Free Republic

Senate Democrats said Wednesday that the Supreme Court has stretched the First Amendment too far when it comes to campaign finances, and vowed to hold a vote to amend the Constitution and undo a number of landmark decisions. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat and chairman of the Rules Committee, said he will push a constitutional amendment to the full floor later this year that would give Congress the power to impose strict limits on campaign finance. “It will draw to a fine point where we are at — and that is, the First Amendment is sacred, but that...

When the IRS revokes tax-exempt status of a 501(c)(3) organization, the sanction is considered so severe that tax practitioners refer to it as the “death penalty.” The IRS recently gave the death penalty to the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty. As reported at The Blaze, “The IRS said the group forfeited its status by promoting regularly politically charged articles written by Patrick Henry Center founder Gary Aldrich, a former FBI agent.” Aldrich is a best-selling author, considered a hero or an enemy, depending on one’s view, for exposing Bill Clinton’s escapades. He’s also a friend to many constitutional conservatives....

Original Title:Here’s What CBS Had to Say in Response to Sharyl Attkisson’s Claims About Network’s Reporting Bias CBS News on Monday responded to its former employee Sharyl Attkisson’s claims that the network indirectly discouraged her from doing investigative reporting critical of the Obama administration. Attkisson reported extensively on Benghazi and the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal. The ex-CBS reporter later revealed that she didn’t run into the same roadblocks while reporting on issues that hurt former President George W. Bush. She blamed a lot of the bias problems on special and corporate interests. n response to Attkisson’s public comments, CBS...

Four counties in Alabama have more registered and active voters than the number of voting-age adults in the county. An active voter means the person has voted within the last four years.

Yesterday was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests to put political opponents in prison. Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal Lois Lerner cooking up plans with Justice Department officials to talk about ways to criminally charge conservative groups that are insufficiently quiet. Larry Noble, a law professor now with the Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center , was cited in the emails as someone agitating to jail conservatives who “falsely” report on IRS forms that...

On MSNBC last night, host Alex Wagner continued her ongoing “leave the IRS alone” theme with a defense of the organization and its key players that tread into the territory of virtuosity in the art of reversing the spin. Not only, Wagner would have you believe, is the IRS not guilty of anything, not only were conservative groups not harmed or hampered in any way, but in fact it is the IRS who is truly the victim of unjust targeting. They are not the aggressor but the innocent victim, the simple, plainspoken agency that gosh darnit just wants to do...

The U.S. House Oversight Committee today released emails between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Democrat Minority Leader Elijah Cummings of the same committee detailing joint attempts to collect non-public information from True the Vote. According to the release obtained by Breitbart Texas, House Oversight offered glimpses into coordinated fishing attempts for information: Five days after Cummings contacted True the Vote seeking “copies of all training materials used for volunteers, affiliates, or other entities,” the IRS sent True the Vote a letter requesting True the Vote provide “a copy of [True the Vote’s] volunteer registration form,” “…the process you use...

The spin doctors who deny the existence of voter fraud have no boundaries. “Plans to fight voter fraud are based on nightmares, tall tales, and paranoid fears,” says Scott Keyes of the liberal Center for American Progress. Voter fraud is so rare “you’re more likely to get hit by lightning than find a case of prosecutorial voter fraud,” asserts Judith Browne-Dianis, co-director of the liberal Advancement Project. Kim Strach, the new director of North Carolina’s Board of Elections, disagrees. She just searched a database that comprises about half the registered voters in the U.S. and found 35,750 voters in her...

LA MESA, Calif. - A local couple called 10News concerned after they received an envelope from the state's Obamacare website, Covered California. Inside was a letter discussing voter registration and a registration card pre-marked with an "x" in the box next to Democratic Party. The couple – who did not want their identity revealed – received the letter and voter registration card from their health insurance provider Covered California, the state-run agency that implements President Obama's Affordable Care Act.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Internal Revenue Service told House Republicans on Wednesday that it would take years to provide all the documents they have subpoenaed in their probe of how the agency handled tea party groups' applications for tax-exempt status. The comments by IRS chief John Koskinen drew a frosty response from Republicans who run the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, one of several congressional panels investigating the controversy. The panel's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., warned him he should comply with the request "or potentially be held in contempt" of Congress, a sometimes threatened but...

A House committee report claims Lois Lerner, who oversaw the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status, lied to Congress about her involvement in the targeting scandal. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report Tuesday concluding that Lerner “created unprecedented roadblocks for Tea Party organizations” and “worked surreptitiously to advance new Obama administration regulations that curtail the activities of existing 501(c)(4) organizations.” […] The emails paint a picture of IRS officials being aware of the potential political consequences of their actions and the increasing attention on the issue. On several occasions, Lerner received...

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN--During a filibuster-style radio interview in Milwaukee Friday, senior Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin) charged that the State of Texas as a whole had a tendency to discriminate against minority voters and should be placed back under Holder Justice Department supervision thanks to his proposed legislation. After the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act—a policy that held a number of southern states like Texas and other jurisdictions structurally discriminatory toward minorities until proven otherwise—Rep. Sensenbrenner vowed to revive the law. When pressed to justify his desire to again empower the...

Lois Lerner fears for her life if she testifies openly before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday, according to her attorney. House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa announced Sunday that Lerner will testify at Wednesday’s hearing, but Lerner’s attorney Bill Taylor said that Lerner will seek to continue invoking her Fifth Amendment rights and will also seek a one-week delay of her testimony. Oversight members are reportedly open to granting Lerner a one-week delay if she petitions for one in person at Wednesday’s hearing. The delay would allow Lerner’s lawyers to continue negotiating for immunity, which they...

Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst issued a letter to Secretary of State Nandita Berry today urging her office to immediately turn over all complaints of Battleground Texas’ violations of election law to Attorney General Greg Abbott. The scandal was revealed after Breitbart Texas released the latest James O'Keefe undercover video on what appeared to be a Battleground Texas illegal voter data-mining operation to help elect Wendy Davis.

As predicted by Bryan Preston of the PJ Tatler, the supposedly non-partisan Texas Tribune downplayed the story about the Project Veritas video showing Battleground Texas illegally using voter registration information. How did The Texas Tribune do that? By bizarrely makiing the focus of their deflect story the Texas Secretary of State, rather than the video itself. Here is Preston's detailed analysis of The Texas Tribune's deflection:

LOS ANGELES — California has reached the breaking point. Or so says Tim Draper, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who is pushing a proposal to crack the nation's most populous state into pieces. Six of them, in this case. California has grown so big, so divided, it's essentially ungovernable, according to a ballot initiative that could reach voters in November. It has to go. "Vast parts of our state are poorly served by a representative government," according to Draper's plan, which cleared a key government hurdle this week to qualify for the ballot. California residents "would be better served by...

In May 2013, it was learned that from April 2010 to April 2012, the Internal Revenue Service had placed on hold the processing of applications for tax-exempt status that it had received from hundreds of organizations with such presumably conservative indicators as “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” or “9/12” in their names. During that period, the IRS approved only four applications from conservative groups while green-lighting applications from several dozen organizations whose names included the likely left-leaning terms “Progressive,” “Progress,” “Liberal,” or “Equality.” In February 2014, it was further learned that of the already-existing nonprofits that were flagged for IRS surveillance (including...

Here in Oklahoma, we like to call ourselves the reddest of red states. But even here, the insanity is encroaching and hard to keep at bay. That is why it is ever so important to keep a watchful eye over those who represent us, both on the national and state level.The President and Vice President of the United States are elected by a process known as the Electoral College. I'm not going to bore you with a long and complicated explanation of why that is the case, so here is my simple and condensed version. The United States is made...

There’s no man or woman in red-state America these days with more power than Cruz to set a new conservative litmus test. But c’mon: How many of you need to be formally warned at this point by your favorite Republican that the House is looking to sell out border hawks on immigration reform? It’s like blaming Rand Paul for turning libertarians against the NSA. He plays a useful role in bringing attention to the issue, but those people turned on their own initiative ages ago. Same here.Cruz won’t mind being blamed for this one, though. House Republicans who supported the...

It's getting difficult and slinking toward impossible to defend the Affordable Care Act. The latest blow to Democratic candidates, liberal activists, and naïve columnists like me came Monday from the White House, which announced yet another delay in the Obamacare implementation. For the second time in a year, certain businesses were given more time before being forced to offer health insurance to most of their full-time workers. Employers with 50 to 99 workers were given until 2016 to comply, two years longer than required by law. During a yearlong grace period, larger companies will be required to insure fewer employees...