Free Republic

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank announced on Tuesday his support for the repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a significant portion of President Obama’s health care overhaul. Frank, who announced Monday that he would retire at the end of his current term in office, became the 12th Democrat, and the 212th member of the House, to co-sponsor Tennessee Republican Rep. Phil Roe’s bill aimed at repealing the IPAB. Frank is the most prominent Democrat to join Roe’s bipartisan repeal effort. IPAB is a 15-member board, appointed by the president, scheduled to convene in 2014. In order to reduce per...

Cigar smokers are mad as hell, and they aren’t going to take it anymore. Faced with an unprecedented assault on their guilty pleasure from President Barack Obama's Food and Drug Administration, aficionados and industry insiders told The Daily Caller that they’re picking up their torch lighters and revolting. Usually divided by their preferences for mild, medium and full-bodied smokes, they're uniting against regulations that threaten to make cigars prohibitively expensive, shut down scores of small cigar shops, jeopardize tens of thousands of jobs and erase the traditionally bright line between Camels and Cohibas. Cigar lovers are also recruiting members of...

VIDEO -- New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, told The Daily Caller that laws requiring voters to present photo identification are part of a “deliberate plot by conservatives and Republicans to suppress votes” that would be cast by minorities, the elderly and young people.

Has MSNBC opened a bureau in Arlington, Virginia? Watch the assertively liberal cable news channel on an average day, and you’re likely to see someone from Politico appearing on-screen with the publication’s newsroom and logo in the background — perhaps on multiple occasions. An analysis of one week of MSNBC’s broadcasts, starting at 6 a.m. Monday, Nov. 7 and ending Sunday, Nov. 13 at 12 p.m., identified at least 24 appearances by Politico reporters and editors.

As his path to the Republican nomination for president looks increasingly impossible, former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer’s campaign is starting to mull a third-party run. Last week, Roemer campaign manager Carlos Sierra told The Daily Caller that while he had been exploring other possible options for his candidate, Roemer himself was still focused on the Republican primary. But on Wednesday Sierra suggested that Roemer is aware of his actions and was beginning to consider the idea. “The whole South Carolina and Florida thing — it’s definitely getting him thinking a little more about other options,” Sierra said.

The leader of a tea party group is calling for scandal-embroiled GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain to drop out of the race. Judson Phillips, the founding leader of Tea Party Nation, said Cain’s flailing response to sexual harassment allegations brought forward by several women was simply unacceptable. “Herman Cain has got to go,” Judson said in an email to Tea Party Nation members. “I do not believe Cain’s accusers. There are too many questions about them. The allegations are not why Cain should leave. The campaign’s response is why he should now withdraw.”

A super PAC supporting former House Speaker Newt Gingrich launched during the CNBC presidential debate Wednesday night, “to support Newt Gingrich’s comeback run for president.” The super PAC, called Solutions 2012, was formed to support Gingrich’s campaign by providing the resources and manpower that the campaign currently lacks. After most of his campaign staff quit this summer, Gingrich has been running a pared down campaign, both in terms of people and resources. His campaign brought in only $800,000 in the third quarter, and he had only $353,416 in the bank at the end of that quarter.

During Wednesday night’s CNBC debate, Rick Perry couldn’t recall the third department he would eliminate. Will this end his campaign — or just be a bump in the road?

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said during CNBC’s Republican presidential debate that he would not bail out Italy’s struggling economy even if that nation’s debt problems threatened to sink the entire European financial system. “Europe is able to take care of their own problems,” he said Wednesday night when asked if the U.S. had a stake in the eurozone’s continuing economic struggles. “We don’t want to step in and try and bail out their banks and bail out their governments. They have the capacity to deal with that themselves. They’re a very large economy.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney discussed his reputation as a flip-flopper at Wednesday night’s CNBC Republican presidential debate, disputing the characterization and calling himself “a man of steadiness and constancy.” Romney was asked to address the “issue of character” after he mentioned the auto bailout, which he has been accused of switching positions on. The Democratic National Committee has been bracketing Romney in Michigan with ads attacking him for flip-flopping on the issue.

The crowd at the Republican presidential debate at Oakland University in Michigan made it clear Wednesday night that it wanted to hear about the economy, and not harassment allegations against former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain dating back to the 1990s. The crowd booed CNBC moderator Maria Bartiromo as she alluded to the allegations and asked Cain, “why should the American people hire a president if they feel there are character issues?” The debate was marketed beforehand as a discussion on the economy. Cain responded: “The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion...

The crowd at the Republican presidential debate at Oakland University in Michigan made it clear Wednesday night that it wanted to hear about the economy, and not harassment allegations against former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain dating back to the 1990s. The crowd booed CNBC moderator Maria Bartiromo as she alluded to the allegations and asked Cain, “why should the American people hire a president if they feel there are character issues?” The debate was marketed beforehand as a discussion on the economy. Cain responded: “The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion...

With ratings head and shoulders above its cable news competitors, a Fox News Channel appearance would seem like an appropriate place for Republican presidential candidates to make their case. Fox’s 6:00 p.m. “Special Report” program is especially popular — but not with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has declined to appear on the show. “We just received an email from the Romney campaign that they are officially turning down our invite to be on ‘Center Seat,’” host Bret Baier revealed at the end of his Monday broadcast. “They say, as of now, Gov. Romney will not appear on center...

The White House’s immigration lawyers have issued yet another bureaucratic order that will curb the election-year deportation of illegal immigrants, and perhaps spur the supply of Hispanic voters. The new memo will shelter many illegals who have not committed violent crimes, or who are not suspected of being a national security threat, from routine deportation efforts by professionals in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. There are roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, including roughly seven million in the workforce.

Many television viewers encounter strange, disjointed ads promoting NewAmerica3.com. The ads plead with viewers to visit the website, where the narrator promises a Nostradamus-like offering of dire prophecies for the future. What most viewers don’t know is that the man behind the ad has been found liable in the past for defrauding investors. Meet Frank Porter Stansberry. In 2003 the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against him for peddling false information to subscribers of his financial newsletter. The name of his company at the time was Pirate Investor.

Herman Cain’s presidential campaign is admitting that campaign manager Mark Block had his facts wrong when he said on Fox News that one of the women who has accused Cain of sexual harassment is the mother of a reporter at Politico, the news outlet that first published the allegations ten days ago. Appearing with host Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, Block said it had been “confirmed” by the campaign that accuser Karen Kraushaar’s son works at Politico. But soon after Block made that statement, Josh Kraushaar, a former Politico reporter who Block didn’t specifically name but who he was referencing,...

Former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, who resigned in August, admitted late Tuesday that he leaked a document aimed at smearing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson, an Operation Fast and Furious whistle-blower. “Dennis regrets his role in disclosing the memo but he’s a stand-up guy and is willing to take responsibility for what he did,” Chuck Rosenberg, Burke’s lawyer, said according to NPR. “It was absolutely not Dennis’s intent to retaliate against Special Agent Dodson or anyone else for the information they provided Congress.” Rosenberg claims Burke is cooperating with congressional investigators.

By the time most people knew the name Mark Block, Herman Cain‘s campaign was already on the rise. And with the release of a bizarre web ad showing him smoking, Block became a full-blown political celebrity. (At the time, I remarked that it was a mistake for a strategist to seek the limelight. After all, the campaign should be about Herman Cain.) Then, the scandals started to hit. And in the week or so since the allegations of sexual harassment first surfaced, Cain’s team has failed to put out a series of fires. What is more, Block threw fuel on...

President Barack Obama has declared Washington, D.C. a major disaster zone, but it’s not because of the red ink flooding from his pen. It’s not due to the president’s collapsing approval ratings. And it has nothing to do with the mud-slides and verbal infernos that he has loosed on his political rivals. Obama declared D.C. a disaster zone Tuesday because of the August 23 earthquake that damaged some pinnacles and a gargoyle on an Episcopal cathedral, frightened some zoo animals, dropped some bricks into an alleyway alongside Ecuador’s embassy, and cracked the stones near the top of the Washington Monument....

Attorney General Eric Holder flip-flopped his Operation Fast and Furious testimony during a Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. During a May 3 House Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder told Congressional investigators at least twice that he had only learned of the controversial Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking program a “few weeks” beforehand. But testifying Tuesday, Holder’s timeline changed. His new testimony amounts to an admission that he misled Congress during that May 3 hearing. House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz both asked him during that hearing when he had first learned of “Fast and Furious,” and...