Free Republic

The Cummings/Issa feud is the showdown that keeps on giving. Democrats faced off with Republicans on the House floor, protesting GOP Rep. Darrell Issa's diss of Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings last week. Cummings' colleagues stood on the House floor on Thursday, holding up tablets, iPhones and iPads with screen showing images of Issa shutting down Cummings during a committee hearing a week ago. But the show of solidarity was closed down, with the presiding officer, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), deeming the display of electronic devices a violation of house rules.

Seems quiet out there. Russia invades a country one door down from the EU and crickets from the left. No cries of killing Putin and his family, no signs, No human shields....nothing.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Catholic Church needs to find a way to offer healing, strength and salvation to Catholics whose marriages have failed, who are committed to making a new union work and who long to do so within the church and with the grace of Communion, Cardinal Walter Kasper told the world's cardinals. Jesus' teaching on the indissolubility of sacramental marriage is clear, the retired German cardinal said, and it would harm individuals and the church to pretend otherwise. However, "after the shipwreck of sin, the shipwrecked person should not have a second boat at his or her...

If there's one constant in life in regards to liberals, it's hypocrisy. The darling elites that love capitalism when it fills their coffers as they live in feudal splendor decry that very system when it comes to the rest of us. The latest bit of Hollywood hypocrisy is that a number of film industry groups have gathered together in a petition asking for tax relief. Yep, the same people who spent years whining that the Bush tax cuts favor the rich and hurt the economy (all lies as the tax cuts helped everybody and tax revenues to the federal government...

Full Title Governor Cuomo’s Selective Anti-Gun Fervor: And This Is Why So Many Americans Have No Respect for Laws Or Lawmakers New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been the source of some of the most excessive anti-gun rants making up the sorry legacy of the Post Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck. It was a year ago that a unveiled a package of strict gun restrictions, saying that with “the senseless massacre in Newtown, Connecticut… New York must say enough is enough to gun violence.” Oh, Gov. Cuomo hates guns, believe you me. So what do you think happened when it...

Actress Maria Conchita Alonso loses acting job for supporting tea party January 19, 2014 by Michael Dorstewitz When a famed Cuban-born singer/songwriter/actress openly supported a California tea party gubernatorial candidate, the San Francisco Latino community responded much as one might expect — with derision instead of acceptance. Maria Conchita Alonso appeared with Assemblyman Tim Donnelly in a campaign ad promoting his bid for the GOP nomination. She added a Spanish translation and a little humor to Donnelly’s spiel, saying: Donnelly’s conservative views include a strong opposition to illegal immigration. He was once associated with the Minuteman Project, a group that...

What do you mean "us," Kemosabe? If Howard Dean wants to push a job-killing agenda of higher taxes and other redistributionist claptrap, that's his business. But could he please spare us the faux populism? In an email Dean sent out earlier today touting the "Inequality For All" house parties his DFA group is organizing [and what sounds like more fun than getting together to gripe about what other people have?], Dean wrote [emphasis added]: "These 'Inequality for All' Watch Parties are just the kind of action we need to start leveling the playing field between the 1% and the rest...

San Francisco can stand a lot, but it cannot abide a Tea Party member. An uproar over Venezuela-born actress Maria Conchita Alonso's support for a Tea Party candidate has led the 56-year-old thespian to depart the San Francisco production of "The Vagina Monologues," according to reports. Alonso was to star in a Spanish-language version of the popular show until it came out that she supports California gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly. Donnelly, a Tea Party sympathizer, also runs a Minuteman militia-like group that patrols the border. Alonso quit the show over threats, according to the San Jose Mercury News -- which...

(CNSNews.com) - "We're still a country very much addicted to tobacco," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a news conference last Friday, as she urged communities, schools and businesses to "help make the next generation a tobacco-free generation." A transcript of that news conference runs around 8,300 words, but there isn't a single word about the adverse health effects of marijuana smoking -- even as more states jump on the pot-legalization bandwagon. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana smoke is an irritant to the lungs, and "frequent marijuana smokers can have many of the same...

Self-righteous Tinseltown windbag Harvey Weinstein (Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction) is at it with the liberal causes again, but on this issue he lacks credibility like no other: the producer (of some of the most incredibly violent films to ever hit the screen) says he's got an anti-gun film currently in production (starring fellow moonbat Meryl Streep) -and the NRA "wish they weren't alive after I'm done with them"- Mr Weinstein -for whom self-awareness/shame is clearly not a strong suit- went on to say he's "gonna take the issue head-on", and "I don't think we need guns in this country"- with the ultimate aim is...

It's no mystery what the left intends to make its next life-or-death issue: income inequality. Liberals are all popping off about it. It's everywhere, from Obama's speeches to liberal think tanks to liberal reporters. It's almost as if they were conspiring to distract us from Obamacare. Nah! On "Meet the Press," PBS anchorwoman Judy Woodruff sounded the alarm, not as a dispassionate reporter but as a progressive advocate. While acknowledging Obama's problems with Obamacare, she breathlessly insisted, "At the same time, the argument for doing something about the economy, the argument for addressing inequality, is such a compelling argument." Behold...

Just as you were wrapping your mind around the idea that under Obamacare and the accompanying changes in the health-care system, your medical records will be floating around in some online repository, available to far too many people, you’re being told you’ll soon have a National Identity Card and a Western Hemisphere-compliant travel document whether you want it or not, if you plan to drive in the United States. The federal government says it soon will be enforcing its demands that state-issued driver’s licenses and ID cards comply with Department of Homeland Security standards. DHS announced just before Christmas a...

I’m sorry to arrive late to this controversy — explanation forthcoming in a later posting — but my impression is that the word “blacklist” has not been mentioned much in the debate over the Robertson family, GLAAD, and the A&E channel. Or if it has been mentioned, it certainly hasn’t had the central role that it should have had in this row. For what GLAAD has been operating is a classic blacklist operation. Its object is not to persuade those who disagree with it over the morality of same-sex relationships to change their minds. Nor is it principally intended to...

Governor Sarah Palin, on Saturday, November 9, 2013, compared the ever increasing national debt to slavery. Palin said: Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that money comes due - and this isn't racist, but it'll be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to beholden to the foreign master. What she said about the mounting national debt being a form of slavery is true, that the bill for all the borrowing will come due, that our children will have to do what foreign masters...

These Dems have to balance their loyalty to the president—and his desire to halt the Islamic Republic's nuclear program—with their discomfort over a deal. It's been a tough year for Israel's most loyal supporters in the U.S. It began with a messy confirmation process for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a nominee whom pro-Israeli groups viewed with concern. Over the summer, President Obama leaned on those groups, most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to lobby for his proposal authorizing military intervention in Syria, only to abandon the push at the last minute. And, most recently, pro-Israel organizations have been...

On Thursday, Don Imus, whom MSNBC fired in 2007 after he referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy headed hos" on the network, said he could not believe MSNBC President Phil Griffin is going to keep Martin Bashir on the air after he suggested someone should urinate or defecate in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's mouth.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/11/21/senate-filibuster-nuclear-option-republicans-editorials-debates/3670451/

Senate Democrats bowled over Republicans on Thursday to win approval for a highly controversial rule change which would limit the GOP's ability to block nominees. Majority Leader Harry Reid, moving quickly following days of speculation, used the so-called "nuclear option" to pass the change. Typically, major changes like this take 67 votes, but he did it with just a simple majority. With Republicans fuming, the change weakens the power of the minority to stall nominations for top positions. Instead of needing 60 votes to break a filibuster, the change means Democrats will now need just 51.

In the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, Silicon Valley was squarely in President Obama's corner. Google's executive chairman coached Obama's campaign team; executives from Craigslist, Napster, and Linkedin helped him fundraise; and when the dust settled, Obama had won nine counties in the liberal and tech-heavy Bay Area, scoring 84 percent of the vote in San Francisco. But a little over a year later, following explosive allegations from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the government is exploiting tech companies to spy on Americans, some members of Silicon Valley are taking a new perspective: "F--- these guys."

Senator Elizabeth Warren got on the Senate floor on Wednesday to charge that her Republican colleagues are still so bitter about the election results last year, they are doing everything within their power to “nullify” the results of that election by fighting President Obama at every turn, including filibustering Cabinet and judicial nominees. Warren reminded Republican senators that they may hate the policies Obama’s pushed for, but he ran for reelection on them and won handily. Warren called them out in particular for blocking Obama’s nominees to fill the vacancies on the D.C. Circuit Court, explaining that this is a...