Free Republic

The White House is hinting that President Obama will veto any bill authorizing the construction of the Keystone Pipeline. One of the few bi-partisan pieces of legislation is threatened by the most partisan president in history. The Hill: The White House on Thursday hinted that President Obama could veto congressional legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline as lawmakers in both the House and Senate were readying votes on the controversial construction project. "Our dim view of these kinds of proposals has not changed,” press secretary Josh Earnest said. Earnest reiterated that the State Department was still reviewing the controversial pipeline...

Sen. Mary Landrieu is looking for a win-win, as she pushes for a Senate vote to approve the long-delayed Keystone pipeline in a bid to deliver a victory for the energy industry -- and for herself, in a tough runoff election next month. The senator is facing Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy after being forced into the runoff. Within hours of returning to Capitol Hill, Landrieu called for a Senate vote on the Keystone bill, which is now teed up for next Tuesday. Republicans responded swiftly to Landrieu's maneuvering, scheduling a vote in the House as early as Thursday on an...

Before her remarks, Landrieu was spotted riding the escalator alone up from the Senate trains that carry lawmakers between their offices and the Capitol, toward a row of elevators. She was stone-faced and declined to answer questions from reporters. Once she reached the top level and stepped off, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), one of his party’s top campaign strategists, walked over. Smiling, he asked Landrieu to step aside for a private conversation. She shook her head and moved briskly toward the elevator. As she did, she pointed to her phone, saying she had a call. Schumer paused for a...

Sarah Palin did not support Rep. Bill Cassidy during Louisiana’s Senate jungle primary last week. But now that it’s between Cassidy and Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, the former Alaska governor is changing her tune. The 2008 vice-presidential nominee plans to appear alongside Cassidy, “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson and defeated conservative Senate candidate Rob Maness at a GOP unity rally on Saturday afternoon in Monroe, according to a source familiar with the event. The Palin visit follows a Monday event with Maness, Cassidy and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in Baton Rouge. Palin supported Maness in the primary and predicted that...

Senator Mary Landrieu sure is moving fast to embrace her new Republican overlords. She just might not have the chance work with them. Facing a run-off election in three weeks to hold onto her seat in Louisiana, the woman who is now the most endangered Democrat in America raced to the Senate floor on Wednesday—shortly after it reopened following last week's election—to call for an immediate vote on a top GOP priority: approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. "I want to say yes to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell," Landrieu said. "The time to start is now. The public has...

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) took to the Senate floor this afternoon to push for the Keystone XL pipeline. "This has been a project that has lingered far too long," she said. "It is clearly supported by 60 or more members of this body. It is a piece of legislation that has been endorsed by the new Majority Leader, to-be Majority Leader, is a cosponsor and a leading cosponsor of the legislation." "I believe it is time to act," Landrieu said. "I believe that we should take the new Majority Leader at his word and stop blocking legislation that is broadly...

Six days ago, it was reported the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wouldn’t be lending any more support to Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) leading up to her December 6 runoff election against Republican opponent Bill Cassidy, as the DSCC has canceled its advertising reservations in the state. However, it appears that her problems extend well beyond them, as even more outside groups have appeared to jump ship — at least for the time being. FEC filings from the past week show that the sitting senator hasn’t received one independent donation from any outside group either in support of her re-election or...

Just as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee decided last week to scrap plans for its television ads for U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s re-election bid, the Republican National Committee announced that it was sending an extra 200+ people to the state to help Bill Cassidy, following the Nov. 4 primary. Cassidy is leading most polls three weeks out from the Dec. 6 primary. “We predicted the turnout within a couple hundred votes so we feel really good about how well we know these voters,” RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski told Politico.com. “We are literally buying up hotels and car rentals and sending...

BATON ROUGE- Law experts are questioning a search warrant police obtained following a citizen's complaint to the mayor about an officer's post on Facebook. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity over his uneasiness toward the police department, said he emailed a picture he saw on Facebook showing what appeared to be an officer sleeping and a second officer posing next to him. The man said he believed the officers were out of line. "I emailed it to Mayor Kip Holden's office and I emailed it there thinking, I kind of believed the police would have just deleted the...

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu has already made it quite clear that she isn’t going to go quietly in her bid to win a fourth term in next month’s Dec. 6 runoff. Her effort to brand Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy as “nearly incoherent” ranks up there with Kentucky Democrat Dan Mongiardo’s effort to label Republican Sen. Jim Bunning as not entirely in control of his senses during that state’s 2004 Senate race. (Bunning, who started the race as an overwhelming favorite, was re-elected by only 22,000 votes, a margin of fewer than 2 points.) This is the ultimate example...

NEW ORLEANS – A joint federal-state investigation continued Friday into the shocking firebombing Thursday at the Uptown home of a well-known political strategist. On Wednesday, we told you about the surprising results in the Public Service Commission race and how the high-stakes, expensive runoff between incumbent Eric Skrmetta and alternative energy advocate Forest Bradley-Wright could affect the future of energy regulation in Louisiana. Just a few short hours later, everything changed. Bradley-Wright's finance director and chief fundraiser, Mario Zervigon, had his two cars and Uptown home destroyed in a shocking firebombing. Investigators are checking with ProjectNOLA for crime camera footage...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)One last Campaign 2014 maneuver and several intriguing post-election shifts and calculations made for a fun trip around the table. 1. New ground troops -- in Louisiana There is one more round in the 2014 election, and Republicans are heavily favored: the Louisiana runoff for the U.S. Senate between Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu and GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy. So put this one in the "taking nothing for granted" file: A GOP source tells CNN the Republican National Committee is sending in 350 field workers to help with the December 6 get-out-the-vote effort. Democrats, too, say they will bolster their staff...

Voters in Louisiana’s 6th District have two choices to represent them in Washington, D.C.: a political newcomer, who served in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s cabinet, or a well-known former governor, who also happens to be a convicted felon. By nearly all measures, Republican Garret Graves, who served as Jindal’s coastal secretary for six years, has the upper hand heading into a Dec. 6 runoff against former Gov. Edwin Edwards, a Democrat. Edwards, a colorful character from a different political era, once famously quipped to reporters that the only way he’d lose an election bid was “if I’m caught in bed with...

Hadn't watched the McLaughlin Group in quite some time as they had lost or jettisoned some of the more interesting panelists (and no, Jay Carney wasn't one of them!). The lineup seems to have stabilized although these poor folks are looking O-L-D...perhaps because they are. Felt bad for McLaughlin who apparently was wearing someone else's suit, so baggy was it on his frame. I'm not condemning anyone for aging or illness but it was a bit alarming. In the days before cable news and the internet, the McLaughlin Group were one of the few doses of political candor and a...

With the U.S. Senate now firmly in Republican control, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has canceled advertising for embattled Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu before her December runoff against Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy. The DSCC's canceled advertising was supposed to run from Monday through December 6 in key markets, including Baton Rouge and New Orleans, reports Politico.

With just a few days remaining before the midterm elections, the Democrats are limping to the finish line. We are in the closing days of the 2014 campaign, and in Democratic campaigns across the country, none of the real issues are being discussed. There is no justification for the Democrats to declare there is peace and prosperity, and certainly none of them are promoting a message of hope and change. The Democrats’ campaigns have been a series of denials, comical disassociation and outright clumsy lies that will only further alienate voters from the political process. Say what you want to...

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is canceling at least some of its advertising reservations for Sen. Mary Landrieu ahead of the December runoff in Louisiana. The committee canceled buys planned from Monday through December 6 in the Lafayette, Baton Rouge and New Orleans markets, three sources tracking the air war told POLITICO.

MEDIA ADVISORY: LAGOP Unity Rally What: LAGOP Unity Rally featuring special guest Sen. Rand Paul, Dr. Bill Cassidy, Col. Rob Maness (USAF, ret.), Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. David Vitter and Rep. Jeff Landry, along with Sen. Elbert Guillory, Rep. Paul Hollis, LAGOP Chairman Roger Villere and Garret Graves When: Monday, Nov. 10 – 12:30 p.m. CT Where: Huey’s Bar, 350 3rd St, Baton Rouge, LA 70801 About: Sen. Rand Paul will join Louisiana Republicans for a unity rally to build momentum for the final weeks of the runoff election in the race for the U.S. Senate.

**SNIP** When this hospital needed a champion to build and rebuild, literally out of the rubble of Katrina and Rita, ... where was Bill? In the video found here, Landrieu trumpets her own record, referring to herself in the third person, while damning Cassidy as “wishy-washy, unreliable, undependable, not sure who he is, not sure who he was, and not sure who he wants to be.” It would have made for great optics and might have helped her in a runoff pundits are predicting she will lose if Cassidy hadn't tweeted back an answer to her question: “Mary Landrieu wants...

Incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) got off to a bad start in her desperate bid to hold onto her seat. In an attempt to characterize her Republican opponent Bill Cassidy as “unreliable” and “undependable,” Landrieu demanded to know what he had done to help the state recover from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Cassidy, an MD, responded that he had been working to provide medical aid to refugees of the storm. With help from friends and neighbors he and his physicians’ group set up an emergency treatment center in an abandoned K-Mart. Landrieu shruugged this off as “small potatoes. While my opponent...