Free Republic

The recent Supreme Court decision over-ruling some Federal Election Commission restrictions on political campaign contributions has provoked angry reactions on the left. That is what often happens whenever the High Court rules that the First Amendment means what it says — free speech for everybody. When the Supreme Court declared in 2010 that both unions and corporations had a right to buy political ads, that was considered outrageous by the left. President Obama called the decision "devastating" and said it "will open the floodgates for special interests." Those unfamiliar with political rhetoric may not know that "special interests" mean people...

The Supreme Court’s decision last week in McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission, eliminating the total limit that an individual can contribute in an election cycle to candidates and party committees, amounts to a shot of adrenalin to American democracy. The court ruled that such limits violate First Amendment free speech protection. Limits remain on the total funds that an individual can contribute to a given candidate in an election cycle. But the limit on the total contributions that an individual can make are now gone. The principle involved - that participation in elections and supporting candidates of one’s choice is...

A man convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would like to make a nightmare of one of the Nevada Democrat’s top lieutenants come true — by eliminating all campaign contribution limits. **SNIP** In a bit of irony perhaps, the same day that the Supreme Court issued the decision in the McCutcheon case, attorneys for Nevada developer and lobbyist Harvey Whittemore filed an appellate brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of the Appeals, seeking to overturn a federal conviction on illegal campaign contributions. The Reno Gazette-Journal reported that Wednesday was the deadline for Whittemore’s filing....

CHICAGO - On a politically focused trip aimed at revving up his base and raising cash, President Barack Obama on Wednesday urged supporters to help Democrats keep control of the U.S. Senate and declared this year to be his last campaign. Buoyed by good news over his signature healthcare program, Obama touted proposals to raise the minimum wage and spur job creation that have little chance of passage in Congress during a rally with students in Michigan. Later at a fundraiser in Chicago he underscored Democratic worries about their political vulnerabilities in the Senate and House of Representatives in November...

Breaking: scotus strikes down aggregate campaign contribution limits 5-4 per Chief Justice Roberts in McCutcheon case.

The 137-page, FBI-sworn affidavit against California State Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat who is also running for Secretary of State, and over two dozen other individuals reads like a crime thriller. Beyond the widely reported stories of alleged wire fraud, money laundering, corruption, and bribery, the affidavit contains tales of alleged murder-for-hire plots involving a political consultant close to Yee, as well as large international weapons trafficking operations.Indeed, while the media have fixated on the hypocrisy of a gun-control advocate--Yee sponsored legislation against detachable magazines, for example--alleged involvement in gun smuggling, few reports delve into the kind of weapons with which...

A California state senator has been arrested for promising shoulder-fired automatic weapons and missiles from a Muslim separatist group to an undercover FBI agent in exchange for campaign donations, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday. In San Francisco, FBI agents have charged California State Sen. Leland Yee with conspiracy to deal firearms and wire fraud. The allegations were outlined in an FBI affidavit against Yee and 25 others. The allegations against Yee include a number of favors he requested in exchange for campaign donations, as well as performing "official acts" in exchange for donations to get himself out of a...

The United States Congress does not work for us. As in you and me. I have come to this somber conclusion after reading enough articles, blogs, facts, and budget numbers to make an actuary cross-eyed. And I feel more at peace now because I can say “wow, that explains a lot. That explains everything.” I won’t inflict blindness on you by citing every possible statistic here. Here’s a few: ⁃ Starting Congressional Base Salary $174,000 ⁃ Average First Year Attorney Salary - Washington DC: $160,000 ⁃ Total Congressional Pay + Expenses (not including office expenditures): $233,000,000 ⁃ Estimated Total Campaign...

The Republican-run House of Representatives on Friday approved a bipartisan deal to spare doctors from a looming Medicare pay cut but included a provision to undermine Obamacare, which critics said was a non-starter in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The vote was 238-181, with most House Democrats refusing to swallow what they called an Obamacare “poison pill,” a provision to delay for five years the tax penalty that most Americans must pay under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law if they decline to sign up for insurance. **SNIP** Hundreds of thousands of doctors who participate in traditional Medicare face a 24 percent pay...

MIAMI — The donations kept pouring in: hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to President Obama and more than a dozen members of Congress, carefully routed through the families of two wealthy brothers in Florida. They had good reason to be generous. The two men, Roberto and William Isaias, are fugitives from Ecuador, which has angrily pressed Washington to turn them over, to no avail. A year after their relatives gave $90,000 to help re-elect Mr. Obama, the administration rejected Ecuador’s extradition request for the men, fueling accusations that such donations were helping to keep the brothers and...

A new campaign that seeks to pressure the Jewish campus group Hillel into partnering with anti-Israel organizations is being hailed as a way to “a “liberate young Jews from the vice grip of Zionism” by anti-Zionist activist Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal, who recently wrote a book that compared Israel with the Third Reich, praised the new campus movement “Open Hillel” during a speech at Brandeis University, according to video posted by a group called Safe Hillel. “There is a movement afoot, an organic movement on campuses now … which I consider to be a movement to liberate young Jews, from the...

Organizing for Action is revamping its fundraising practices and fired a fundraiser amid questions about whether the group was promising access to Obama administration officials in exchange for donations. Samantha Maltzman, a top fundraiser for the Democratic group with strong ties to President Obama, resigned from the organization after NBC News obtained emails between her and Dr. Munr Kazmir, a New Jersey businessman, explicitly listing prices to attend a summit last week with the president. The emails conflicted with a pledge by former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, who wrote in an op-ed last year that “we can't and we...

**SNIP** Senator Hagan released the following statement to ABC11: "When this law was written, we established a three-year transition period so that insurance companies had time to begin offering plans that met the requirements of the law for the 5 percent of people on the individual market. As I've made clear, I didn't know that some insurance companies would use that transition period to sell outdated plans without fully notifying consumers that they would no longer be available in 2014. But as soon as it came to my attention last fall when I heard from constituents who felt blindsided by...

Democrats are panicking. They are worried Republicans will win back the US Senate.The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) sent out this email today. Jim — This is bad: Six Democrats are now trailing in the polls after $28 million in Koch attacks — and if the Republicans win all six, the Senate is theirs.But we will turn this around and stop them: our Grassroots Victory Project will invest $60 million into 4,000 field staff in 10 states to reverse the GOP’s gains. To ensure the GVP is fully funded before the FEC deadline TOMORROW, we need you and 786 other...

Alison Lundergan Grimes won't be showing Southern hospitality to President Obama. The Kentucky Democrat says she doesn't need the President to help out in her bid for the U.S. Senate, as she tries to distance herself from his unpopular health care reform. “I speak for myself. I don't need any other surrogate to do that,” she announced Monday in a MSNBC interview with Kasie Hunt, when asked if the President would be joining her on the campaign trail.

For one of the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbents, Sen. Mary Landrieu’s campaign site is rather… sparse right now. **SNIP** In the 29 items listed on the “News & Press Releases” page, the words “Obamacare” “Affordable Care Act” “health care” and “health” never appear. “Insurance” gets mentioned six times… but only in the context of flood insurance.

Fortunately for Claire McCaskill, she doesn’t have to make that call in 2014, thanks to a narrow escape in Missouri’s 2012 Senate election. If she did have to campaign in the post-ObamaCare rollout environment, though, McCaskill would know better than to invite a deeply unpopular President to accompany her while making a pitch for another six years in office, she tells Morning Joe (via Mediaite):CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO MARK HALPERIN: Senator, Mark Halperin here. If you were running for re-election in Arkansas, Louisiana or North Carolina, would you invite the president and campaign side-by-side with him?CLAIRE MCCASKILL: You...

What is this about? New to me. Any more insight on it? PAW (which I despise) posts this without any explanation.

WASHINGTON — President Obama is offering to help Senate Democrats get re-elected — by staying as far away as possible. The president broached the sensitive topic of his political toxicity in some parts of the nation during a meeting with the Senate Democratic conference Wednesday. “He said he knew he is not popular in some of the states, so he would not be offended if he were not invited to visit them this year,” one senator later confided to The Washington Post.

The most robust defense of Obamacare on television right now lasts about three seconds and comes from a little-known Texas Democrat named Barbara Mallory Caraway, a former state lawmaker running for Congress. Her $20,000 spot says last year's government shutdown led by her home-state senator, Republican Ted Cruz, hurt "those people looking for health care insurance." A Democratic super PAC indirectly plugged the health care law in a December ad, boasting that Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina "forced insurance companies to cover cancer and other preexisting conditions." Before that, campaign ad trackers say the last exclusively positive message on...