Free Republic

The health bill is "dead on arrival" in Congress, said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce committee, said during an interview on Fox News. "If they somehow manage to get the votes and get enough Democrats to walk the plank and commit suicide, in the next Congress, I'll be chairman Joe Barton of the Energy and Commerce committee, and we'll repeal it," Barton said.

No one seems to be mentioning U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, as a candidate to replace outgoing Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. Turns out that Barton — who came in third in the 1993 special election that Hutchison won in a runoff — is indeed thinking about running. "Congressman Barton continues to watch the developments in Texas politics with an interested eye," spokesman Sean Brown said. "He believes serving the entire state of Texas as their next senator would be an honor. If and when an opportunity presents itself, he will discuss it with his wife, family and supporters before...

Another episode of MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," another angry rant about a conservative disagreeing with liberal agenda - how predictable. On the March 26 broadcast of "Countdown," Olbermann set his sights on Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, for suggesting that nature adapts to a changing climate - even when the changes predate the theory that man possessed the ability to change the climate. "But our winner - Republican Congressman Joe Barton of Texas, back for another round of denying climate change," Olbermann said. ...more (w/video)...

Despite Al Gore’s appearance during which Congressman Joe Barton confronted him with scientific facts that destroyed his position and which he could not counter, I think that there are definite signs that the global warming nonsense has reached its peak, and that common sense and science are starting to take hold. The proximate causes for this turning point were the appearance of the video, “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, which has now been viewed by millions, and the NY Times piece that presented views from some leading scientists who dispute global warming and which also took Al Gore to task...

"We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" -- Phil Jones in a reply to climate skeptic Warwick Hughes in February 2005 as confirmed and reported by climatologist Hans Vans Storch at a National Academy of Sciences hearing March 2 on "Scientific Efforts to reconstruct surface temperature records over the last 1,000 to 2,000 years." "Getting caught is the mother of invention." -- Robert Byrne "People say that in politics, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up....

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, suffered a heart attack Thursday evening, his office confirmed Friday morning. Barton, 56, is resting at George Washington University Hospital, where he was taken after feeling ill during a conference committee meeting in the U.S. Capitol Thursday night. ``Congressman Barton is touched and grateful for the many expressions of concern he has received,” Barton press secretary Karen Modlin said in a statement. The statement said that Barton is resting "comfortably'' after his heart attack Thursday evening. Barton is under the "expert care" of Dr. Jonathan Samuel Reiner at George Washington University Hospital, who has...

2006 Congressional Election Cycle Has Begun  50 Republican Incumbents Undeserving of Support by Pro-life Voters   The Republican National Coalition for Life PAC is currently receiving phone calls from Republican candidates for Congress in the 2006 Republican primaries. Our usual practice is to mail our Candidate Questionnaire to Republican candidates in each district as soon as the filing deadlines are reached. When we receive the results of the questionnaire, they are recorded on our website at www.RNCLife.org so that voters can see for themselves it those seeking to represent them in Washington are truly pro-life. We hope that this service...

Congratulations to... Republicans Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield, who... opened a probe into the nation's asbestos and silicosis claims. Their decision to investigate the people responsible for recruiting and falsely diagnosing tens of thousands of plaintiffs is a major step toward exposing this fraud. Credit for alerting the Congressmen to this issue goes to Texas federal Judge Janis Graham Jack, who earlier this summer surprised the tort bar by publicly excoriating 10,000 silicosis claims in front of her court. Messrs. Barton and Whitfield have now followed up with letters to the doctors and screening companies that helped gin up these...

When talking science, especially global-warming science, civility is a word rarely used these days. Take, for instance, what happened to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton recently. In June, Mr. Barton requested research information from the authors of a controversial global-warming study, because "this dispute surrounding your studies bears directly on important questions about the federally funded work upon which climate studies rely." Sounds reasonable, but to House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, this constituted "intimidation" of the scientific community. The New York Republican responded to Mr. Barton's inquiry with another letter, saying that it was a...

Top scientists have reacted angrily to a US Congressman who has demanded to see the full financial and research records of three climate experts. The Congressman, Joe Barton, says questions have been raised about a study the experts did on climate history and which is at the heart of the current understanding of global warming. The dispute surrounds a pair of papers written by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes at the end of the 1990s suggesting that the past decade was probably warmer than any other in the last one thousand years. A graph from the papers, showing...

WASHINGTON - Rep. Joe Barton, a usually reliable pro-life vote for the more than 20 years he's been in Congress, broke rank Tuesday to vote for expanding federal support for research using embryos created for in-vitro fertilization that would otherwise be discarded. And as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Barton was floor manager of the bill and found himself in direct opposition to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, as well as President Bush, who promised to veto it. Just before Tuesday's vote, Barton, R-Ennis, captured the anguish and the promise that drives research supporters. "My...

In the wake of CBS News' "60 Minutes" controversy, an influential Republican on Tuesday said he wants to convene a Capitol Hill hearing on TV news operations after the Nov. 2 election. Rep. Joe Barton (news, bio, voting record) (R-Texas), chair of the House Commerce Committee, told a meeting of the TV engineering trade group MSTV in Washington that broadcast network news divisions "need to have safeguards to prevent reporters from infusing their opinions into news reports." The lawmaker said he wanted to hear from execs of all the nets -- not just CBS -- and threatened to introduce legislation...

September 16, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders yesterday put the kibosh on demands from a powerful House Republican for a probe into "evidence that CBS News has aided and abetted fraud" by peddling suspect documents critical of President Bush. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, sought the investigation "given the shortness of the time between now and the election, which the apparent fraud is meant to influence." He complained the network has declined to give the source of the documents. But fellow Republican Joe Barton (Texas) rebuffed Cox's demand, saying an investigation "hardly seems appropriate...