanding twenty points, with the very demographic she was supposedly rescuing, women, rejecting her by nine. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to have been enough time for RH Reality Check senior political reporter Andrea Grimes to process the defeat analytically. Grimes is righteously indignant that...

Now that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have launched their new friendship initiative with Cuba, progressives are thinking more optimistically about what else might be possible in the remainder of the president’s term. After all, since the November 2014 elections, Obama has moved sharply left on immigration, climate change, and net neutrality. So why shouldn’t the Left hope for more? What might be next on the Obama agenda? Breitbart News has obtained one such to-do list: 10. Marijuana to be completely decriminalized under the ever-expanding doctrine of “prosecutorial discretion.” In the meantime, the administration will push...

Let’s take a few minutes to see why pro-abortion militant Armanda Marcotte believes “It’s Been a Terrible Year for Reproductive Rights.” But we’re going to take her conclusion first because it’s the kind of question-begging argument that pro-abortionists specialize in. And then we will end where Marcotte began. Pro-lifers and those who have no particular stake in the abortion issue have passed a great number of laws going back to 2011 that require that abortion clinics upgrade their physical plant (and therefore the safety of women); that they use the FDA recommended protocol for chemical abortions; that abortionists have admitting...

State Sen.-elect Lois Kolkhorst, laying out her priorities since winning a promotion to the upper chamber, said Wednesday she anticipates a “big revamp or repeal” of the Texas law allowing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants — a move that has the blessing of Gov.-elect Greg Abbott. (SNIP) While Patrick has vowed to repeal the DREAM Act, Abbott’s position has been less straightforward. During his second gubernatorial debate with Democratic opponent Wendy Davis, he said he would not veto a repeal of the law if it came to his desk. His campaign has previously expressed a need to reform the measure...

as 2014 the year of the Un–Bum Steer? So many of our usual suspects behaved themselves (more or less) that we wondered if something was amiss. Texas A&M didn’t do anything too Aggie-like, the Dallas Cowboys were actually in the playoff hunt for a change, and Matthew McConaughey minded his p’s and q’s while picking up an Oscar along the way. Thankfully, politics didn’t let us down. Governor Rick Perry was indicted by a grand jury for abusing his power and coercing a public servant, and he celebrated having his mug shot taken with a jaunt to buy frozen custard....

Wendy Davis, who lost the Nov. 4 gubernatorial election to Republican Greg Abbott, has won Texas Monthly magazine's coveted "Bum Steer of the Year" award for her "train wreck" of a campaign. The annual awards take a snarky jab at Texas politicians, odd news stories and personalities. Fromer winners include Anna Nicole Smith, Gov. Rick Perry, Lance Armstrong and Tom Delay. This year's cover depicts Davis stepping in a cow patty while wearing the bright pink Mizuno "Wave Rider" sneakers she donned during her 2013 filibuster against Texas' new abortion restrictions that brought her into the national spotlight. The magazine...

The biggest mystery that never unraveled in Florida Election 2014 has to be super-uber trial attorney Steve Mostyn. Why would a Houston multimillionaire with no current business in the Sunshine State out-donate billionaire George Soros, giving it to Democrat Charlie Crist's Florida gubernatorial campaign and the Florida Democratic Party? We never did get to the bottom of it. Crist and Mostyn didn't really know each other before the campaign. What did Mostyn want? Soros, founder of the far-left Open Society Institute, who advocates bringing European social democracy to the United States, only gave Crist a smidgen over $1 million. But...

No, red state women didn't save the party. But Ebola was a phony GOP-made crisis and Dems shouldn't have cowered. Thanksgiving is a great time for writers to reckon with whatever we got wrong over the year – and to be grateful that in this day and age we get to write every day, and put mistakes behind us quickly. So with the 2014 midterm election rapidly disappearing in the rearview mirror, I thought I’d reckon with my one big political mistake this past election cycle, as well as one big thing I got, sadly, right. In July 2013, long...

The American Life League released an amusing video this week chronicling the “Planned Parenthood rejects” of 2014. The bottom line is that this year, American voters rejected the Planned Parenthood agenda and sided with pro-life values. Planned Parenthood catalyzed the campaign of failed Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis. If elected, Davis would have undoubtedly been good for PP’s business in Texas, as she demonstrated when she stood for eleven hours trying to filibuster a pro-life bill that the vast majority of Texans backed in 2013. Instead, Texas voters elected the 100% pro-life, Texas Right to Life-endorsed candidate Greg Abbott by...

The Democratic dream of “turning Texas blue” dissolved on Nov. 4. The left had elevated Wendy Davis, an obscure state senator, to superstar status after she delivered an emotional 11-hour panegyric to abortion. She was expected to ride her celebrity status and the “war on women” into the executive mansion in Austin. She had only to defeat a Republican white man. It didn’t quite work out that way, drawing just 38.9 percent of the vote. From the top of the ballot on down, the wreckage from the Democratic effort was strewn across the state from Texarkana westward to El Paso....

I think I can speak for nearly all the pundits in the right side blogosphere when I say that we’re going to miss Wendy Davis. Few candidates have offered more fun coverage and easy peasy headlines than the pink sneaker wonder delivered during the 2014 races. When the end came, it came down like a hammer, and even with all of the rosy pictures being drawn by Texas Democrats about shifting demographics and a new majority, Davis took home a brutal, 20 point drubbing for her efforts. (Prompting Salon to proclaim that White Women had let down the entire state.)...

I am well aware that Wendy Davis lost the Texas governor’s race by a wide margin. It’s salt in a very personal wound. Her campaign meant a lot to me, and to so many other Texas women — thousands of whom stood in line for hours to cast their ballots in support. Greg Abbott won anyway, and he won by a lot. But he didn’t win by a lot across the demographic landscape. I went to the Texas Tribune first for a dissection of the election results, and one piece of information struck me as particularly… wrong. The Tribune cited...

Not that it mattered, of course. Greg Abbott absolutely routed his opponent in the general election on Tuesday night. But it is disconcerting that when a voter went to pull the lever for the governor-elect, his name was...nowhere to be found. Instead, former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s name appeared, a guy who ran for a completely different office in Texas and lost in the primary: The company that supplies Bexar County with iVotronic ballot machines acknowledged Wednesday that a glitch caused an electronic ballot to display the wrong name for the Republican candidate in the race for Texas governor. A...

OK, let’s not mince words. It was abject slaughter in Texas. Republican Greg Abbott beat Democrat Wendy Davis by 21 points [59/38]. Then again, the pro-abortion Davis never really had a chance to win this election in the first place. Yet, from the darkened lair that is Salon.com, comes a horrid story of the “erasure” of votes cast by women of color in Texas, or something. Jenny Kutner, the editor who wrote about her plans to have an abortion, wrote this [emphasis mine]: I am well aware that Wendy Davis lost the Texas governor’s race by a wide margin. It’s salt in...

In one of the most bizzare explanations for losing a campaign ever, a spokesman for pro-abortion Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis blamed the massive loss to pro-life Governor-elect Greg Abbott on ebola. From Breitbart: wendydavis11Texas State Senator Wendy Davis was steamrolled in her bid to become the state’s next governor, and it appears that her staff believes Ebola has something to do with the failure of her campaign. Speaking on behalf of Davis’ campaign, Communications Director Zac Petkanas told the Wall Street Journal, “The losses that you are seeing in very blue states are simply amplified in states like Texas...

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis was steamrolled in her bid to become the state's next governor, and it appears that her staff believes Ebola has something to do with the failure of her campaign. Speaking on behalf of Davis' campaign, Communications Director Zac Petkanas told the Wall Street Journal, "The losses that you are seeing in very blue states are simply amplified in states like Texas where there is already a structural advantage for Republicans," he said. The Journal added that, "Another challenge, [Petkanas] said, was that Texas was at the center of two issues — immigration and the Ebola...