Free Republic

Rep. Lee Terry, a Nebraska Republican, has introduced a bill that would force the federal government to tell states and Congress the locations where it is keeping the illegal immigrant children flooding the southern border. Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has been making the same demand since some of the children were housed in his state without his prior knowledge. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin made the same complaint Wednesday. Terry told Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto" on Wednesday his bill would force the Department of Homeland and Security and the Department of Health and Human Services to tell...

LINCOLN, Neb. (CBSDC/AP) — Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman believes federal authorities are conducting secret operations by sending immigrant children into states without the knowledge of state officials. Heineman told Fox News he learned from Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., that 200 unaccompanied immigrant children were placed with relatives or sponsors in the state. Heineman says no federal officials notified them that would be happening. “We want to know the names of those individuals, who their sponsor is. Is their sponsor legal? What communities did you send them to? Why are they conducting a secret operation, essentially, transporting them all over the...

The U.S. Department of Justice has sent a member of its Community Relations Service team to investigate a Nebraska parade float that criticized President Obama. A Fourth of July parade float featured at the annual Independence Day parade in Norfolk sparked criticism when it depicted a zombie-like figure resembling Mr. Obama standing outside an outhouse, which was labeled the “Obama Presidential Library.”

The U.S. Department of Justice has finally found something to do. Since investigating multiple “fake” scandals like the White House Benghazi cover-up and IRS targeting of conservatives seem so petty, Holder’s crew have been itching for something worthy to investigate. A controversial float in the Norfolk Independence Day parade is just the ground-breaking case they were hoping for. “One of the floats included a zombie-like mannequin standing near an outhouse labeled ‘Obama Presidential Library,’” Omaha World-Herald reported. According to the World-Herald : "The department sent a member of its Community Relations Service team, which gets involved in discrimination disputes,...

A float in the city of Norfolk's Fourth of July parade has sparked a lot of controversy. The float showed an outhouse with a dark figure using a walker on the outside. The outhouse was labeled "OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY."

During the afternoon of Monday, June 16, 2014, several tornadoes touched down in northeast Nebraska. Later that same evening, the Nebraska State Patrol conducted a helicopter flyover of tornado damage at the request of the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). The Nebraska State Patrol has a Bell 407 helicopter. The helicopter's video equipment was purchased with the use of US Department of Homeland Security grant funds.

UPDATE (7:30 a.m.) CONDITIONS IN PILGER — Stanton County Sheriff Mike Unger said Tuesday morning that the five-year-old who died was a girl in a mobile home situated on Main Street. A traffic fatality 2.5 miles east of Pilger in Cuming County has not been linked to the storm. — 75 percent of the community is “gone, and that’s my opinion,” Unger said, including the middle school, Midwest Bank, a convenience store, post office, numerous houses, city hall, firehouse and St. John’s Lutheran church.

Ted Cruztook a victory lap of sorts this week after Eric Cantor's primary defeat. And why shouldn't he? The junior senator from Texas helped fuel the anti-establishment furies that devoured the House majority leader. "This election should be a reminder to all in Congress—Republicans and Democrats alike—that the conservative base is alive and well, and the American people will hold us all accountable," said Mr. Cruz. "Each of us needs to do what we said we would do and tell the truth." If this sounds like a threat, that's because it is.Mr. Cruz is wont to criticize Republican politicians who...

One day after the GOP’s Lee Terry opened the door to closing off compromises on Capitol Hill, Democrat Brad Ashford tells Nebraska Watchdog that Terry’s talk is “ridiculous, it’s disappointing.” Following Eric Cantor’s tea party ambush on Tuesday, Terry, an 8-term incumbent, told CNN, “Do we compromise? How do we work together? All of this is now in question.” Ashford says the “Cantor lesson” is just the opposite. “You can’t find solutions without working together,” says Ashford. Terry, of course, is coming off his own Cantor-like primary—just last month Terry survived a threat from his right wing, defeating Republican Dan...

It’s only a small matter of time until the Obama administration finally, rapturously releases what its hopes will be the crown jewel of its rise-of-the-oceans-slowing climate-change agenda: Regulations capping the emissions from existing power plants, a.k.a., stamping out coal plants across the country. This set of regs is going to be even more complicated and controversial than the regulations for only new power plants the administration released last year, and as the AP obliquely explains, we’re likely to start seeing those “necessarily skyrocketing” energy prices Obama once mentioned pretty quickly here: Electricity prices are probably on their way up...

The Republican Establishment always says conservative purists would rather lose than compromise. But the opposite is playing out in Nebraska. The moment Ben Sasse got endorsed by the Senate Conservatives Fund, Mitch McConnell went all in for Shane Osborn. Well, Osborn is now toast. He has extremely high negatives, extreme negative poll numbers, and outside groups have just finished him off with an ad blasting his involvement in a made up military memo. That leaves Sid Dinsdale who’d have you know he is a lifelong Republican despite years of significant giving to Democrats. Dinsdale too, however, is behind in the...

Ben Sasse, winner of last week’s Republican Senate primary in Nebraska and likely the next senator from that state, is a Tea Party hero with an unusual credential: a PhD in history from Yale.Sasse—a proud anti-choice activist, homeschooler, and opponent of Obamacare and its “entire failed worldview”—bills himself as an outsider to politics, with an expertise in “business turnaround projects” for such powerhouses as Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey and Company.Even before winning the primary, Sasse had been the subject of favorable profiles in both the National Review (“Obamacare’s Cornhusker Nemesis”) and the Weekly Standard (“A Virtuoso Pol from Nebraska?”). In a reverential interview, Glenn Beck told the candidate, “I can hear the Constitution running through your veins.”If the Constitution could actually flow through the human circulatory system, there’s one part I might imagine Sasse...

Challengers see themselves in the Texas senator, even in races where their odds of an upset are considered steeper than Cruz’s surprise victory over a GOP establishment figure two years ago. He’s made endorsements in the Oklahoma and Nebraska Senate races, plus the Nebraska gubernatorial race, and sent almost $26,000 to federal candidates through his leadership PAC. “Ted Cruz would be extremely helpful as an endorser and a fundraiser,” said C. Edmund Wright, a consultant to longshot South Carolina Senate hopeful Lee Bright, in an email. “Rand Paul and Mike Lee would be great also.” But, he said, “the reason...

"The biological family of a little girl taken from her foster parents and returned to her jailbird father have branded her adoptive mom and dad, ‘selfish’ for fighting to get her back and vowed never to give her up again. Sonya, aged nine, had been in the care of Kim and David Hodgin, from Dickson, Tennessee for more than seven years, but she was recently handed over to ex-con John McCaul in Omaha, Nebraska. The Hodgin family have released a heart-breaking phone conversation, revealing Sonya’s desperate pleas, begging to be reunited with them."

Nebraska GOP Senate nominee Ben Sasse may not see himself as an establishment slayer, but Nebraska's primary voters may have given him a dominating 27-point victory on Tuesday to send a message to the Washington Republican establishment. At the beginning of the year, Shane Osborn's internal polling still showed him with 39 percent of the vote, while Sasse and Sid Dinsdale had 7 percent each. Sasse's internal polling had him trailing by as much as 37 points last year. By February, however, the race was a dead heat, according to a poll by Harper Polling. Sasse closed the gap and...

Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz claimed his first victory in the battle to control the Republican Party on Tuesday night when his two candidates in Nebraska won their primary elections.Cruz endorsed gubernatorial candidate Pete Ricketts and Senate candidate Ben Sasse won their respective primary races, positioning Cruz as kingmaker in November.'Ben Sasse’s decisive victory in Nebraska tonight is a clear indication that the grassroots are rising up to Make DC Listen. They’re rising up to take our country back,' Cruz posted to his Facebook. Ted Cruz, left, campaigns in Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday, May 9, for Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete...

The Tea Party, left for dead by the mainstream media only a week ago, roared back to life on Tuesday with two big Republican primary victories in Nebraska and West Virginia. All eyes now turn to Mississippi's June 3 Republican U.S. Senate primary between establishment incumbent Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Tea Party-backed state senator Chris McDaniel as the next big test of the Tea Party's ability to win elections. In Nebraska, the Republican U.S. Senate primary race that many thought had tightened into a three way race turned into a romp for Tea Party-backed Ben Sasse, who easily won with...

The victory notched by tea party Republicans in the Nebraska Senate race was modest, but they'll take it in a season that has yielded few bright spots so far. Ben Sasse won the GOP nomination for the seat being vacated by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb. Sasse was the closest thing to a tea party candidate in the three-man race, largely because he feuded last fall with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the epitome of establishment Republicanism. But Sasse is hardly the out-of-right-field firebrand that some tea partyers cherish. A college president with degrees from Harvard and Yale, he worked for...

One small governor's race has turned into a cattle call for potential 2016 presidential candidates: Nebraska. Specifically, one candidate in the Cornhusker State is getting outsized attention from talked-about Republican presidential contenders. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, 2012 vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas have all endorsed Omaha businessman Pete Ricketts ahead of Tuesday's primary. As potential candidates work to woo Republican mega-donors, the contest offers presidential contenders entrée with a billionaire sugar daddy of the most literal variety: Joe Ricketts, the TD Ameritrade-founding, Chicago Cubs-owning billionaire who also happens to be...

Midland University President Ben Sasse on Tuesday won the Republican nomination to replace retiring Sen. Mike Johanns (R) this year. Democrats won’t contest the state this fall, making Sasse virtually a senator-in-waiting. But before jumping to conclusions that the tea party beat the establishment, note that Sasse doesn’t fit neatly into the outsider construct. Here are 14 things to know about Sasse, a candidate with an unusually diverse resume that includes time working within the system: 1. He’s a fifth-generation Nebraskan, but he spent much of his career in Boston, Austin and Washington, D.C. Sasse attended high school in Fremont,...