Free Republic

TPA, or similar a law, has existed for decades. The recent vote in the U.S. Senate was a renewal of the TPA, and Senator Ted Cruz, perhaps the foremost constitutional conservative in the Senate, supported it because it created a process in which the president could be held accountable. TPP was never voted on in the Senate or the House, and its language has not even been finalized. My objection, at this point, to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is that it is secret, and only members of congress are permitted to read it. Ted Cruz has read it, and...

In a scene all too typical in present day Washington, the culmination of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, along with the push for passage of related legislation such as Trade Promotion Authority (or Fast Track) have set off a lobbying frenzy. While liberal organizations and members of Congress deride the TPP as the biggest boondoggle since NAFTA and President Obama defends it as “the most progressive trade treaty ever,” the influence peddlers who populate K Street see opportunity. Policy makers aren’t simply facing a lobbying barrage from the typical slate of domestic interest groups. Foreign governments are running sophisticated operations to influence...

In the wake of revelations that technically a vote for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) would be a vote to grant the executive branch massively-expanded immigration powers, the Washington establishment cooked up an elaborate ruse to try to save the flailing Obamatrade bill. This comes as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)96% re-emerges as a central figure pushing Obamatrade. His polling numbers in early states remain stagnant and Obamatrade opponents like Mike Huckabee, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)93%, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, Dr. Ben Carson, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum are gaining traction...

A little-known private foundation controlled by Bill and Hillary Clinton donated $100,000 to the New York Times’ charitable fund in 2008, the same year the newspaper’s editorial page endorsed Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, according to tax documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.The Clinton Family Foundation, a separate entity from the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, has been the family’s vehicle for personal charitable giving since 2001.It is funded directly by the Clintons and distributes more than $1 million a year to civic and educational causes.The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund is a charity affiliated with...

Conservatives have long considered it a given that free trade was a benefit to the American economy and that opening trade and reducing trade barriers would be a net positive for the United States. Obama’s Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to advance it have turned that calculus on its head and amount to a new looting of American workers by the Republican and Democratic elites who are pushing it through Congress without even reading it. The fact that the document is classified and may only be accessed by Members of Congress after they’ve signed a...

The state Education Department has rejected all 15 applications for new charter schools, including 12 in New York City, claiming they failed to meet academic standards. “We always look for quality and these applications didn’t measure up,” Education Department spokesman Dennis Tompkins said Wednesday. “We invited several of the applicants to reapply in June and we gave them suggestions on how to improve their applications.” But charter-school advocates weren’t buying it, saying the rejection of all the applicants reeked of pro-teacher-union politics. “The timing and nature of these blanket rejections should raise serious concerns for New Yorkers ... Mayor de...

On May 1, Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby charged six police officers, including two black male officers and one female black officer, with 28 various charges, including murder and manslaughter over the death of Freddie Gray. Officer Caesar Goodsoon, the black driver of the van Gray rode in, was charged by the 35-year-old state’s attorney for Baltimore City with the most serious offense, “second-degree depraved heart murder,” which means indifference to human life. Baltimore is 64 percent black, and almost half of the Baltimore Police department is black. The officers are accused of arresting and roughing up Gray, who is black,...

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Uber says it's ceasing operations in Kansas following the Kansas Legislature's veto of SB 117. The Republican-controlled Kansas Senate has overridden GOP Gov. Sam Brownback's veto of a bill imposing new regulations on ride-hailing companies like Uber. The measure would require drivers for ride-hailing companies to undergo Kansas Bureau of Investigation background checks. They'd also need additional auto insurance coverage beyond the $1 million Uber offers when drivers are logged into its network or transporting passengers. Uber had said the measure would push it out of the state. Governor Brownback released the following statement following the...

People who are trying to do good for their families and the planet by living a simple life based on traditional skills are facing yet another assault. Artisanal soap makers say new regulations, proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), will put them out of business. The view of Sen. Feinstein and her corporate backers (listed below) is that the Personal Care Products Safety Act (Senate Bill S.1014) will make the world a safer place by scrutinizing “everything from shampoo and hair dye to deodorant and lotion.” She says the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act...

A special celebration was held Thursday honoring University of Miami president Donna Shalala. This past fall, Shalala announced that she is stepping down as president at the end of the 2014 - 2015 university year. ....Shalala says she plans to return to the faculty as a professor of political science and health policy.

Twenty-two of the 37 corporations nominated for a prestigious State Department award — and six of the eight ultimate winners — while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State were also donors to the Clinton family foundation. The published donor records of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation don't give exact dates or amounts of its contributors, but it is possible to create a general timeline for when many of the corporations donated and when they were either nominated or selected for the award. Silicon Valley giant Cisco was the biggest foundation contributor nominated in 2009, giving the Clinton charity...

The newly released documents buttress a report issued late last month detailing how an immigration director was swayed with respect to hundreds of millions of dollars in film and TV investments under the EB-5 visa program. The U.S. Department of Homeland SecurityÂ’s inspector general has released hundreds of pages of emails plus other documents in support of its investigation of improper influence on the EB-5 immigration program. Many of the documents discuss hundreds of millions of dollars in financing for film and television productions from Sony Pictures and Time Warner with prominent politicians including former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendall and...

The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department meddled in three high-profile immigration cases, giving special treatment to applications from wealthy and well-connected immigrants after calls from major Democrats despite the objections of career employees, the department’s inspector general concluded in a report Tuesday. Alejandro Mayorkas, who was elevated from head of the department’s legal immigration agency to be deputy secretary while the investigation was ongoing, also angered many of his colleagues by getting involved in the cases, and “created an appearance of favoritism and special access” for the wealthy immigrants, the inspector general concluded. Inspector General John Roth...

Many of the key figures cited in a scathing inspector general’s report this week are allies of Hillary Rodham Clinton, marking the latest in a series of stumbles for the former first lady and secretary of state that likely forced her to delay her planned presidential campaign announcement.A Democratic strategist familiar with her team’s thinking said they are scrambling to limit the damage and readjust the campaign rollout schedule after the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general revealed an apparent cronyism scandal that ensnared Mrs. Clinton’s brother, Anthony Rodham, and two of her political confidants, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and former...

In January, the 89th Legislature convened to begin its work. With the elections behind us and the House under Republican leadership, we opened the session with a renewed sense of bipartisanship. Many suburban legislators, myself included, had high hopes for one particular bill that would inject some common-sense into a major concern of local city councils — the Metropolitan Council. The Met Council is an unelected body that has the power to tax and spend over $1 billion every year and inject itself regularly into local government decisions. It has the authority to dictate (among other things) where new trains...

Can we stop putting America up for sale to the most politically connected bidders yet? Where is our self-respect? Since 2001, I've warned about the systemic and bipartisan corruption of America's EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. The latest report from the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general -- which outlines the meddling and pandering of No. 2 DHS official Alejandro Mayorkas, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, Democratic bagman Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton's brother Tony Rodham, former Pennsylvania. Gov. Ed Rendell and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, to name a few -- provides yet more sordid evidence that the green cards-for-sale scheme...

Guess What Makes The Cut As A 'Smart Snack' In Schools? Hot Cheetos Flamin' Hot Cheetos might conjure a lot of descriptors: spicy, crunchy, unnaturally fiery red. But it's a good bet that "healthy" didn't exactly spring to mind. Yet it turns out that those fiery Cheetos beloved by school children (some kids even made an epic rap paean to Hot Cheetos a few years ago) actually qualify as a "Smart Snack" under revised federal nutrition guidelines for schools. The Obama administration rolled out the new guidelines last year in a bid to limit the amount of junk food kids...

Long before Ted Cruz was a big-name senator and conservative rock star, wowing the crowd at Liberty University in the early days of his presidential bid, he was just another lawyer toiling away in virtual anonymity under George W. Bush. While Cruz’s time in the Senate is best known for fiery speeches and high-profile gestures like his 21-hour filibuster, in his earlier time in Washington he demonstrated a wonkish eye for detail and an eagerness to take on powerful industry groups that he saw as stifling competition. Though his efforts ultimately succeeded on a much smaller scale than he’d initially...

Politicians frequently claim they’ve been misquoted or misunderstood by reporters. See Scott Walker’s spokeswoman’s response to a Wall Street Journal report about his position on amnesty. But there’s a sure way to avoid that: Keep reporters out of the room. The Phoenix Business Journal reports that’s what Gov. Walker did when he spoke this week to the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. It was part of a series featuring presidential contenders. “I’d love to tell you what he had to say that was important enough for him to travel thousands of miles from home, but I can’t,” Travis Arbon writes. “The...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)For many conservatives, the fight against Obamacare has been the defining battle of President Obama's years in the White House. For them, and probably a majority of the Republican base, fighting first against the passage of the Affordable Care Act and later pressing to repeal it have been so important because: A) they strongly oppose the substance of the law, and B) they see opposition to Obamacare as the best way to resist the president's overall expansion of government. That the struggle has so far been a losing one has not changed the fact that conservatives require their presidential candidates...