Free Republic

Congress has apparently misinterpreted the call to shrink the federal government. While our Representatives and Senators have included over 9,000 earmarks in the omnibus spending bill under consideration today, and while they continue to add more and more federal spending, they have shrunk the border fence passed by the 109th Congress last year. It removes the requirements for specific construction and location, leaving the project in limbo (via Michelle Malkin and Memeorandum): Congress last night passed a giant new spending bill that undermines current plans for a U.S.-Mexico border fence, allowing the Homeland Security Department to build a single-tier barrier...

WASHINGTON - A Senate plan to build 700 miles of border fencing hit a snag Tuesday when Texas' senators said the Department of Homeland Security and border communities — not Congress — should decide where the fence is built. The objections by Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn complicated plans by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to win passage this week of a bill intended to showcase to voters the GOP's commitment to border security. The House passed an identical fencing bill last week, with specific locations for the fence, such as a segment from Laredo to Brownsville....

Conservative Republican candidate for Governor of Texas - Debra Medina - writes an op/ed taking Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison to task for her longstanding opposition to pro-life issues. Medina says in part, "Conservative and pro-choice rarely fall in the same sentence, unless you’re referring to “conservative” gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison, of course. A long time Washington insider and clear adversary on pro-life issues, Senator Hutchison has had ample opportunity to rally against abortion, and she has failed."

WASHINGTON – With Congress at a stalemate over immigration, Texas' two senators took different tacks this week in hopes of breaking the logjam and getting a bill to President Bush's desk. Sen. John Cornyn and fellow Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona on Monday urged the president to make a bold move and demand that Congress immediately free up nearly $4 billion for hundreds of Border Patrol agents, immigration inspectors and border fencing. Doing so, they said, will convince Americans that the federal government is serious about enforcing immigration law – and could increase support for a broader bill that includes...

MAXWELL, Iowa--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The omnibus Consolidated Appropriations bill includes a little-known provision that guts the major provisions of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. This provision -- buried on page 123 of Division E of the Consolidated Appropriations Act - contradicts the Secure Fence Act’s specific mandate of a double-layer fence covering 854 miles of the U.S-Mexico border. Grassfire.org has been tracking this provision which was first introduced quietly by Sen. Hutchison this summer as S.Amdt. 2466 to H.R. 2368 (the DHS appropriations bill). “The Hutchison amendment gives DHS virtually total discretion over how and where the fence is built,” says...

Steve Elliott, the president of Grassfire, says he still wants to know, “Where’s the fence?” Elliott, in a telephone interview, told WND an amendment submitted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, for the Department of Homeland Security 2008 budget would gut the already-approved Secure Fence Act, which was adopted with the promise hundreds of miles of physical fencing would help secure the U.S. border with Mexico. But the budget bill now in a conference committee contains the Hutchinson amendment, and Elliott says it simply would drop the requirement for the security project. “After the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was...

Let me be the first to write this political obituary. I met Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison for the first time in 1991, when we invited the then-Treasurer of Texas (a position that the voters retired soon after Kay was elected to the Senate) to speak to a student organization at The University of Texas at Austin (UT). She was, and is, a very gracious person who seemed in (slightly) over her head. When I asked Kay about the Texas Constitution’s Legislative Budget Board (LBB) and how it is supposed to arrest growth in state government, she made it clear that...

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s decision to challenge Republican Gov. Rick Perry in next year’s gubernatorial primary is leaving her would-be Senate successors perplexed on how to handle their campaign finances. SNIP Already at least four Republicans are running and raising money: former Secretary of State Roger Williams, Texas Railroad Commissioners Elizabeth Ames Jones and Michael Williams and state Senate President Florence Shapiro. But the most aggressive campaign organization is being built by the Democratic mayor of Houston, Bill White, who raised $1.8 million over the past three months and has $2.1 million in the bank. snip The complicating factor is...

Cornyn ready for challenges, including housing New senator gets eye-opener on prices, discusses priorities 11/15/2002 By DAVID JACKSON / The Dallas Morning News WASHINGTON - Texas' newest senator says he is eager to get to work on national security and confirming judges, but first he needs an office and a house. Congressional leaders haven't assigned workspace to John Cornyn and other freshman lawmakers, and he and his wife are finding Washington's real estate market steep, the state attorney general said Thursday in his first news conference as senator-elect. "Even for a fairly modest hovel here in the district, it's...

Update 10:58pm Eastern: Yeah, I’m watching C-SPAN. The motion to concur in the House amendments to HR2764, the omnibus spending bill, just passed…76-17, with 1 present. More here. Update 10:20pm Eastern. Sen. Jim DeMint is on the Senate floor right now blasting the omnibus bill for gutting the fence, removing the ban on sanctuary cities, and funding illegal alien lawyers. Hear, hear. Update 1:20pm Eastern. Omnibusting links the section of the bill containing the border-gutting. Update 10:20am Eastern. The fence gets robbed, but the spending bill gives $10 million in “emergency” funding for attorneys of illegal immigrants?!!?! *** Fence? What...

Update 10:58pm Eastern: Yeah, I’m watching C-SPAN. The motion to concur in the House amendments to HR2764, the omnibus spending bill, just passed…76-17, with 1 present. More here. Update 10:20pm Eastern. Sen. Jim DeMint is on the Senate floor right now blasting the omnibus bill for gutting the fence, removing the ban on sanctuary cities, and funding illegal alien lawyers. Hear, hear. Update 1:20pm Eastern. Omnibusting links the section of the bill containing the border-gutting. Update 10:20am Eastern. The fence gets robbed, but the spending bill gives $10 million in “emergency” funding for attorneys of illegal immigrants?!!?! *** fencewhatfence.jpg Fence?...

Do you know the story of the Incredible Disappearing Border Fence? It's an object lesson in gesture politics and homeland insecurity. It's a tale of hollow rhetoric, meaningless legislation and bipartisan betrayal. And in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, it's a helpful learning tool as you assess the promises of immigration enforcement converts now running for president. Last fall, Democrats and Republicans in Washington responded to continued public outrage over border chaos by passing the "Secure Fence Act." Did you question the timing? You should have. It's no coincidence they finally got off their duffs to respond just before...

The home of the “Happiest Place on Earth” has been breeding killer jihadists and Muslim zealots for years. Omar Mateen, the cold-blooded mass murderer who gunned down 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub and wounded 53 more before police took him out late Sunday, may have worked alone. But he operated in the larger context of a teeming, terror-coddling paradise. While tourists from around the world soak up sunshine and dreams at Disney World, Islamic extremism festers around them. Schools: The Muslim Students Association, founded by the radical Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood whose stated purpose is to wage “grand jihad”...

The bottom feeders at Gawker are going under. Arrivederci, a- -holes! News of the slime Web site’s bankruptcy filing is schadenfreude-licious for those of us who, like wrestler Hulk Hogan and Silicon Valley financier Peter Thiel, were victimized by these Internet thugs but didn’t have the resources to fight back in court.

Michelle Malkin joining Sarah Palin in wanting to Cantorize Rino RYAN.

The gun-control lobby has a new target: Your children’s Lego sets. A new "study" touted by libs decries the prevalence of weapons in the brick construction kits: I kid you not. The gun-grabbers have their panties in a twist over harmless fantasy play with teeny-tiny plastic parts. LEGO building kits are becoming increasingly violent as toy manufacturers are engaged in an “arms race” to appeal to children, a New Zealand study says. Researchers at the University of Canterbury concluded from research that examined LEGO catalogues from 1973 to 2015 that weaponry is now included in 30 per cent of...

The Volunteers for Nehlen Committee announced Monday that conservative dynamo Michelle Malkin has endorsed Paul Nehlen, who is running against Paul Ryan in the Republican primary race unfolding in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District. Malkin is a force in publishing, on television, and in the conservative blogosphere. She is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Culture of Corruptionand many other books, most recently Sold Out with John Miano. In May, Malkin will also travel to Wisconsin to headline a major fundraising event for Nehlen. The fundraiser will be held in Kenosha, where the Nehlen campaign bases its headquarters. “I...

It's not over. It's never over. After last week's deadly airport and subway bombings in Brussels, the Belgian government remains on high alert for jihad attacks and espionage at its nuclear facilities. One Belgian nuke plant security guard was murdered recently and his ID is missing. Two of the Brussels bombers reportedly spied on the home of a top senior scientist in the country's nuclear program. ISIS has been implicated in an alleged insider plot to obtain radioisotopes from one of Belgium's nuclear plants for a dirty bomb. Two former Belgian nuke plant workers left their jobs to fight for...

Establishment Republicans are always mystified when they embrace Democratic Party policies and get hammered for it, particularly, as is frequently the case, when those programs don't work particularly well. "It was everyday moms who shamed the Republicans into abandoning Common Core," syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin averred at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "There are three reasons why Jeb Bush failed: his last name; his support for amnesty; and his cheerleading and cashing in on Common Core." The National Governors Association devised Common Core with Clinton era appointees, Malkin explained. In 2009, 25 people in the room devised Common Core including...

Malkin: RNC Approved Debate Moderator: Beltway Elitist John "Pulverizer" Dickerson Who is the moderator of tonight's South Carolina GOP debate? He's another not-so-moderate, card-carrying member of the D.C. media ruling class.John Dickerson is the host of Face the Nation on CBS News, political director for the network, and a longtime political correspondent for Slate and Time magazine. If there were ever a poster boy for inside-the-Beltway journalism, Dickerson is it.*snip* Perhaps most notoriously, Dickerson penned a screed last year advising President Obama to "Go for the Throat!"; "declare war on the Republican Party;" and "pulverize" his political enemies over gun control, climate change, and immigration.Dickerson...