Free Republic

Ted Cruz is set to announce is candidacy for President of the United States. Rand Paul is apparently going to announce early next month before going on a campaign tour. Until today technically the only candidate was Jeb Bush, who announced late last year his intentions. At the time everyone thought that Bush was going to force everyone else to declare their candidacy early. It doesn’t appear that has happened, Cruz and Paul have appeared in no rush to make a formal announcement. Scott Walker, perhaps the front runner in the race, still hasn’t formally announced his candidacy and there’s...

Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida have released a blueprint for federal tax reform called “The Economic Growth and Family Fairness Tax Plan.” First, we should not embrace the language of progressive socialism in believing tax reform should have as a goal to advance “family fairness.” The plan should simply be entitled “The American Growth and Opportunity Plan.” That said, the Lee-Rubio plan is a great improvement over the current system. For the individual tax structure, the plan introduces a two-tier system to replace the current seven tax brackets. This plan moves America from a...

Talk about the Norfolk terrier tail wagging the Great Dane. If they are to have any hope of winning their party’s nomination, Republican presidential hopefuls better support ethanol mandates, Hawkeye State politicos told potential candidates at the recent Iowa Agricultural Summit in Des Moines. “Don’t mess with the RFS,” Republican Governor Terry Branstad warned, referring to Renewable Fuel Standards that require refiners to blend increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline. “It is the Holy Grail, and I will defend it,” said Rep. Steve King, another Iowa Republican. It is vital for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and preventing dangerous climate change...

<p>Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky were among the top Republicans receiving high ratings from the influential antitax Club for Growth, which released its annual scorecard of House and Senate lawmakers on Monday.</p> <p>Mr. Cruz , along with Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Rep. Matt Salmon (R., Ariz.), make up a select group of lawmakers from either the House and Senate who can boast of a perfect 2013 and lifetime score from the group. Those three, along with Reps. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.), Tom McClintock (R., Calif.) and David Schweikert (R., Ariz.) were the only lawmakers to receive a perfect 100% score for 2013, according to the group.</p>

With just a point and a click, you can browse a face book of felons, a new government website that will warn of the danger these criminals pose to society.Only these are not the faces of sex offenders and serial killers. These criminals are mortgage schemers and inside traders, most likely armed with nothing more than an M.B.A. or a law degree.Their faces will soon appear online courtesy of the Utah Legislature, which on Wednesday approved a measure to build the nation’s first white-collar offender registry, appending a scarlet letter of sorts on the state’s financial felons. The registry —...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) argued for criminal justice reform at a historically black college in Maryland on Friday, in what has become a staple of his message to young voters and minorities ahead of a potential presidential run in 2016. Paul, who has frequently nodded to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s idea that there are “two Americas,” said in his speech at Bowie State University there’s one America where citizens are free to pursue their lives freely, and one where the federal government piles on with unnecessary laws, burdensome fines and regulations, and overly strict sentencing guidelines that contribute to keeping...

The Marriage and Religious Freedom Act was introduced in the last Congress – in the Senate by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) with 11 co-sponsors and in the House by Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) with 92 co-sponsors. This legislation will soon be re-introduced in the current session and should be given priority by Senate and House leadership and passed. It is of enormous national importance. The bill will protect individuals from discrimination, under federal law, so that they may be free to express and conduct their business according to their religious conviction that marriage is a union between one man and...

Forty-seven Senate Republicans are signaling in an open letter to Iran and the White House that a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program will be at risk once President Obama leaves office. “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system,” the senators wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Bloomberg. “Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution — the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices — which you should seriously...

Capitol Hill conservatives are watching the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Protection hosts a March 10 hearing, which is the chairman's first crack at how the Obama Justice Department plans to help the recording industry in its last months in office. The hope is that Sen. Michael S. Lee (R.-Utah) will use his hearing, titled: “How Much For a Song?: The Antitrust Decrees that Govern the Market for Music,” to press put industry players on the record about their lobbying of Justice to rework the current royalty framework governing the relationship between...

I know that a lot of tax reform hawks were hoping for more of a complete overhaul, perhaps taking the form of an entirely new system which replaces the progressive tax code with a completely alternate structure. (Something along the lines of a flat tax, consumption tax, etc.) It doesn’t look like that will be happening any time soon, but Marco Rubio and Mike Lee are at least looking at some simplifications. GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah are rolling out an overhaul of the tax code on Wednesday that, among other things, consolidates...

Establishment Republicans are reportedly trying to convince former Utah Governor and failed 2012 presidential candidate Jon Huntsman to oust Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) in 2016. CNN’s John King said on Inside Politics that national establishment leaders in the business community will join state establishment leaders to try to convince President Barack Obama’s former Ambassador to China to challenge Lee. King noted that Huntsman’s deep-pocketed dad (Huntsman Sr., though, did pony up funds to his son’s campaign down the stretch–perhaps because he saw the writing on the wall.) does not like Lee (Huntsman Sr. is reportedly upset his cancer institute did...

ACTION: Contact your Senators and urge them to cosponsor S. 477, the Firearms Manufacturers and Dealers Protection Act of 2015. Operation Choke Point a Threat to the Second Amendment About a year ago, the Second Amendment community was rocked by news that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had teamed up with Attorney General Eric Holder to utterly destroy firearms manufacturers and dealers by cutting off all credit and banking relationships with them.For its part, the FDIC categorized gun and ammunition sales as a "high-risk business," lumping it in with drug dealers, pornographers, and Ponzi scheme operators -- all of...

WASHINGTON, DC - The National Board of the Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) voted Thursday to rescind its endorsement of Representative Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine 2nd CD, after he voted against the repeal of Obamacare. Poliquin was one of only three Republicans to vote against the repeal because, he claimed, "more than 60,000 Mainers have invested their time and energy in choosing health care plans that work for their families." Poliquin said he would only vote to repeal Obamacare if Republicans had a replacement bill ready to vote on at the same time. "We were both stunned and disappointed by Rep. Poliquin's...

Based on historical patterns, the next president is likely to be a GenXer. This is not good news for the many baby boomers running, or thinking about running, in 2016. When voters decide it is time to move the presidency on to the next generation, they keep electing presidents in that next generation, or they go on to the one that follows. They do not go back. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were from the baby boomer generation. Barack Obama is from the Gen X generation (those born 1961 to 1981). If the pattern holds, the next president will...

Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas and Congressman Luke Messer of Indiana have introduced a bill that could produce positive, badly needed change in American K-12 education. The bill allows for Title 1 education funds “to follow low-income students to any public or private school of their choice.” What is Title 1 funding? It goes back to President Lyndon Johnson’s War of Poverty. In 1965 Johnson signed into law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Title 1 of the Act provides federal funds to schools with the target being low-income students. The motivation is special assistance...

Dear Friends, Obamacare, the VA scandal, the IRS scandal--these are just a few examples of what happens when we give government huge power without oversight. It's about to happen again--the Obama Administration is fighting for a government takeover of the Internet and the Federal Communications Commission is going to vote on it February 26th. That's why I am writing you today--I need your help to stop this.President Obama came out a few weeks ago urging the FCC to vote to regulate the Internet the same way that it regulates public utilities under Title II. What this means is that, for...

Starting Saturday at 10 a.m. ET, the Iowa Freedom Summit will be livestreamed in its entirety. Speakers include: Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Steve King (R-IA), real estate mogul Donald Trump, former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and many others.

If you're not familiar with the following website, you need to. These guys have systematically all of the data concerning the delegates and nomination process for the parties and how delegates are selected, what counts, and what doesn't count. I've reviewed the list and am currently working on an IA projection map of the caucus and potential vote but waiting until the straw poll when I can start filling in candidates. Yet, when I review the total states, I find it difficult to see how the Establishment loses if they are unopposed by other Establishment candidates. Red States for the...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush appears poised for a presidential run and is currently leading the polls among potential Republican candidates for 2016, but the comments he made in 1994 during his first run for Florida’s highest office may come back to haunt him.The Associated Press reports that Bush described himself then as a “head-banging conservative” and used fiery rhetoric — such as claiming he would do “probably nothing” for African-Americans if he became governor — in his ultimately unsuccessful bid. Bush made that statement in response to a question on what he would for African-Americans if elected to office.“It’s time...

I told you last night, there was only one way for this year to end on Hot Air. May one word ring in your ears as the ball drops, my friends: Romneymentum.Hopefully you’re all already liquored up sufficiently to dull the pain. “I know exactly what Mitt’s going to do,” [Ken] Gardner, a real estate developer who helped bring Romney to Utah to lead the 2002 Winter Olympics, told the Deseret News. “I think over the next few months, a lot of things will happen.”…“If it’s Ted Cruz that’s the candidate, he’s in. If it’s Jeb Bush, he’s probably not,”...