Free Republic

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), Joni Ernst (R-IA), and Deb Fisher (R-Neb) met October 17 to discuss the future of the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), which regulates the production of biofuels. At issue was whether the RFS might be lowered for 2018, as Administrator Pruitt suggested in recent months might be the case. But, on October 20, EPA officials announced the renewable fuel volumes for 2018 would be at or above what had been originally proposed, reversing the implication of statements made earlier in the year by Administrator Pruitt. Such a decision matters because U.S. grain and...

The Russian lawyer who penetrated Donald Trump’s inner circle was initially cleared into the United States by the Justice Department under “extraordinary circumstances” before she embarked on a lobbying campaign last year that ensnared the president’s eldest son, members of Congress, journalists and State Department officials, according to court and Justice Department documents and interviews.

So in this video ( https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetruthaboutguns.com%2F2017%2F05%2Frobert-farago%2Fdennis-reece-springfield-armory-video-didnt-know-gun-dealer-licensing-bill&h=ATPqPySZ0xWeuWrfLNgjdpMLqCwJQNvSE8W-NnKpY8W9y2BJBdSBTD33-f97tMgQJI1ANPVczzqC5vHZoeTFkr4pFBiHZUbz4D3efNCxsqKcwW_uZh0stGPc6-5kU3ycNynRAXBILuCItm7kaQ&enc=AZPSzNWxFmjvgEzvR4XyAOHINE7gcPVw1se85IFAqvF8Ibgmrcm0UWLNEyCDQ22UcV7jlmpgFe8roRVMhu3f9Ce1j0gd09q5XI9UwV5FtYAmFweB1JmkuHbhVgfNanUiz6S7S72t1HZlNUfAvtFAF2xyt4Q7hHGuZLjINXOO1Oj-v-yC2iy3oT2MiXjxumWyMXS-D_3o2_eDE6j64zzdHom9&s=1 ) making the rounds in the gun community (Military Arms Channel) , Springfield Armory is obviously lying about getting their 50 pieces of silver from corrupt Democrats in Illinois to shut down small FFL. SA is only 30 miles from another progun state, they could move out like Beretta did, but talk is cheaper. I will not buy RAA and SA products. Fulton Armory and Beretta or Glock are good alternatives.Note that SA in the past has participated in handing weapons to bad characters in South America. They give a bad name to guns,...

Here is a story of how $1,000 a plate Washington breakfast influenced the votes of several Conservative Members of Congress who serve on the House Judiciary, including Representative Steve King (IA-04), allowing Committee passage of H.R.9, the innovation killing Innovation Act. Over the past several years there have been a number of large corporations, many that have patents themselves, who have funded and managed a powerful Washington lobbying effort. The focus has ostensibly been on reforming the problem of patent litigation abuse, but the changes advocated would be to their favor at the expense of innovators, like universities, independent inventors...

On Wednesday, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) 2% became the 34th Democrat in the U.S. Senate to support the Iran deal, handing President Barack Obama a veto-proof majority. In so doing, Mikulski drove the final nail into the coffin of the pro-Israel lobby, centered around the once-vaunted American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which had vowed in July to fight the deal “with the entirety of our institutional resources.” AIPAC’s loss proves that the so-called “Israel lobby” was never as strong as antisemitic conspiracy theorists said it was. But AIPAC was weakened even further, and deliberately, by the Obama administration, which...

WASHINGTON -- Former Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is joining the Washington lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman, the firm will announce later Tuesday (May 26). Landrieu said she will join Van Ness Feldman as a senior policy advisor, working closely with another recent hire, former Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the former top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. Former senators are barred from lobbying their former colleagues for two years after the end of their congressional careers. For Landrieu, that means she can't lobby colleagues until January, 2017. But she can lobby members of the executive branch, and is free to...

A Sharon man was arrested Thursday night after York police say he exposed himself in the police station lobby. The officer on duty at the York police station on North Roosevelt Street looked into the public lobby at 10:30 p.m. and noticed a 57-year-old man asleep in a chair with his belt undone and pants unbuttoned. Upon closer examination, the officer noticed the man had his genitals exposed. Two officers woke the man up and asked him why he was exposing himself in a public place. The man replied that “he was sleepy and trying to get comfortable,” according to...

Bill Clinton collected $2.5 MILLION in speaking fees from companies that lobbied Hillary's State Department Former president Bill Clinton reaped more than $2.5 million in speaking fees from 13 companies that lobbied the State Department while his wife was secretary of state. Ten of those companies paid him within the same 3-month reporting period covered by the government documents that disclosed the lobbying activity. Most of the influence-peddling accusations swirling around Hillary Clinton in the past ten days have focused on claims that she traded the power of her office in exchange for foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation, her...

The size and scope of the symbiotic relationship between the Clintons and their donors is striking. At least 181 companies, individuals, and foreign governments that have given to the Clinton Foundation also lobbied the State Department when Hillary Clinton ran the place, according to a Vox analysis of foundation records and federal lobbying disclosures. The following chart shows entities that donated to the foundation and lobbied the State Department during Hillary Clinton's tenure. The totals include funding from both the corporate and charitable arms of listed companies (the Gates and Walton foundations are named to illustrate that point). The chart...

The White House released a list of its high-ranking officials who took part in a video conference with President Obama late Tuesday. Among them appears Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who apparently has formerly worked for the National Iranian-American Council. The White House brief, which was disclosed by The Daily Beast, listed Sahar Nowrouzzadeh as the National Security Council Director for Iran. Nowrouzzadeh appears to be a former employee of the alleged pro-Tehran regime lobbying group, NIAC (National Iranian-American Council).

..... More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities, an investigation by The New York Times has found. .....

WASHINGTON -- Private car-hailing service Uber has hired President Barack Obama's former campaign manager David Plouffe to be its senior vice president of policy and strategy. Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick said Plouffe will oversee all global policy and political activities, communications and branding efforts. The company has faced resistance from taxi companies in cities including Miami and Washington.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a good ol' liberal Democrat (sort of in the Kennedy mold), I kept hearing those Bible Thumpers in the Moral Majority bandy about a word: Secularist. What the heck was that? Nobody I knew (and everyone I knew was a person of the sort-of Left) called him or herself a "secularist."What in the world did those zealots mean by labeling me that way and pretending that I'm doing something damaging to them? I understood what was really going on: Very religious people were abnormal, and then there were the rest of us who...

Psalm 33:12 - "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord."

For all of the non-stop wall-to-wall coverage of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby—in which the Court ruled that the government doesn’t have the authority to force “closely-held corporations” to violate their religious beliefs—a simple fact has been lost. The ruling did not overturn a single word of the “Affordable Care Act,” otherwise known as Obamacare. Nor did the Supreme Court prevent the government from requiring that taxpayers finance abortion-related services. Pro-life activists—and Obamacare opponents—are cheering today. But when they sit down and reflect, they’ll realize that they haven’t won a thing. The Supremes endorsed the White...

The Authoritarians (aka Liberals/Leftist) are furious over the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby court ruling. Even to the point of making terrorist threats.

The Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby on June 26, and the closer we get to that date the more frantic liberals become. Their fear of a decision in favor of the arts and crafts chain, whose owners have challenged the constitutionality of Obamacare’s contraception mandate on the grounds that it violates their religious liberty, has reached such a pitch that they are making claims that transcend the merely portentous. Their warnings concerning the consequences of a high court win for the Green family, the company’s owners, have now become downright apocalyptic....

Brendan Buck, press secretary for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), on Monday was named vice president of communications for America’s Health Insurance Plans. “Brendan’s experience and skill set will allow him to hit the ground running on Day One,” AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignagni said. “He’s an effective communicator who knows how to tackle complex policy issues and skillfully navigate an ever-changing health care and media environment.”

Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer's political action group is targeting Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in an anti-Keystone XL pipeline ad set to air Sunday. NextGen Climate, founded by Steyer in 2013, announced on Friday that Rubio would be the subject of its ad blasting the proposed $5.4 billion pipeline after the senator was selected in an online poll. "Oil lobbyists take Rubio for a sucker," the 60-second ad states. "Sen. Rubio, don't get taken for a sucker."

If Betsey McCaughey is correct (and I bet she is, because she has not only read the entire ObamaCare bill, she has written a book about it), Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan publicly humiliated herself during the oral arguments on the Hobby Lobby case, revealing that she either did not read the law, or failed to comprehend it if she did so. Writing in the New York Sun, McCaughey lays out what is wrong with the Justice’s declaration about Obamacare: she asserted that the statute itself mandates provision of birth control. Not one word in the Affordable Care Act guarantees...