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WASHINGTON — Congress is sending President Obama a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security through the end of the budget year, without overturning the president’s immigration policies. The House on Tuesday voted 257-167 for the measure that Obama is expected to sign. Without action, funding for the department would have expired Friday at midnight.

Last week, Mark Levin, a Constitutional expert, suggested that the GOP senators should suspend the filibuster. There is nothing in the Constitution which requires the arcane filibuster rules. Besides we need a weapon to defend the citizens against Obama's lawlessness. Even if Obama Vetoes the DHS bill without Amnesty, the American people will see the Dems defending Obama's lawlessness if they do not vote to override the veto. Let's tell our Senators to cut to the chase and suspend the filibuster and pass the House version of DHS without Amnesty. The GOP promised the electorate that they would stop Amnesty...

I sent the following to Se. McConnell in hopes that he will consider it a viable option. Dear Senator McConnell, Presently the democrats are filibustering in order to prevent discussion on the DHS funding bill passed by the House. The democrats want funding for the illegal immigration executive amnesty order, while the Republicans are against it, and rightly so. I suggest employing the nuclear option in this battle. It is justified by holding a news conference and telling the citizens of the US that the security of our Country is too important to be held hostage by the liberal democrats....

For weeks, Harry Reid and his Senate Democratic minority -- with the explicit blessing of the White House -- have been blocking all debate on a House-passed bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The House legislation provides full appropriations for DHS, with the small exception of stripping out funds targeted for the implementation President Obama's unpopular and illegal (according to both a federal judge and Obama himself) executive amnesty fiat. Democrats in the upper chamber had already filibustered three attempts to take up, discuss, or amend the House's bill. Last night witnessed round four. Kudos to CNN for...

To invoke, or not to invoke, the "Reid Rule?" That is the singe most important question facing Senate Republicans. Simply put, if destroying what is left of the Senate's tradition of the filibuster would save the country from terrible crises and hardship, almost every senator of both parties would vote to abolish it. Indeed, all but one of the currently serving Senate Democrats who also served in 2013 voted with their leader to break the filibuster rule by simple majority, thus creating "the Reid Rule" that the rules of the Senate can be modified by a simple majority of the...

Senate Democrats are using the filibuster to try and embarrass the GOP into backing down on the House's version of a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, a version which would roll back the president's unconstitutional unilateralism on immigration reform. Congressional Republicans are trying to put on a show of unity, but the fissures are already evident. The demands from conservative activist leadership and the grassroots' legions for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to invoke "the Reid Rule" and smash what's left of the Senate filibuster using the same procedural maneuver that Harry Reid used to kill the...

There is a significant test coming up for the new Republican majority in the Senate, and if they have any hope of sustaining the support of conservatives and like minded independents who propelled them back into the driver’s seat it is one they must pass. On their first attempt at passing a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (while cutting off funding for executive amnesty) the Democrats filibustered and shut the deal down in the Senate. This led to two names you don’t normally see in the same sentence addressing the issue. Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas)...

Two senators from very different wings of the Republican party united to outline how the GOP might counter a Democratic filibuster of the House bill that denies funding for President Obama’s immigration executive orders. Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) argued during a Senate GOP lunch that if Democrats filibuster the Department of Homeland Security funding bill — which blocks implementation of Obama’s 2012 deferred action program and his November 2014 “adult amnesty” — Republicans should respond by blocking only the 2014 orders. The thinking, according to a GOP senator who was in the lunch,...

**SNIP** Sharpton said, “This is the largest majority Republicans have had since the 1920s, and what will happen, and how we deal with our interests, when we have both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives dominated by the Republicans — one, we need to realize and recognize, had we voted like we should have we wouldn’t be here,” he said. “But secondly, all is not lost, the president can use veto power, which he already said he is going to do about the Keystone Pipeline legislation, and executive action.” “Even though the legislature is tied down, the executive...

Democrats launched the first filibuster of the new Congress on Thursday, objecting to the GOP’s effort to try to bring the Keystone XL pipeline bill to the floor early next week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to schedule action early next week on the bill, and promised an open process, including allowing both sides to offer amendments to the bill — an attempt to break with the previous few years, when Democrats controlled the floor and kept a tight lid on amendments. But Democrats objected to Mr. McConnell’s request, forcing him to begin the procedure for breaking a filibuster.

In January, the Senate Judiciary Committee will swing from a 10-8 Democrat-to-Republican advantage to an 11-9 Republican to Democrat advantage. Here are the eleven Republicans: Chuck Grassley, Iowa (presumptive chairman) Orrin Hatch, Utah Jeff Sessions, Alabama Lindsey Graham, South Carolina John Cornyn, Texas Mike Lee, Utah Ted Cruz, Texas Jeff Flake, Arizona David Vitter, Louisiana David Perdue, Georgia Thom Tillis, North Carolina

Poised to take over the Senate next month, Republicans may well keep weaker filibuster rules that they angrily denounced Democrats for muscling through the chamber a year ago. GOP senators remain divided on the issue, and it is uncertain what will happen when they discuss it Tuesday behind closed doors. But several Republicans said they think they will stick with the Democratic-imposed old threshold that a simple majority of votes can end filibusters against most nominations, instead of reviving the tougher 60-vote standard that lasted four decades before it was scuttled last November. […] Retaining the weaker standard would likely...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wants Republicans to reverse the Democrats' filibuster reforms in the new year, arguing that doing so will make it tougher for President Barack Obama to get his nominees approved. The new system requires just 51 votes to advance executive branch nominees and judges nominated for all courts except the Supreme Court, instead of the 60 votes that were previously required. Democrats approved the reforms after Republicans were refusing to let many of Obama's nominees go through. Half the nominees filibustered in the country's history, for example, were blocked by Republicans during the Obama administration.

Democrats lost the Senate, but so what? President Obama still has two more years and a veto. But there is at least one area where the GOP’s new Senate majority makes a big difference: a Supreme Court nomination. While it’s still unclear whether Obama will get to nominate another justice, the Republican gains in November make it unlikely a liberal nominee, such as Justice Thurgood Marshall, would be confirmed. And a nominee like the two Obama-appointed justices currently sitting on the court, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, would face a possible filibuster. Only a true middle-of-the-road nominee — such as...

If Senator McConnell really wants to play hardball with Obama, he should announce he will 'temporarily' suspend the Filibuster Rule in the Senate if Obama goes ahead with Executive Amnesty. 1) This will drive a wedge between Reid and Obama, since Reid's power will be directly tied to Obama's action 2) This will enable the Legislative branch to more readily balance it's powers with those of the Executive Branch 3) Much better than some Impeachment action, since it will actually give the Senate more power over the Executive Branch. Desperate times call for desperate measures ...

In Tuesday’s elections, Republicans won control of the Senate and expanded their majority in the House. In the coming weeks and months, Republicans in Congress must focus on developing and pursuing a winning agenda over the next two years — an agenda that will help elect a Republican president in November 2016 and provide that president with a governing majority in Congress. But a small cadre of current and former Senate staffers is instead pressing Republican senators on what strikes me as a profoundly foolish and destructive diversion: reinstating the filibuster — more precisely, the 60-vote cloture threshold — for...

Republicans won an impressive number of victories last night, including a larger and more conservative House majority and enough wins to give the GOP at least a 52-seat majority in the Senate. As Jeffrey Anderson and Robert Laszewski have noted, Republicans made ObamaCare a major issue in the election (the New York Times’ denials notwithstanding). Senate Republicans will fall several seats short of the 60-vote super-majority needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster of an ObamaCare-repeal bill, though. ObamaCare opponents are therefore debating whether and how Republicans could repeal some or all of the law via the Senate’s “budget reconciliation” process,...

Senate Democrats’ effort to reverse the Supreme Court’s “Hobby Lobby” ruling on birth control could not overcome a Republican filibuster Wednesday, exposing the partisan divide over how to balance women’s health rights with religious liberty ahead of November’s congressional contests. The chamber’s 56-43 vote was not enough to green-light the “Not My Boss’ Business Act” for final consideration, even though Republicans Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska broke party ranks and voted to put the bill on the floor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, changed his vote to “no” at...

Republicans on the Hill cheered the 9-0 Supreme Court decision that found President Obama’s January 2012 appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional, while the top Democrat in the Senate maintained that the White House was in the right. Obama branded them “recess appointments,” but the Senate was actually in pro-forma session at the time. In September of that year, 41 GOP senators filed an amicus brief in support of the case brought against the presidential appointments. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled the appointments of Sharon Block and Richard Griffin were unconstitutional...

While Republican senators flocked to the floor Wednesday night to support Sen. Rand Paul’s nearly 13-hour filibuster, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) did exactly the opposite on Thursday. McCain quoted heavily from a Wall Street Journal editorial that slammed Paul’s filibuster on the Obama administration’s drone use, including a line that said “If Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in college dorms.” McCain called Paul’s concern that the government could kill any American with a drone “totally unfounded.” He referenced Jane...