Free Republic

WASHINGTON - The Senate has rejected a Republican energy plan that calls for opening an Alaska wildlife refuge and some offshore waters to oil development. Supporters of the measure couldn't get the needed 60 votes to overcome a Democratic-led filibuster threat. Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said more domestic oil production is needed to keep prices in check and to reduce U.S. dependence on oil imports. Opponents said areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and coastal waters that have been off limits to drilling for 25 years ought to remain that out of bounds to oil companies....

This week, the Bureau of Land Management has been attempting to confiscate the cattle of Cliven Bundy, the last rancher in Nevada’s Clark County. On Wednesday, BLM agents confronted the Bundy family and supporters, using attack dogs, tasers and stun guns. Bundy’s son was tased and his daughter thrown to the ground. Three others were injured. Bundy supporters eventually drove the BLM off, but not before they had taken some cattle. The BLM claims the cattle are “tresspassing” on land designated for the endangered desert tortoise. This designation is a red flag that something else is going on. Desert tortoises...

Dear Friend of Liberty, Obama acolyte Mark Begich needs to go. It's time for a senator from Alaska who will provide proper oversight and stand up to the abuses of Washington. The Obama Administration is simply out of control. The spectacle we are watching in Nevada with the Bureau of Land Management's land grab and cattle round up is, sadly, unsurprising. The BLM's insistence upon driving ranchers off the land their family has inhabited for the last 140 years, just so the EPA can “save” a supposedly endangered turtle, is almost as brilliant as sending SWAT teams to invade small...

Iraq War veteran Joni Ernst emerged as the Republican frontrunner this week in the race to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa). Ernst, who served as a company commander in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 and is a mother of three, gained a slight advantage over the other four candidates for the GOP Senate nomination in a Suffolk University poll. Ernst has 25 percent support among likely primary goers, followed closely by wealthy businessman Mark Jacobs with 23 percent. The other three candidates received less than 10 percent, while 40 percent are still undecided for the June 3 primary....

On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who is under fire for spending at least $31,000 in campaign funds to buy jewelry from his granddaughter, asked his supporters to send him campaign donations because former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin berated him. "Sarah Palin berated me for calling out the Koch Brothers in their attempt to buy control of the U.S. Senate," he writes in an e-mail sent a day before the end of the first fundraising quarter.

GOP Senate candidate Ben Sasse announced Thursday he raised more than $850,000 in the first quarter of the year, significantly more than his main challenger in the race. Sasse made the announcement on Twitter. Another Republican candidate, Shane Osborn, announced earlier this week he raised more than $550,000 in the first quarter of this year. Osborn is a former state Treasurer and Navy pilot and his main rival is Sasse, who serves as president of Midland University. Last week, conservative group FreedomWorks withdrew its endorsement of Osborn and said it would support Sasse instead. They are among four GOP contenders...

In a major blow to former Republican state Treasurer Shane Osborn’s candidacy for Nebraska Senate, national conservative group FreedomWorks is withdrawing its endorsement and backing his main primary rival, Midland University President Ben Sasse, instead. At issue, FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe said in a statement, is the unspoken support Osborn is believed to have from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “Both Osborn and Sasse are great people, and this was not a decision taken lightly. The question at the heart of this decision is, who would caucus with the Freedom Caucus, and who would fall in line with the...

FAIRBANKS — The University of Alaska Fairbanks is launching a widespread review of its procedures after dozens of students in the medical assistant program were told to inject each other with a solution that isn’t approved for human or animal use. Students practiced their injection techniques with the unauthorized solution during each of the past two semesters, according to UAF. Students only confirmed the potential danger after one of them contacted the manufacturer and was told to stop using the product immediately. Chancellor Brian Rogers called it “the most serious issue I’ve seen” since taking the top position at UAF...

On Friday, former Alaska Gov. Palin went to Nebraska and endorsed businessman Pete Ricketts for governor in the state in which her endorsement has proven to be the gold standard. Palin joined Kay Orr, Nebraska's former Republican governor whom Palin called the "original Mama Grizzly," to endorse to endorse Ricketts, whom Palin called the clear principled commonsense conservative choice in this race whose positions are clear: "he opposes amnesty and taxpayer funded benefits for illegal immigrants in any form and always has." Palin said the "alternative is woeful dependency on an inevitable sinking ship I call 'Liberal Lunacy.'" Palin has...

Sarah Palin has a new reality show premiering Thursday night on the Sportsman Channel. In Amazing America with Sarah Palin, the former Alaskan governor and Republican vice presidential candidate will showcase the places and people that she says represent what makes America so "good and free." Given that the show is airing on the Sportsman Channel, it's no surprise that it will feature outdoor activities like hunting and fishing. She recently told TV critics, "I think this world would be better off having more young women holding a fish in a picture, and fewer of them holding their camera in...

The Tonight Show will have a special guest on tonight’s show: Sarah Palin. The show’s Twitter account made the announcement Wednesday afternoon, saying the former Alaska governor will be stopping by the show to “do something fun” with host Jimmy Fallon. Fallon Tonight ✔ @FallonTonight Last minute addition to tonight's show. We've got @SarahPalinUSA stopping by to do something fun! #FallonTonight 12:58 PM - 2 Apr 2014 The scheduled guests for Wednesday night’s show are Denis Leary, Cat Deeley along with musical guest Nickel Creek. It appears unlikely that Palin will sit down with Fallon for an interview, but perhaps...

A simple tweak by the Commerce Department would allow the U.S. to begin selling ultralight fossil fuels overseas, a significant first step in easing the 39-year-old ban on crude exports, a new report says. The analysis released by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, focuses on condensate, a natural gas liquid made up of light fuels such as propane and butane. The fuels generally flow as liquids at normal temperatures even if they’re gas underground. Though it is chemically different than crude, condensate is swept under the oil export ban — at least as long as the light hydrocarbon is coming out...

Texas is producing about 36 percent of the country’s crude oil — three times more than any other state, according to the latest monthly figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Texas pumped nearly 2.9 million barrels of crude daily of the 7.9 million barrels produced nationwide in January, the latest month for which figures are available. The Gulf of Mexico produced about 17 percent, the second-largest portion, followed by North Dakota with about 12 percent of the U.S. crude. California and Alaska rounded out the top five crude-producing areas, each home to about 7 percent of the nation’s oil....

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin warned that if Senator Barack Obama were elected president, his "indecision" and "moral equivalence" may encourage Russia's Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. Palin said then: "After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next." For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine. In light of recent...

Turns out Sarah Palin was right. Obamacare does have Death Panels, and they are currently disguised as the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee. In this week when Obamacare finally turns one day old, the political problems that our economic recovery face have never been on better display. While the stock market makes new highs, even the Fed is acknowledging that this recovery is different. And because it’s different, Wall Street is winning and Main Street is losing. “Although we work through financial markets, our goal is to help Main Street, not Wall Street,” said...

The new law makes South Dakota the sixteenth state to stamp out red light cameras and speed cameras by statute or state court ruling ... the cameras violate due process, don’t make intersections safer and generate revenue more for the red light vendor than the community. ... Brekford, based in Maryland, reported last week that it is losing money. .. Redflex Traffic Systems in Phoenix has even bigger headaches. The firm has been the subject of a federal bribery investigation in Chicago for the past year.

80 billion lbs. of metal could 'wipe out American import dependency' On the heels of the Obama administration clamping down on oil and gas exploration and President Obama declaring what many consider to be a war on coal, environmental groups are now urging the government to deny exploration of the world’s largest known copper reserve before the permitting process even begins. ... “When a mining project goes into the permitting process, there are local avenues for some of the permits; there are state avenues for some of the permits and federal as well,” McGroarty said. “So it’s multi-layered, and it...

I assumed that this non-story would have gone away on its own, but some conservative sites still insist on taking it seriously. Some Alaskans apparently are not opposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent annexation of Crimea—in fact, they are hoping to be grabbed up next. More than 30,000 Alaskans have signed the petition “Alaska back to Russia,” pleading that the White House allow them to secede and join their native land. If the request garners 100,000 signatures by April 20, the White House will make an official response. The petition titled “WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Alaska back...

Unrest in the nation must be running high if people are looking for ways to pull up stakes and leave the union entirely. Some Texans petitioned the White House to break away in 2012, though not much came of the effort. Possibly my favorite breakaway story was that of the Conch Republic, which seceded from the US in 1982, immediately suing the government for $1B in war damages.Despite the lack of success on the part of these previous efforts, they all had one thing in common. They weren’t looking to join up with any other nations, but rather to strike...

Two newcomers, Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, are the hottest figures in the dominant conservative wing of the Republican Party. In markedly different ways, they both claim to be the heirs to the party’s contemporary patron saint, Ronald Reagan. In a short time, these first-term lawmakers have electrified elements of the party’s base and rattled the Senate establishment. The top two Republican leaders in the chamber, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas, have had to defer to the political popularity of their junior colleagues. Both are outside the party mainstream, rock stars...