Free Republic

Abdel showed up at his local Pennsylvania motor vehicle office to take his driver’s license test — and walked out having registered to vote, even though he is not a citizen. He said his command of English isn’t good and the computer system was unclear, but he somehow managed to sign up even though he knew he shouldn’t. Then there was Angelo, who figured he could vote because he joined the U.S. military, even though he wasn’t a citizen. He, too, signed up at the Pennsylvania motor vehicle bureau and registered as a Democrat. He then voted nearly every year...

A coalition of Latino civil rights organizations asked Thursday a judge in Alabama to include them as co-defendants in a lawsuit brought by the state against the federal government, seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants from the 2020 Census. The groups, led by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) and Birmingham civil rights attorneys James U. Blacksher and Edward Still, said they don't trust the Trump administration to mount a defense to Alabama's lawsuit. “One legal outcome of the Civil War was a Constitution that abandons the previous ‘3/5 rule’ and treats all persons as full ‘persons’; that Alabama, of...

It is time for you to step down with dignity and grace and allow the Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to appoint your replacement. You are 82 years old, you have spent 36 years in Washington DC and 23 years in the Navy (27 if you include the four years at the Naval Academy) -- You have earned to the right go out on your terms, certainly, but the party and your country needs your selfless commitment and devotion one last time. We are all aware that the seat you are vacating was once filled by another giant of the Republican...

The latest batch of Axios/Survey Monkey polls shows that Democrats are in real danger of losing three U.S. Senate seats, which means they have no chance of capturing that chamber in 2018. In order to take control of the Senate, Democrats must hold on to all 10 seats currently up for grabs in states President Trump won in 2016. On top of that, they must snatch two seats from incumbent Republicans. According to these polls, Democrat incumbents in Florida, North Dakota, and Indiana are losing to their Republican challengers by three, five, and two points, respectively. Another endangered Democrat incumbent,...

The Democrat Party is #CLUELESS. The Democrats probably weren’t going to beat Trump anyways, or the GOP, no matter what they did, or said in either November 2018, or 2020. The economy is just too good. But they certainly had a chance, if they didn’t go completely off the rails. But then they chose illegal immigration as their headline issue. Really? And as their new star (DNC Chair Tom Perez calls her “the future of the party”) Dems just elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a proud Socialist. She was a bartender last year, now call her “Congresswoman.” She believes in open borders, abolishing ICE,...

Justice is coming for unions that forced non-members to pay "non-political" agency fees that went to prop up Democratic candidates. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that forcing workers who disagree with a union to make these payments anyway violates the workers' First Amendment rights. Less than a week after that ruling, Janus v. Association of Federal, State, City, and Municipal Employees (FSCME), seven California teachers have filed a class-action lawsuit to recoup unjustly forced fees. "This lawsuit will enable teachers like me to recover the agency fees that we were wrongly forced to pay against our will," Scott Wilford,...

Mitch McConnell doesn't have the stomach for a Supreme Court fight. He doesn't want his democrat buddies in republican states to be cornered. He doesn't want to upset the precious Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. He doesn't want have to pressure "suffering" John McCain to retire before the Arizona August primary so the beloved Cindy can be appointed without any political consequences. And McConnell doesn't want another hard-line textualist on the court. McConnell wants Trump to make it easy for him.

This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 42, as it has since June 6th, when the last judge was confirmed. Between Jeff Flake pledging to halt judicial confirmations and a Supreme Court appointment, I don't expect a lot of confirmations in the coming August session. There's always a convenient excuse. "We only work from Tuesday to Thursday and have SO much else to do!"

Republicans theoretically have a 51-49 majority in the Senate, but in practice, it has been 50-49, since John McCain has left the Senate due to his brain cancer and shows no signs of returning. This makes it difficult for the Senate to pass legislation, of course, but since the Senate needs 60 votes for most matters, McCain's absence is not critical. ...except for judicial nominees. Under current rules, only a majority of senators is needed to approve judicial nominees. That's why every senator counts. With McCain's absence, if one Republican senator defects, and no Democrats support Trump's Supreme Court nominee,...

Interesting tidbit via the NY times revealing that Democrat, Congressman, Joe Crowley's internal polling revealed the he was up 36 points over his challenger, Democrat, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Of course we all know the fifteen point "political slaughter" that befell the stunned, Joe Crowley, last Tuesday evening, in the 14thNYCD. One of Democrat, Nancy Pelosi's, favorites, Joe Crowley, received a most crushing blow in his defeat handed him by Ms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I tried to search the internet for pre-primary election polls, but came up empty, even on "Real Clear Politics" site. It appears the Fake News" pollsters scrubbed their numbers...

An NBC News/Marist Poll has mixed results for Republicans in Ohio. Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike DeWine leads his Democrat rival, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, by four points, 46 percent to 42 percent. But the picture is not so encouraging for Republicans in the U.S. Senate race, where incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) leads the GOP nominee, Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH) by 13 points, 51 percent to 38 percent. “This survey of 946 adults was conducted June 17th through June 22nd, 2018 by The Marist Poll sponsored and funded in partnership with NBC News . . ....

"The politicians haven't done anything besides enrich themselves and they've left us behind," said Antonio Arriola, a member of a recently-created indigenous council that has petitioned the Mexican government for autonomy

This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 42. We've got the big one coming now, a Supreme Court nomination, which will likely put some lower court confirmations on the back burner. But the Senate will still be working in August, and there's a backlog of nominations, so I will continue this weekly post through the end of this Congress.

I have no news story to link to here. To the contrary, I haven’t seen this question asked once in the flood of coverage since Kennedy’s announcement yesterday. So let’s ask it. With McCain out, Senate Republicans have zero margin for error on the nomination. It’s 50/49. Either Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski — or anti-Trumpers Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, both of whom are retiring — could sink the nominee if Democrats hang together. And they will, I think. The Democratic base will get so hot over this that Manchin and the rest of the red-staters will hang back...

President Donald Trump has repeatedly told his advisers that he wants to leave the World Trade Organization, Axios reported. “He’s [threatened to withdraw] 100 times. It would totally [screw] us as a country,” a source told Axios. “We always get f—ed by them [the WTO]. I don’t know why we’re in it. The WTO is designed by the rest of the world to screw the United States,” the source said. In an interview with Fox Business Friday, Treasury Secretary described the Axios report as an “exaggeration.”

As 28-year-old Ocasio-Cortez begins her meteoric rise in politics – observers have pointed out that she has an asteroid named after her, called 23238 Ocasio-Cortez. "It's true! Science was my first passion," she tweeted on June 12, adding that the asteroid was named in honour of longevity experiments she conducted out of Mt. Sinai Health System in New York. "My research won 2nd place globally in Microbiology at @intel ISEF," she said in the tweet, referring to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. "At [Boston University] I started as science major, changed to Econ ???? #nerdalert" The asteroid in...

Christ came to me emblazoned on the upper arm of my beloved cousin Marc. The blue-black ink danced between the bullet scars and stretch marks that graced my cousin’s upper body. Atop this crown-of-thorns depiction was a tattooed banner with the phrase “Only God Can Judge Me.” Marc—like several men in my family—had been caught in the webbed threads of poverty, geography and lack of opportunity during the fever pitch of 1990s mass incarceration. Baggy-pant boys like him fit the descriptions of “super-predators” and “thugs” that dominated our national discourse at the time. Marc served his time, and has been...

Political assassinations, murders, and violence continue to escalate as Mexico’s elections approach. In the 10 months since the election cycle started, nearly 130 political candidates were murdered. The most recent took place this week in Buena Vista Michoacan when a team of cartel gunmen shot and killed Javier Ureña Gonzalez, the acting mayor for the municipality as he visited a small village. Ureña assumed the role of acting mayor while his boss Lorenzo Barajas took leave to run for re-election. Ureña’s murder comes one day after a Oaxaca state congressional candidate was gunned down along with four of his associates...

Trump Derangement Syndrome is combining with resentment over the cheating of Bernie Sanders out of the 2016 presidential nomination to lead the Democratic Party toward an embrace of angry radicalism, which will result in rejection by voters on November 8.  Bill Clinton, who led his party to victory in the 1990s with moderation ("triangulation"), apparently sees the danger of the party repulsing mainstream Americans and gaining status as a radical minority, successful only in big cities. Yesterday, he went on the little watched late-night program hosted by Trump-hating Trevor Noah and averred a "lot of respect" for the way Sarah...

TENANTLA, Mexico – Whoever wins Sunday's presidential election will have to face not only Mexico's drug cartels, but a new kind of crime involving whole neighborhoods defying police and military personnel. It was on display in the Jalisco state town of Ciudad Guzman — a stronghold of the Jalisco New Generation cartel — in early June, when a crowd of men and women gathered around two pickups carrying armed Mexican marines. They taunted the troops, throwing rocks and water bottles at them and kicking one repeatedly as he was helped away by two comrades. Purportedly protesting a young man's disappearance,...