Free Republic

Sen. James Inhofe, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, rejects the idea that poorly vetted Tea Party candidates cost the GOP control of the Senate, as some other Republicans have suggested. In a phone interview with The Hill, Inhofe derailed as "absolutely false" the argument put forward recently by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who said in a recent interview with an Alabama newspaper that Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin "cost us control of the Senate" and that Tea Party candidates generally underperformed in Senate races. "The Senate would be Republican today except for states (in which Palin...

When the Nov. 2 general election is over and the lame duck session of Congress begins, Inhofe said he plans to take up the cause of earmarks again. Inhofe said he is listed as the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate by a number of conservative journals and will try to reinstitute the practice of earmarks. He said earmarks should be germane to the legislation they are attached to. “It would be nothing short of criminal to go to all the trouble of electing great new anti-establishment senators, only to have them cede to the executive branch their constitutional...

The top Republican on a Senate environmental panel released a scathing report Tuesday that he contends shows that the Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rule on cleaning up boilers nationwide could devastate America's manufacturing base and imperil hundreds of thousands of jobs without providing any real public health or environmental benefits. In June, the EPA issued a proposal that would force industrial, commercial and institutional boilers and heaters to use "maximum achievable control technology" to reduce harmful emissions that erode air quality and pose a public health risk.

The big story coming out of Friday's Values Voter Summit—the massive religious-right confab in DC—is the obvious marriage between the burgeoning tea party movement and the old Christian Coalition. The stars of the event were tea party luminaries: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), and of course, newcomer Christine O'Donnell, who just won the Senate GOP primary in Delaware. But lost amid all the tea party fervor was what may be the beginning of the end of the presidential prospects of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Romney was clearly here because he is running...

Inhofe tells the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber that voters will sweep Republican senators into office after undergoing the "shock treatment" given the nation's economy through policies enacted by the president and fellow Democrats. Voters will respond to the "shock treatment" given by the president's national economic policies by sweeping in enough Republicans in November to take over the U.S. Senate, Oklahoma's senior U.S. senator said Thursday.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) went after his fellow GOP Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) as the latter as faced reelection Tuesday. Inhofe, rated as one of the most conservative members of the upper chamber, attacked McCain's conservative credentials and said he only gets elected because of his opposition to earmarks. The Tulsa World wrote that Inhofe "attacked" McCain as a "closet liberal," then quoted Inhofe as saying he "gets elected because of one thing -- earmarks."

President Barack Obama’s zeal to give illegal immigrants amnesty is holding the nation’s border security “hostage” to his political agenda, says GOP Sen. James Inhofe. As Obama called on Congress to tackle comprehensive immigration reform in a speech Thursday afternoon, Inhofe told Newsmax in an exclusive interview that the president is clearly using border security as a bargaining chip to obtain amnesty for millions of illegal aliens residing in the United States. That was the same charge made by Inhofe’s friend and colleague, Arizona GOP Sen. John Kyl, who stirred controversy last week when he revealed a discussion in which...

Oklahoma Senator On Global Warming: I've Been Vindicated By Alex Cameron, Oklahoma Impact Team Posted: Jun 24, 2010 9:53 PM Updated: Jun 25, 2010 9:03 AM PERRY, OK -- He's been called an idiot, a climate killer, and one of the worst enemies of the planet, and it couldn't make Jim Inhofe more proud. To Oklahoma's senior U.S. Senator, the insults just validate his efforts to expose what he says are the lies and exaggerations of global warming alarmists. And, as he told our Oklahoma Impact Team, his efforts are finally paying off, because public opinion on the issue is...

Eight Senators seem to think so. They have sent Obama a letter asking for a guarantee that he will not use an Executive Order to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants already in the United States: Numbers USA: Several Senators have learned of a possible plan by the Obama Administration that would provide a mass Amnesty for the nation’s 11-18 million illegal aliens. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), eight Senators addressed a letter to the President asking for answers to questions about a plan that would allow DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to provide an amnesty if they can’t secure enough...

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), today expressed his concerns over the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on the Senate floor. Inhofe’s statement comes after yesterday’s SASC hearing on START with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Admiral Michael Mullen, and Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu. “My opinion on the START Treaty has not changed since President Obama signed the treaty in April,” said Inhofe. “I remain concerned about the limits this treaty places on our nation’s ability to advance our missile defense, also...

Sen. Jim Inhofe tells Newsmax that President Obama “hasn’t made a good decision yet” on the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and his Tuesday night speech about the spill was his “worst moment.” The Oklahoma Republican also says Obama remains committed to a cap-and-trade bill — and charges that the Democrats are standing in the way of America’s energy independence. Inhofe, first elected in 1994, is the Ranking Republican on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee and a longtime opponent of cap-and-trade legislation to curb carbon emissions.

Overregulation: The Senate votes on blocking a government bureaucracy from usurping power never delegated to it by Congress. This administration may put Copenhagen above the Constitution, but we the people have other plans. The GOP's 1994 "Contract with America," a gift that keeps on giving, hopefully will rescue us once again from the clutches of an unelected bureaucracy, the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been allowed by the Supreme Court to regulate every breath we take and every machine we operate. When cap-and-tax legislation was introduced in Congress, the Obama administration threatened that if Congress failed to act, the EPA...

The National Rifle Association claims that in the wake of the Fort Hood shooting incidence, some base commanders are tightening the controls on personal firearms belonging to service men and women. US Senator Jim Inhofe wants to put a stop to that. Inhofe has filed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would protect the Second Amendment rights of military members. Major Nidal Hasan is accused of gunning down 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas last year. The bill also demands that the military destroy gun ownership records.

Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions? Environmentalism did not cause the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but it did help make it possible, just as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, which the Gulf Oil spill has now eclipsed, was also ironically made possible by a desire to protect the environment. The original plan when oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope was to build a pipeline directly to the...

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe blocked Democrats' proposal Tuesday to boost the liability cap on oil spills from the current $75 million to $10 billion, a move that sparked what the Oklahoma Republican viewed as a partisan attack from President Barack Obama. In objecting to letting the proposal move forward, Inhofe warned its current approach could actually end up helping big oil companies such as BP by handing them exclusive rights to offshore drilling. Smaller, independent producers would be shut out, he said. Inhofe expressed agreement with others who insist the liability cap should be increased, adding, however, that...

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) defended Arizona's tough new immigration law on Monday, calling it a response to the federal government's inaction. Inhofe, a conservative Republican who opposed comprehensive immigration reform several years earlier, said there's nothing wrong with Arizona's new law, which is seen as granting authorities some of the most leeway in the country in pursuing illegal immigrants. "I think the frustration is that the federal government isn't enforcing the laws, so we're going to do it on the state level," Inhofe said of the factors which led to the law during an appearance on KTOK radio. "I don't...

LAWTON, Okla. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe said a treaty signed by President Barack Obama and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev to limit nuclear weapons faces a hard battle in the Senate, "and I'll lead the opposition to it." Inhofe, R-Okla., visited Lawton Friday for a dedication of a new facility at nearby Fort Sill. He said after the ceremony that it will be difficult for Obama to muster the 67 votes needed to ratify the treaty, which shrinks the U.S. and Russian nuclear warhead limit by about a third, to 1,550.

There is now a desperate effort afoot by assorted climate alarmists to explain away the revelations of the incriminating e-mails leaked last year from the University of East Anglia (UEA). A concerted whitewash campaign is in full swing to save the IPCC and its questionable conclusion that the warming of the last thirty years is anthropogenic. But ongoing investigations so far have avoided the real issue, namely whether the reported warming is genuine or a manufactured result by scientists in England and the United States who manipulated temperature data. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has repeatedly characterized anthropogenic global warming (AGW)...

Pollution Control: From cars to coal mines, the imposition of economy-killing restrictions is under way. Are the new EPA regulations on auto emissions the precursor to regulating carbon dioxide by executive order? In announcing the Environmental Protection Agency's first regulations on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars, Administrator Lisa Jackson has promised they won't be the last such rules stemming from the EPA's "endangerment finding" that carbon dioxide, six pounds of which every human being exhales every day, is a dangerous pollutant. "These are the first regulations that cover greenhouse gas emissions in the United States," Jackson told reporters in...

Republican Sen. James Inhofe today threw cold water on plans to put a new carbon fee on transportation fuels as part of climate change legislation being negotiated in the Senate. The idea -- advocated by ConocoPhillips and other oil companies -- has gained traction with the three senators writing a new climate change bill. They have abandoned a House-passed plan to force refiners to buy pollution permits to cover the carbon dioxide released when consumers burn transportation fuels in cars, trucks and planes. Instead, they are considering a so-called "linked carbon fee" on jet fuels and gasoline that consumers would...