Free Republic

FBI officials executed a search warrant at former state Sen. Kent Sorenson’s home two weeks ago and confiscated computers and other materials connected to presidential campaign politics, his lawyer said Wednesday. “We were not notified that he was the target of any investigation,” attorney Theodore Sporer said. “They took computers and things that would be used to verify or validate communications with presidential entities.” Earlier this year, a report from a state special investigator suggested that two presidential campaigns — those of Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul — may have violated federal election laws by skirting rules to funnel money...

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Republican primary challenger, Matt Bevin, insists he’s just where he wants to be in his longshot bid to unseat Kentucky’s longest-serving senator. “I’m David, and he’s Goliath. That’s just the reality of it. However, the path to victory just gets wider and wider,” said Mr. Bevin, a private-equity investor-turned-Senate candidate, on a swing through Washington. The McConnell campaign doesn’t quite see it that way. To them, the Bevin challenge is disappearing fast in the rearview mirror. “We don’t pay very much attention to Mr. Bevin these days,” said McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton. “His campaign has gone...

In the opening pages of Ray Bradbury’s famous novel Fahrenheit 451, protagonist Guy Montag asks: Wasn’t there a time when firemen used to put out fires? They laugh at him, rebuke him and say: Everybody knows firemen start fires.

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, is taking on a new and formidable immigration policy director, a sign that he could be more serious about passing immigration legislation than his critics suggest. Rebecca Tallent, who currently serves as director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, will join Boehner’s staff on Wednesday. Before joining the BPC, Tallent held several senior staff positions with Sen. John McCain, including chief of staff. During her time with McCain, she helped the Arizona Republican draft a handful of immigration overhaul measures, including the last big push McCain made with the late Sen. Edward M....

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has hired Rebecca Tallent to work on immigration reform. She is currently the immigration policy director at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "The Speaker remains hopeful that we can enact step-by-step, common-sense immigration reforms -- the kind of reforms the American people understand and support," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner. "Becky Tallent, a well-known expert in this field of public policy, is a great addition to our team and that effort." According to her BPC bio, Tallent has worked as a policy aide on immigration and energy issues to Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) and...

<p>LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Authorities trying to solve a distillery heist that netted cases of prized Kentucky bourbon have monitored websites and interviewed more than 100 people since the pricey whiskey was taken weeks ago. Now a cash reward is getting mixed in.</p>

Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes' family recipes, posted on her website for the Thanksgiving holiday on Wednesday, appear to be lifted from other websites. -snip- The recipe issue is reminiscent of one that ensnared Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) campaign for a few days in April of 2008. McCain's campaign was caught passing others' recipes off as favorite family recipes of Cindy McCain. After drawing negative press for the situation, the McCain campaign scrubbed the recipes off their website and accused an intern of plagiarism.

Our friend Tony Lee over at Breitbart has a great report on the Kentucky Republican Senate primary between incumbent establishment Senator Mitch McConnell and Tea Party backed conservative Matt Bevin that gives some important evidence to support what CHQ Chairman Richard Viguerie has been saying for years – Republicans never win big elections unless they draw a sharp distinction between the conservative world view and the liberal world view. Mr. Viguerie regularly tells audiences for his speeches and in his CHQ columns that to win Republicans must frame the campaign as a fight for traditional values, lower taxes, smaller, less...

At a recent book tour stop for her best-selling book, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin drew a blue-collar crowd consisting of all races in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. As can be seen in the video below, many who came to see Palin said they identified with her because she has a son in the military. Others said they loved her "values" and how she "stands by them." An active duty soldier said that Palin "speaks the truth" and is "straight-forward." "And I like that so much," the active duty soldier said....

A 6-year-old boy stepped off the school bus one October afternoon and found himself locked out of his Metairie home. He peered into the kitchen window and saw his mother's lifeless body on the floor. Two weeks earlier, another 6-year-old returned to his Old Metairie home after a weekend away and found the decomposing body of his mother in bed. In July, a River Ridge woman found her 41-year-old son dead in a bedroom in her home, her third child to die from a heroin overdose.Those lives lost, two from heroin and another from a drug made to resemble it,...

The chairman for the Democratic Kentucky Family Values PAC is refusing to release the citations for a key claim in a new radio advertisement running in the special election in western Kentucky’s 7th House District. The ad is aimed at Republican candidate Suzanne Miles and says her “family’s businesses got $2.5 million in federal handouts.” Cary Blankenship, the chairman for the Kentucky Family Values PAC, refused to tell Pure Politics how the group arrived at the $2.5 million figure. Four times Blankenship said he “doesn’t discuss strategy” when asked directly about the facts behind the claims of the ad. Blakenship...

On the campaign trail, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was still blasting the new health-care law as unsalvageable. At the White House, President Obama was still apologizing for the botched federal Web site. But in a state where the rollout has gone smoothly, and in a county that is one of the poorest and unhealthiest in the country, Courtney Lively has been busy signing people up: cashiers from the IGA grocery, clerks from the dollar store, workers from the lock factory, call-center agents, laid-off coal miners, KFC cooks, Chinese green-card holders in town to teach Appalachian students. … This is...

Kentucky U.S Senate candidate Matt Bevin beat incumbent Mitch McConnell in a straw poll conducted by the Boone County Republican Party. The unscientific survey was held at the group's gala on Thursday which featured libertarian speaker Judge Andrew Napolitano among others. Of the approximately 425 people who participated, Bevin won 85 percent compared to just 13 percent favoring McConnell. Boone County GOP Chairman Rick Brueggermann says it is unclear if any solid prediction can be drawn from the results ahead of the May primary next year, but that members were eager to participate. "It's not random sampling, but it is...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reportedly told GOP donors on a conference call this week the Tea Party is “nothing but a bunch of bullies” that he plans to “punch in the nose.”Well, the Tea Party responded tonight to the alleged remarks by Senator McConnell. Matthew Boyle at Breitbart reported: A major GOP donor who told Breitbart News Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made disparaging remarks about the Tea Party movement and about Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) continues to stand by his original story after claims that the reports were not accurate.This individual reported that...

In a surprising win on Tuesday night, the White House and top Senate Democrats successfully defended provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would loosen restrictions on transferring detainees out of Guantánamo Bay, advancing President Obama’s goal of closing the facility by a margin of 55-43. . . . . . . As recently as early November, Democratic Senate aides participating in the fight to loosen the transfer rules described the politics of the vote as “difficult” but “not impossible” and said those whipping the vote were five or six votes short of the bare majority they needed...

An al Qaeda-linked terrorist, who was resettled in the U.S. as an Iraq War refugee after allegedly killing American soldiers, was caught on camera in Kentucky handling heavy weapons that the FBI said he believed would be sent to insurgents back in Iraq. The 2010 video, obtained exclusively by ABC News, was part of a broader ABC News investigation into the flawed refugee vetting program, which officials said may have let “dozens” of terrorists into the country. READ FULL EXCLUSIVE: US May Have Let ‘Dozens’ of Terrorists Into Country as Refugees In the video, Waad Ramadan Alwan is seen expertly...

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has an 89.12 lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and has been in Congress since 1995. Yet the Republican fixture on Capitol Hill will face four primary challengers next year, all of whom accuse him of not being a true conservative. Graham, who is much in the mold of his friend, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is known for often reaching across the aisle on important legislative issues. One notable example of this is his being a member of the bipartisan Gang of Eight immigration reform group this year. Before being elected to the...

The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal corporation which operates energy facilities and other land management operations across multiple states, has announced that they will be closing eight coal fired power plants. They will seek to reduce coal sourced energy to 20% of their total capacity and the plants in question will be closed in Alabama and Kentucky. (The latter plants faced some headwinds as Mitch McConnell fought to stop them from closing, but the TVA overruled him.)

House Democrats are bracing for Republicans to may political hay next year out of ethics issues that have dogged members of the Democratic majority caucus and are preparing a deflection defense. It’s inside baseball, House Speaker Greg Stumbo essentially said in an interview with Pure Politics this week. “I don’t think people look at that. I think people look at what you’ve done overall,” Stumbo said in response to questions about some of the ethical issues that have faced individual House Democrats. Former Rep. John Arnold of Sturgis resigned in September amid allegations that he sexually harassed female legislative staffers....

U.S. Rep. Andy Barr could only laugh in response when Jane Friedman of Lexington stood up at his town hall meeting in Winchester last week. "You're not under a rock like your predecessor was," Friedman said. Barr's predecessor, of course, was former U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, and Barr seems determined to avoid Chandler's fate, making constituent outreach a focus while aiming for re-election next year. Barr did 20 events in the 6th Congressional District last week, touring Ale-8-One, taking questions from University of Kentucky students about the National Security Agency and attending town halls like the one in Winchester. "I'm...

for some in the McConnell camp, the partnership with the upstart Paul—and his supporters—is a humiliating arrangement, no matter how necessary. “These are people who tuck their shirts into their underwear,” one prominent Kentucky Republican grouses.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday will convene a special meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus and senior White Officials to discuss the troubled rollout of ObamaCare. Reid on Wednesday told reporters he would not answer questions about the hundreds of thousands of insurance policy cancellations or other issues until he has further discussions with the White House. The Senate leader said President Obama called him Tuesday evening to discuss healthcare and other issues. Several Democrats have signed onto a proposal sponsored by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) that would force insurance companies to let people keep their health...

<p>FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Old guard Republican Larry Forgy has endorsed Louisville businessman Matt Bevin ahead of next May's primary.</p> <p>Forgy, a Lexington attorney who was the GOP nominee for Kentucky governor in 1995, announced the endorsement Tuesday. Forgy is a former member of the Republican National Committee and served as Kentucky chairman of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984.</p>

The story of the first gay Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, Gene Robinson, is fascinating. His parents were poor, ignorant, redneck, tobacco farmers, who were fundamentalist Christians. Robinson was a gay child raised in the Bible Belt state of Kentucky, where he was taught hateful religious right doctrines that the definition of marriage is one man joined to one woman, and that no other form of sexual behavior was permitted. Robinson's hillbilly redneck parents also required their child to attend Sunday School, where he had a perfect attendance record for 13 years. In these Christian religious schools, he was...

One of the biggest criticisms of Kentucky’s early returns from the state’s health exchange is that an overwhelming majority have landed on the government’s Medicaid program rather than private insurance. But state officials say that’s to be expected early in the open enrollment period, which began Oct. 1 and ends March 31. The reason the number of Medicaid enrollees is so much higher so far is because if someone’s income qualifies them to be on that program, they’re automatically signed up. It’s like a turning on a light switch. Others who earn more than 138 percent of the poverty rate...

Two days after a conservative political action committee endorsed his Republican challenger, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was gifted a trump card in the form of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio, like Kentucky’s junior Sen. Rand Paul, has enjoyed immense support from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, and his endorsement of McConnell on Fox News Sunday gives the embattled senior senator some much-needed cover. Rubio’s backing comes at a critical time for McConnell.

In the midst of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's lengthy floor speech against the president's health care law, a tea party group is having second thoughts about endorsing GOP Leader Mitch McConnell for re-election next year. Earlier today, McConnell rejected Cruz's plan to filibuster the House spending bill which funds the government past Oct. 1 but does not pay for Obamacare. -snip- If Mitch McConnell is not going to support efforts to defund Obamacare and in fact is going to work against them, then Tea Party groups simply need to abandon him.

A group that played a crucial role in Ted Cruz’s primary win is taking on a new challenge this cycle: The Madison Project has made it a top priority to take down the current Republican leadership, and one front in that war is Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin’s primary race against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. “The problem in Washington, D.C., right now is the current GOP leadership and their unwillingness to fight the big-government policies that are coming down the pike,” says Drew Ryun, the group’s political director and a former deputy director at the Republican National Committee. “That is...

If New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has any chance of securing the Republican presidential nomination, he just might have to thank such darlings of the tea party movement as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz for an unlikely path to victory. As Mr. Paul’s and Mr. Cruz’s recent filibusters on the Senate floor have shown, the 2016 quest for the White House is well underway. A fierce battle among the new small-government, libertarian stars is already raging. That has left a growing number of conservative activists voicing concerns publicly about a scenario that would let a moderate Republican like Mr....

One Senate aide blamed Corker’s spotlight-grabbing role as Cruz’s foil on weak Republican leadership. “Because our leadership has not led for a number of months because of electoral politics, Senator McCain and Senator Graham and Senator Corker have sort of emerged as sort of de facto leaders in a leadership vacuum,” he says. “I like Senator Cornyn, I like Senator McConnell, I respect them, I know their colleagues respect them, but in fairness there just has not been a whole lot of direction, there’s really been no strategy.” “It might not work,” he adds of Cruz and Lee’s efforts (we...

There’s a new public enemy No. 1 in Senate GOP circles, and it’s not Ted Cruz. It’s the Senate Conservatives Fund, an organization that used to prop up underdog conservative candidates but now is training its fire mainly on Republican incumbents — rather than Democrats. The group has ginned up anger on the far-right towards Republican senators for refusing to use a government shutdown threat as leverage to defund Obamacare — a campaign that has been good for its bottom line. Since it started engaging in the defund Obamacare campaign, the group brought in the vast majority of the $3.5...

Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are seeking to stay relevant in the debate over ObamaCare, but they might as well be shouting in a hurricane. A hurricane named Ted. During this month’s fiscal standoff, Sen. Ted Cruz attracted the most attention of any possible White House hopeful on Capitol Hill. GOP strategists say Cruz, a freshman Republican from Texas, has seized the role of Tea Party standard-bearer, giving him an edge with conservative activists. The grassroots army Cruz built over the last few months could help him in Iowa and other primary battlegrounds if he decides to...

Mitch McConnell got another lucky break today when Obama announced his latest climate fascism that will cripple the coal industry. He was provided with another low-hanging talking point to distract from the most immediate threat of amnesty – something he actually has the power to stop. In case you were wondering why McConnell hasn’t given any floor speeches opposing this bill, and refused to state his position until the hour of the vote on Corker-Hoeven, take a look at this article at the Huffington Post: The top two Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of...

enate minority leader Mitch McConnell likes to say, “If someone flicks a pebble at you, you hurl a boulder back at him.” His political team is just as emphatic. Some Republicans in Kentucky who flirted with working for his primary opponent, Matt Bevin, were told by the McConnell allies that they would get the “death penalty.” Another frequent warning: “Mitch McConnell doesn’t take prisoners.” McConnell’s team “shoots the wounded on the battlefield as a matter of course,” says University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato. A former GOP leadership aide who has seen the McConnell operation up close sounds terrified. “They’re...

The push to legalize domestic hemp production is gaining steam. Supporters of industrial hemp gained a powerful ally in Washington several weeks ago when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined fellow Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul and Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) as a co-sponsor of S.359, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013. The House companion, sponsored by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), has 28 co-sponsors. The bills would amend the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp, the domestic production of which has been illegal since 1970. Though manufacturing hemp is currently just as illegal...

Rand Paul calls Ted Cruz's tactics "not necessarily fair".

WASHINGTON — Addison Mitch McConnell has made a career of following in his heroes' footsteps and vexing critics who underestimate his political skills. Now the Senate's top Republican is on the offensive against critics of the compromise he crafted with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to reopen the federal government through Jan. 15. The deal ended a two-week government shutdown that McConnell terms “a foolish strategy.” “I felt it was important to get us out of a shutdown that was overwhelmingly despised by the American people and achieved nothing toward getting rid of Obamacare,” McConnell told the Tribune-Review during...

A conservative political action committee on Tuesday slammed two of the Senate’s top Republicans as “turncoats” who have “surrendered” on the health care fight. “Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have surrendered to Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the Democrats,” charged an email blast from the Senate Conservatives Fund. “More importantly, they have surrendered to Obamacare — the biggest job killer in America.” -snip- “We knew Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn weren’t with us when they voted to fund Obamacare earlier this year,” the email continued. “But then, under pressure from grassroots, they said they supported the effort to defund it....

Senate leaders Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have not yet weighed in on whether they believe Congress should have to debate and authorize military action in Syria before President Barack Obama can move forward with it. Reid’s office says the Nevada Democrat has been briefed by the administration, “but that’s all we have to say right now.” McConnell has not yet released a statement and his office would not say whether or when he might. Reid voted to authorize both the Gulf War and the Iraq War. In 1991, only 10 out of 55 Senate Democrats voted to...

Senate Republicans are unhappy with a House GOP plan to raise the debt ceiling for six weeks without funding the federal government — and are coalescing around their own proposal to pair a short-term debt-ceiling increase with a year-long stopgap spending bill. Under their plan, government would be funded for a year at the $967 billion level set by the 2011 Budget Control Act. The package would also include a repeal of ObamaCare's medical-device tax and language to require income verification of people who apply for healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, say GOP sources familiar with the talks....

--snip-- “Norm is a good, old-fashioned, far-left guy,” McConnell said. “I like him. He’s fine. He’s been wrong for as long as I can remember. And it’s great to see you here. I’ve been wanting to spar with you for years.”

The effort to stop the further implementation of Obamacare that Utah’s principled limited government constitutional conservative Republican Senator Mike Lee got rolling is starting to gather steam at the grassroots, with conservative commentator and talk radio superstar Mark Levin, the Club for Growth, Heritage Action and Freedom Works all weighing-in to support of Lee’s effort. Yet the Senate Republican leadership, especially Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have been using every behind the scenes tactic they can muster to spike the effort of conservatives to defund Obamacare. This ain’t rocket science, all it takes, as Senator Lee observed, is for Republicans to...

Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) primary challenger got a boost Friday with the endorsement of a prominent national conservative group, the Senate Conservatives Fund. The endorsement of Matt Bevin comes just days after the fund blasted McConnell for his role in working toward a deal to end the government shutdown, charging in an email to supporters Tuesday that he was "leading the surrender" of the GOP. In the endorsement, Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) Executive Director Matt Hoskins conceded that Bevin has an uphill climb in unseating McConnell, but said the group is "confident" he can win. "Matt Bevin is a true...

Short video of Rand Paul stepping in to counsel McConnell on strategy while waiting for live spot.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus backed Sen. Ted Cruz’s anti-Obamacare quasi-filibuster Tuesday, possibly sending a message to senior GOP leaders who are criticizing Cruz’s tactics in defunding Obamacare. Cruz is speaking against Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plans to hold a vote on a stopgap continuing budget resolution Wednesday, where Reid is expected to strip out language from the House version of the budget resolution that defunds Obamacare. Cruz doesn’t want the vote to happen until Obamacare is definitively defunded — without Reid’s expected changes. “In a fight between Harry Reid and Ted Cruz, I will stand with Ted...

The Democratic National Committee is launching Spanish-language online ads and robocalls targeting Republicans on the government shutdown, it announced Thursday. The effort is the third phase of a broader campaign this week that has been hitting Republicans in their home states, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), as well as early voting states Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The Spanish-language calls and Twitter, Facebook and Google ads launching Thursday will target Latino voters in...

When Mitch McConnell receives the National Rifle Association's "Defender of Freedom" Award in Louisville on Friday, he and the group will be cementing a friendship that McConnell's team thinks could be the difference in next year's Senate race. The NRA, which spent more than $16 million in the 2012 election cycle, plans to be heavily involved in McConnell's re-election effort, the group said Thursday. "We're watching closely," Chris Cox, the NRA's top lobbyist, told the Lexington Herald-Leader. "And we're going to make sure that gun owners in Kentucky understand that they have a champion representing them in the United States...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Obama Accused of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ at International Criminal CourtPosted By Raymond Ibrahim On November 8, 2013 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments According to Egyptian newspaper El Watan, a group of Egyptian lawyers has submitted a complaint charging U.S. president Barrack Hussein Obama with crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.The complaint charges Obama of being an accessory to the Muslim Brotherhood, which incited widespread violence in Egypt both before and after the June 30 Revolution.Along with Obama, the complaint reproduced by El Watan mentions several Brotherhood members by...

Nashville, TN – Today, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham introduced the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The legislation currently has 33 cosponsors – but Senator Alexander is not one of them. Conservative Senate candidate Joe Carr called on Senator Alexander to change his stance and add himself as a co-sponsor. “I’m strongly pro-life and believe it’s imperative the Senate pass this important piece of legislation. When Senator Graham announced his co-sponsors and Senator Alexander’s name was missing, I was disappointed. I am hoping Senator Alexander will change his stance and add himself as a co-sponsor. This legislation is too...

State health cabinet and insurance officials are trying to counter frustration and confusion — and political arguments — in the wake of a rash of insurance policy cancellations as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Around 280,000 Kentuckians will see their current insurance policies be discontinued in the coming months because of changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act, but that does not mean they are being dropped, according to the Kentucky Department of Insurance. About 130,000 individuals and 150,000 people who hold small group policies in the state will receive letters stating that their policy is discontinued...