Free Republic

Stevie Wonder is lending a hand to endangered Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu. The legendary musician is performing at a $1,000-per-person fundraiser Dec. 1 in New Orleans to drum up campaign cash for the Big Easy Committee, a joint committee that supports Landrieu and the Democratic State Central Committee of Louisiana. …

The 2014 elections swept many formidable pro-abortion incumbents from the Senate. The last to remain standing is Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who has voted against the pro-life position on every vote scored by NRLC during her current six year term in office. She faces a December 6 run-off against pro-life challenger Rep. Bill Cassidy. While it is undeniable that the political climate was favorable to Republicans, a closer analysis of the results shows several of the key Senate races were won or lost by the slimmest of margins. In North Carolina, pro-life Thom Tillis defeated pro-abortion Kay Hagan by just...

Embattled Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and other supporters of building the Keystone XL pipeline appear to be one vote short of the 60 they need to win a key vote on the project on Tuesday. Landrieu has 59 votes backing legislation to approve the project, and Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Angus King (I-Maine) appear to be her top targets to get to 60. The effort is crucial to Landrieu because of her runoff election in December against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who also backs the pipeline. Landrieu is seen as a decided underdog in the race, and Senate Democrats...

Energy Transport: New data show fast-rising rail shipments from North Dakota's Bakken shale formation and the need for a safer alternative to rail — like the Keystone XL pipeline. In his post-election press conference, the president noted in justifying his continual kicking of the Keystone XL oil drum down the road that "while this debate about Canadian oil has been raging ... we've seen some of the biggest increases in American oil production and natural gas production in our history." That increase is due in large part to oil recovered from the Bakken shale formation centered on North Dakota. So...

One by one, Mary Landrieu’s paths to victory in her Louisiana Senate runoff are closing off. Rely on the old Democratic coalition? She got a paltry 18 percent of the white vote in the first round.

Republican oil mogul Harold Hamm says Congress is wasting its time debating the Keystone XL pipeline. “It’s not relevant at all, in my opinion. And here we are making it relevant now? Forget it,” the billionaire CEO of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources told Politoco in an interview Friday, just before the House passed a bill aimed at approving the pipeline. […] Hamm said his company, which had planned to use Keystone to ship some of its North Dakota crude, is already using other pipelines for half of its oil. And the percentage is growing. “We’re supporting other pipelines out there; we’re...

There is an idiom that parents and employers likely put in practice when an important task has to be completed correctly; “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” President Obama certainly understands that sentiment with a slight variation; if the nation wants anything done at all, the President has to do it himself due to Republicans who have done nothing since January 2009. Sometime next week, after waiting patiently for Ted Cruz to order House Republicans to take up, and pass, the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform, the President will take action on immigration reform. The...

Like other remaining Democratic candidates around the country, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu knows she must increase her support among black and white females to emerge victorious on Dec. 6. That’s why Norma Jane Sabiston, Kristin Palmer, Angele Wilson and others are again reaching out to 5,000 key women supporters statewide to build Mary’s Army, highly committed grassroots warriors who will knock doors and work phones non-stop for the next three weeks. Armed with pink t-shirts and lists of likely voters, these women clearly understand the campaign’s success rests largely on their ability to persuade voters one person at a time....

The Republican unity tour with former rivals Rep. Bill Cassidy and Rob Maness will continue Saturday (Nov. 15) afternoon with a rally featuring the two of them, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson. Maness drew 14 percent of the vote in the primary, and Cassidy needs that to defeat Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. Though Palin and Robertson are sometimes controversial figures outside the most conservative circles, political observers believe Cassidy is doing the right thing by aligning himself with the right wing of the party to earn that support.LSU political scientist Robert Hogan said he...

Do you remember the Louisiana Senate runoff election of December 1996? Conservative Woody Jenkins sure does. He was the Republican Senate candidate who got mugged out of a Senate seat by Mary Landrieu. Flashback to 18 years ago — reporting in the December 23, 1996, and February 10, 1997, issues of National Review — Rich Lowry tells the story of how Mary Landrieu won ‘The Big Sleazy’ Senate runoff election of 1996. Now just 2 1/2 weeks away from the the 2014 Louisiana Senate runoff, Lowry’s investigative reports from nearly two decades ago are a sober reminder of what can...

Republican Senate contender Bill Cassidy and his conservative allies have outspent endangered Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu by roughly a 180-to-1 margin on television since their campaign went into overtime. It was a reverse from earlier in the campaign, when Landrieu blanketed the airwaves and conservatives held onto their cash. No outside groups so far have come to Landrieu's aid, while GOP groups have ramped up their support of Cassidy.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday as Senate supporters worked to line up 60 votes to send the measure to the White House. The 252-161 House vote came amid jockeying by two Louisiana lawmakers — Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy and Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu — to be seen winning authorization for the pipeline before voters decide which of them serves in the Senate next year. Cassidy said it’s past time for the United States to authorize Keystone XL, six years after Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. first asked for permits to construct the pipeline...

The House of Representatives passed a bill expediting the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Friday, thrusting Congress back into the debate over a long-stalled project lauded by proponents as a job creator and reviled by foes as an environmental disaster. The bill passed by a margin of 252 to 161. This is the ninth time the House has passed such a bill on the pipeline. The Senate has planned a vote on a similar proposal next Tuesday. The long-simmering debate over the pipeline's construction reached a sudden boil earlier this week when a group of lawmakers, led...

As expected, the US House of Representatives voted on and passed legislation today approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. This is the ninth time they have done so: The House on Friday voted 252 to 161 to approve a bill that would direct the federal government to move forward on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ahead of a vote scheduled for Tuesday in the Senate that could send the measure to President Obama’s desk. There is little chance that the votes will clear the way to construction of the long-fought, long-delayed pipeline, which would carry petroleum from the Canadian oil sands...

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 519 (Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic ; Independents underlined ) H R 5682 RECORDED VOTE 14-Nov-2014 12:52 PM QUESTION: On Passage BILL TITLE: To approve the Keystone XL Pipeline … … … … … 221 … 1 11 Democratic 31 161 … 9 Independent … … … … TOTALS 252 161 1 20 ---- AYES 252 --- Aderholt Amodei Bachmann Bachus Barr Barrow (GA) Benishek Bentivolio Bilirakis Bishop (GA) Bishop (UT) Black Blackburn Boustany Brady (PA) Brady (TX) Brat Bridenstine Brooks (AL) Brooks (IN) Broun (GA) Buchanan Bucshon Burgess Byrne Calvert Camp Capito...

On Friday, an overwhelming majority of House members passed legislation sponsored by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) which approved construction of the long-delayed Keystone XL Pipeline. By 252 to 161, the House opted to send the measure to the U.S. Senate, where it will face a vote from the upper chamber next week which could, for the first time, force the president to determine whether to approve or veto the oil transit route. 31 Democratic representatives voted with every Republican member of Congress save Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), who voted present, to approve construction of the pipeline. It is an...

President Obama is fond of telling Congress that it should pass things with the overwhelming support of the American people, including (among other things) comprehensive immigration reform, increasing the minimum wage, and increasing gun background checks. And yet, Obama could soon be in a position of vetoing something with a similar amount of support: the Keystone XL pipeline. Poll after poll has shown support for Keystone is somewhere between very strong and overwhelming. A Pew Research Center survey this month showed support for the project at nearly two-to-one, 59 percent to 31 percent. And that was about the lowest level...

Makes me wonder about Barack Hussein Obama's "peaceful actions." Two hundred twenty one Republicans and 31 Democrats in the U. S. House voted on Friday, November 14, 2014, to approve the overly debated Keystone oil pipeline to be constructed from our Canadian friends to the north to the eagerly awaiting refineries in the southwestern area of the United States. It was sent to the Senate where a struggle between conservative Republicans and Obama, with his group of anti-jobs and country conscientious objectors, will take every effort to imitate Obama’s Rev. Wright’s country condemnation of “God Damn America” to kill the...

According to Sen. Jim Inhofe, there may be enough Democratic votes to override President Barack Obama’s expected veto of legislation to authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Oklahoma Republican said that Democrats who survived their party's big defeat in the midterm elections want to keep their distance from the president — so much so that many of them would vote to override a possible veto on the pipeline. "After the beating the Democrats took, keep in mind we have another election coming up in 2016," Inhofe told WMAL Radio on Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon reported. "There are...

The House of Representatives on Friday passed legislation giving the makers of the Keystone pipeline the go-ahead to build the fourth and final section of the oil transportation system. Republicans have already sanctioned the construction of the XL portion of the pipeline eight times but today it passed language identical to a bill under consideration in the Senate by a vote of 252-161.The Democratically-controlled upper chamber has long declined to vote on the matter but had a change of heart on Wednesday after Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana begged her colleagues to immediately bring the legislation to the floor.