Free Republic

The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on an amendment that would federally legalize marijuana by allowing states to regulate their own medical and recreational pot markets. But even one senator can block a vote on the amendment, which would address a longstanding conflict between federal and state law. Sen. Cory Gardner, D-Colo., is seeking to attach the measure to the First Step Act, a bundle of prison, prisoner re-entry, and sentencing reforms that senators voted 81-12 to advance Monday.

Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander announced Monday he will not run for re-election in 2020, saying it’s time for “someone else” to have the privilege of representing Tennessee in the Senate. “I will not be a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate in 2020,” the 78-year-old Alexander said in a statement. Alexander, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, previously served as governor of Tennessee. He also worked as secretary of the Department of Education under then-President George H.W. Bush. “The people of Tennessee have been very generous, electing me to serve more combined years...

McConnell also has told Senate colleagues he is not interested in shutting down government agencies, and told reporters recently that a shutdown would not be "a great way to end what in my view has been the most successful Congress, right of center, in decades.”

FULL TITLE: Ouch! Jeff Flake makes two embarrassing errors on his way out. One was announcing his farewell on Twitter Sen. Jeff Flake made his share of mistakes since taking office, chief among them being to underestimate the intelligence of the average Republican voter, so it’s only fitting that the lawmaker makes two embarrassing errors on his way out the door. The first and perhaps most brutal error was for the moderate Trump-hating Arizona Republican to announce his farewell on Twitter. “Full of gratitude today as I deliver my farewell address in the Senate Chamber at 11:00 EST,” Flake advertised....

Sen. Jon Kyl will resign from the Senate before the start of 2019, the Arizona Republican said in a letter, leaving it up to the state’s GOP governor to appoint a successor until a special election is held in 2020. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey had appointed Mr. Kyl in September to fill the seat of the late GOP Sen. John McCain. Mr. Kyl had made clear at the time that he hadn’t committed to remaining in the Senate beyond the end of this session of Congress. In his resignation letter to Mr. Ducey, Mr. Kyl said he would resign before...

Lame-duck Speaker Paul Ryan managed to shepherd through a motion protecting President Barack Obama’s illegal war in Yemen, thanks to five Democrats who joined the Republican majority to pass the measure. Speaker Paul Ryan attached a rule on Tuesday night to the Conference Report for the 2018 Farm bill which would block a potential War Powers resolution vote on America’s involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. The rule passed through the House 206-203, featuring strong Republican support for the rule, along with five Democrats who voted for the measure. Eighteen Republicans and 185 Democrats against the measure. Ryan’s actions...

Vice President Mike Pence had to break a tie in the Senate on Tuesday to confirm Jonathan Kobes as a judge on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. The 50-50 tie came thanks to Sen. Jeff Flake, who joined every Democrat in voting against the nomination. The retiring Arizona senator has vowed to block all judicial picks until the Senate votes on legislation that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired.Kobes is the first judge in U.S. history to be confirmed by the Senate with a tie-breaking vote from the vice president, according to CBS News.  With @VP breaking...

President Donald Trump sought Tuesday to pressure Democratic congressional leaders into supporting his demand for billions of dollars to build his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, threatening to have the military build it “if Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country.” Trump tweeted the threat hours before Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi were to meet with Trump at the White House in an effort to avert a partial government shutdown on Dec. 21, when funding for some agencies is scheduled to expire. In a series of tweets Tuesday, Trump...

On Jan. 3 2019, current House Speaker Paul Ryan gets to retire at the ripe old age of 48, but don't worry, as an entrenched Washington D.C. politician, we won't be done with him at that point. He has many years of lobbying for six or seven figure salaries ahead of him until he is inevitably recycled by the GOP establishment to do what he does best: undermine and sabotage the 'America First' agenda of President Donald Trump. Ryan has done such a poor job that it has become impossible for even the paid sycophants of Conservative Inc. to whitewash...

House Lawmakers on Saturday released the transcript of former FBI Director James Comey’s closed-door testimony, just 1-day after being questioned about the FBI’s decisions related to Hillary Clinton's email server and the 2016 presidential election.House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Oversight/Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-SC, published the 235-page transcript as a part of an agreement with Comey. He initially challenged the subpoena to appear before the committee and instead pressed for a public hearing out of concerns his comments would be selectively leaked and taken out of context.The details of the transcript revealed that Comey...

Lawmakers say they have reached a deal on the massive farm bill, which has been hung up for weeks over demands by President Trump and House Republicans for new work requirements for food stamp recipients. Negotiators have agreed to jettison those requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which were included in the House version of the bill but not the Senate version. However, the White House has not yet signed off on the agreement and House conservatives may not support a bill that lacks work requirements.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz with three other senators introduced a bill Wednesday that is aimed at fully funding a wall along the US-Mexico border... The WALL Act would fully fund the border wall by closing existing loopholes that provide illegal immigrants with federal benefits and tax credits, without affecting the benefits and tax credits used by Americans.

President Trump is dismissing the importance of paying down the national debt, saying he won’t be in office to take blame for the nation's fiscal crisis when it becomes even more unsustainable, according to a report Wednesday. The national debt sits at $21 trillion and counting. As a candidate, when the national debt was $19 trillion, Trump promised to erase the entire debt “over a period of eight years.” Senior administration officials showed Trump charts and graphics in early 2017 that illustrated a “hockey stick” spike in the debt in the coming years. Trump said the data showed the national...

"...But Ryan delivered on none of this. Instead he passed a health-care bill that lobbyists crafted and Trump was lukewarm on. He fought to preserve a tax loophole for Wall Street that Trump "tried more than two dozen times" to get rid of. He also failed to pass any meaningful immigration reform. On the contrary, according to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Ryan refused to lobby for the Goodlatte immigration bill, which would have built a border wall, enacted E-Verify procedures, and offered DREAMERS a path to citizenship. It failed to pass the House after nearly 20 Ryan loyalists voted against...

Hispanic Democrats drew a red line Wednesday in budget negotiations, saying they cannot support any year-end spending bill unless it reduces the government’s ability to detain illegal immigrants ahead of deportation. The Democrats also said they want to eliminate all money for the border wall — not the $5 billion President Trump is seeking, nor even the $1.6 billion that Senate Democrats have said they’re willing to spend. “We urge the Committee to provide zero funding for the border wall,” the chair and vice chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said in a letter to GOP leaders. “Five billion dollars...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced Wednesday that he is canceling votes on nearly two dozen of President Trump’s judicial nominees that were expected to come up in the Judiciary Committee this week. The cancellation of the committee’s Thursday business meeting comes as Senate Republicans are in a standoff with outgoing Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who has vowed to oppose all court picks until he gets a vote on legislation protecting special counsel Robert Mueller. The notification from the Judiciary Committee didn’t specify when, or if, the committee votes on the nominations would be rescheduled. Six circuit court nominees had been...

Although Democrats routinely deny that they’re for open borders — dismissing the very suggestion as an outrageous slur — their reaction to Sunday’s violence by some of the Central American illegal aliens in Tijuana suggests otherwise. If Democrats criticize DHS for trying to prevent storming of the border, and for responding to attacks on its agents with non-lethal crowd-control measures like tear gas, then what border-control measures can they possibly be for? The border clash was the culmination of a series of policy choices by Democrats over the past several years, asymptotically approaching open borders. Although things are lousy in...

The second problem is that while some offenders are ineligible for these new “time credits” based on an exclusion list, many serious violent crimes are missing from that list. Since proponents tend to misstate or misunderstand their own bill, here are some of the specific federal laws that are missing from the bill’s exclusion-from-early-release list: Drug-related robberies involving assault with a dangerous weapon (18 U.S.C. § 2118(c)(1)) Using a deadly weapon to assault a law-enforcement officer (18 U.S.C. § 111(b)) Assault resulting in substantial bodily injury to a spouse or child (18 U.S.C. § 113(a)(7)) Violent carjacking resulting in serious...

Just-defeated GOP Rep. Mia Love — who was mocked by President Trump after Election Day for supposedly not showing him sufficient loyalty — fired back at the commander-in-chief Monday. “The president’s behavior towards me made me wonder: What did he have to gain by saying such a thing about a fellow Republican,” the Utah lawmaker said in Salt Lake City. “It was not really about asking him to do more, was it? Or was it something else? Well Mr. President, we’ll have to chat about that,” she continued during her concession speech after a tight race with Democratic Rep.-elect Ben...

Former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova appears on WMAL radio for a discussion of the joint house committee issuing subpoenas for Loretta Lynch, James Comey and Sally Yates. diGenova brings up a good point, what happens if they just simply refuse to comply? Answer: Nothing. From diGenova’s perspective it’s chaff and countermeasures. In this interview a fired-up diGenova strongly lambasts Bob Goodlatte, Trey Gowdy, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy for enabling a highly political Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller to cover-up the institutional corruption within the DOJ and FBI.