Free Republic

How many times have you heard of Senators and Representatives adding riders or amendments to bills to help fund their pet projects back in their states or for a friend? I’ve written about a number of these in the past including: $384,949 for the study of duck penises$876,752 to study snail sex$15.3 million for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska$113,227 for a video game preservation center in New York$550,000 for a documentary on how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union$48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii’s chocolate industry.$350,000 to support an International...

Left wing radicals shut down the Donald Trump rally in Chicago last night. Jim Hoft provided extensive coverage of the event at The Gateway Pundit. But who was behind the violent protests? Bernie Sanders supporters. They openly bragged about it on Twitter. Here’s a screenshot in case they delete their tweet:

Homeless U.S. military veterans stand in line for free services at a "Stand Down" event hosted by the Department of Veterans Affairs on November 3, 2011 in Denver, Colorado. A week ahead of Veterans Day, more than 500 homeless veterans were expected to attend the event, where they received free medical care, winter clothing, employment assistance and were able to see a judge to resolve legal issues. Organizers say the homeless veterans population has surged in recent years with the high national unemployment rate. Stand Down is a military term that means a temporary stop of offensive military action. (Photo...

According to the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica, the word cabal is defined as a private organization or party engaged in secret intrigues. In the wake of Donald Trump's near clean sweep of the March 8 GOP primaries and caucus, the anti-Trump secret meeting recently held in Georgia certainly fits the definition. In what may be the most curious presidential race in the history of the United States, Anusha Asif of Tech News Today reports on Mar. 8, 2016, many of the Congressional leadership of the Republican Party have met on March 7 with a who's who of liberal billionaires behind closed...

Democrat-turned-Republican state Sen. Carlyle W. Begay has announced he is entering a crowded field for the GOP nomination for the open seat in Arizona's 1st Congressional District. Begay is a Navajo appointed to fill a legislative vacancy in 2013. He won election to legislative term of his own in 2014 as a Democrat. He switched his party registration in 2015 after earlier in the year breaking party ranks to back a Republican-drafted state budget.

Recognizing the need for addressing the mental health issues plaguing many American citizens, the Senate health committee has announced the Mental Health Reform Act of 2016. While mental health can be described as "our emotional, psychological, and social well-being," mental illness "can affect your thinking, mood, and behavior."  Mental health problems can wreak havoc, not only with a person's life, but also with the lives of his or her near and dear ones. Recognizing this, a bipartisan Senate committee has announced that it is working out ways to address the mental health crisis in the United States. Senate health committee members announced...

Mitt Romney's speech against Donald Trump is not likely to win many converts. Romney's remarks will just further vindicate and entrench Trump supporters. Romney, though a good man, is quintessentially GOP establishment and has shown, by his speech, that he still doesn't understand the role he and his colleagues have played in bringing about the Trump surge. During campaign season, these guys always seem to get it. They profess to understand how destructive President Obama's agenda is, but once they're elected, they lose their will to fight, which makes many conservatives believe they didn't believe their own rhetoric in the...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/03/donald-trump-president-rep-tom-marino-editorials-debates/81277746/

Judicial Watch Presses Ahead with Fight over IRS Criminal Investigation Facts Department of Homeland Security Releases Documents Showing 1,000 Individuals Removed from Terrorist Watch List Judicial Watch in Court over CongressÂ’s Obamacare Exemption Judicial Watch Presses Ahead with Fight over IRS Criminal Investigation Facts The Clinton email matter is important, and your JW is, of course, at the center of the story. Check out this New York Times article, which shows that the FBI and Judicial Watch are the only two entities in DC likely to get answers and accountability on the Clinton email issue: Last week Judge Emmet...

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER: I didn't watch the debate, there have been about 25,000 debates, this was about 25,001... This is over. You're having tens of millions of Republican voters coming out to vote for Trump. So I understand Romney has an issue, Jeb Bush lost, Romney lost, Marco Rubio lost. They're all kind of in the angry loser group. I'm sorry, but you have millions of Republican voters voting for Donald Trump and that's just the way it is. Period.

To the catalogue of anxieties her patients explore during therapy — marriage, children, and careers — psychologist Alison Howard is now listening to a new source of stress: the political rise of Donald Trump. In recent days, at least two patients have invoked the Republican front-runner, including one who talked at length about being disturbed that Trump can be so divisive and popular at the same time, said Howard, who practices in the District. What had happened to Trump during his childhood, the patient wanted to know, to make him such a “bad person?” “He has stirred people up,” Howard...

Freedom lovers everywhere are biting their nails during the election season, wondering how the damage can be limited. Depending on who gains control, we could have trade wars, nationalized health care, the pillaging of Wall Street and Main Street, more wars in the Middle East, a VAT tax, surveillance of your smartphone, mass deportations, internment camps, and worse. Read that sentence slowly in a deep voice and it sounds like the trailer to a dystopian film. Another Way Let’s take a step back and ask whether it has to be this way. What if the power of government were so...

Conservative and center-right columnists often have to do far more digging than their liberal counterparts, simply because overwhelmingly left-leaning beat journalists, aka "Democrats with bylines," provide such unbalanced reporting on current events on a daily basis. Fortunately, the Washington Post's Marc Thiessen did the entirely necessary work of rummaging through available information about federal court nominations in 1988 and 1992. Any beat reporter could have done the same thing, but either didn't, or decided not to report what was found. What Thiessen unearthed makes an argument-ending mockery of Vice President Joe Biden's claim, made in a Monday evening tweet, that when he...

It's taken eight years, but it looks like it might actually happen: Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee favorably reported HR 3892 out of committee and onto the floor. The bill, if passed by the full House, would declare that the Muslim Brotherhood meets all the conditions that define a foreign terrorist organization, and would require the State Department to designate it as such. The Muslim Brotherhood has been patiently infiltrating its assets into American institutions for more than two decades. It has placed agents at high levels in the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House. Members of Muslim...

That should prove relatively easy, since transferring Gitmo detainees to the US remains illegal — under a law signed by Barack Obama. Paul Ryan promised a fight in both the legislative and judicial arenas to stop Obama’s latest iteration of his demand to shutter the detention facility at the Guantanamo naval base: House Speaker Paul Ryan says Republicans are taking legal steps to stop President Barack Obama from closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Ryan told reporters Wednesday that lawmakers have the votes to block Obama’s plan in Congress and enough votes to override any veto. Separately, the...

Let's play the hypothetical what if game. In this what if game let's hypothesize a voting record we have been unable to capture because said person never served. Be it as it may I will attempt to lay out my case as to why I am unable to vote for Donald Trump. I will also lay out the case of the way he would have voted on very important decisions for conservatives had he been a member of Congress. I will attempt to do this by utilizing his own words, his actions and beliefs that are well documented and compare...

Count Mitch McConnell among the unimpressed with Barack Obama’s plan to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The Senate Majority Leader responded to Obama’s declared plan to transfer its detainees to one or more of thirteen potential locations within the US by reminding the President that Congress has opposed such a move on a bipartisan basis. And, by the way, such a move would be illegal — under bills Obama has already signed: McConnell: Congress Opposed to Obama Gitmo Plan Count Paul Ryan among the unimpressed as well: My statement on the Obama administration's Guantanamo plan: https://t.co/0wTrIyF5ya pic.twitter.com/eHDWP763Tt— Paul...

Is there anybody more "all over the map" on healthcare than Donald Trump?...

The chair of a U.S. House investigative panel has announced they have issued subpoenas to obtain documents regarding the possible sale of aborted baby body parts. The investigation follows a 2015 University of New Mexico (UNM) research study obtained by New Mexico Alliance for Life (NMAFL) which detailed “how aborted baby liver and kidney tissue [was] harvested from ‘six fetuses,’ only 15 minutes after the abortion procedure.” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) who chairs the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, said the panel issued the subpoenas Tuesday. They went out to UNM and the late term abortion facility South Western...

"I call it the 'Cruz effect,'" Coburn, who retired from the Senate in 2014, told Sirius XM host Pete Dominick. "Look, when you tell people you can accomplish something that you can't, for example, shutting down the government over the Affordable Care Act. When, in fact, you promise people in your speeches and your talk that we can do this, and by dinghy, we're gonna get rid of the Affordable Care Act, and all we have to do is shut down the government. "Well, that's one thing to tell 'em that," the former Oklahoma senator said. "It's a whole other...