Free Republic

On Friday, there will likely be a vote on fast-tracking President Obama's most progressive trade deal(s) in history. Here is why the House should vote no on granting the president what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called "an enormous grant of power." 1. Obama is a terrible negotiator, so he needs full oversight. Remember the Iranian nuclear deal, the China climate deal, the Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl release deal? These are just three examples that prove a simple fact: Obama is not a very good negotiator when it comes to representing U.S. interests. Fast-track trade authority denies Congress the...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: The civility chorus may at last be getting what it wants, a shutdown of debate in the name of piety and good manners. Honest debate frightens the chorus, whose sopranos and tenors forget that debate, sometimes gentle and sometimes loud and robust, is what Congress is meant to be about. Rep. Paul Ryan, once the tough numbers cruncher for the Republicans, has been the eager point man for President Obama in the campaign to give him authority to make unilateral trade deals that include far more than mere trade. Mr. Ryan is having trouble dealing with partisan stress on...

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican leaders pushed a new plan for raising taxes through the Kansas House early Friday morning, hours after top aides to GOP Gov. Sam Brownback warned them that failing to erase a budget deficit risked funding for universities and invited a downgrading of the state's bond ratings.

Traitor is strong language, but in the aftermath of Tuesday’s vote on a bill that was supposed to reaffirm the Senate’s constitutional power to consent to President Obama’s as yet still undefined and undisclosed nuclear treaty with Iran there is no other way to describe the actions of Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations The bill Corker rammed through the Foreign Relations Committee is worse than no bill at all. What Corker’s bill does is, in its post-markup form, require the president to submit for congressional review the final nuclear agreement reached between Iran, the...

In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel's nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent. But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel's nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth. The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that...

In 2014, the Establishment went all out to defeat its foes not just on the electoral battlefield, but in the battlefield of the mind as well. They wanted to teach the upstarts a lesson: You have not only lost, but you will always lose; you will not be permitted to win, ever. The entire Party will rise up to crush you should you signal any intention of bucking our Rule. I warned them about something then: A hopeless soldier is a soldier who will desert the field. Yes, Establishment GOP, you can teach us that you will always lie to...

Hillary Can’t Delete This As Secretary of State, Clinton says she stopped at nothing to get a blind dissident out of China. That’s not what he remembers. By DAVID FEITH March 15, 2015 This book won’t help Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. Its author, Chen Guangcheng, is the blind Chinese human-rights lawyer who in April 2012 escaped rural house arrest and sought refuge at the U.S. embassy in Beijing. The ensuing diplomatic tussle over his fate was a high drama that Mrs. Clinton touts as an accomplishment of her tenure as secretary of state. It reminded her of the “responsibility...

Barbary Glory, Barbary Shame By Barr Seitz Two hundred years ago, seven U.S. Marines at the head of a ragtag army of European and Arab mercenaries set out on an extraordinary mission to free 300 U.S. hostages and end America's first foreign war. To do that, they first had to march almost 600 miles across the Barbary deserts of North Africa to what is the eastern part of modern-day Libya. Those were long odds for an untested Christian-Muslim army whose soldiers were as likely to kill each other as the enemy. Tripolitan War The desert expedition was a quixotic chapter...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A secret decision apparently has been made by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even Iran to let the strategic Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish-Syrian border fall to ISIS fighters, jeopardizing the lives of some 160,000 Syrian Kurds, WND has been told by a well-placed Middle East expert. In letting Kobani fall to ISIS, the source said, there was agreement “to deal with ISIS later.” The apparent decision aims to diminish the influence of the Kurds in Syria and weaken the prospect of creating a sovereign Kurdistan, which is sought by the Kurds...

Loudon and Beck — Together Again on TheBlaze TV — Exposing The Enemies Within and WithoutAnti-Communist and Best-Selling Author, Trevor Loudon will return to Primetime, TheBlaze TV, March 9th, 5:00 pm ET, hosted by Glenn Beck. Loudon, a New Zealand researcher and investigative journalist, has been touring America as a modern-day Paul Revere to warn America that “The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress” are here and that they are endangering America and all she stands for. The book is published by Pacific Freedom Foundation. “The Enemies Within” profiles fourteen Senators and more than fifty...

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf says leaks on the Iran nuke talks by Israel would “betray” the US’s trust. “We’ve continuously provided detailed classified briefings to Israeli officials to keep them updated and to provide context for how we are approaching getting to a good deal,” she told reporters in Washington. “Any release of any kind of information like that would, of course, betray that trust.”

They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. -- Jeremiah 6:14Gentlemen may cry peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! --...

......, the Obama administration went, well, nuclear. One “senior American official” threatened Netanyahu, telling the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that “Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price.” Meanwhile a “source close to [Secretary of State John] Kerry” told The Post that the “secretary’s patience is not infinite” and that “playing politics with that relationship could blunt Secretary Kerry’s enthusiasm for being Israel’s primary defender.” .. No wonder Netanyahu is going around these people to Congress for support. Is Kerry defending Israel as a favor...

John Boehner is getting revenge. He secured his third term as speaker Tuesday afternoon, losing 25 votes on the House floor to three relatively unknown members of the House Republican Conference. But he’s already punishing those who betrayed him. First up: Florida Reps. Daniel Webster and Richard Nugent. The pair will be booted from their spots on the House Rules Committee, according to sources familiar with the decision. Webster ran against Boehner (R-Ohio) for speaker Tuesday, and Nugent supported his fellow Floridian. The Rules Committee is a panel appointed by the speaker, and it controls the flow of legislation to...

During the last Congress, I led the fight in the House to pass conservative bills that offered real solutions to the challenges we face as a nation. Now we have a Republican Senate to join us in this endeavor. Conservatives have a real opportunity here to affect change in Washington. But in order to do so we must now be united in the fight against Barack Obama and his failed policies. When we met as a conference on November 13th, Republicans nominated John Boehner as their candidate for Speaker of the House. No one ran against him for the position...

I am no longer a Republican. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their Democrat-lite, RINO Republican establishment have seen to that. They have betrayed their own constituents. They have actively turned against the American people – the very voters who granted them power to do good. Even before the gavel has sounded on the Republican-led 114th Congress, these treacherous cowards shamelessly, eagerly, it seems, squandered perhaps the one opportunity they had to stop, in his tracks, America’s first cultural Marxist, anti-American, palpably evil president.

I am no longer a Republican. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their Democrat-lite, RINO Republican establishment have seen to that. They have betrayed their own constituents. They have actively turned against the American people – the very voters who granted them power to do good. Even before the gavel has sounded on the Republican-led 114th Congress, these treacherous cowards shamelessly, eagerly, it seems, squandered perhaps the one opportunity they had to stop, in his tracks, America's first cultural Marxist, anti-American, palpably evil president. If ever there were, there can no longer be any doubt. Barack Obama is bent on turning...

Cubans in Miami’s Little Havana reacted with anger and dismay to President Barack Obama’s dramatic bid Wednesday to end a half-century Cold War with the communist-ruled island. “It is a betrayal. The talks are only going to benefit Cuba,” said Carlos Munoz Fontanil in Calle Ocho, the heart of an exile community that has long pined for the fall of the Castro regime in Havana. […] An equally outraged Felix Tirse, who arrived from Cuba 53 years ago, said Obama’s announcement showed “a lack of respect.” “He is more communist than others,” he said. …

In the dark of the night, two weeks before Christmas, the GOP consummated their betrayal of our trust. We voted them a majority for the next two years, and they thanked us by a backstabbing so heinous, that it moved the seismic needle on the Democratic party

...In the midst of the summit, Clinton touched briefly on US-Cuba relations, telling CBS4’s news partner the Miami Herald, he believes the embargo could be lifted if Cuba released USAID subcontractor Alan Gross, who’s serving out a 15 year sentence on the island. Following the daylong meeting, Clinton and his wife Hillary were the guests of honor at a fundraiser at the Star Island home of Gloria and Emilio Estefan. “President Clinton, when he left office in 2001, still thought he hadn’t done enough, and thought as a private citizen he would like to do what he can,” Gloria Estefan...