Free Republic

The billionaire is ready to take out Florida’s multi-millionaire governor. In a nationwide push to fight Republicans who deny the existence of man-made climate change, investor-turned-activist Tom Steyer has founded a Florida political committee, seeded it with $750,000 of his own money and says he’ll spend far more to help Democrat Charlie Crist defeat Gov. Rick Scott. Florida Democrats are buzzing about Steyer spending $10 million, which he won’t discuss. Republicans say the California Democrat is a phony environmentalist, but they nevertheless worry his financial commitment could be real in Florida. “It’s hard to look at the map of the...

Twelve states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration on Friday seeking to block an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate coal-fired power plants in an effort to stem climate change. The plaintiffs are led by West Virginia and include states that are home to some of the largest producers of coal and consumers of coal-fired electricity. The suit was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The other plaintiffs are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. The E.P.A. rule, announced by President Obama on June...

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a state law requiring voters to have photo identification to cast a ballot, although the law remains blocked by an earlier ruling by a federal judge that it is unconstitutional. The court wrote in its decision that providing a photo identification at the ballot box does not create a substantial burden to the voter, as claimed by the plaintiffs in the case. "Photo identification is a condition of our times where more and more personal interactions are being modernized to require proof of identity," the court wrote.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Fusion TV's Jorge Ramos that part of the reason Hamas hides rockets in schools and civilian areas is "Gaza is small." "I'm not a military planner but Hamas puts it's missiles, it's rockets in civilian areas, part of it is Gaza is pretty small and its densely populated," she said as neglecting the question of whether or not Hamas should have rockets in area to begin with.

Mideast: Secretary of State Kerry practically acts as proxy for the Hamas terrorist group, and his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, excuses Hamas' use of human shields. As President Obama likes to say, "That's not who we are." 'Our starting point must always be a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel," Obama wrote in a much-celebrated 2007 Foreign Affairs magazine article. "That commitment is all the more important as we contend with growing threats in the region — a strengthened Iran, a chaotic Iraq, the resurgence of al-Qaida, the reinvigoration of Hamas and Hezbollah." Seven years later, Iran is...

The Tea Party favorite loves to needle Team Obama. But in an interview, Cruz also reveals a new kind of conservative foreign policy: American exceptionalism without the nation building.One way to understand Ted Cruz’s foreign policy, particularly if you are a Democrat, is through the prism of the social media phenomenon known as trolling. The best trolls are provocateurs. Their language is meant to expose a fallacy or weakness in the opponent’s position as opposed to offering a constructive alternative. In a wide-ranging interview with the junior senator from Texas, there was a lot of trolling. Of Obama’s recent attempt...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she wanted more Central American citizens to apply for asylum to live in the United States from their home countries. The Obama administration is reportedly considering setting up a satellite facility in Honduras to allow people to apply for asylum without coming to the United States, but Clinton said Guatemalans and El Salvadorans should have asylum facilities in their nations as well. In an interview with Jorge Ramos on Fusion, Clinton said that she wanted facilities "over there" to "screen kids... before they get in the hands of coyotes, or they get on...

Republican Senate candidate Ed Gillespie said he thinks there is enough evidence to support climate change after being pressed on the issue during a debate with incumbent Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). "I believe there is ample scientific evidence that contributes to climate change but I'm not entirely dismissive of those who have a different point of view," Gillespie said. Gillespie added, "Norfolk is dealing with rising sea levels but people can debate what contributes to that or not." Still, Gillespie said he thinks the administration's new carbon pollution rules "go to far."

For years, President Barack Obama railed against the surge of unlimited spending flowing into American political campaigns, arguing that average voters were being shut out of a secretive system that lets special interests bankroll elections. Now, as Obama enthusiastically raises money for Democratic super PACs, he's embracing some of the same secretive elements of that system, drawing charges of hypocrisy from good-governance advocates who say the public deserves to know what Obama's saying and to whom he's saying it when donors pay for a few minutes with the president.

On his regularly scheduled visits to rake up campaign cash from the salons of Los Angeles’ upper-crust neighborhoods, President Obama just as regularly drops into locales meant to emphasize that he is more man-of-the-people than man-of-the-moneyed. On Thursday that locale was Canter’s Deli, the venerable Fairfax district eating spot, where Obama struck up conversations with diners about basketball, his failing jump shot and other regular-guy concerns. Fresh from a morning fundraiser at the Pacific Palisades home of Live Nation Chief Executive and President Michael Rapino — the bookend to a Wednesday night fundraiser at the Hancock Park home of television...

President Obama delivered a tough-love talk to his biggest boosters Wednesday, telling Democratic donors gathered in Los Angeles that they need to step it up before November if he’s going to get much done in his last two years in office. "You thought, 'OK, we elect Barack and that's it,’” Obama told a crowd big-dollar donors gathered in the lush Hancock Park backyard of TV producer Shonda Rhimes. “I have got to have a Congress that has some sense and is willing to work and is willing to compromise and is focused on the American people. And we don’t have...

Montana Sen. John Walsh's thesis written to earn a master's degree from the U.S. Army War College contains unattributed passages taken word-for-word from previously published papers. The Democrat said Wednesday he was on medication and being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder from his service in Iraq when he wrote the paper. He said he also was dealing with the stress of a fellow veteran's recent suicide. Walsh said he made an unintentional mistake and did not intend to plagiarize. "I don't want to blame my mistake on PTSD, but I do want to say it may have been a factor,"...

The head of the IRS confirmed Wednesday that investigators looking into missing emails from ex-agency official Lois Lerner have found and are reviewing "backup tapes" -- despite earlier IRS claims that the tapes had been recycled. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, testifying before a House oversight subcommittee, stressed that he does not know "how they found them" or "whether there's anything on them or not." But he said the inspector general's office advised him the investigators are reviewing tapes to see if they contain any "recoverable" material. The revelation is significant because the IRS claimed, when the agency first told Congress...

President Obama is unpopular. In the 12 states that will decide control of the Senate this November, though, he's even more unpopular. A new poll from Democratic pollster Democracy Corps shows 60 percent of people in these states say they disapprove of Obama, compared to just 37 percent who approve. Perhaps more striking: 50 percent of voters in these states say they not only disapprove of Obama, but they "strongly" disapprove of him. To the extent the 2014 election is about Obama and his job performance -- as midterm elections are generally theorized to be -- half of voters in...

For the first time, working-class whites make up less than half of Ohio’s eligible voters, part of a demographic shift in a key Midwestern swing state that is pushing political parties to widen their appeal beyond the once-dominant bloc. Nationwide, working-class whites—defined as those ages 18 to 64, with less than a bachelor’s degree—are more likely to be socially conservative, less optimistic about their futures and skeptical of big government. But in Ohio, the group has been much more politically divided: encompassing deeply religious, GOP-leaning conservatives in rural areas as well as unionized blue-collar Democrats in cities. Now, those voters...

A holiday weekend video treat: How cable music channel VH1 turned booing of Senator Hillary Clinton into cheering. Senator Clinton was booed when she walked on stage last October at a rock concert in Madison Square Garden to benefit 9/11 victims. It was shown live by VH1 but, as ABC's John Stossel illustrated in a July 20/20 special on media distortions, when the Viacom-owned cable channel replayed it sound technicians replaced the booing with cheering and applause. And that version is the permanent record VH1 put onto its DVD of the event. During his July 12 20/20 look at media...

Should the Democrats nominate Elizabeth Warren for President in 2016, as a draft-Warren movement, some liberal pundits and enthusiasts at this week’s Netroots Nation convention believe? Should Republicans nominate Ted Cruz, who has kept his options open with frequent trips to Iowa and New Hampshire? In some ways, Cruz and Warren are mirror images, and the cases for and against them are surprisingly similar. But there are also some critical differences.Before 2008, the idea of a presidential contest between two first-term Senators in their (by then) fourth year in Washington would have seemed ridiculous; in 1988, Dan Quayle was roundly...

Not so long ago the federal deficit was projected to destroy the country, our children’s future and just about everything else. Budget battles shut down the entire government for a couple weeks. How times change. A count by our colleague Alice Crites illustrates how the issue gained media traction – - especially after the Bush/Obama stimulus packages to mitigate Bush’s Great Recession – and how much it’s faded from the front pages. So what happened? Simple answer, of course, is that the deficit is way down and, for now, no longer a big problem.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is traveling to New York City Thursday for two campaign fundraising events during a national transportation tour. He is scheduled to attend one event for the Democratic Party and another for the House Majority PAC, which tries to help Democrats win House seats. They are being held at separate private homes in Manhattan and are closed to media coverage. Obama will spend about five hours in the city, arriving at Kennedy airport at 4 p.m., then heading to the fundraisers. He will return to the White House just after 9 p.m.

Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Crist turned to voter-rich South Florida Thursday to tap a running mate. Crist's campaign announced he had picked Annette Taddeo-Goldstein, a Colombian-American and chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, to be his lieutenant governor nominee -- provided he wins the primary