Free Republic

Scalise Apologizes For Event He Didn't Attend The venality and outright lies about House Republican Whip Steve Scalise’s association with David Duke’s racist organization, EURO, keep getting more obvious as Speaker of the House John Boehner, House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy struggle to contain the damage keeping Scalise on the House leadership team is doing to the Republican Party. None of what Scalise has said to try to explain away his association with David Duke, and Duke’s principle Louisiana political operative Kenneth Knight, has passed the smell test, and the more Scalise tries to explain it away, the deeper...

Crominbus was the last straw. Conservatives are now absolutely livid at the RINO Establishment. Rarely, if ever, has such an unmistakable voter mandate been so brazenly nullified before the newly elected could even take office. Calls escalate to "end" the Republican Party because conservatives cannot change it. By contrast, Rush Limbaugh, while lamenting that "the losers in the last election [got] pretty much everything they want[ed]," nevertheless rejects the third party call: "taking over the Republican Party is better." Sarah Palin protests that what House Speaker John Boehner and 162 Republican "yahoos" did "stinks to high heaven," for which Rep....

By now, you probably already know that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) once addressed a crowd of people in the same hotel where a white nationalist conference was being held in 2002. Scalise, a state representative at the time, spoke hours before the white nationalist meeting began, so it looks like this story turned out to be a big nothing burger. Republicans and Democrats came to Scalise’s aid, with Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) saying that his colleague doesn’t have a “racist bone in his body.” With David Duke in the mix, Scalise, who’s the House Majority Whip, was bound to get some media attention over...

House Speaker John Boehner's not waiting until New Year's Day for a hangover -- his headache is already here. Back-to-back House Republican dramas in the final week of the year are the latest indication that many of the issues the GOP hoped to leave behind when they take full control of Congress next week — an unruly base and scandal-prone members — will continue to dog them in the new year, and might even kick off 2015 with an attempted coup on the Speakership. Though Boehner was successfully able to convince Rep. Michael Grimm to resign on Monday after pleading...

Speaker John Boehner must go. Congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA), a John Boehner man running for re-election as House Republican Whip, is in trouble. And he too must go. By making a point of backing Scalise in the middle of this mess, so now is the Speaker himself in trouble. Mark Levin has long been out there saying Boehner needed to go. So too has Sean Hannity, with both updating their views over the holidays in light of the Scalise scandal. We’ll come back to this in a minute. But first, let’s focus on Scalise’s situation. It is a textbook case...

Drat! Foiled again! That is going to be the feeling of much of the mainstream media which has been incessantly pushing the narrative about House majority whip Steve Scalise supposedly speaking at a David Duke sponsored white supremacist event in 2002. It turns out that it never happened. Instead he spoke at a local neighborhood association. And who discovered this vital information? A very unexpected source, the liberal Slate. Betsy Knight explains what really happened and the reason for the confusion:

The first time I ever spoke to Steve Scalise, it was in the context of his helping me and his cousin, state senator Ben Bagert, block the political career of David Duke. In the quarter-century since that 1989 phone conversation, Scalise has given no indication that he holds any views anywhere near as odious as Duke’s racist and anti-Semitic garbage, and plenty of indications directly to the contrary — indeed, compellingly so. Scalise, the House majority whip now under fire for having spoken back in 2002 to a white-supremacist group tied to the former Klansman Duke, says he did...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-La.) said Wednesday that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) needs to respond with "more than words" to a controversy over a speech he gave to a white supremacist group in 2002. Jackson Lee, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, implied that she doubted her fellow Louisiana lawmaker's explanation, that he did not know the views of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, which was founded by well-known former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. "This was not 50 years ago, it was 12 years ago, and every member knows what David Duke stands for,...

Back in 1999, Roll Call interviewed white supremacist leader David Duke about the possibility he would seek the House seat vacated by the resignation of Republican Rep. Bob Livingston. As part of that report, reporter John Mercurio also talked to up-and-coming Louisiana politicians, current Sen. David Vitter and current House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. “I honestly think his 15 minutes of fame have come and gone,” said state Rep. David Vitter (R), a wealthy Metairie attorney who holds Duke’s old seat in the state House and is “seriously considering” a Congressional bid. “When he’s competed in a field with real...

WASHINGTON, December 24, 2014 — For tens of millions of southerners the December 6 runoff loss of Louisiana U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu to Rep. Bill Cassidy represented the epic opening of a new age in America. This region is now a solid conservative south for the first time since Democrats seized control just after the end of the Civil War. For a region of the nation that stretches from the Carolinas to Texas, this is massive and so is the impact of this new Red, White and Blue American Wave. Here a New South Rises. How the new south...

Hey, Jeb, Ted, Rand, Marco, Bobby, Chris and the dozen or more others I'm forgetting, here's something to write on your bathroom mirror in 2015 and beyond: The "P" in POTUS stands for "President," not "Pundit." I understand that the Seinfeldian faux-holiday Festivus is behind us, but I want to get at least this one grievance in for next year a bit early. Republicans have a tendency to tell, not show. They feel the need to explain why they are saying something, rather than work at simply saying what they need to say convincingly. I call it "reading your stage...

In a new poll of likely Republican primary voters nationwide by Zogby Analytics, 2012 GOP nominee Romney leads the pack with 14%, followed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (12%), Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (10%), New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (8%), former Arkansas Governor and now Fox News Host Mike Huckabee (7%), Florida Senator Marco Rubio (7%), Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (5%), Rep. and former Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan (4%), Texas Governor Rick Perry (4%), Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (3%), Texas Senator Ted Cruz (3%), South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (2%), former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (1%), and both...

A man was killed in a Christmas Eve shooting inside the crowded Oakwood Center mall, and a suspect has been arrested, the Jefferson Parish sheriff said. Sheriff Newell Normand said the shooting occurred about 4:20 p.m. Wednesday (Dec. 24) at the Footlocker shoe store. The victim, identified by authorities as 24-year-old Harvey resident James Vaughn, had just made a purchase when a gunman walked up and opened fire from about three feet away, Normand said. At least three shots were fired, he said. The gunman ran, but a suspect was taken into custody several blocks away from the mall after...

With the recent defeat of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu — which leaves three Democratic Southern U.S. Senators — the common wisdom is that Democrats should bid farewell to the South. Even with favorable changing national demographics that benefit Democrats, an abandonment of the South and, on a larger scale, a viable moderate wing would be a mistake. Recently, writer Michael Tomasky argued that the South, a “reactionary, prejudice-infested” region, should be left to Republicans to create a “free market Jesus paradise.” Few sentiments better show what is wrong with Democrats today and why ironic Republican arguments that it is the...

McDonald’s and its franchisees illegally retaliated against employees for participating in union-related activities, the National Labor Relations Board’s top lawyer alleged Friday in a case with sweeping industry implications. NLRB general counsel Richard Griffin announced Friday he will issue 13 complaints involving 78 charges against franchises and McDonald’s USA, LLC. Though many of these alleged labor violations were committed by independent franchise owners, Griffin ruled earlier this year that McDonald’s can be held liable for those actions as a so-called joint employer, leaving the corporatrion — and potentially other franchisors — exposed to such claims. McDonald’s said the decision will...

Retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness has launched Gator PAC, a political action committee which the group says “will work to inspire and recruit conservative activists and citizen leaders who are committed to accountability in government, constitutional principles, certainty and prosperity.” "Running for office was never about me, and it never will be - it's about us, our country and becoming an active voice for conservative solutions," Maness said in the release about the launch of the PAC, provided to Breitbart News ahead of its public release. "The reality is Washington D.C. is a swamp, career politicians are the Gators...

It’s a question that will prove crucial next year when Mitch McConnell takes the reins of a new Senate: Just how big is the Ted Cruz caucus? Three votes on the “cromnibus” late Saturday night suggest it could be as large as 22 senators — a dangerously high number for McConnell — or as few as a handful. Let’s break down the three votes — on filibustering the $1.1 trillion package, on Cruz’s point of order aimed at targeting the president’s immigration action, and final passage. The high-water mark for the Texas Republican came on his point of order vote,...

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., says she probably won't run for office again. "Oh Lord, no," Landrieu, 59, told reporters when asked if another campaign, perhaps for governor in 2015 or the Senate in 2016, was in her future. "Well, let me say, I'm not going to say a definite 'no' about any of those two," Landrieu said. "I've been trained to never say no. But it is highly, highly unlikely." [Snip] Matthew Lehner, her communications director, said he expects her farewell address later Thursday to be upbeat, and reflect on some of the contributions - such as oil and gas...

The cromnibus had an unlikely savior Thursday afternoon in the form of a lame-duck lawmaker who used to raise reindeer. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), who lost his primary earlier this year, was originally among the conservative Republicans who voted against the rule. Without the help of Democrats, Republicans could only lose 17 of their own to pass the rule, which sets up floor debate for the underlying "cromnibus" spending bill. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) intervened once there were 18 Republican defectors — and not a single Democrat voting "yes." Many Democrats will vote against the government spending measure because they...

The defeat of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu by Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy in last weekend's Louisiana runoff ends an election year that has been very successful for Republicans -- and has implications for 2016. Some observations: (1) Democrats relied heavily on legacy candidates -- and lost nevertheless. Mary Landrieu's father, Moon Landrieu, was elected to the Louisiana legislature in 1960 and as mayor of New Orleans in 1970 and 1974. Her father's anti-segregationist legacy helped Mary Landrieu appeal to black voters and win narrow victories in 1996, 2002 and 2008. It wasn't enough in 2014. Other defeated Democratic candidates this...