Free Republic

**SNIP** The IRS scandal that still leaves many stones unturned. While persons in the Obama administration have been investigating to a small degree, there is obvious a need to conduct more of an investigation into this concern. The assertions of lost emails by persons involved, such as Lois Lerner, is still unsettled. Just two days ago, Breitbart did a piece titled “IRS: Um, Yeah, We Never Actually Looked for Lois Lerner’s Emails or Anything.” Needless to say, the IRS scandal remains and has not settled well with Americans who want to know the truth. After all, targeting conservative groups prior...

Loretta Lynch, President Barack Obama's choice to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General, would likely sail through confirmation hearings under normal circumstances--i.e. even when Democrats had not gutted the filibuster rule in a cynical act of partisanship, and when the administration had not turned the nation's top law enforcement office into such a politicized and race-obsessed office. She certainly has the right qualifications. Lynch has served twice as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and has a long résumé of high-profile prosecutions. Her most recent headline case has been that of U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), who...

As speculation continues to swirl over whether she would run for president in 2016, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) solidified her standing as a favorite of Hollywood and Los Angeles progressives on Sunday when she delivered a speech hammering Washington for being beholden to corporate interests and the rich and powerful. While some of the guests at the ACLU of Southern California's Bill of Rights Dinner expressed frustration and dismay over the campaigns of Democrats, Warren directed her remarks at the system on Capitol Hill.

With the walloping Republicans gave Democrats in the midterm elections, the GOP stands one Louisiana Senate runoff away from completely controlling Southern politics from the Carolinas to Texas. Only a handful of Democrats hold statewide office in the rest of the Old Confederacy. The results put Southern Republicans at the forefront in Washington — from Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to a host of new committee chairmen. Those leaders and the rank-and-file behind them will set the Capitol Hill agenda and continue molding the GOP’s identity heading into 2016....

John Cornyn is the even-keeled insider. Ted Cruz is the brash, ambitious bomb-thrower. The GOP takeover of the Senate last week puts the two Texas Republicans in a white-hot spotlight — and potentially a collision course. As deputy majority leader, Cornyn’s main task will be to keep the party unified behind an agenda and strategy set by the incoming majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Cruz, by contrast, wouldn’t even pledge to support McConnell for the leadership post, before or after Tuesday night’s sweeping victory. “Ted’s going to be a leader. He’s not just going to be an agitator,” said...

Voters in Louisiana’s 6th District have two choices to represent them in Washington, D.C.: a political newcomer, who served in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s cabinet, or a well-known former governor, who also happens to be a convicted felon. By nearly all measures, Republican Garret Graves, who served as Jindal’s coastal secretary for six years, has the upper hand heading into a Dec. 6 runoff against former Gov. Edwin Edwards, a Democrat. Edwards, a colorful character from a different political era, once famously quipped to reporters that the only way he’d lose an election bid was “if I’m caught in bed with...

AUSTIN, Texas -- It has been an up-and-down week for Texas State Representative Ron Reynolds. On Tuesday, Reynolds, an attorney and Democrat representing Missouri Springs, coasted to an easy re-election, winning 66 percent of the vote against his Republican opponent. Wednesday, he was in a Montgomery County courtroom -- not to represent a client, but to face trial for 10 felony counts of "barratry," the illegal solicitation of clients by attorneys commonly referred to as "ambulance chasing." Finally, on Friday, he managed to avoid a felony conviction, but was found guilty of six misdemeanor counts for a lesser charge of...

WASHINGTON — As most Republicans were taking a victory lap the morning after the elections, a group of conservatives huddled anxiously in a conference room not far from Capitol Hill and agreed that now is the time for confrontation, not compromise and conciliation. Despite Republicans’ ascension to Senate control and an expanded House majority, many conservatives from the party’s activist wing fear that congressional leaders are already being too timid with President Obama. They do not want to hear that government shutdowns are off the table or that repealing the Affordable Care Act is impossible — two things Republican leaders...

For the first time, the number of women in Congress has hit triple digits. Alma Adams, a Democrat from North Carolina, was elected representative for the 12th Congressional District on Tuesday. Because it was a special election, she will be sworn in immediately and join the 113th Congress. Before Adams’s election, there were 20 female senators and 79 female representatives in Congress, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Obama took to the podium on Wednesday after the midterm elections and made it clearer than ever that he lives in his own universe. Americans sent the message loud and clear that they reject his policies and the Democrat platform as it currently stands, yet Obama drove the message home that even with a Republican Congress in control, he would continue to push his extremely unpopular liberal agenda. The wellbeing of Americans has never been the top priority in Obama-land, and his arrogant-selfishness was the resounding sentiment throughout his misguided press conference. In Obama’s mind there may as well not...

The Congressional Review Act of 1996 established expedited (or “fast track”) procedures by which Congress may disapprove a broad range of regulatory rules issued by federal agencies by enacting a joint resolution of disapproval. For initial floor consideration, the Act provides an expedited procedure only in the Senate. (The House would likely consider the measure pursuant to a special rule.) The Senate may use the procedure for 60 days of session after the agency transmits the rule to Congress. In both houses, however, to qualify for expedited consideration, a disapproval resolution must be submitted within 60 days after Congress receives...

It’s official: in January, Jody Hice will be sworn in as the next Congressman from Georgia’s 10th District. This is a man who has called Islam, the second-largest religion in the world, “a totalitarian way of life with a religious component” that “does not deserve First Amendment protection.” In his book he calls legal abortion “worse than Hitler’s six million Jews or Mussolini’s three hundred thousand,” adding that “the genocide in America is inexcusable!” In 2004, he told the Athens Banner-Herald that he doesn’t “see a problem” with women running for office “if the woman’s within the authority of her...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is said to be losing the strong support she has enjoyed among her Democrats in the United States House of Representatives. Yet, the 74-year-old politician powerhouse from California has made it well known to her fellow-Democratic lawmakers that she intends on keeping her position in Washington, D.C., as the House Minority Leader. As she expresses her desire to stay in power, Politico is reporting on Thursday that there are no Democrats preparing to challenge Pelosi publicly even though there are those who wish she would be replaced.

Speaker John A. Boehner pushed back Thursday on speculation of an expanding "hell no" caucus in the Republican party following Tuesday's Midterm Elections, instead calling on President Barack Obama to rebuild trust by not acting unilaterally on issues like immigration.

The lame duck session hasn’t yet convened, but its first major battle — over how best to thwart the executive action on immigration the president is expected to issue in the coming months — is already underway. Conservatives are pushing to include a measure attempting to deny the government the funds it needs to administer the amnesty in a must-pass spending bill, the so-called continuing resolution. That would include the funds to issue green cards and work permits. National Review Online obtained a copy of a letter that Arizona congressman Matt Salmon is circulating to his colleagues to generate support...

Some Los Angeles donors who attended a Sept. 30 fundraiser for Clay Aiken in Los Angeles feel “duped” after the announcement, just hours after he lost his race for a North Carolina congressional seat, that Esquire Network had been producing a “docu-series” about his campaign. According to Karen Ocamb of FrontiersLA, donors are asking that footage of the event not be included in the documentary. Donors have complained that a film crew following Aiken around that night asked attendees to sign release forms, but told them that it was for a BBC documentary that would not air in the U.S....

Wonder Woman is home from the war on women, a "war" fought mostly in the fantasies of embattled Democrats, and she sounds like a Republican who looks a lot like Joni Ernst of Iowa. Or Elise Stefanik of New York, who at 30 will be the youngest woman to serve in Congress, or Mia Love of Utah, 38, daughter of Haitian immigrants, the first black Republican woman in Congress. These are women with neither lamentations nor unresolved grievances. The only whine anyone heard on the morning after the elections was the growl of Mrs. Ernst's Harley. Despite the tedious rhetoric...

Obama’s Amnesty By BlackmailPosted By Matthew Vadum On November 7, 2014 @ 12:34 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments Ignoring voters’ historic coast-to-coast repudiation of his disastrous policies this week, President Obama is now threatening to move forward unilaterally with a massive immigration amnesty by the end of the year.At his first post-election press conference Wednesday, instead of embracing conciliation as a responsible adult might do, Obama, the petulant Chicagoland thug, pulled a switchblade. Obama tried to blackmail newly emboldened congressional Republicans, vowing to enact amnesty through executive fiat if Congress doesn’t play ball.Republicans’ newly won control of the...

Memo to the GOP. You had a great night on Tuesday. But remember: You didn’t win it; the Democrats lost it. This is not to say that you didn’t show discipline in making the election a referendum on six years of Barack Obama. You exercised adult supervision over the choice of candidates. You didn’t allow yourselves to go down the byways of gender and other identity politics. It showed: A gain of probably nine Senate seats, the largest Republican House majority in more than 80 years, and astonishing gubernatorial victories, including Massachusetts, Maryland, and Illinois, the bluest of the blue,...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to confirm 50 of President Obama’s nominees and move an omnibus spending bill in a last hurrah before Democrats give up power in the Senate. The nominees are part of a packed lame-duck schedule that Reid is furiously planning, and that will be a topic at Friday’s White House lunch meeting between Obama and congressional leaders. Reid also wants to move a package of expiring tax provisions, the annual Defense Department authorization bill and an extension of a tax moratorium on Internet purchases in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That will be...