Free Republic

Soon, all the politicians in Washington, D.C., will run down the Capitol steps, full of excitement about the beginning of summer recess. (I just couldn’t resist that visual.) Still, some lawmakers are calling for a reduction in Congress’ time off for the month of August so the needed legislative work can actually get done. It’s not as if they haven’t had time to work, but I believe our legislators have chosen to wait and see how the mainstream media and the progressive left might lead them. Budget reconciliation must be completed, and the American people deserve an Obamacare repeal-and-replace. Congress also needs...

RUSH: You know, Trump said something during the cabinet meeting. We just played the sound bite. He says, “Mitch McConnell is going to pass our health care bill.” Now, what was your reaction when you heard that? (interruption) Yeah, yeah. You probably said, “Now, that’s just Trump. You know, he’s just he’s just trying to move the process along. McConnell? Th Senate’s not gonna do anything. Trump trying to be…” RUSH: You know, Trump said something during the cabinet meeting. We just played the sound bite. He says, “Mitch McConnell is going to pass our health care bill.” Now, what...

SCOTUS filibuster vaporized as Mitch McConnell holds firm on cloture rule change Wow. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) actually did the right thing for a change. He led the way as Senate Republicans invoked the so-called nuclear option today, voting 52 to 48 on a party-line vote to eliminate the filibuster for nominations to the Supreme Court. Going forward, high court nominees including President Trump’s current pick Neil Gorsuch, will need a simple majority to be confirmed.

With the Senate’s Supreme Court confirmation vote for Judge Neil Gorsuch just days away and the possibly of Republicans nuking the filibuster looming, NBC’s Chuck Todd seemed as though he was in a near panic on Sunday’s Meet The Press. Besides his declarations of the GOP continuing the Senate’s decent down the “slippery slope” of removing the filibuster, Todd pestered Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the Senate to hold a vote for former President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. “There is clearly a debate and a fight about how Supreme Court justices are confirmed, how it was handled,”...

Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed to the Supreme Court on April 7, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell guaranteed on Tuesday. “He’ll be on the floor of the Senate next week and confirmed on Friday,” McConnell told reporters. “We are optimistic that [Democrats] will not be successful in keeping this good man from joining the Supreme Court real soon.”

I grow weary, beyond weary really, with the “but the Democrats” crap. And I shouldn’t be alone. We just had an election — Democrats got trounced. There are fewer Democrats in the legislative branch across the country since before the Great Depression. There is a Republican president to go along with those legislative majorities as well. Democrats lost more than 900 seats nationwide during the Obama years. The Democrats are literally in disarray and powerless. 1. Let me repeat that — the Democrats are literally powerless. Republicans have all the political and parliamentary power to do pretty much whatever they...

ollowing a scathing speech against Trump's nominee for Attorney General, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell said Senator Elizabeth Warren had "impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama," violating the so-called 'Rule 19'. By a vote of 49-43, Senator Warren was then barred from speaking on the floor until Senator Sessions nomination debate is complete (likely tomorrow evening).... McConnell defended the decision, noting Warren had been warned. "Sen. Warren was giving a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation," he said after the vote. "Nevertheless, she persisted."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said President Donald Trump isn't likely to get his travel ban implemented by Congress if courts strike it down. "I don't know that that's necessary," McConnell told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" Sunday. "I mean, the courts are going to decide whether the executive order the President issued is valid or not, and we all follow court orders." McConnell's comments come after a federal judge put a pause on Trump's order that barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries -- Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen -- from entering the US...

Several top Senate Republicans raised concerns Sunday that President Trump’s order to halt the admission of refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries had not been properly vetted and could harm the relationship between the United States and key allies. […] Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) cautioned that the United States does not have a religious test for entry into the country, though he stopped short of rejecting the order in its entirety. McConnell said that Muslims, both in the United States and abroad, are key allies in the fight against terrorism and urged caution in regard to Trump’s...

If the Senate Majority Leader stays true to form, President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is going nowhere When Senate Democrats confirmed yesterday that they will filibuster President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) responded, “What I would expect from our Democratic friends is that the nominee be handled similarly to Clinton’s and Obama’s first two nominees in their first terms.” Wow. If I were Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), I’d be peeing my pants.

Republicans on Sunday defended their party against Democratic complaints that Congress is being forced to consider nominees for Donald Trump’s administration without completed ethics reviews. “All of these little procedural complaints are related to their frustration in having not only lost the White House, but having lost the Senate,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I understand that,” he added, “but we need to sort of grow up here and get past that.” …

Today a Politico article reveals the John McCain/Lindsey Graham push to create an international crisis with Russia has found push-back from an unlikely source, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. (Politico) John McCain and Lindsey Graham are backing off of their push for a select committee on cybersecurity after Russian interference in the election, bowing to the political reality that the Senate Republican Conference largely does not back their idea. […] “We’re just going to move with the individual committees and see how that works. If it doesn’t work, we’ll regroup,” [Lindsey] Graham said in an interview. The House Intelligence Committee Chairman...

One of 2016’s most spectacular examples of government dysfunction was the U.S. Senate’s outrageous refusal to consider President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. That dereliction of duty by the Republican majority not only denied a sitting president his constitutional prerogative to fill vacancies in the court (so that the appointment would go instead to a hoped-for Republican successor). It also prevented the court from resolving a handful of cases because of a 4-4 split and probably discouraged the justices from accepting other cases because of the possibility of a...

Remember when Democrats insisted that incoming presidents had to get immediate confirmation of Cabinet appointments for the good of the nation? What a difference an (R) makes ... The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe reports on a plan by Senate Democrats to “slow walk” confirmation of Donald Trump’s appointments, including an insistence on nor more than two confirmations a week: Democratic senators plan to aggressively target eight of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees in the coming weeks and are pushing to stretch their confirmation votes into March — an unprecedented break with Senate tradition.Such delays would upend Republican hopes of quickly holding...

Soon after his inauguration next month, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate someone to the Supreme Court, which has been hamstrung by a vacancy since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. There will be public debates about the nominee’s credentials, past record, judicial philosophy and temperament. There will be Senate hearings and a vote. No matter how it plays out, Americans must remember one thing above all: The person who gets confirmed will sit in a stolen seat. It was stolen from Barack Obama, a twice-elected president who fulfilled his constitutional duty more than nine months ago by nominating...

In the first of what Mike Pence called "several very important announcements," Politico reports that former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao is set to be announced later Tuesday as President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Transportation.The other contender for the position was former Democratic U.S. Representative from Tennessee Harold Ford.As Politico adds: Chao, who ran the Labor Department under President George W. Bush, met with the incoming president at Trump Tower last week and discussed labor and transportation policy, Trump’s transition team said then. The formal announcement is expected at 1 p.m., one source said. The wife of Senate...

What a difference a few weeks makes. Right up until the morning of November 8th the two parties were lined up in the political equivalent of trenches on the western front in WW1. You’d have been hard pressed to find a Democrat anywhere in the nation who wasn’t ready to declare open rhetorical warfare on Donald Trump and anyone agreeing with a single policy he endorsed. But now, with the dust largely settled, there’s a particular group of Democrats in the Senate who suddenly are finding common ground to be a good thing and are ready to work across the...

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s audacious — and roundly criticized — decision to block President Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court pending the results of the presidential election has paid off handsomely for conservatives, who until this morning had every reason to suspect the end of their long-running project to reshape the court. Donald J. Trump’s victory means the court will almost certainly have a conservative majority for years to come. Challenges to regulation by administrative fiat, class-action lawsuits and restrictions on property use will find a more hospitable court, while laws restricting abortion and promoting the rights of religious organizations...

After voting to proceed to a bill that didn’t exist earlier this week, the Senate has finally produced text of the continuing resolution, a short-term government spending bill. The bill, written behind closed doors by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, was brought to the floor late Thursday afternoon, and for the majority of Senate Republicans, represented their first opportunity to see the text. According to McConnell, senators will have four days (two of them on a weekend) to review the bill before having to cast their votes next week. As far as conservative priorities go, the bill is a failure....

On Tuesday night, the Senate voted to proceed to the continuing resolution, a bill that will allegedly fund the government until Dec. 9. The only problem is that there isn’t actually a bill yet. There is no text. There is no agreement between Democrats and Republicans on what the bill will fund—Planned Parenthood, the Export-Import Bank, control of the internet—all of it remains a mystery. Yet the Senate voted 89-7 to proceed to this nonexistent bill. The Senate operates under complex parliamentary rules that require a series of votes in order to “proceed to” or “get onto” a bill. The...