Free Republic

Accountability is sorely lacking in the administrative state. Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats make decisions significantly affecting our daily lives with too little involvement from our elected officials. The Congressional Review Act was intended to restore at least some degree of democratic accountability to the administrative process. It requires agencies to submit to Congress every rule they wish to impose on you, giving the people you elected an opportunity to oversee what federal bureaucrats are up to. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, agencies have failed to comply with their obligations under the statute, withholding rules from Congress and thereby avoiding...

It was hard to watch Mark Zuckerberg's congressional hearing without liking congress a lot less. In between the rampant showboating and clumsy soundbites, it became clear that a lot of legislators don't know enough about technology to competently regulate it. And even if they did, the federal government's track record on surveillance and privacy rights is less than sterling.

Someday a non-political frog, one who looks like President Donald Trump and who is totally unrelated to government, will set all Facebook frogs free. Millennial pipsqueak Mark Zuckerberg may have done us all an unintended favor at Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s Congress performance. Anyone who watched it knows exactly where the masses stand in this perilous moment in time: millions of frogs in social media’s boiling cauldron of water getting uncomfortably hot, but not quite yet knowing it’s time to jump out.

What is it about spectacular American business success stories like Facebook that brings out envy and resentment? Facebook has 2 billion monthly users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is 33 and has a net worth north of $60 billion, making him the fifth richest person on Earth, according to Forbes last month. His company is also accused of allowing "misuse" of its users' personal data to help elect President Donald Trump. Never mind that the 2012 Obama campaign bragged about using Facebook in a similar way to win re-election. So, when it comes to Facebook and Zuckerberg, what's not to hate? Industrial...

Former FBI Director James Comey's promised openness is particularly tantalizing for some congressional investigators who have been trying unsuccessfully to get Comey to answer questions in the months since he was fired. Fired FBI Director James Comey's bookselling campaign is well under way. ABC is leaking sensational tidbits from a five-hour interview Comey did with George Stephanopoulos, set to air in a prime-time special Sunday. A commercial for the show features Stephanopoulos revealing that Comey compared President Trump to a "mob boss." A "source present at the taping" told Axios that the interview "left people in the room stunned —...

House Speaker Paul Ryan is not seeking re-election and will retire from Congress after this year, the Wisconsin Republican announced Wednesday. "You realize something when you take this job," Ryan told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning. "It's a big job with a lot riding on you ... but you also know this is not a job that does not last forever. ... You realize you hold the office for just a small part of our history. So you better make the most of it." He reminded reporters that he took the job "reluctantly" in 2015, when he took...

The House of Representatives just passed a $1.3 trillion spending bill which none of them read. In it, the majority party violated virtually every campaign promise they made to get elected. The things they promised to cut were fully funded, and the things they promised to fund did not get done. The level of corruption and derogation of duty is staggering. This is the reality. And apparently, this is the setup for a really good joke too. Soon, the very same House of Representatives is set to take up a proposal to call for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the...

Mark Zuckerberg swears he found out just two weeks ago that bad actors were harvesting users’ private info by the millions. But the company was alerted long, long before that. Facebook was warned five years ago that the “reverse-lookup” feature in its search engine could be used to harvest names, profiles, and phone numbers for virtually all its users. But the company ignored the red flags until last week, after it happened. In prepared testimony to Congress released Monday, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that malefactors had used the reverse-lookup “to link people’s public Facebook information to a phone number,” he wrote...

MT. LEBANON, Pa. -- On a steep tree-lined street just off U.S. Route 19, a modest red-brick home has an old sign in the front yard that seems to be from a lifetime ago. "Where's Tim Murphy?" the sign asks. Murphy was the Republican congressman for this area until October, when he resigned in disgrace, spurring a special election in which his once-reliable Republican House seat fell into the hands of a young moderate Democrat named Conor Lamb. The sign is a relic not only because Murphy is gone but also because his congressional seat is history. The Democrat-controlled Pennsylvania...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will apologize for his company’s role in a data privacy scandal and foreign interference in the 2016 elections when he appears before Congress this week, saying the social network “didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility,” according to prepared remarks released Monday. Zuckerberg will appear before lawmakers on Tuesday and Wednesday to try to restore public trust in his company and stave off federal regulation that some lawmakers have floated. His company is under fire in the worst privacy crisis in its history after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated...

Few Republicans in Washington are willing to go head-to-head with President Trump, but there is one band of GOP members willing to stand up to the leader of their own party: lawmakers who have announced their retirements. While it’s not uncommon for members to feel far more liberated on their way out the door, it has taken on a whole new meaning in the Trump era, where lawmakers are confronted daily by a never-ending stream of White House controversies.

Few Republicans in Washington are willing to go head-to-head with President Trump, but there is one band of GOP members willing to stand up to the leader of their own party: lawmakers who have announced their retirements. While it’s not uncommon for members to feel far more liberated on their way out the door, it has taken on a whole new meaning in the Trump era, where lawmakers are confronted daily by a never-ending stream of White House controversies. The GOP’s retirement caucus has provided some of the most biting commentary on the president in recent months, with Rep. Ryan...

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) announced Friday that he is resigning from Congress immediately after facing a backlash over using $84,000 in taxpayer funds to settle a sexual harassment claim. "While I planned on serving out the remainder of my term in Congress, I know in my heart it's time for me to move along and look for new ways to serve," Farenthold said in a statement. The abrupt resignation is effective as of 5 p.m. on Friday, according to his office. Lauren Greene, the congressman's former communications director, sued her boss over allegations he fostered a hostile work environment where...

New reports have emerged that dozens of House Democrats waived the background checks on the Awan Brothers — the House I.T. aides handling their cybersecurity and with access to their email systems. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton went to Capitol Hill last year to help shine a spotlight on the ongoing Awan Brothers I.T. scandal in the House of Representatives that the mainstream media — and, sadly, even our Justice Department and much of Congress — are all ignoring. This is a story that involves political corruption, alleged cybersecurity breaches, the potential sharing of private constituent info, possible large-scale fraud,...

Has anyone noticed....* The increased activity on all fronts by President Trump and getting things done.* With the useless House and Senate out of town on Vacation, and...* His poll numbers are up.Am I the only on to see that connection or am I off base here?A penny for your thoughts Freepers...

Get ready for Zuck’s big ‘stoop and scoop scene’ before Congress, Oscar performed before all those he called “dumb fu*ks” for trusting him It’s got to be the biggest insult to the intelligence of the public at large in all time: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “testifying” before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11, that is. Zuckerberg, who kicked himself off in the business world as plain “Zuck” will be “testifying” to the same people who invest heavily into his company, a name that rhymes with the one he calls people who use his platform: “I have over...

Rep. William Lacy Clay (D., Mo.) continues to push campaign funds to a law firm run by his sister, which has now received nearly $1 million in payments since first appearing on the campaign's payroll 16 years ago, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The St. Louis Democrat's campaign committee, Clay Jr. for Congress, reported directing $27,000 in disbursements to the Law Office of Michelle C. Clay, LLC, a firm owned by the congressman's sister, during the first quarter of 2018, which spans from Jan. 1 to March 30. The firm is located just miles outside of Washington, D.C., in...

The federal money spent on research that uses tissue from aborted babies -- and sometimes transplants it into "humanized mice" -- has increased since Republicans won control of both houses of Congress in the 2014 elections, according to data published by the National Institutes of Health. The recently passed omnibus, which funds the government through fiscal 2018, was stripped of language initially included in the NIH funding bill that would have expressly prohibited funding for research that uses tissue from aborted babies. Since 2008, the NIH has published estimates of how much it spends on different categories of research in...

Don’t expect much legislating to get done on Capitol Hill before the Nov 2018 midterm elections. Today's USA Today newspaper reminds readers that historically, congressional leadership in both dominant parties don't push vulnerable members -- those facing difficult re-election prospects -- to cast difficult votes. USA Today writers Eliza Collins et al. describe the coming months as likely to be a legislative "dead zone": "With a few exceptions, the performance of Congress over the past five midterm election lead-ups — from the Easter break to Election Day in 2014, 2010, 2006, 2002 and 1998 — backs up the belief that...

Daily Caller News Foundation reporter Luke Rosiak said Democrats exhibited terrible judgement in the wake of the House IT scandal Monday on Fox Business and questioned why they still haven’t taken action. The Awan brothers — who worked as IT aides for many Democratic members of Congress, including Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz — have been the focus of an investigation into security practices on Capitol Hill. The brothers were not given background checks before being given access to highly sensitive government information and no explanations have been given as to why. “The House policy actually says that background checks...