Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) applauds the passage of the FY 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on Thursday after a week of debate and consideration by both parties. Sen. Cruz introduced or cosponsored more than a dozen amendments that were successfully adopted by the committee. “Congress’ first priority is to provide for the national defense and ensure our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have everything they need to defend our freedom,” said Sen. Cruz. “I am grateful for the committee’s support for my amendments, including measures that will ensure...

The length to which ABC, its news division, and its parent company (Disney) have gone to protect and curry favor with the Clintons is almost impossible to grasp. To begin with, in 1996, ABC News hired George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton campaign and White House official. Within a few years he would become the ABC new division’s chief anchor and political reporter. Then, just today, we learn that ABC News and Stephanopoulos are involved in a massive conflict of interest — a $50,000 donation Stephanopoulos made to the Clinton Foundation. That’s right, the symbol of ABC News has an ongoing...

GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz said today that ABC News anchor and former Clinton White House staffer George Stephanopoulos has no business moderating any 2016 presidential debates. Cruz was asked in the Senate hallway this afternoon whether Stephanopoulos should host any debates following today’s revelation that he gave $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation without it disclosing it while officially covering the organization for ABC News. “Of course not,” Cruz responded, according to a transcript provided to The Federalist by one of his campaign communications staffers. “Debates should not be moderated by partisan Democrats who are actively supporting one of...

After being questioned by the Washington Free Beacon about large donations he made to the Clinton Foundation, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News disclosed to Politico that he had funneled $50,000 to the tax-exempt organization in 2013 and 2014. Stephanopoulos’s secret donations to the Clintons’ non-profit came while he was professionally covering the family for ABC News. And then, after he was busted by the Free Beacon, he decided to leak the news of his secret Clinton cash contributions to Politico in order to deny Free Beacon its scoop. Classy, huh? It gets even worse, though. It wasn’t just that...

That comes from Conn Carroll, formally White House correspondent for our sister site Townhall and currently communications director for the junior senator from Utah. ABC News’s Election 2016 coverage can tolerate a boycott by a single senator, even one as influential on the right as Lee. Can it tolerate a domino effect among the rest of the GOP field, where Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and the rest of the gang all feel compelled by pressure from conservatives to follow Lee’s lead?Actually, why would there need to be pressure from conservatives to make them boycott ABC? It’s in...

We have to view the powers of Congress and the 10th Amendment as sort of two sides of the same coin. The 10th Amendment says in effect that any power that’s not given to Congress is retained by the states or by the people. And so that begs the question: What powers are given to Congress? And if any of those powers in isolation or all of those powers hooked together are open-ended — if they’re limitless – then the Tenth Amendment means nothing. Now generally we don’t look at any provision of the Constitution with an eye toward saying...

Republican Sen. Rand Paul split with senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to vote for a healthcare bill Tuesday night that will add about half a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next several decades.Paul sided with the overwhelming majority of senators and representatives who voted for the bill, in a decision almost certain to come up in the primary race, where he is currently joined by Cruz and Rubio.The “doc-fix” bill solves a recurring problem in the way Medicare payments are made to doctors, extends a children’s health insurance program, and requires higher-income seniors to pay higher...

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, expected to soon announce his candidacy for president, plans to steal Democrats' thunder and target income inequality by campaigning on a tax plan that he promises will "reward families with children while slashing levies on business and investment income but keeping a top rate personal income rate of 35 percent," according to Politico. Rubio’s plan, a joint effort with Utah Sen. Mike Lee, pares down tax brackets to just two — 15 percent and 35 percent, while also creating a new child tax credit worth $2,500 and eliminating the estate tax, Politico reports. For corporations, the...

Sen. Mike Lee would have quite the fight on his hands if he were to face off against former Rep. Jim Matheson in 2016. The latest UtahPolicy.com shows 48% of Utahns would support Lee while 42% would back Matheson. 10% are undecided. Matheson's electoral calculus has always been the same in heavily Republican Utah. Win a majority of Democrats, pick off some Republicans and get a majority of the independent vote. The survey shows Matheson would win 87% of Democrats, 20% of Republicans and 57% of independents. He would likely need to increase the numbers among Republican and independent voters...

RandPAC is trolling other potential GOP contenders early and often with the help of Google ads—and Chris Christie and Rick Perry just might be next. When former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush announced in mid-December that he would “actively explore” running for the Republican presidential nomination, curious parties took to Google to learn more about him. While they were there, many of them were greeted by another politician’s name at the bottom of the page—one they hadn’t searched for. “Join a movement working to shrink government. Not grow it,” read one of the ads, placed by RandPAC, the political action committee...

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...