Free Republic

Republican voters believed they had sent a message to Washington in November when they voted to increase the GOP majority in the House and give Republicans a Senate majority for the first time since 2007. If a message was sent, it was not received. Weeper of the House of John Boehner got only a token challenge for his speakership. Most of the new freshmen sent to Congress to change the status quo in the House turned into congressweasels before they’d even moved their furniture into their new Capitol Hill offices. That’s even quicker than usual. Normally, they hold out a...

The Republicans won the 2014 midterms in a landslide. They have the most House seats since World War Two and they won the Senate. We’re two weeks into the new term and the Republicans are already losing to Obama and the Democrats. What is the Republican agenda? Rather than having bills up and ready to go, the Republicans have dithered. Rather than taking the fight to the Democrats in the Senate, McConnell is balking at the House’s effort to defund executive amnesty. Keystone XL should have been a simple bill to pass onto the President, it still hasn’t happened. What...

There were times in Ukraine’s recent history when even the country’s military brass were kneeling before the U.S. Literally. In June 2013, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft received the saber of the Ukrainian Cossack in the city of Kherson from a kneeling Ukrainian high-rank military official. Mr. Tefft nowadays is serving the country as an Ambassador to Russia where no such honors are even imaginable. But that was then—a previous regime. On the surface, today’s Ukraine is much more favorably disposed toward everything Western and everything American because of the exciting wind of transformations that swept through the Ukrainian...

Back in October, it was widely reported that the United States was responsible for accidentally dropping weapons and supplies to ISIS in Syria. The mainstream media played it off as a mistake. Many in the alternative media, however, hinted that it was intentional, though admittedly difficult to prove. Melissa Melton was one of the more vocal opponents of the MSM narrative at the time: Are they really going to claim intelligence failure when, thanks to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks, we now know we live in a world where the U.S. government can suck up the communications data of...

For universities looking to make their football teams nationally known and profitable, the great college-football realignment is likely coming to completion. There are fewer major conferences. Just a few short years ago, the Big East was 5-0 in bowl games, but now survives only as the weak American Athletic Conference. The WAC no longer sponsors football at all. The Conference USA is an empty shell. Even the Mountain West Conference, despite subsuming the best of the WAC and Big West, is weaker than it once was. The Big 12 may be looking to expand back to 12 teams from 10....

Jerusalem - Jewish settlers attacked American consular officials Friday during a visit the officials made to the West Bank as part of an investigation into claims of damage to Palestinian agricultural property, Israeli police and Palestinian witnesses say. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that a small number of settlers threw rocks at officials who had come to an area near the Jewish settlement outpost of Adi Ad in two consular vehicles to look into Palestinian claims that settlers uprooted scores of Palestinian olive trees the day before. He said that after the rock barrage began, the vehicles left the area,...

House Speaker John Boehner's not waiting until New Year's Day for a hangover -- his headache is already here. Back-to-back House Republican dramas in the final week of the year are the latest indication that many of the issues the GOP hoped to leave behind when they take full control of Congress next week — an unruly base and scandal-prone members — will continue to dog them in the new year, and might even kick off 2015 with an attempted coup on the Speakership. Though Boehner was successfully able to convince Rep. Michael Grimm to resign on Monday after pleading...

Speaker John Boehner must go. Congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA), a John Boehner man running for re-election as House Republican Whip, is in trouble. And he too must go. By making a point of backing Scalise in the middle of this mess, so now is the Speaker himself in trouble. Mark Levin has long been out there saying Boehner needed to go. So too has Sean Hannity, with both updating their views over the holidays in light of the Scalise scandal. We’ll come back to this in a minute. But first, let’s focus on Scalise’s situation. It is a textbook case...

Germans Protest Islam, Leftwing Media Denounces Putin By Julio Severo On Monday, December 15, some 15,000 people in Germany took part in a demonstration labeled by the German press as ‘xenophobic.’ The demonstration was held by the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA, by its German-language acronym), whose main objective is to oppose Islamic immigration from the Middle East and Africa. Since October, PEGIDA has held weekly rallies against Islam. German chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned PEGIDA, declaring, “There is no place in Germany for those who are instigating hatred against immigrants.” She also denounced the...

Full title: Cop charged with choking and beating a HOSPITAL PATIENT - after he tried to claim the victim attacked him but was caught on video A San Francisco sheriff's deputy allegedly choked and beat a hospital patient who walked with a cane - then lied on the police report to cover his tracks. Michael Lewelling, 33, was accused of approaching a sleeping man as he started to wake up, knocking away his walking cane, grabbing his neck, then arresting him. He then filed a police report claiming that the man started the fight by attacking him with the cane,...

#KilledByCops is an interactive map that chronicles and visualizes a humanizing, detailed, but far-from-complete perspective on the massive scale of police killings nationwide. And since fewer than 5% of law enforcement agencies in the country currently provide information on police killings, a comprehensive data collection of and a national conversation about police homicides in the United States is desperately needed.

On the rare occasion I find myself in agreement with President Obama, I get nervous. It just feels like a setup. Like someone's going to pull the rug out from under me at any moment. But right now, I have to admit, I was very pleased to hear the news that the U.S. and Cuba are moving to normalize relations.

Moscow, December 15, Interfax - The Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society (IOPS) has announced the creation of a White Book on crimes against Christians in the Middle East, which will be presented at the United Nations Human Rights Council in February 2015. "We are working to compile the so-called White Book, containing a sorrowful list of names of the slain and tortured Christians, instances of churches and shrines being destroyed, and eyewitness accounts. We would like to present this book at the UN HRC at its next session in late February - early March," IOPS Vice President Yelena Agapova told a...

Recently, the House passed, by an overwhelming margin, a resolution to condemn the Russian Federation for actions considered hostile and aggressive within its sphere of influence, specifically with regard to the politically torn country of Ukraine. Ten Members voted “nay,” myself among them. I wish to explain why I took this unpopular position. Above all, while Vladimir Putin’s government may well have engaged in questionable behavior toward neighboring countries, Resolution 758 was nothing more than gratuitous, needlessly provocative and shortsighted. Moreover, reasonable observers the world over can see it as tantamount to a declaration that Russia is America’s enemy. The...

Senator Rand Paul To Headline Mississippi Republican Party Victory Event ON:5 December 2014 BY:Admin IN: Media Advisory WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) will join Governor Phil Bryant and the Mississippi Republican Party in Jackson, Mississippi on Monday, December 8 for a fundraising event benefiting the state party. MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2014 WHAT: Mississippi Republican Party Victory Lunch TIME: 11:30 am (CST) WHO: Senator Rand Paul & Governor Phil Bryant WHERE: The Old Capitol Inn 226 North State Street, Jackson MS 39201

I will find you and pay you back. Thank you.

"His education was bought and paid for by the Saudis. ... '... letter of recommendation to get one of his Saudi proteges into Harvard Law'..." (Ann Barnhardt 9/5/13 interview by Elijah Johnson)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved Idaho-based J.R. Simplot Co.'s new genetically modified potato. But one of the company's oldest business partners — McDonald's — hasn't. The fast-food giant says it doesn't use genetically modified potatoes, the Idaho Statesman reported. "McDonald's USA does not source GMO potatoes, nor do we have current plans to change our sourcing practices," the company said in a statement.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.” ~ Margaret Atwood, Award-winning author Well, well, so much for bipartisanship. Ten days after Republican Senator Mitch McConnell promised to work with Democrats to improve the quality of life of all Americans, the honorable senator from Kentucky disavowed that promise by declaring war on America’s first black president. In an interview with Louisville, Kentucky’s The Courier-Journal today, McConnell, who presumably will become Majority Leader in the United States Senate in January, accused President Obama of waging a “war on coal” and declared, “I’m going to war with him.”

Has anyone seen or heard of any upcoming leadership challenges within the GOP? Specifically are the GOP House members just going to lay down again and re-elect Boehnor? Any challenges to McCarthy? How about McConnell? Nothing will change with the same lame losership that the GOP currently has.