Free Republic

In a move more reminiscent of Texas Senator Ted Cruz than Ohio Representative John Boehner, the House Speaker has pursued a strategy to defund President Obama’s executive action on immigration, leveraging funding for Homeland Security in the process. Bloomberg News reports: House Speaker John Boehner said he’s prepared to let funding lapse for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and blame Democrats if the Senate fails to pass a House-backed bill for the agency. … The Homeland Security Department faces a shutdown of nonessential operations if Congress does not reach agreement before current funding ends on Feb. 27. When asked...

President Obama is putting Republicans on notice that he plans to run through their cynical politics and opposition during his final two years in office. While speaking at a DNC fundraiser in San Francisco, the president said: "And one of the things I am absolutely determined to do over the next two years is not just consolidate the gains that we’ve made, not just move forward on new initiatives like free community colleges for young people around the country who need to be trained for the 21st-century economy, but part of my goal is also to restore a sense of...

The unofficial death of the moderate American Democrat went largely unnoticed last week. Tim Ryan — a once-strident champion of the Rust Belt city of Youngstown, filled with moderate Catholic Democrats whose issues are still firmly pocketbook-based — penned an op-ed saying he now supports abortion. The Ohio congressman, who once sat on the board of the Democrats for Life in America advocacy group, made that surprising reversal as he contemplates a run for U.S. Senate. You see, plenty of Jacksonian Democrats remain in his district — and all across the country, for that matter — but no tolerance for...

It’s not just that they shoved the Keystone XL bill through as fast as possible. It’s not that they voted, once again, to strip millions of Americans of their health care, knowing it wouldn’t pass Obama’s veto but wanting to send a “message” that, well, that they don’t give a damn about you or your kids, and don’t care who knows it. Everyone saw that s***-storm coming a mile away. The GOP agenda is nothing if not openly spiteful and shamelessly hostile toward anything that is not white, wealthy and male. The current mood is far more sinister – and...

Representative G.K. Butterfield (D., N.C.) accused Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) of opposing the confirmation of President Obama’s attorney general nominee because she is “an African American legal scholar.” “The Congressional Black Caucus recognizes Senator Paul’s unfounded argument as nothing but an excuse to keep an African-American legal scholar from holding this high position, and we directly call on him and Republicans to allow the nomination of Loretta Lynch to proceed to an up or down vote in the Senate,” Butterfield, the chairman of the CBC, said in a Thursday statement. Paul says he opposes Loretta Lynch taking over for...

GOP presidential hopefuls are cozying up to anti-immigrant extremists and right-wing billionaires. When I was growing up, my older Mexican-American relatives had an expression: “Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.” It was my family’s way of making me careful about choosing my friends. Even then, I could see they were right. The smart kids mostly hung out with other smart kids. The athletes stuck with other athletes. The troublemakers befriended other troublemakers. That saying comes to mind when I think about the Iowa Freedom Summit, a big gathering in Des Moines that basically...

Texas Republicans issued a one-sentence rebuttal to Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) for his comments during a Monday Rules Committee meeting. In debating with Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) over the latest Obamacare repeal bill, Hastings referenced his colleague’s home state, “which I think is a crazy state to begin with, and I mean it just as I said it.” As the two fought over speaking time, Burgess complained that Hastings “made a very defamatory comment about my state, and I will not stand here and listen to it.” Hastings has not apologized. House Texas Republicans issued a joint statement today:...

Peter King running for president in order to prevent other Republicans from winning the 2016 election. In numerous interviews, Congressman Peter King from New York has confirmed that his main reason for entering the presidential race is to serve as an obstacle to conservatives like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.Peter King running for president not because he thinks he can make it to the White House, but because he wants to stop several Republicans from becoming the most powerful leader in the world. For over two years now, Mr Peter Thomas King, who is the U.S. Representative for...

I was leaving the One Voice worship service at the Renaissance Hotel in D.C. Wednesday night, on my way to meet fellow pro-lifers at the Dubliner Pub (dichotomous activities, I know, at least for a Protestant :), when Casey Mattox of Alliance Defending Freedom stopped me in the hall. “They’re pulling the 20-week ban,” said Casey, “and substituting ‘No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion‘.” Casey started walking again, on a mission to tell others, but I remained frozen, with my mouth hanging open, watching Casey until he disappeared around a corner. (Correction: Casey has told me he was actually on a...

Erick Erickson, the man described by The Atlantic as the Most Powerful Conservative in America, swung his verbal hammer on the Republican Party’s abandonment of the pro-life movement.  The blow hit directly on the fissure separating the party’s money and influence-peddlers from its principled core.  This single statement “[maybe] it is time for a third party to give the GOP competition” marks a cataclysmic shift in RedState.com, a media site dedicated to Republican principles, whose own posting rules prohibit its readers from posting the very statement Erickson made on its front page. 6. It is forbidden to promote or give...

Prepare yourself at 9 p.m. ET for the magic that only a seventh-year State of the Union speech can create. Every SOTU is a political Groundhog Day but tonight’s looks to be more repetitive than usual — tax hikes on the rich, some whining about the Citizens United decision, a few studiously vague sentences on “progress” made in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, etc. Seventh verse, same as the first. What’s novel is the new reality in Congress and Obama’s reaction to it. Having just seen Democrats obliterated in an election which he himself sold as a referendum on his...

There is no shortage of lawyers on Capitol Hill — they comprise 45 percent of the 114th Congress. But unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, whose nine justices hail from just three elite law schools, a state school law degree won't hamper and may even smooth the way to the U.S. House of Representatives or Senate. The sitting crop of lawyer-­lawmakers passed through 105 law campuses on their way to Washington. The 20 law schools that sent the most alumni to Congress include some of the country's most prominent — Harvard Law School tops the list with 18, followed by...

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said those who criticize the appointment of Democratic Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) to the Intelligence Committee because he is a Muslim are “un-American.” Schiff, who is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he has been “deeply disturbed” by the reaction by some to Carson’s appointment last week. “I am deeply disturbed that since his appointment to the committee, Congressman Carson has been subject to vicious, anti-Muslim attacks online and in social media, questioning his loyalty to our country solely because of his faith.”(continued)

Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus plan to be in Ferguson, Mo. on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Monday, January 19, to encourage residents to get more involved in the political process. Ferguson has been the subject of regular demonstrations and some unrest since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, 18, an unarmed African-American, by white policeman on Aug. 9, 2014. A local grand jury declined to indict the police officer, though some questioned the fairness of the process set up by the local prosecutor. Richmond said Black Caucus members will encourage...

Dr. Savage says that "this means the election was for naught." John Boehner is still speaker of the House. This confirms what we have known forever: That this country is no longer a republic. It is an oligarchy: A government of the powerful, by the powerful, for the powerful. John Boehner is a tool of the establishment. This means he and Obama are one and the same. The government is immune to the people. The people be damned. Where does that leave us? We are back where we started before the American Revolution. We might as well have a British...

One of the biggest fallacies in politics today is the claim that we, as conservatives and libertarians, can only be effective if we stay loyal to the Republican Party and work to gain control of it by electing more free-market conservatives every election year. We at AFR believe such thinking to be tragically misguided. To expect the Republican Party to challenge the modern day juggernaut of statism is as foolish as expecting socialist professors to instill Americanism into our youth. It won’t happen anymore than the planets will one day reverse their orbits. This is because the members of the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)In his most forceful language yet against GOP detractors, House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that he dislikes being described as "spineless or a squish" by conservative Republicans, but that the label that stings him the most is when he's called a part of the "establishment." "I am the most anti-Establishment Speaker we have ever had" he told NBC News at his first solo press conference of the new Congress. "Who was the guy who got rid of earmarks? Me. Who's the guy who believes in regular order? Me. Who believes in allowing more members to participate in the process,...

In the wake of the vote reelecting John Boehner as House speaker, it is worth noting a statement put out by rock-rib conservative Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.): Some people wrote me encouraging me to vote for Louie Gohmert. I like Louie, but let’s be clear: Louie Gohmert was – is – never ever going to be Speaker of the House. I respect his passion, but he isn’t a credible candidate. That was proved today by the fact that he got three votes, despite all the national media attention he managed to grab. My colleague who got the most anti-Boehner votes...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Newly elected Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) has recently reaffirmed her support for repealing Obamacare on ABC’s This Week with host Martha Raddatz. When asked by Raddatz if she would stand by senators like Ted Cruz in their fight to do whatever possible to defund and dismantle Obamacare, Love responded: “Look, I was elected by my district to make sure we get the decision-making back in their hands and I’ve said I was going to do everything I can to repeal and replace it with broad health-care reforms, free-market health-care reforms. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”Though it may...

This is a sampling from Bay Area News Group's Political Blotter blog. Read more and post comments at www.ibabuzz.com/politics. Dec. 23 Those blaming President Obama, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio or protesters for the shooting deaths of two New York City police officers Saturday are "demagoguing the issues" and doing the nation a disservice, Rep. Barbara Lee said Tuesday. "As someone who supports nonviolence and gun safety and gun control and peaceful resolutions in Congress, I don't think there's any way any of us in the protest movement, in the progressive movement, would condone that" kind of violence,...