Free Republic

A bipartisan group of senators announced on Sunday the upper chamber will form an investigative panel to look into allegations that Russia tried to manipulate the U.S. election by hacking into Democratic officials and groups' email servers. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Jack Reed of Rhode Island will partner with Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina for the committee's creation, according to a report of the joint letter.

Texas Republicans have spent years trying to crack down on illegal immigration across the southern border with Mexico. Emboldened by the election of Donald Trump, however, the time may finally be right for the GOP to mobilize an assault on loosely defined "sanctuary cities," especially with two large counties eyeing such policies. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pushed the issue to the front of his unofficial agenda for 2017, pledging in interviews and on social media to sign into law a "ban" on cities and local governments that are seen as protecting people in the U.S. illegally, with sanctions such...

State and federal agents may have waited nearly three years to pursue financial records about offshore accounts that a prosecutor believes could link a $2 million check from a Utah bank to a reported attempt to bribe a powerful U.S. senator — even though they had access to a copy of the check and key witnesses as early as 2013.

Jesus had his Judas, General George Washington had his Benedict Arnold, and the 9/11 victims’ families have their betrayers in Republican Senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.), John McCain (Ariz.), and Orrin Hatch (Utah). The Senators are attempting infanticide of the 10-weeks-old Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) which was enacted with their support to assist the 9/11 families in obtaining judicial redress for the 9/11 terrorist abominations. To paraphrase attorney Joseph Welch’s rebuke of Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings, have Senators Graham, McCain, and Hatch no sense of decency in putting the interests of the misogynist, religiously bigoted,...

DECATUR – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded two grants totaling $10 million to the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS), housed at the University of Illinois’ Prairie Research Institute (PRI). The grants will fund projects to research commercial-scale geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “Any meaningful strategies for addressing the causes and dangers of climate change must include reduced carbon emissions,” Durbin said. “That’s why we are here today to announce a $10 million investment by the United States Department of Energy to study if 50...

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped South Carolina GOP Rep. Mick Mulvaney as his budget director, naming a tough-on-spending conservative and an advocate of balancing the federal budget to the important post. An official on Trump’s transition team, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter before it is officially announced, confirmed Trump’s pick Friday evening. Mulvaney, 49, was elected in the 2010 tea party wave and is a founder of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, whose members pushed former Speaker John Boehner from power and have caused heartburn for current Speaker Paul Ryan. He is one of the...

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” while discussing President-elect Donald Trump naming ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, “With all due respect to the president’s nominee, perhaps he’s suitable for something else,” adding that secretary of state was “a revered position.” Pelosi said, “First of all, let’s — what is the job? The job — the secretary of state is really in line to succession to the president of the United States … Well, by sequence, they are, but that’s the primary one and has special status. So the secretary...

You just knew this was coming… Republican leader Mitch McConnell warned today he will not pass Donald Trump’s tax cuts. Senate Majority Leader McConnell has a different plan. Bloomberg.com reported: President-elect Donald Trump’s race to enact the biggest tax cuts since the 1980s went under a caution flag Monday as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned he considers current levels of U.S. debt “dangerous” and said he wants any tax overhaul to avoid adding to the deficit. “I think this level of national debt is dangerous and unacceptable,” McConnell said, adding he hopes Congress doesn’t lose sight of that when...

Until Nov. 8, everyone talked as if the presidential election would hinge on smallest incident: a killer ad, a fatal gaffe, an October surprise. But now, in the emerging conventional wisdom, tactics are suddenly deemed unimportant, as we rush to propound big theories about What It All Means. We now hear that Donald Trump’s victory — which he is calling, preposterously, a landslide — was the result of the grand tide of history, a thundering declaration of Vox Populi: Identity politics is dead. Populism is ascendant. #WhiteWorkersMatter. The people want change. The Democratic Party, without question, has lessons to learn...

‘I think 2018 is going to be a very good year for the Democrats’ he leaders of the Democratic Party of the future will be Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden, said Joe Biden in an interview Sunday. The outgoing vice president appeared on CNN's "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper: TAPPER: “Who is the leader of the Democratic Party as of January 21st?" BIDEN: “Well, like after every presidential election where the party loses, there is no single leader. There are voices that hopefully will be heard. Hopefully, I’ll be able to have a voice...

DEC 11 2016 GOP Opposition to Potential Trump Cabinet Nominees Grows by LIZ JOHNSTONE Donald Trump's unified wall of partisan support has shown a few cracks over Cabinet appointments that run counter to both campaign promises and traditional Republican foreign policy ethos. Breitbart, the normally pro-Trump, right-wing website formerly run by top Trump adviser Steve Bannon, accused the president-elect putting foreign labor ahead of American workers by choosing fast food CEO Andrew Puzder to lead the Department of Labor. The Conservative Review, meanwhile, called Puzder an "open border zealot." Meanwhile, Erick Erickson, a staunch Trump critic who applauded him for...

McCain’s attitude doesn’t surprise me. He’s the Senate’s most ardent Russia hawk, he’s 80 years old, and he was just reelected. He’s got nothing to lose in standing up to Trump. Rubio’s attitude does surprise me a little. He’s hawkish and freshly reelected too, but he’s all of 45 years old and is surely planning another presidential run eventually. He backed off his apocalyptic criticism of Trump after the primaries this year, even before he’d decided to run for Senate again, seemingly fearing that any further anti-Trumpism on his part might jeopardize his national prospects down the line. Now...

The "Cajun John Wayne" is on his way to Washington, D.C. Louisiana voters in Acadiana and Lake Charles voted Saturday (Dec. 10) to replace U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, with tough-talking former sheriff's captain Clay Higgins over Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle in the all-Republican runoff. Higgins, like Donald Trump, has no experience as an elected official and had never run for office. He became a celebrity, largely because of videos he recorded while working for the St. Landry sheriff that went viral and gained national attention. An internet sensation, Higgins is often referred to as the "Cajun John Wayne."...

The 2016 election has dimmed Democrats’ optimism, and cheered up the GOP.Democrats are not feeling especially rosy about their party’s path forward, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey released Sunday finds.  Just 13 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters say they’re enthusiastic about their party’s future, compared to 35 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters who say they are enthusiastic about the outlook for the GOP.

The $2 million cashier's check was drawn at a St. George bank Nov. 5, 2010. From there, it was sent by FedEx to a Los Angeles attorney who represented Ireland-based Full Tilt Poker. Made out to "Mail Media LTD" — a Full Tilt-owned entity used to launder online-gambling funds — the millions then were deposited at Basler Kantonalbank in Switzerland, where Mail Media had an account. And from there, Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings is investigating whether it went into a Marshall Islands account in the name of Searchlight Holding Inc. to benefit, or even bribe, Harry Reid, the once-powerful...

BATON ROUGE, La. – Louisiana voters chose Saturday to send Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy to the U.S. Senate, filling the nation's last Senate seat and giving the GOP a 52-48 edge in the chamber when the new term begins in January. Kennedy had always been the runoff election's front-runner in a state that overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump. He defeated Democrat Foster Campbell, a state utility regulator whose chances were seen as such a long-shot that national Democratic organizations offered little assistance to Campbell's campaign. As he celebrated the victory, Kennedy said he represented change in Washington. "I believe that...

Cameron SmithDecember 9, 2016 It's easy to spot a political hit job when you know what to look for. The telltale signs might include a steady trickle of negative information, an echo chamber focusing on the same story at the same time, or even a seemingly coordinated move from one "breaking" story to the next. Those of us who pay attention to politics have seen it whether we know it or not. The most effective smear includes a smattering of facts, spotty allegations, and doctored quotes that fit a predetermined narrative. The "breaking" story usually comes from the biggest sympathetic...

The AFL-CIO endorsed Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) to take over a Democratic National Committee (DNC) that was rocked by scandal during the 2016 campaign season. “Ellison meets the high standard working people expect from leaders of our political parties,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Thursday in a statement. “He is a proven leader who will focus on year-round grassroots organizing to deliver for working families across America. Under his leadership, the Democratic Party will embody the values that our members stand for every day.” Ellison is seen as an early frontrunner in the race for DNC chairman, having secured union...

“We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” Mr. Trump told Time magazine. “They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

On Tuesday, disgruntled Democrats held a forum to discuss the possibility of replacing the Electoral College. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) conceded that Democrats could not get rid of the Electoral College due to the way the United States Constitution is written. “I don’t think we can sustain our American democracy by having the majority ruled by the minority. And so the question is how to fix this since the Constitution is written in such a way that it’s almost impossible to amend,” Lofgren said. Lofgren went on to say she is open to a Constitutional Convention, “We are three states...