Free Republic

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) unveiled what he called the Republicans“ “policy agenda” for 2017 on Wednesday, including a plan to regain the legislative power granted to Congress in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. “Article One,” Ryan said at a pen and pad briefing with reporters at the Capitol, “this is something that our members are very animated about because this has gotten out of control. This is about the separation of powers, about the Constitution, and wresting control away from decades of executive overreach and giving it back to Congress,” he said. Ryan noted that President Barack Obama...

George Jepsen and 13 other state attorneys general sent a letter to congressional leaders Tuesday asking them to direct funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the causes and prevention of gun-related injuries and death. "There is no time to waste," they wrote. "As the chief civil or criminal law enforcement officers of our respective states, we are charged with keeping our communities safe, and we need evidence-based strategies to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is ravaging our families and communities."

The lid may finally blow off the Fast and Furious cover-up by the Obama administration, as a federal judge ordered the release of thousands of emails showing how then-attorney general Eric Holder obstructed, stonewalled, and misdirected congressional investigators looking into the program. People in the Nixon administration went to jail for less. ... The documents reveal how senior Justice Department officials — including Attorney General Holder — intensely followed and managed an effort to carefully limit and obstruct the information produced to Congress,” he asserted. They also indict Holder deputy Lanny Breuer, an old Clinton hand, who had to step...

Last week, the Senate passed legislation to address and prevent the spread of the Zika virus. However, the Senate failed to pay for it, and instead approved a $1.1 billion “emergency” spending supplemental bill that is not subject to the budgetary caps that were agreed to last year. (Snip) In March, President Obama gave the United Nations $500 million out of an account under bilateral economic assistance to fund the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund. Congress refused to allocate funding for the U.N. Climate Change Fund last year, so the president used this account designated for international infectious diseases to pay...

US House blocks aid to duplicitous Pakistan The US House of Representatives' decision to incorporate stringent requirements for the release of American aid to Pakistan, even in the face of opposition from the White House, is indicative of a gradual change of heart in Washington, DC, towards what was once its frontline ally in the war on terror. It comes days after the US Congress objected to the sale of American F-16s, which have little value in fighting insurgents but help Pakistan build parity with India. This is not to suggest that the US is anywhere close to changing its...

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) was enraged after his Republican colleagues defeated his amendment to uphold President Obama’s executive order that prohibits workplace discrimination against the LGBT community. Because seven Republicans decided to change their minds, his measure, which was tagged on to a spending bill, was defeated by a vote of 213-212. Democrats let the GOP know how upset they were, chanting “Shame! Shame!” on the House floor after the vote. Politico said the scene was one of “chaos.”Maloney, who is the first openly gay New York congressman, used some lofty language to describe how he felt. "The members who...

A BILL Making appropriations for the Department of the Interior, environment, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the following sums are appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, for the Department of the Interior, environment, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and for other purposes, namely: Amendments... H.AMDT.592 (A062) Amends: H.R.2822 Sponsor: Rep Huffman, Jared [CA-2] (offered 7/7/2015) AMENDMENT DESCRIPTION: Amendment inserted...

Member Of Congress: “It’s Easy To Manipulate A Nation Of Naive Sheep” You may not believe the incredible things that one member of Congress is saying about the corruption of our political system and the gullibility of the American people. In a brand new book entitled "The Confessions of Congressman X", one anonymous member of the U.S. House of Representatives confesses that he hardly ever reads the bills that he votes on, that his main job is to get reelected, and that it is "far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant...

Their signs may have read “united for students” but little about the recent teachers’ strikes in Chicago and Detroit public schools actually benefited the city’s children. That’s because teachers in both cities have staged “sickouts,” forcing schools to close and sending roughly 450,000 students into the streets of two of America’s most dangerous cities. At the helm of these protests are unions that use collective bargaining disputes to call on teachers to leave the classroom and block traffic during rush hour. These strikes are just the latest example of how unions can manipulate workers and taxpayers to advance their own...

Nine GOP committee chairmen lined up behind presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump Friday, just a day after the billionaire businessmen met with key party leaders on Capitol Hill. In a statement released announcing the endorsement, the chairmen said that it was important for Republicans to unite around Trump since America cannot deal with another Democrat in the White House nor can Republicans to lose their hold on Congress. “Any other outcome is a danger to economic growth, puts our national security in peril, enshrines ObamaCare as the law of the land, entraps Americans in a cycle of poverty and dependence,...

Nearly every 12 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies of a drug overdose. People in communities across America are abusing both prescription pain killers and heroin. It is an epidemic. No one is immune; it is a sad reality that is playing out across the country, including in my own district in Southwest Michigan. There were 13 suspected overdoses in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the first quarter of 2013, up from 9 in the first quarter of 2012. Behind these numbers are real folks, and their families, suffering. In 2008, we lost Amy Bousfield, an 18 year-old graduate of Portage Central...

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce will use its Select Investigative Panel to investigate late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart. Public reports show at least almost half-a-dozen women have been hospitalized since December while seeking an abortion at his Germantown, Md., abortion clinic. The clinic is one of the few in the country that performs abortions during the third trimester. "Reports regarding the Germantown clinic are deeply troubling, both for the sake of babies whose lives are ended so close to — and possibly even after — birth and for the sake of the women who have been rushed from that...

A Republican congressman has introduced legislation that would block the District of Columbia government from spending its local tax dollars without approval by Congress. Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee on government operations, introduced the bill Thursday, according to a copy of the legislation. It seeks to clarify the requirement that the District submit its local budget to Congress, as it has during more than 40 years of self-rule. …

See UNBELIEVABLE VIDEO below of Cubans and Africans in an uprising, because Costa Rica won’t let them through to come to the US. Panama and Costa Rican Officials have a MESS on their hands with illegal aliens from everywhere trying to get across their borders, all headed for the USA. A recent report from the Center For Immigration Studies states “the Costa Rican authorities have reported the presence of people of 14 different nationalities at that border.” The whole world has heard that America’s borders are open, and they are coming. In addition to the thousands of Cubans (who the...

Federal court to Obama: Sorry, champ, you can't spend money on ObamaCare if Congress didn't allocate it It seemed an astoundly obvious case. The power of the purse belongs to Congress, and the executive branch can’t just spend money if Congress never passed a bill allocating the money. But ths is the presidency of Barack Obama, where things like the Constitution and balances of power are mere puzzles to be solved by a power-crazed executive. Remember, this is the guy who regularly declares, “If Congress won’t act, I will!” No, champ. If Congress won’t act, you can’t. That’s how the...

Beyond the larger context of Globalists VS Nationalists, the internal opposition to Common Sense economic conservatism/nationalism can be fundamentally broken down into two categories: ♦  The first group are those who are fundamentally naive about large and historic economic issues; and how the economy was changed, forced to change, through the past forty years by financial interests who created a second, “false“, paper economy. This first group is generally young, pseudo-intellectual, and their only reference has been while formally educated within the last thirty years (they’re under 50).   Most of the oppositional (conservative) punditry falls into this category.  Important to note, this...

An anonymous congressman has dropped a bombshell election-year book that confirms why Americans hate their national government and have rallied to anti-establishment presidential candidates like Donald Trump. The veteran politician lays bare a rotten and corrupt Congress enslaved by lobbyists and interested only in re-election in an anonymous, 65-page manifesto called “The Confessions of Congressman X.” “Like most of my colleagues, I promise my constituents a lot of stuff I can never deliver,” he admits. “But what the hell? It makes them happy hearing it . . . My main job is to keep my job.” The House member —...

It seems that federal officials have worked overtime to undermine public trust. Benghazi, the IRS abuses, the “fast and furious” gun-running fiasco, the solar power boondoggles, and the seemingly endless implementation problems of the Affordable Care Act—all these scandals have common themes: arrogant and abusive bureaucracy, double dealing, lame excuses, and legal hairsplitting. The outrages listed above can be placed squarely at the doorstep of the White House. But one scandal is truly bipartisan: How key administration and congressional officials connived to create, under cover of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, special health insurance subsidies for members...

Did a key official in the ObamaCare chain of command lie to Congress about funds recouped from state-based exchanges? Andy Slavitt, acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) testified in a House Energy and Commerce hearing last December that CMS had recouped over $200 million from state-based exchanges (SBEs) that have failed. Further investigation, however, shows that Slavitt’s claim was false — that the actual grant dollars recovered was about a tenth of what he claimed, and that even those dollars were not “recouped,” but just never transmitted in the first place. The executive summary lays...

Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's vice-presidential running mate, sold stock in US banks on the same day he attended a confidential meeting where top level officials disclosed the sector was heading for a deep crisis. The congressman on Monday denied profiting from information gleaned from the meeting on 18 September 2008 when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, then treasury secretary Hank Paulson and others outlined their fears for the banking sector.