Free Republic

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) told host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that supporters of new gun control legislation do not yet have the votes to pass it, despite defeating a Republican-led filibuster attempt last week. Durbin is the Senate Majority Whip, responsible for counting his party's votes on key legislative proposals. The specific bill facing the Senate is the Manchin-Toomey compromise on background checks, which would expand such requirements to gun shows, among other provisions. Currently, private sales between individuals at gun shows do not require background checks--just as private sales anywhere do not require them. The following is...

Come on in...it's all free, courtesy of the American taxpayer!- by John HillStand With ArizonaJoe Wilson is right....again.Remember Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and his outburst at Obama's 2010 State of the Union address? Here's a refresher: Obama said his healthcare plan would not cover illegal aliens - twice. Wilson shouted "You lie!" to the outrage of many, and for which he was later censured by Pelosi & Co. Democrats said it was ridiculous to suggest that illegal aliens would EVER be able to receive Obama Care benefits. Wilson was right, of course, as SWA pointed out and way back in...

Well, now we know why the “the popular spring vacation season”  Easter Egg Spring Sphere Roll was snatched out of the jaws of the Sequester Jester: we needed yet another photo op to highlight the tragedy of people getting “some automatic weapons they didn't need." Hadiya’s parents with Lady M at the SOTU address So Lady M is honoring Chicago gun violence victim, Hadiya Pendleton, by inviting her parents to the annual photo op eggroll on the South Lawn, and Senator Dick Durbin is honoring her by writing a new gun bill: (snip)The Stop Illegal Trafficking in Firearms Act of...

Key senators are exploring an immigration bill that would force every U.S. worker—citizen or not—to carry a high-tech identity card that could use fingerprints or other personal markers to prove a person's legal eligibility to work. snip But at least five of the eight senators writing the bill have backed biometric ID cards in the past. At least three of them—Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.)—have said they support requiring the cards under the new law but are open to other options, aides say. snip Mr. Graham, in an interview, said that...

Well, well, well, so Obama has embarked on his third war in little more than two years. You've got to admit that "flexibility" is his middle name. Or at least one of his middle names: Barack Barry Hussein "Flexibility" Soetoro Obama, Jr. Those are the names we know so far, but The Donald thinks there might be more. Whodda thunk? Here we are barely into the first week of what started out as a "No-Fly Zone" and it is now turning out to be Air Al Qaida. Ten years ago, AQ had a mere four civilian airplanes to crash into...

U.S. states could collect millions of dollars in online sales taxes, with members of both parties in Congress sponsoring legislation Thursday that would resolve states' decades-long struggle to tax businesses beyond their borders. "Small businesses and states alike are suffering from the inability to collect due — not new — taxes from purchases made online," said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., adding the legislation is a "bipartisan, bicameral, common-sense solution that promotes states' rights and levels the playing field for our Main Street businesses." Legislation on the Amazon tax, named for the colossal Internet retailer, has languished for years. ..... <...

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said on Sunday embattled Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) should keep his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee despite an investigation into his dealings with a top donor. "Sen. Menendez has given us an assurance that there is no substance to these charges," the Democratic senator from Illinois said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's being looked at by the Ethics Committee. Of course, I can't comment beyond that." The Senate Ethics Committee is looking into Menendez's interaction with Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye surgeon who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Menendez and...

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) admitted to David Gregory on Meet the Press today that the Obama sequestration plan was just a political game and was never intended to move forward. “David, sequestration was designed as a budget threat, not as a budget strategy. And, I think all of us understand that if it goes forward in less than three weeks it’s going to have a dramatic negative impact on several agencies.”

Illinois Senator Richard Durbin’s exchange Wednesday with National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre defined the disconnect anti-gun Democrats have with the reality of so-called “universal background checks” and why they won’t stop criminals from obtaining firearms. As quoted in the Seattle Times, and shown in this video, Durbin became engaged in a frustrating debate with LaPierre. The NRA executive told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “My problem with background checks is that you’re never going to get criminals to go through universal background checks.” “You’ll create an enormous federal bureaucracy, unfunded, hitting all the little people in the...

Dick Durbin told the NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre that background checks WILL deter criminlas from buying guns (apparently at places where background checks are conducted). And so it is good to know that Democrats are going to have background checks set up in "back alleys." /s Dems will also set up "Gun Free Zone" signs all across America in back alleys and the like, so that when criminals see these signs it will deter them from selling hot guns/stolen guns in those "back alleys." /s BTW, why is Sen. Feinstein using a Straw Man argument when she brings up malls...

According to CNN, Gabrielle Giffords, Mark Kelly and the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre will testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on America’s gun violence crisis. You can watch it below. It begins at 10:00 AM ET.

January 27, 2013 Durbin: Benghazi hearings one of Clinton’s ‘finer moments’ Ben Wolfgang A top Senate Democrat believes Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s duel appearances last week on Capitol Hill, in which she clashed with Republicans over the Obama administration’s handling of the Sept. 11 Benghazi terrorist attacks, will go down in history as one of the secretary of state’s “finer moments.” “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has done an extraordinary job for this country. It’ll be recognized by history. This was one of her finer moments,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat and member of the Senate Foreign...

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D) on Sunday revealed key details about a bipartisan immigration-reform plan, saying the legislation would be comprehensive and would include a pathway to citizenship. Durbin said the group of six senators was working on a comprehensive approach to the issue, as opposed to moving individual elements piecemeal and was optimistic they were close to their goal. “Sitting in these meetings with three Democrats and three Republicans, working on this immigration issue has been as encouraging as the rules vote on Thursday night,” Durbin said on “Fox News Sunday”, referencing a bipartisan agreement in the Senate last...

Creating gun laws is one thing, but convincing people to support them is something else. That was the job of Vice President Joe Biden on Friday, when he held a roundtable discussion on gun control in Virginia. CBS 2’s Mike Puccinelli reports new laws could be tough to sell at gun shows, like one held in suburban Rosemont on Friday. Organizers said it was the first gun show in Cook County in as many as 50 years. Gun shows have come under increased scrutiny since the school shooting massacre in Newtown, Conn., because in the vast majority of states, gun...

Are Democrats done raising taxes on the American people? “No,” says House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “We can raise more revenue,” says Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). And Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) says “there are still deductions, credits, special treatments under the tax code which ought to be looked at very carefully.” …

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” said President Obama’s former consigliere Rahm Emanuel, who is now the mayor of the strictly gun-controlled gun murder capital of the world, Chicago. So naturally the statist anti-gun utopians see opportunity in Friday’s Newtown school massacre to push the total gun ban they’ve been lusting after for so long. Rather than pause long enough to grieve with the rest of us over the horrific murders of twenty children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school; rather than wait for the media frenzy to subside so all the facts could...

Many powerful Democrats, even some of the most liberal among them, are supporting what amounts to a dismantling of President Obama’s signature health care law. Using “Republican” language to make their case, these Democrats are attempting to repeal some of the funding mechanisms as well as the cost-containment measures that were purportedly inherent in the law. With some of their most influential constituent groups facing onerous tax increases that are slated to help fund the law’s mandates and regulations, Senators like Al Franken (D-MN), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Patty Murray (D-WA)

If you thought President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder had given up on closing Guantanamo Bay and bringing jihadists to American soil, think again. Two troubling developments on the Gitmo front should have every American on edge. The first White House maneuver took place in October, while much of the public and the media were preoccupied with election news. On Oct. 2, Obama's cash-strapped Illinois pals announced that the federal government bought out the Thomson Correctional Center in western Illinois for $165 million. According to Watchdog.org, a recent appraisal put the value of the facility at $220 million. Democratic...

I value anybody working to make this country I love and honor, America, as great as it has been and so much greater than it is now. Senator Dick “Dimples” Durbin pulled the earnings gap out of the Democratic Party closet and pummeled hedge fund managers for making too much money in comparison to Navy SEALS. He feels there’s an immoral disparity between what this nation pays its warriors and what hedge fund managers earn in private industry. This proves a point: the Democratic Party leadership is composed of wealthy people saying “don’t do as I do; do as I...

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin has a message for Republicans insisting on wholesale changes to entitlement programs in exchange for new tax revenue: not yet. In a speech later this morning that seeks to crystalize the progressive approach to deficit reduction, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat will try to split the debate about overhauling Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from the negotiations over resolving the fiscal cliff. “Progressives should be willing to talk about ways to ensure the long-term viability of Medicare and Medicaid but those conversations should not be part of a plan to avert the fiscal cliff,” Durbin...