Free Republic

President Obama is expected to announce his executive order to grant legal status for millions of illegal immigrants in an address Thursday night, according to sources close to the administration. Mr. Obama will give a broad outline of his action Thursday and follow it up with a trip Friday to Las Vegas to provide more details. The White House would not confirm the report Wednesday morning, nor have Mr. Obama’s aides announced any travel plans for later this week. But a spokesman for the AFL-CIO inadvertently disclosed the tentative plans in an email Wednesday. “We hear there will be a...

With only a handful of legislative days left before Congress calls it quits for the holiday season, it appears increasingly likely that Democratic Leader Harry Reid will cede the Senate majority to Republicans without confirming a new attorney general, leaving Eric Holder with the job he quit almost two months ago until at least January. The process to confirm a new attorney general, which typically takes weeks, has barely begun as members of the Senate have turned their focus to the Keystone pipeline, a bill to curb the National Security Agency's powers, and dozens of lower-level administration nominees. Given the...

John Harwood of CNBC and the New York Times reports that President Obama's executive amnesty order is coming Friday in Las Vegas: Confirmed by source familiar: Obama to announce immigration order on Friday in Las Vegas — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) November 19, 2014 Obama immigration announcement in Las Vegas on Friday may also serve as unofficial launch of Reid 2016 re-election campaign — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) November 19, 2014

Democratics want Obama to shoot for the moon... “When the president decides to do his executive order, he should go big — as big as he can,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. They say Obama will pay the price with Republicans (who won outstanding majorities nationwide at midterms), so he might as well enjoy the reward by winning the affection of millions of immigrants and support from a key bloc of Latino voters .... Obama's E/O could come this week---would allow more than four million of the estimated 11 million undocumented to work and live in the US legally....

The Senate narrowly rejected legislation to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline on Tuesday, handing a defeat to the oil industry and dealing a major blow to Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu, who staked her political career on the outcome. The Senate voted 59-41 for the legislation, falling one vote shy of the 60 needed for passage under the deal bringing it to the floor. But Keystone supporters insisted the defeat would be short-lived. Republican leaders are vowing to try again after they take over the chamber in January — when they will have more than enough votes to get a measure...

Harry Reid personally voted against Landrieu and screwed his own party. Checking the Roll Call this morning, Harry Reid's vote is Nay. Why did he allow the vote (since he rules the Senate with an iron fist) and then vote against her and ruin her chances in Louisiana? Nothing short of the Bills passage would have saved her down there. She's too little to late now and the union jobs are being pooched. And Obama stands above it all to pooch the Union jobs with a veto promise. This might have been the last chance for the Democrat Party (notice...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Barack Obama should move quickly on his executive amnesty because it is the fair thing to do for families that fear deportation.

The number of immigrants who are in Nevada illegally dropped by about 20,000 people from 2009 to 2012. But Nevada still has the largest share of any state of unauthorized immigrants in its total population, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. The study, released Tuesday, examines migration trends among the estimated 11.2 million people who were in the U.S. illegally in 2012. The overall number has held steady from 2009, but 14 states saw their unauthorized immigrant population decrease and seven saw it increase. While unauthorized immigrants accounted for 3.5 percent of the U.S. population of...

If you thought the overwhelming defeat of the Education Initiative Nov. 4 was the end of tax talk in Nevada, you couldn’t be more wrong. If anything, the election results were the start of a larger discussion. But that discussion is complicated by groups competing for primacy, differing priorities and a frustrating lack of specifics on the part of big players. And that’s even before we get to Carson City and meet the new speaker of the Assembly, who says taxes should be a last resort rather than a top priority. Let’s start with business. Starting immediately after the Education...

The largest solar power plant of its type in the world - once promoted as a turning point in green energy - isn't producing as much energy as planned. One of the reasons is as basic as it gets: The sun isn't shining as much as expected.

In 2009, current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid praised Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber on the Senate floor as “one of the most respected economists in the world.”

With all the numbers tallied, out of 251 races, NRA-backed candidates won in 229, over 91 percent of Congressional races in which they endorsed a candidate. According to the Washington Examiner, NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam explained that the Second Amendment group was able to win at this level because individual NRA members were motivated to vote for freedom. He said: "Our members came out in droves and voted for their rights and their freedom. This was one of the most successful election cycles in a decade."

After pouring in millions to fund a universal background check initiative that passed in Washington State on November 4, Michael Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety is preparing to bypass the Nevada legislature and impose universal background checks on Nevadans. The Hill reports that Bloomberg's group gathered 250,000 signatures and will ask the state legislature to pass universal background checks during 2015. If the legislature refuses, Bloomberg's group will do an end-around the legislature as they did in Washington state by pushing a ballot initiative in 2016.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has privately asked the White House to delay an executive order on immigration until Congress passes a spending bill to keep the government running, ABC News has learned. While Reid supports President Obama’s ability to act on his own on immigration, he told senators today that he is increasingly concerned some Republicans will seize on the move and try to block the funding bill, which could lead to a government shutdown.

|Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he would like President Barack Obama to wait for Congress to pass legislation funding the government before he takes executive action giving deportation relief to undocumented immigrants. “The president said he is going to do the executive action,” the Nevada Democrat said heading in to a Democratic lunch. “The question is when. It’s up to him. I’d like to get the finances of this country out of the way before he does it. But it’s up to him.” Reid said the president was aware of his preference.

IN POLITICS, there’s nothing harder than realizing that it’s time to go. For Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that moment has arrived. With the Democrats’ midterm losses, the two 74-year-olds should announce that when this session of Congress ends, they will relinquish their roles as leaders of their respective Democratic caucuses. And if Reid and Pelosi don’t soon come to the conclusion on their own that it’s time to bow out? Well, then, their fellow Democrats, recognizing that you can’t begin a new era with old leaders, should let both know that the time has come to go.

In politics, there’s nothing harder than realizing that it’s time to go. People who have made their careers as Beltway politicians start to think they’ve become indispensable to Washington, when in fact it’s Washington that has become indispensable to them. And so they can’t or won’t recognize when the moment has come to move on to other things. For Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that moment has arrived. With the Democrats’ midterm losses, the two 74-year-olds should announce that when this session of Congress ends, they will relinquish their roles as leaders of their respective Democratic caucuses.

It seems incredible, but a single missing word could turn a water law into a government land grab so horrendous even a U.S. Supreme Court justice warned it would “put the property rights of every American entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency employees.” The missing word is “navigable.” The Obama administration is proposing a rule titled “Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’ Under the Clean Water Act,” which would strike “navigable” from American water law and redefine any piece of land that is wet at least part of the year, no matter how remote or isolated it...

Federal wildlife officials have granted protection to the Gunnison sage grouse, a move that could to bring restrictions on oil and gas drilling and other land uses to preserve the bird's habitat in Colorado and Utah. ... They're related to the greater sage grouse, which is at the center of a separate and larger debate over federal protection across 11 Western states.

As President Obama congratulated Republican lawmakers for “running very strong campaigns” during a meeting Friday at the White House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) stared, stone-faced, into the distance. Reid was seated at the president’s elbow, but in many ways, the gulf between the two leaders has never seemed greater. Tension between Obama and Reid has been long simmering, multiple sources with knowledge of their relationship say. It exploded into the headlines following Tuesday’s landslide victory for Republicans. Within minutes of networks declaring that Republicans had seized back the Senate, the Washington Post published a report featuring David Krone,...