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Why a Contested Convention Favors Cruz By Eliana Johnson    — March 23, 2016 Meet Curly Haugland, former chairman of the North Dakota Republican party and current Republican national committeeman. Haugland is one of just 112 delegates who will arrive unbound to this summer’s Republican convention in Cleveland, free to cast a vote for any candidate he chooses on a first…

A top Homeland Security official told Border Patrol agents the Obama administration has “no intention of deporting” many of the illegal immigrants caught trying to sneak into the country, ordering instead that they be released so they don’t clog up the courts, a leading advocate for agents testified to Congress. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said…

In his latest column, George Will charges that Senate Republicans have had an “incoherent response to the Supreme Court vacancy” that “is a partisan reflex in search of a justifying principle.” But it’s Will’s attack on Senate Republicans that lacks coherence: 1. Will purports to present five reasons that Senate Republicans have provided for their determination to keep the vacancy…

The Republican party’s incoherent response to the Supreme Court vacancy is a partisan reflex in search of a justifying principle. The multiplicity of Republican rationalizations for their refusal to even consider Merrick Garland radiates insincerity. Republicans instantly responded to Antonin Scalia’s death by proclaiming that no nominee, however admirable in temperament, intellect, and experience, would be accorded a hearing. They…

As the White House prepares to choose a nominee for the Supreme Court, they are continuing to suggest that they might nominate a supposed “moderate.” But Garland has a long record, and, among other things, it leads to the conclusion that he would vote to reverse one of Justice Scalia’s most important opinions, D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the…

President Obama has announced Judge Merrick Garland, chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, as his Supreme Court nominee to replace the recently deceased conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia. The president praised Garland for “his decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence” and as a consensus builder. What the president was subtly alluding to in his…

The “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC did their part on Thursday night to continue the standard set earlier in the day that President Barack Obama’s latest Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is nothing but a “moderate” and personally pleaded with Republicans to consider placing him on the Court. While two networks mentioned comments made by current Vice…

Donald Trump’s loss in winner-take-all Ohio keeps alive the possibility of a contested GOP convention that denies Trump the nomination. Last August, I pointed out that Trump could still run for president as an independent even if he lost the Republican nomination because the filing deadline for independents in every state is much later than for those who run in the…

A bigger tent, Donald Trump as ringmaster—and an animal unlike the old elephant. Super Tuesday II didn’t so much yield results as reveal continuing trends. Donald Trump up, Hillary Clinton up. This is what I hear from Washington’s Republican political leaders and operatives: Wait and see. There’s still time for Mr. Trump to self-destruct, for voters to start to see…

Quite a few Donald Trump fans are convinced that their man would beat Hillary Clinton resoundingly in a general election, carrying a slew of blue states where Republicans aren’t generally competitive in general elections. Wayne Allyn Root’s assessment is typical. “New York is only the start,” he wrote. Trump can win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio, too, Root contends, because there…

Students at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., sing before Donald J. Trump delivers a speech on Jan. 18, 2016. Donald Trump’s candidacy has sparked a civil war inside American Christianity. Trump’s popularity among self-identified evangelical Christians has led national figures in American Christianity to question whether large swaths of the church even know what their faith teaches, and how it…