Free Republic

Via Red State, not a huge deal but worth flagging in case there’s another poll this weekend showing his numbers dipping a bit in New York on the eve of the primary. That would suggest a trend, and that would be a big deal given what’s at stake. To be clear: Trump’s going to romp in NY on Tuesday night, winning by 25 points or better, and will pick up something like 75 delegates even in a worst-case scenario. But since his path to 1,237 is so difficult, it matters a lot whether he ends up with 75 in New...

President Barack Obama’s income fell to just over $436,000 in 2015, the lowest of his presidency, and he and first lady Michelle Obama paid nearly $81,500 in taxes, according to tax returns the White House released on Friday. The president’s more modest adjusted gross income reflected book sales that have continued to fall off in the years since he last published in 2006. The first family paid an effective tax rate of 18.7 percent. The Obamas also reported donating $64,000 to charity, or about 15 percent of their income. Their largest charitable donation, $9,000, went to the Fisher House Foundation,...

Bernie Sanders issued a global call to action at the Vatican on Friday to address “immoral and unsustainable” wealth inequality and poverty, using the high-profile gathering to echo one of the central platforms of his presidential campaign. The Democratic senator from Vermont cited Pope Francis and St. John Paul II repeatedly during his speech to the Vatican conference commemorating the 25th anniversary of a landmark teaching document from John Paul on social and economic justice after the Cold War. […] “We don’t choose to politicize the pope,” Sanders told attendees, “but his spirit and courage and the fact, if I...

CASPER, Wyo. — On Saturday morning, while his two rivals for the Republican nomination stay back east, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, will fly to this city to address the state GOP convention. The potential prize: Fourteen delegates to the national convention in Cleveland. The competition: Hard to find. On Friday, with no explanation to either party officials or media, Donald Trump's campaign announced that Sarah Palin would cancel her scheduled speech here. Additionally, while Republicans gathered for a barbecue and fried chicken dinner, the campaign of Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, was invisible, and the Trump campaign was clearly outmatched. The...

Reality Check has already shown how “Neutral” Conservative News Websites Breitbart and The Daily Wire are actually fronts for the Ted Cruz Campaign. In our article “The $25 Million Dollar Trump Take Down” we clearly show that the owners of those sites donated over $25 Million Dollars to the Cruz Campaign and then use their websites to promote him. But is Talk Radio also on the take? Reality Check dug into Cruz FEC Filings and discovered the Cruz PACs paid a Talk Radio Insider over $8 Million Dollars, and the endorsements of Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and others quickly came...

DePaul University students, don't fear! There will be no more political "chalking" at your school. Apparently, someone wrote - with chalk - on a campus sidewalk last week: "Make DePaul Great Again." The message sent students and staff into a tailspin. The xenophobia! The bigotry! The racism! "While these chalk messages are part of national agendas in a heated political battle, they appeared on campus at a time of significant racial tension in our country and on college campuses. DePaul is no exception," DePaul's vice president for student affairs Eugene Zdziarski wrote in a campus-wide email obtained by Campus Reform....

As the Republican presidential race has narrowed to a contest between two candidates the Republican elites despise, each one with a razor-thin path to the nomination, the conversation among party figures in Washington has rapidly shifted from the desperate to the absurd. They talk of an “open convention” in Cleveland, where party leaders could parachute in a third, more favored candidate and render the entire GOP primary process null and void. House Speaker Paul Ryan, one focus of such talk, ruled himself out at a press conference on Tuesday. “I do not want, nor will I accept, the Republican nomination,”...

The Black Flag in the Balkans: The Islamic State's Links to Bosnia By John Dyer April 10, 2016 | 9:00 am The German magazine Der Spiegel recently reported that the Islamic State is finding fertile ground for its ideology in rural Bosnia. Der Spiegel reports that in some tiny, remote villages in the country's north, residents practice Sharia law and fly the militant group's black flag. 'In some remote villages, the black flag of IS is flown..." the article says. "The Sarajevo public prosecutor responsible for terrorism investigations admits that there are places in the northern part of the country...

Media coverage of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia typically noted that it reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage. Slate’s William Saletan acknowledges the literal truth of that reporting, but suggested in an April 8 article that the document contains seeds that will sprout into Vatican acceptance of same-sex unions, though he admits that process “might take centuries.” Saletan argued that in time, the Church will extend Amoris Laetitia’s treatment of infertile heterosexual couples to same-sex couples: “This double standard, between homosexuality and other forms of infertility, is the cracked pillar at the foundation of the church’s policy against same-sex...

April 16, 2016 Saturday of the Third Week of Easter Reading 1 Acts 9:31-42 The Church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samariawas at peace. She was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit she grew in numbers. As Peter was passing through every region,he went down to the holy ones living in Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas,who had been confined to bed for eight years, for he was paralyzed. Peter said to him,“Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed.” He got...

Trump: Cruz supported Chinese currency manipulation By Ben Schreckinger 04/15/16 09:17 PM EDT HARTFORD, Conn. — Donald Trump charged Ted Cruz with bowing to foreign interests and supporting the Chinese government's manipulation of its currency at a rally here on Friday night Trump lodged the accusation during remarks on the decline of Connecticut's manufacturing sector, which he blamed on the entrance of China into the World Trade Organization and the country’s devaluing of its currency. “Cruz wants it to go on because somebody probably representing interests in China says, ‘This is what we want,’” Trump said. Trump may be referring...

Businessman Donald Trump’s seemingly unstoppable presidential campaign might be losing its momentum. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s recent sweep in Colorado put up another speed bump in Trump’s path to the Republican nomination. While Trump claimed the Colorado outcome was “rigged” and “totally unfair,” his campaign is simply no longer winning all aspects of the race. Prediction markets are reacting to this latest hiccup for the Trump campaign. As the possibility of a contested convention in July looks more and more likely, Trump’s numbers have dipped. Prediction markets are where people bet on the possibilities of certain outcomes in politics, sports...

"To be suspicious is not a fault. To be suspicious all the time without coming to a conclusion is the defect." -- Lu Xun Donald Trump and his campaign generals have lodged serious allegations and complaints about the 2016 Republican Party rules governing the election of delegates to the National Convention via primaries, caucuses, county/local and state conventions or a combination of these. Words such as "rigged", "fixed", "corrupt" and "broken" have been thrown at the party on state levels in the aftermath of delegates allegedly being 'poached' from the Trump Camp by the Cruz Camp, with the conspiratorial assistance...

One of the two firefighters who were shot Friday night in Maryland has died of his injuries, officials confirmed late Friday. ... The incident began at about 7:30 p.m., when firefighters and police received a 911 call from a "concerned individual" who was worried about the resident of a home in the 5000 block of Sharon Road in Temple Hills in Prince George's County, Stawinski said. The firefighters tried to communicate with the resident, but there was no response. As they tried to go into the house to help the resident, the resident fired several rounds that hit the two...

The US Navy has taken three torpedoes to its bow and is going down. These are trying times for the US Navy. It seems that every two weeks or so there is some crisis engulfing the once proud, competent and steadfast organization that used to be a bedrock of the nation’s defense. The performance and conduct of the US Navy lately has seemed like something emanating from a Third World, Banana Republic coastal defense force; heavy on medals and light on brains, skills and tenacious fighting spirit. Two days ago the USS Donald Cook was taunted and embarrassed by Russian...

In the latest survey of likely Republican presidential primary voters, conducted by Optimus, a Republican pollster, businessman and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump garners 49% of all respondents, followed by Ohio Governor John Kasich witb 24%, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz rounds out the field with 13%. This sampling was the largest that we have seen in New York State during the primary season as a total of 14,201 respondents answered the call, and were surveyed between April 11-14, 2016. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 1% overall.

Every day, hundreds of people call BART’s San Francisco stations home. One hallway in particular tells the tale: A long stretch connecting Powell Station’s eastern stairwells with the escalators to BART trains features floor-to-ceiling advertisements, while at least a dozen homeless lay slumped against them on a daily basis. Now BART may partner with San Francisco to help these homeless up and out of the BART stations, and into city services. BART’s latest budget proposal includes $50,000 to fund a partnership with San Francisco’s Human Services Agency to help the homeless.

British soldiers have provided Saudi Arabian forces with training for cruise missile and artillery attacks since Riyadh entered the war in Yemen, despite international condemnation of the kingdom’s air strikes and claims they have killed scores of civilians. The details of the training were revealed on Friday after freedom of information requests, made by the human rights group Reprieve and seen by Middle East Eye, were released. The Ministry of Defence has maintained that British forces are not helping Saudi forces direct strikes, select targets or conduct operations in Yemen. However, information in the FoI shows how close military cooperation...

Bad Newz For Cruz A series of brand new trend polls highlight an ongoing discussion/trend. With increased visibility Senator Ted Cruz support decreases. It would be inaccurate to say Cruz is collapsing, if it were not for multiple polls indicating the same trend line. However, when you have three completely disparate polls, indicating an almost identical retraction, you cannot dismiss the reality. Fox News and IPSOS Rueters both identify the issue on a national scale, and within the CBS polling of Pennsylvania voters you find the specifics as to why. First, the Fox Trend Poll showing Donald Trump extending his...

One of the suspects from the March 22 Brussels bombings was the subject of a 2005 documentary on successful integration in Sweden. Osama Krayem, a 23-year-old Swedish citizen, is awaiting trial in Belgium for his part in the Brussels bombings which killed 32 civilians. Krayem was supposed to be the second suicide bomber at the Maalbeek subway station, but got cold feet. Along with his brother and father, 11-year-old Osama Krayem were featured in the documentary “Without borders – a movie about sports and integration.” The documentary focused on how Krayem and his brother found their place as immigrants in...

DO NOT VOTE ON THIS THREAD. This is the nightly DISCUSSION thread for the ongoing 2016 Free Republic Caucus. Per caucus rules, no comments are allowed on the caucus thread itself - hence this open chat thread. If you'd like to vote in the caucus, please look in the sidebar for the link, or check downthread here. Thanks, and let 'er rip! Windy Free Republic Caucus 2016 04/16

Possible Republican presidential candidates in 2016

Welcome to the Free Republic CaucusPlease read the rules, and participate according to the guidelines provided.  Thank you. REMEMBER:  To find the Caucus thread for the day, Search "Caucus" The New York (95) Primary takes place in three days. Only vote on this thread on: 04/16/2016  another thread will pop up moments before: 04/17/2016Wait to vote until 12:00 midnight EST, and don't vote after 12:00 midnight EST at the at the end of the day.  Look for the new thread. Votes outside the 24 hour period, will not be counted.  Give it three minutes or so on each end, so you...

He won a big victory in Wisconsin. He pierced the Donald Trump mystique. He even got some of the Capitol Hill lawmakers who regard him as a revolutionary and renegade to slink cautiously into his corner. By all logic, this should be a Ted Cruz moment — if only the next primary weren’t in New York. But on Tuesday, New Yorkers go to their polling places, and though Cruz has been the beneficiary of the calendar before — his performance on Super Tuesday helped force out of the race Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a demographically identical and philosophically similar...

Priebus says he'd prefer GOP nominee run against Clinton than Sanders By Julia Manchester, CNN Updated 2229 GMT (0529 HKT) April 15, 2016 Washington (CNN) — Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday he would prefer the GOP nominee run against Hillary Clinton than Bernie Sanders. "I'd rather run against Hillary Clinton because she's defined, she's not liked, and in a popular cultural vote in America, that's a really important question, and she doesn't do well with that question," Priebus told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I don't know what is going to happen with the FBI. So put her unpopularity...

Sarah Palin is warning of a revolt if Republican establishment powers try to take the party nomination away from either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. "How dare they? Oh these, arrogant, arrogant political operatives who underestimate the wisdom of the people,” Palin said in an interview with The Associated Press, when she was asked if she was concerned about what would happen if the party tried to choose someone who is not currently running for president, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan. (For his part, Ryan has emphatically taken himself out of the running.) "We will rise up and say...

BATON ROUGE, April 14, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has signed an executive order that critics say will open the floodgates for discrimination lawsuits to be filed against businesses and will prevent people of faith from freely exercising their religion. The order, which was signed yesterday, adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” alongside such immutable characteristics as race, sex, and national origin in the state's anti-discrimination policy. All firms that accept state contracts must adopt a similar policy. “We are fortunate enough to live in a state that is rich with diversity,” said Gov. Edwards on Wednesday....

A new filming technique has captured the incredible abilities of fighter jets in stunning detail. The footage, from California-based Blue Sky Aerial, shows Gripen fighter jets flying over Sweden. In what looks like a computer animation, the multirole fighters manoeuvre into rolls and send out a series of flares at speeds of 345mph. The video was captured using BlueSky's GSS 520 5 axis system, which can work at speeds of up to 300 knots per hour. The cameraman was riding in the back of a Saab 105 and filming the Saab JAS 39 Gripen fighter jet cruising over the icy...

Meet Abu Ammaar Yasir Kazi. He's not some crazy Imam in the Middle East. He’s a college professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, who was described by New York Times Magazine as "one of the most influential conservative clerics in American Islam." In lectures to students at this American college, he blasts those in his class as being filthy and impure. He then steps up his vitriolic diatribes, by tearing into Christians, where he compares them to feces and urine, saying they are the "most evil of evils." He then instructs his students that they should engage in jihad...

Conference attendees called for a new way of thinking 'consistent with Gospel nonviolence'Participants at a conference hosted by the Vatican have called for the Catholic Church to renounce its just war doctrine and for Pope Francis to write an encyclical on nonviolence and “just peace.” In a closing statement, attendees at the conference, which was sponsored by the Vatican’s justice and peace office and Pax Christi International, the Catholic peace movement, said that too often the doctrine had been used to justify and endorse military action rather than prevent it. Church teaching has long allowed for “just wars” — the...

Tensions between the Republican Party and its own front-runner erupted into a full-blown public battle as top party officials rebuked Donald Trump on Friday for alleging that the GOP primary system was “rigged” against him. The dispute, which has been simmering for days, centers on Trump’s failure to win any delegates last weekend in Colorado, which selected its 34 delegates at a party convention rather than a primary attended by voters. All went to Trump’s chief rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The outcome prompted a daily stream of complaints and allegations this week from Trump, who wrote in an...

Full title - "[Catholic Caucus] World Over - 2016-04-14 – Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation on the Family with Raymond Arroyo" FR GERALD MURRAY and ROBERT ROYAL...the Papal Posse...join us to discuss Pope Francis' recently released Apostolic Exhortation, AMORIS LAETITIA (The Joy of Love). Excerpt - see video of this EWTN program segment at "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Avd7bCiV0".

As Ted Cruz-mania skyrockets exciting millions http://bit.ly/1SHWzWW, I still get emails from professed Christians ripping me to shreds for choosing Cruz over Trump. These anti-Cruz Christians dig deep, coming up with reasons so weak not to choose Cruz that they equal saying Ted Cruz took another kid’s candy when he was seven. Then, they fall back on rehashing Cruz’s eligibility. http://bit.ly/22nhGD6 Frankly, anti-Cruz Christians have me scratching my head. Clearly, these Christians are willing to overlook all of Mr Trump’s shortcomings, anti-Christian political positions http://bit.ly/23mAGaI and liberal leanings. http://bit.ly/1LUzCxd Meanwhile, they “passionately” leave no stone unturned, relentless in their attempts...

The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump will win the New York primary with well over 50 percent and win nearly all of the Empire State’s 95 delegates this upcoming Tuesday. While this is certainly a possibility, there is also a chance, and not a far-fetched one that Trump will finish with under 50 percent of the vote. If that happens, it will signal a seismic shift in the race for the Republican nomination. A look at recent polling makes it seem almost certain that Trump will finish with over 50 percent of the vote. The current New York Real...

McLennan County District Attorney Abelino Reyna finally responded to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Waco defendant Matt Clendennen yesterday. The suit was filed on November 17, 2015 and is one of nine similar suits filed that day or the next by defendants charged with “Engaging in Organized Criminal Activity with the Intent to Commit or Conspire to Commit Murder, Capital Murder, or Aggravated Assault” in the aftermath of what Clendennen is calling the “Twin Peaks Incident” and Reyna is calling “The Battle at Twin Peaks.” The plaintiffs are represented by Dallas attorney Don Tittle or Dallas attorney Clint...

Senator Ben Sasse announced that he and his wife have voted early in the Nebraska GOP primary for his colleague Senator Ted Cruz. Senator Sasse has been vocally opposed to the current Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. Back in February, he penned an open letter to Trump supporters on Facebook explaining that in his view, Mr. Trump is not committed to defending the United States Constitution and the principles of conservatism.

(Reality Check 753) Reality Check has already shown how “Neutral” Conservative News Websites Breitbart and The Daily Wire are actually fronts for the Ted Cruz Campaign. In our article “The $25 Million Dollar Trump Take Down” we clearly show that the owners of those sites donated over $25 Million Dollars to the Cruz Campaign and then use their websites to promote him. But is Talk Radio also on the take? Reality Check dug into Cruz FEC Filings and discovered the Cruz PACs paid a Talk Radio Insider over $8 Million Dollars, and the endorsements of Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and...

Despite only winning his home state of Ohio, Kasich continued to defend his staying in the race as he spoke to voters and host Chris Matthews at an MSNBC town hall in New York Thursday. Audience member Steve Young confronted Kasich on his "responsibility to voters," reminding the Ohio governor that his poll numbers don’t seem to indicate a GOP nomination. "Don't you think at some point you have a responsibility to voters to recognize the fact that they're not voting for you," Young asked, noting that Kasich’s message does not seem to have resonated. ... Kasich again made the...

Ronald Reagan said years ago "If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism." Well if you paraphrase these words and replace America with Germany they would be prophetic Just in the past week or two here are three stunning examples-- 1.The liberal German government instructed the police to raid the homes of people who posted on the internet that they did not like Germany's immigration policy. http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/07/police-raid-social-media-posts/ 2. A liberal justice minister came out and said that billboards that feature women in underwear or bathing suits need to be banned because they are what...

The widely circulated claim that same-sex families are “no different” from intact, heterosexual families is not settled science. New studies suggest that children do best when they are raised by their biological parents in a stable, intact marriage.

Garry Kasparov, a Russian pro-democracy leader, has apparently been taking a lot of heat from Bernie Sanders supporters who think they know more about socialism than he does. His response: How are you all going to “lecture me”?

Bernie Sanders released his full 2014 federal tax return Friday, revealing that he mostly lives off a six-figure government salary and donated about 4 percent of his family’s income to charitable causes. Sanders and his wife, Jane, donated $8,350 to charity while reporting an adjusted gross income of about $205,000 that year, according to the couple's joint tax return. The share of his family’s income that went to charity was about one-third the percentage of income that his primary opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, gave to charitable groups. The Sanders campaign...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Donald Trump's presidential campaign has all but thrown in the towel in Wyoming ahead of Saturday's Republican convention. The billionaire businessman's campaign made a conscious decision not to commit resources to Wyoming, according to Alan Cobb, a senior Trump adviser. Trump picked only up a single delegate in last month's Wyoming county conventions while rival Ted Cruz scored nine. There are 14 more delegates at stake at this weekend's state convention. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press from the convention site in Casper, Cobb said Friday that he expects Cruz to sweep what remains of...

There has to be dozens of possibilities for a Hillary Catch Phrase as an answer to Bernie's. After being in the national political scene for over twenty years, we could come up with quite a list of catch phrases for Hillary starting with "Feel The"or "Feel My". You could probably name one for every year she has been in the spotlight. Example: 1997, "Feel The Monica". For 2015, "Feel The Wipe" pretty much suits her to a Tee.

A new study in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics finds that the kids really are all right. Despite the ongoing cultural debate around same-sex parenting, the new study finds the children of same-sex parents are just as healthy emotionally and physically as the children of different-sex parents. […] The study found that there were no differences in the children when it came to their general health, their emotional difficulties, their coping behaviors and their learning behaviors. What the study found to be more indicative predictors of these behaviors were the relationships between the parents, the parents and child,...

So it might come as a surprise to American entrepreneurs that there is at least one group to whom the federal government is providing direct assistance for business start-ups: illegal aliens. In fact, these recipients of your taxpayer funds fall into an even more restricted category: illegal aliens who have been deported back to their native land.

If you’ve ever paid taxes, you probably agree that the tax code is entirely too complicated. To that end, you would probably also enjoy having a simple, easy-to-understand one-page form that you can fill out in about ten minutes and be done with your taxes. For what it’s worth, the Tax Man agrees with you. I don’t have many nice things to say about IRS Commissioner John Koskinen (in fact, Congress should impeach him…), but when asked at a Congressional hearing this week about the flat tax, this was his response: Clearly, if you had a two-page form or a...

Parents of fourth-graders at an Oregon elementary school were 'furious' to discover that their children - some as young as nine - had read an explicit sex education book featuring cartoons of sex acts and masturbation, Fox 12 Oregon reported Thursday. In a letter to parents, Hudson Park Elementary School admitted that copies of 'It's Perfectly Normal,' a guide to sexual health aimed at children ten and up, were passed around to students. . . . The book is aimed at children aged 10 and up, and features cartoon depictions of male and female teens and adults. Acts featured in...

Ted Cruz told a CNBC reporter that he doesn't care where his campaign money comes from. politico.com reports: Appearing on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Friday, Cruz again referred to the Dodd-Frank Act as benefiting large banks at the expense of the "little guy," or smaller community banks. Co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin then pressed the candidate about his "rivals" criticizing him for soliciting donations from the same people whose industry has spoken out on the campaign trail. “Look, we’ll take money from anyone. In fact, Andrew, I would love a check right now. It’s $2,700, or you could go to TedCruz.org," Cruz...

One of the first United Methodist Church congregations to join the LGBT lobbying group, Reconciling Ministries Network, will close next month. St. Paul United Methodist Church of Denver, Colorado, a theologically liberal congregation that became the third church to become a Reconciling congregation, will soon close its doors. The Rev. Jessica Rooks, head of St. Paul UMC, told The Christian Post the final worship service will be held on Sunday, May 22. "St. Paul has opened its doors and built relationships with the LGBTQ community, the homeless and hungry in Denver, those struggling with addition, and individuals who struggle to...