Free Republic

<p>There was a striking moment in the Senate Judiciary Committee's debate on the Gang of Eight's comprehensive immigration reform bill when Republican Jeff Sessions and Democrat Charles Schumer argued over the number of immigrants who would be allowed into the country under the new legislation.</p>

Madison — The Senate plans to send Gov. Scott Walker a state budget Thursday that would cut income taxes by an average of $150, raise property taxes by $29 on the typical home, reject a key element of ObamaCare and allow voucher schools in all corners of Wisconsin. The budget passed the Republican-controlled Assembly on Wednesday 55-42 and is likely to get through the Senate by just one vote. Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) told his colleagues on the Senate floor that without major changes, he would vote against the budget because it is "too far removed from the interests...

Paul Ryan issued a challenge. The Heritage Foundation picked up the challenge. Mark Levin wants to see this debate as well. It’s time — past time — for a full and open discussion in the conservative family about immigration. To stop with the sound bite presentations. To put an immediate stop to the idea of comprehensive immigration bills zipping through Congress with all the usual backdoor wheeling and dealing. It’s time for a William F. Buckley-esque debate between conservatives that finally and quite publicly puts those involved with the issue together on one stage at the same time. Puts them...

Ask Democrat Ed Markey or Republican Gabriel Gomez about guns or ObamaCare or each other's qualifications to be the next US senator from Massachusestts, and out come the canned talking points and put-downs that anyone following the Senate race quickly wearies of. But what if you toss them some questions from off the beaten path? I put some nonstandard queries to the two nominees, hoping their answers might be illuminating – or at least unexpected. Herewith excerpts from their replies. (The candidates' full responses are posted online: Click here for Markey's and here for Gomez's). 1. Are TV shows getting...

OBAMA: Now, having said all that, you'll remember when I made that speech a couple of weeks ago about the need for us to shift out of a perpetual war mind-set, I specifically said that one of the things that we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy because there are some tradeoffs involved.

WHEN is a Jew not a Jew? When he’s a Karaite. Or so says Israel’s chief rabbinate, which, after 65 years of relative harmony with an ancient Jewish sect, is reopening an old and bitter schism. In recent months, rabbis working for Israel’s ministry of religion have deemed Karaite marriages invalid, fined their butchers for claiming to be kosher, and demanded that Karaites marrying Orthodox Jewish women should convert, sometimes having to undergo tavila, or baptism. “We are already Jews,” protests Moshe Firrouz, a computer engineer who heads the Karaites’ Council of Sages. “The rabbinate is denying us our religious...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has invited Vice President Joe Biden to debate him on gun control. The invite came during Cruz’s speech Friday at the annual National Rifle Association convention in Houston.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, noting that Vice President Joe Biden reportedly plans to revive a legislative push for gun control, challenged him to a debate about policy responses to gun violence.

"It is not enough for the insecure left to deem a position wrong; if it’s merely wrong, it needs to be argued about, and it can’t survive that. It must instead be morally abhorrent, so that the zealot reacts to the toxin of questioning much like a jogger coming across a decomposing body on the side of the road — it must be internalized that the correct response to such a horror is to retch, and faint, and call the authorities post-haste. This is how the leftist faith protects itself from the infection of doubt. (Meanwhile, of course, patting...

April 12, 2013 Dear Friends, I believe every senator should be required to go on the record about their views on the Second Amendment. And yesterday, I voted for a procedural motion to require senators to go on the record about where they stand on gun control. I believe the American people deserve to know where the Senate stands on this issue. I want to debate and I want to vote. I’m not afraid to show my support for the Second Amendment. Here's why: · Many senators have refused to take a position on some of these gun control issues...

Same-sex marriage is probably inevitable in America whatever the Supreme Court decides. That's because the public is clearly leaning that way. That the court is even being asked to impose a sweeping social change on the nation is illustrative of another lost battle -- the idea that the Supreme Court is not a super-legislature and that nine robed lawyers ought to refrain from imposing their policy preferences on the whole nation. Even two liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, have from time to time expressed caution about the Court imposing its will on matters better left up to...

Atheist professor and philosopher, Alex Rosenberg, says if you believe in Intelligent Design you are a chauvinist. (Posted by: Religio-Political Talk. This is one of the most incredible statements I have heard in my life. While it is trivial to many, it shows the depth of how progressive ideology in education has corrupted even the sciences with its radical multiculturalism and politically-correct thinking. Here again is Professor David Clemens explains how this thinking has crept into all corners of education, here he talks about some of the cases that the above video adds to: http://tinyurl.com/caej2oz The entire debate between Professor...

Recently a discussion of this story about DC Comics being pressured by homosexual activists to fire one of its writers because he’s on the board of the National Organization of Marriage prompted vigorous debate on my Facebook wall. While perusing through the various comments, it was obvious there still exists much confusion in our country today about the term “rights.” There are two types of rights: unalienable and contractual. Sometimes referred to as a natural right (i.e. “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” reference from The Declaration of Independence), an unalienable right is a right that comes from God...

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) predicted Sunday that Republicans would eventually accept Democrats’ combination of closing tax loopholes and spending cuts to replace sequestration. Schumer characterized the GOP’s plan to offset the across-the-board cuts with other spending cuts and no new revenues as out of step with a majority of voters. The Senate Democratic Policy Committee chairman said Republicans’ preferred path caters to special interests and the wealthy. “I think that the Democrats have the high ground both substantively and politically, and we will win on this issue. … I believe that just like on the ‘fiscal cliff,’ Republicans will come...

The Great Gun Debate shows American political discourse at its irrational worst; with both left and right promoting panic and hysteria that distracts attention from the nation’s truly menacing problems. Instead of addressing crushing deficits, economic stagnation, political gridlock, and the erosion of middle-class security, politicians and pundits obsess over gun violence—one of the few challenges where the United States has made dramatic progress in recent years. How can the president and his supporters work themselves into a self-righteous lather over minor regulatory adjustments that have been tried before with no measurable impact on the rate of firearms crime? And...

**SNIP** The president also conceded that “[t]he same dynamic happens on the Democratic side,” but in his mind, “the difference is just that the more left-leaning media outlets recognize that compromise is not a dirty word.” He claimed that “leaders like myself—and I include Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in this—are willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done,” as opposed to the opposing party which he views as obstructionist. “[T]hat’s one of the biggest problems we’ve got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value...

And Obama's advisor (Jarrett) went on to compare the current president with Abraham Lincoln. "I think you can't compare the Civil War to what we're going through," she said. "But we've been through a really tough time in our country. And seeing how Lincoln had to work so hard just to make the progress that he did, how he never gave up, and how resilient he was, and [how] he tried a whole range of different strategies. And I think obviously that resonated with the president. And so it kind of reaffirmed what he already knew, which is you have...

“You come in here, brandish your little book as if I don’t know what’s in there--” “My little book? That’s the Constitution of the United States. It’s our founding document, Piers.” “I know what’s in your Constitution.” “Do you really?” That was the climax of a heated debate between Breitbart News Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro and CNN’s Piers Morgan on live television this evening--one in which Morgan came off much the worse for wear. Shapiro began by pointing out that for weeks, Morgan had bullied guests who defend the right to bear arms by "standing on the graves of the children...

The decision of a newspaper in New York’s Westchester County to publish an interactive map that allowed readers to discover the names and addresses of owners of legal guns is generally being debated as one about whether the Gannett-owned Journal News showed good judgment. It didn’t, but the problem goes a lot deeper than whether or not a newspaper ought to publicize information that is legally available to the public in this manner. The controversy goes to the heart of the entire discussion about guns in this country. No matter what those behind this stunt say

Sen. John Kerry is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations responsible for oversight of US State Dept., execution of foreign policy and oversight of diplomatic facilities. But in Oct. 2012, Kerry was also acting as Obama's debate coach when Obama prepared for the 2nd debate, the foreign policy debate at which Romney was expected to grill Obama over the Benghazigate disaster. Did Kerry violate the separation of powers and ignore a conflict of interest in being both Obama's foreign policy debate coach and Chair of the committee? Kerry's committee in the legislative branch is supposed to provide...