Free Republic

A Florida man is getting probed for posing as U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin to get out of his mortgage payments. Sidney Hines, 67, called a collection agency five times in 2013 and 2014 impersonating “a sitting U.S. Senator from Illinois” with the initials R.D. claiming that his loan for his New Port Richey, Flor. home had been paid in full, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office indictment.

As Donald Trump held closed-door meetings Thursday with top Republican leaders, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois cautioned that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's "radical" and "extreme" positions will pose a challenge for Republican candidates in Illinois, including U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk. Kirk, who is up for re-election, has said he will support his party's presidential nominee — even if it is Trump — but will not attend the GOP's national convention in Cleveland in July. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, who is not on the ballot in November, said he will not attend the party's presidential nominating convention — nor...

The bill is unlikely to find much support in the GOP-controlled Senate. But Boxer, who is retiring from Congress, said she wants to put this in motion now, and Durbin volunteered to take up the mantel when Boxer is gone. “I hope, if we can’t pass this this year, I can take up the flag and carry it in her name in years to come so when we talk about finally passing this, it will be known as Barbara Boxer’s legacy,” he said.

As a member of the controversial "Gang of Eight" working up comprehensive immigration reform three years ago, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio blocked bipartisan efforts to reform the worker visa program to make sure American workers get first dibs on jobs, according to a top Senate Democrat. At a hearing on H-1B worker visas Thursday, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois said that "a junior senator from Florida" fought to kill visa changes in the legislation that would have limited the ability of firms to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. "In 2013, I was part of the Gang of Eight....

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Tuesday that the United States should accept 100,000 Syrian refugees, far outpacing the number the administration said last week that it will accept. “What the administration has posed is modest: 10,000. Too modest,” the No. 2 Senate Democrat said. “As far as I am concerned, I believe we should be prepared to accept 100,000—100,000 Syrian refugees.” Durbin's remarks come after White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the United States will accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees during the 2016 fiscal year that starts next month. The senior Democrat’s comments echo those of 72 House...

14 US Senators tell Obama: Bring MORE Syrians to America (65,000 is a good number!) Posted by Ann Corcoran on May 22, 2015 Update May 24th: Be sure to see Leo Hohmann’s good article at World Net Daily on this newest push for a mass infusion of Syrians into the US. Also, on this Sunday morning is your church indirectly supporting the resettlement of 65,000 mostly Muslim Syrians to America? Click here. Urgent update! If your Senator is listed here, you really need to get the word out so that they get an earful from constituents! Breaking News: According to...

Democrats have rolled out a proposal that would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013. The bill, introduced by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), would establish a new formula to determine which state and local governments are required to get approval before changing their voting laws. Under the legislation, states that have a "record of racial discrimination" within the past 25 years would need federal approval to change their voting laws, according to a fact sheet from Leahy's office. The proposal would also allow...

A group of Senate Democrats is urging the Obama administration to allow at least 65,000 Syrian refugees to settle inside the United States. “While the United States is the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees, we must also dramatically increase the number of Syrian refugees that we accept for resettlement,” the group of 14 lawmakers — led by Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) — said Thursday. The group letter noted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) wants to resettle 130,000 Syrian refugees over the next two years and has thus...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Orrin Hatch may soon give the President authority to write gun control restrictions into a “trade agreement.” So click here to contact your Senators –- whether they are liberal or conservative. Urge them to vote against the anti-gun “fast track” bill (S. 995). Will UN-style gun control be rammed down our throats? Gun import bans ... Microstamping of firearms ... Ammunition bans ... The full implementation of the anti-gun UN Arms Trade Treaty ... Illegal amnesty which locks in millions of new, anti-gun voters.

Truth Revolt asks why the new Archbishop of Chicago has the nerve to speak of illegal immigration as if it were ‘God’s agenda.’ Where are truth-loving Catholics supposed to look for a Church that isn’t in the pocket of anti-Catholic hate today? Either it is evil to be conservative or these bishops are pretenders. Is it ‘love’ to hand political power to the true enemies of God and man? True to his claim that immigration reform is “God’s agenda,” Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich has been cozying up to pro-abortion Democrats to get his social justice initiatives underway. On Sunday, the...

Ron Fournier is a columnist for National Journal and a cable news mainstay who served as the Associated Press' Washington bureau chief for years. In his new opinion-based role, he's worked to carve out a niche as a 'pox on both houses' purveyor of common sense, a detector of BS, a practitioner of intellectual honesty, and Chief of the Civility Police.  In that last capacity, Fournier expended much indignant energy denouncing Rudy Giuliani's acerbic commentary about President Obama's patriotism -- wrongly asserting that Obama would never say such nasty things about his political opponents.  Regardless of that particular blind spot, Fournier would likely tell you that he feels...

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin has a lot of nerve to accuse Republicans of racism for delaying President Obama’s nominee for Attorney General considering he’s the only sitting senator who actually opposed a candidate specifically because of race. In fact, the veteran lawmaker referred to the judicial nominee as “especially dangerous” for, among other things, being “Latino.” Additionally, Durbin has voted against several Republican presidential nominees who also happened to be ethnic minorities—Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the first African-American female Secretary of...

The second-ranking Senate Democrat on Wednesday accused Republicans of putting the president's attorney general nominee "in the back of the bus" by delaying her confirmation. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois made the comment on the Senate floor as he criticized the GOP over its handling of Loretta Lynch's nomination. She would become the nation's first black female attorney general, replacing Eric Holder, the first African-American in the job.

Politico scored a journalistic coup with its exclusive 2014 profile on Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the agency's targeting of conservative groups. But a former Illinois lawmaker who said Politico contacted him repeatedly that year with questions regarding claims he was targeted by Lerner in the mid-1990s has been left wondering why the news group chose to ignore his documented dealings with the former federal official. "I was shocked," Al Salvi told the Washington Examiner's media desk, describing what he characterizes as several "lengthy" interviews with Politico reporter Rachael Bade. Lerner went after his 1996...

On Monday Senators. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., invited Netanyahu to meet in a closed-door session with Democrats during his visit. Netanyahu declined the invitation on Tuesday and expressed regret about the politically fraught tone of his trip. “I regret that the invitation to address the special joint session of Congress has been perceived by some to be political or partisan,” Netanyahu wrote. “I can assure you that my sole intention in accepting it was to voice Israel’s grave concerns about a potential nuclear agreement with Iran that could threaten the survival of my country.” Netanyahu said to...

Last night John rendered his "Verdict: The New York Times blew the story." The "story" was the testimony of five federal judges -- Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum and four former FISA court judges -- on Senator Specter's proposed revision of the FISA statute. According to yesterday's New York Times story by Eric Lichtblau: In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel...voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. They...

Now that the GOP is taking control of the Senate in 2015, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., offered up a resolution of sorts for the opposing party to abide by next year: Get Ted Cruz under control. Durbin’s suggestion comes days after Cruz’s disastrous maneuver last week that brought the Senate into session on Saturday, unwittingly opening the door to the approval of dozens of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees. That infuriated Republicans, leading Cruz to apologize days later. “It was classic Cruz. He knew how to get the headline, but he didn’t know how to close the deal,” Durbin...

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Thursday morning slammed a provision in the pending spending bill that would repeal a piece of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and expressed doubt that enough Democrats could support the package if that rider remains. “I just spoke to Nancy Pelosi. The Democrats believe this is an odious provision that should not be included. Many of us feel the same way,” said Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “[Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)] can take it out in the bat of any eye, and I hope he will....

A major Democratic donor was arrested this week by the Sex Crimes Unit in Portland, Ore., for raping a minor. Terrence Bean, a liberal activist who bundled more than $500,000 for Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, is charged with having sex with a 15-year-old boy. Bean has made contributions to influential Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin and Rep. Barney Frank, who has had his own smarmy brushes with the law. Bean’s Instagram account shows him on Air Force One with President Obama and getting chummy with Vice President Joe...

WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today announced that communities and housing agencies throughout Illinois will receive a total of $26,128,915 in grant funding through three programs administered by Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to help develop urban communities in the area. “This funding will give local development agencies around Illinois the ability to expand and improve affordable housing and other critical services in their communities,” Durbin said. “These federal programs provide invaluable assistance to those in need.”    Community Development Block Grants The Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) program provides annual grants to states and local governments to...