Free Republic

Ted Cruz has been earning himself somewhat of a “bad-boy” reputation in political circles these days. He’s been characterized as a bully by his colleagues and the left has demonized Cruz as a rogue Tea Party Terror bent on destroying the fine, upstanding, hard-working men and women of Congress. Recently mysterious posters of Cruz photoshopped onto a tattooed torso with a cigarette in his mouth began popping up all over Los Angeles..... Apparently Sabo’s art has inspired others to pay their own form of tribute to the GOP’s bad boy. This work of art popped up on YouTube just this...

Dmytro Yarosh, a leader of the Right Sector movement, addresses a rally in central Independence Square in Kiev [Caption from] Reuters The leader of the far-right Ukranian Nationalist Pravy Sektor (Right Sektor) party has reportedly threatened to attack Russia's lucrative gas pipeline which travels through Ukraine to prevent the Kremlin from sparking a "Third World War.' ...

Former Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs appeared on the “Meet the Press” roundtable Sunday and laid bare truths about Washington, and his former boss’s spokesman. As the show’s featured guest, White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer painted a ludicrously optimistic portrait of the 2014 midterm elections for Democrats, stating emphatically, “I believe we will keep the Senate.” Later in the show, Gibbs admitted the Democrats could “absolutely” lose the Senate. He added: “If [Obama] doesn’t get more involved in raising money and making this a choice, as Dan Pfeiffer said, you lose the Senate. And, if you lose the...

Fresh off a congressional trip to Ukraine, Sen. Chris Murphy on Monday rejected criticisms that Russia’s posture on Ukraine has something to do with the failures of the Obama administration, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin is improvising as he goes. “I think he is making this up as we go along,” Murphy said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” of Putin’s moves into the Crimean region of Ukraine. “I worry, though, that he’s going to realize he needs to move further than Crimea in order to get the end that he desires here.”

Barack Obama’s presidency will come to an end. The legacy of pain he will leave behind will not -- at least for years to come. He and his fellow Democrats plan to keep their grip on the levers of power-even if they lose control of Congress and the White House. And they will do so with “invisible hands” gone but not forgotten. Every first-term president has a single compelling desire: to win a second term. But for Obama and his liberal allies to accomplish a second major goal, to “fundamentally transform America,” requires more than two terms. Their agenda depends...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and his Democrats face the challenge of limiting fallout from Obamacare and drumming up voter enthusiasm in the November congressional elections, problem areas exposed by the loss of a Florida candidate who had led in the polls. The defeat of Democrat Alex Sink by Republican David Jolly in a special election last Tuesday has raised anxiety levels for Democrats as they struggle to hold on to control of the Senate in November and pick up seats in the Republican-held House of Representatives. Paramount on the Democrats' list of concerns about November is the need...

MURRAY, Ky. (AP) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry threw his support behind U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell on Saturday, telling 300 fellow Republicans that the minority leader will win re-election. McConnell finds himself in a GOP primary fight with wealthy businessman Matt Bevin, who attended the event but wasn’t allowed to speak. “I love the number six,” Perry told the crowd at the Lincoln Reagan Dinner of West Kentucky. “Sam Houston was 6 foot 6 inches tall. And Mitch McConnell is going to be in his sixth term as United States senator.” Organizers said the dinner was supposed to unite the...

A delegation of U.S. senators looked to up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin Saturday, as tensions around Ukraine heightened. A bipartisan group of eight senators traveling through Ukraine blasted the Russian leader, and called Sunday’s election on whether Crimea should join Russia rigged and illegitimate. Some of the senators called for the U.S. to provide military equipment to Ukrainian troops, and the group vowed crippling economic sanctions against Russia until the nation pulled back. “This is the person that stated that the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century was the breakup of the Soviet Union,” said Sen. John McCain...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is warning Republicans that if they expect to be relevant in the future and grow the party they will have to soften on social issues. In an interview with vocativ.com, Paul said he had "sort of a Jeffersonian belief in unity, peace and commerce with all" and that the best way to build the GOP for the future is to include people with whom they don't agree on every issue. "I think that the Republican Party, in order to get bigger, will have to agree to disagree on social issues," Paul advised. "The Republican Party is...

KIEV - The man Russian President Vladimir Putin has cast as one of Europe's potential new Adolf Hitlers is a little late for coffee this Saturday morning. Igor Mazur, or Topoyla (Poplar) as he's known because he's 6'7" is the leader of the Ukranian Right Sector at Maidan, Kiev's Independence Square. The Right Sector are the radical nationalists of this Ukranian Revolution. There are others: the right-wing Svoboda (Freedom) Party, for one, which has an actual political following, 12 percent of the vote in the last elections. It used to identify itself as a national socialist movement, just like the...

“No, absolutely not,” Democrats should not shy away from supporting the Affordable Care Act, even though Democrat Alex Sink lost the special congressional election in Florida on Tuesday, says House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Sink’s Republican opponent, David Jolly, campaigned against Obamacare, but that’s not a winning strategy for Republicans, Pelosi told a news conference Thursday. …

The Obama administration is requiring health plans in Obamacare insurance marketplaces to include a more robust offering of care providers in 2015 after some early backlash over limited networks in the health care law's first year. Health plans selling on the federal marketplaces in 2015 must include 30 percent of area "essential community providers," which are usually health centers and other hospitals serving mostly low-income patients. That's up from a 20 percent requirement in 2014, the first year of expanded overage under the health care law. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the marketplaces, will also...

As the U.S. Senate took up a bill to provide financial aid to Ukraine, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, rose to object to an IMF bailout Majority Leader Harry Reid attached to the legislation. In the process he blasted Reid for repeatedly demonizing the billionaire Koch brothers - Reid tried to blame the Koch brothers for halting progress on the Ukraine bill. "I'm beginning to think [the Koch brothers] are a character almost out of Dr. Seuss in the majority leader's mind, they are the grinch who stole Christmas in his telling," Cruz said. Cruz accused Reid of "using his...

Liberals will use a Straw Man argument and say that Bush and Clinton used Executive Orders far more than Obama has. But it isn't the NUMBER of Executive Orders that is at issue, it is the NATURE of the Executive Orders. If Congress passes a law saying that illegals will be deported - WILL - if they do X,Y and Z when coming here, how can Obama keep from breaking the U.S. Constitution by saying that "Dreamers" can stay and long as they do A, B and C? Some would say that Governors cannot override federal law as the U.S....

The policy debate around health care is as intractable as ever. But, unnoticed amidst the partisan spin in the wake of the Florida congressional special election, the two parties are converging about the politics of health care. For much of the last four years, Democrats believed Obamacare would help them, and Republicans believed it would pose a fatal liability. Now they both believe the same thing. Democrats and Republicans alike grasp that Republicans have won the public relations war over Obamacare, and they have lost the public relations war over repealing Obamacare. A new Bloomberg poll finds that 51 percent...

American personnel on the ground in Benghazi the night of the 2012 terror attack are outraged after learning that the CIA's inspector general never conducted an investigation into what happened -- despite two CIA workers being killed in the attack and despite at least two complaints being filed by CIA employees. Former Ambassador Chris Stevens, another State official and two ex-Navy SEALs working for the CIA were killed in that attack. Many in the agency were told, or were under the impression, that an investigation was in the works, but that is not the case. One person close to the...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, had an "oops" moment on the House floor, as seen in C-Span video. The Houston representative declared the U.S. Constitution was some 400 years old. Unfortunately, that's incorrect. The Constitution was created in 1787 and ratified nearly a year later. Four hundred years ago, Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, was founded.

A Republican congressman disenchanted with his party's stance on women's issues urged attendees at a rally to give money to Democrats to send a message to the GOP. "I think these are very precarious times for women, it seems. So many of your rights are under assault," Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) told a crowd at a rally in Washington, D.C., for the Equal Rights Amendment, according to the Huffington Post. "I'll tell you this: Contribute your money to people who speak out on your behalf, because the other side — my side — has a lot of it. And you...

Rep. Michele Bachmann spoke out against Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s recent decision to veto a measure that some say would’ve allowed businesses to refuse service to gay people. “The thing that I think is getting a little tiresome is that the gay communities have so bullied the American people and they’ve so intimidated politicians. The politicians fear them, and so they think that they get to dictate the agenda everywhere,” Bachmann said. “Well not with the Constitution you don’t.”

Ron Paul has basically said that Crimea has the right to self-determination and by extension a right to an independence referendum vote. The Obama administration seems to be goading Europe (not that it would take that much) into agreeing with it that Crimea (and Eastern Ukraine) do not have the right to self-determination, and that Western powers will not accept a referendum vote in Crimea (or Eastern Ukraine for that matter) that leads to Crimea joining Russia, or becoming independent. Margeurite, yesterday, nailed it on the head, though, in a thread of mine: "The West cannot have it both ways....