Free Republic

Responding to harsh criticism from Tea Party activists and conservatives, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) defended his support of the current immigration bill on the Senate floor Wednesday. He appealed directly to the people who helped him get elected, saying “their opinions really matter to me.” “Over the last few days, I have received numerous emails and calls from conservatives and tea party activists from across the country regarding immigration,” Rubio began. “And they are increasingly unhappy about the immigration reform proposal in the Senate.” Marco Rubio Defends Himself Against Tea Party Attacks on Senate Floor Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks...

When Barack Obama gave a speech in Berlin in 2008, he drew a crowd of 200,000. Wednesday's speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate was a little less popular. White House pool reporter Elmar Jakobs estimated the crowd at only 4,500.

Conservative activists are planning to storm Capitol Hill on Wednesday for what they are predicting will be “the largest Tea Party protest since 2010.” The protest — drawing tea partiers like TV host Glenn Beck and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — is in response to the Internal Revenue Service’s recent admission that it has been specifically targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny. The gathering on the West Lawn of the Capitol is being called the “Audit the IRS” Rally. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/18/the-largest-tea-party-protest-since-2010-is-tomorrow/#ixzz2WaxhEEBG

Republican voters have an unfavorable view of their party in Congress, according to a new survey from Public Policy Polling. The poll found that overall, only 24 percent of voters approve of the job congressional Republicans are doing, compared with 67 percent who disapprove. That's down from a 25-68 approval split in May.

(CNSNews.com) - In a belated and incomplete response to the House Ways and Means Committee’s request for Internal Revenue Service documents relating to the agency’s targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups for heightened scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel has informed the committee that the agency is in the process of reviewing approximately 64,600,000 pages of documents from IRS officials “who may have potentially relevant information” about the targeting. Werfel also suggested to the committee that he believes the ultimate answers to who knew what and when in the White House and the...

This is an important point because Democrats like to pretend that if you have tax-exempt status that you are being subsidized by the taxpayer. But Laurens County Tea Party group founder Dianne Belsom, who says she’s outraged by the accusation, corrects the record and points out that donations her C4 group receives are not tax deductible and have already been taxed when they were earned. The point, she says, of C4 is to ensure those donations don’t get taxed again at the end of the year.

Meet Karen Kenney, the first in what will undoubtedly be a parade of victims of the intimidation tactics of the IRS aimed at conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Twitchy captures Kenney’s statement and the immediate Twitter reaction to it. With President Obama attempting to pre-empt the hearing with an odd live statement on judicial nominations — usually a matter left to press releases — coverage of the hearing has been spotty, but this needs to be seen and read in full:

A tea party witness from Alabama launched into emotional testimony Tuesday as she described her group’s political abuse at the hands of the Internal Revenue Service. “We peacefully assemble. We petition our government. We exercise the right to free speech. And we don’t understand why the government tried to stop us,” Wetumpka Tea Party President Becky Gerritson said during her opening statement before the House Ways and Means Committee. “I’m not here at as a serf or a vassal,” she went on, beginning to choke up. “I’m not begging my lords for mercy. I’m a born-free American woman, wife, mother...

Vice President Joe Biden will not be throwing his annual beach party for journalists this summer, POLITICO has learned. Since 2010, Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden have invited top journalists to their home at the Naval Observatory for a beach bash that has included Super Soaker fights, face painting, and a moon bounce.

Interviews with IRS employees have established that the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service was engaged in targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for unfair levels of scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. Rep. Darrel lssa, chairman of powerful House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, made that startling announcement on CNN Sunday morning. 'As late as last week,' he said, 'the [Obama] administration was still trying to say the [IRS targeting scandal] was from a few rogue agents in Cincinnati, when in fact the indication is that they were directly being ordered from Washington.'

The Obamas announced today that they will be hosting another “Performance at the White House” event on May 28 to honor American singer and songwriter Carole King: As part of their “In Performance at the White House” series, the President and First Lady will host a concert in the East Room honoring singer-songwriter Carole King, who will be awarded the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. President Obama will present the award as he did when the Library of Congress honored Stevie Wonder (2009), Sir Paul McCartney (2010), and the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal...

The Liberty Township Tea Party was one of several Tea Party groups in Ohio who were harassed by the IRS in the lead-up to the 2012 elections. The group recently released the extensive list of the questions sent to them by the IRS. Ohio patriot Carol Greenberg sent in this information. As many of you know, the IRS issued an apology for targeting “tea party” and “patriot” groups. We within the Liberty Township Tea Party are painfully aware of these intrusive actions. Click this link and download a PDF to see the type of questions that were demanded of us...

Steven T. Miller, the acting IRS commissioner who managed the division that has admitted targeting anti-Obama Tea Party groups, was one of several agents who investigated anti-Clinton organizations including Judicial Watch during that Democrat´s administration, according to court documents and interviews. Miller, who headed the IRS Services and Enforcement Division from 2009 until the end of last year, is named in court documents as part of a trio of Internal Revenue Service officials who allegedly characterized the 1998-2001 investigation of Judicial Watch as politically motivated.

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Sunday that the IRS´ admission of targeting various conservative groups for extra scrutiny was "absolutely chilling," and she called on President Barack Obama to apologize. "This is truly outrageous and it contributes to the profound distrust that the American people have in government," Collins said on CNN´s "State of the Union." "It is absolutely chilling that the IRS was singling out conservative groups for extra review, and I think it´s very disappointing that the president hasn´t personally condemned this and spoken out." The Alabama Democratic Party:

The Internal Revenue Service admitted Friday to improperly targeting conservative groups for aggressive applications processes for tax exempt status in 2012, using the terms “Tea Party” and “patriot” as flags. Here are some of the things they wanted to know about those groups. 1. We’re gonna need all your direct and indirect communication. “‘Direct and indirect communications’ is profoundly chilling of First Amendment rights, ” said David French, senior counsel for American Center for Law & Justice, which has been representing 27 conservative organizations met with IRS inquisitions. “It’s so vague as to be impossible to comply with.”

This Tea Party Thing I am a Tea Party Patriot. I know what that means to me but I am confused about what it means to others. The point of this post is to learn what being a Tea Party Patriot means to other Tea Party Patriots. I doubt I will learn anything that would alter what I believe but I can’t know until it is learned. Declaring I am a Tea Party Patriot means I favor a constitutional government. No more and no less. I accept the Constitution as the proper amount of government. My believe is that the...

Commentators across the board have been hailing the "British Tea Party" for at least a year. Daniel Hannan, the Tory MEP, has even tried to launch one, without much success. The latest to ride on the coat-tails of the popular US movement is Nigel Farage, newly re-elected as UK Independence Party leader. Speaking on Sky News, he said that his party shared the feeling of being "overtaxed, overgoverned, not being listened to". He claimed that this gave the party a "bigger political opportunity than ever before" to recruit Tories dissatisfied with David Cameron's EU-friendly policies. Could Ukip be the British...

How often do we use the old saw, “A person who doesn’t study history is doomed to repeat it.” ? Well, here’s your history. And it bears repeating. If you’re anything less than hard-core about your history lessons, you’re probably just like me when it comes to “those dang DATES”. I can get you to the right century, yes, and even to the right decade most times, but the year is not always as spot-on as I would like. This applies, today, to some ideas for our future that I proffered on PQRM40. The Democratic-Republican Party was formed by Jefferson and Madison in the...

San Francisco park workers and volunteers spent much of Sunday picking up and hauling away 10,000 pounds of garbage strewn all over the eastern part of Golden Gate Park known as Hippie Hill, the remnants of Saturday's annual yet unofficial pot-smoking bacchanalia. But this year's annual celebration - which falls each year on April 20 and is known as "420" - drew a larger-than-average crowd of between 10,000 and 15,000 revelers on the warm weekend day. They proceeded to smoke, drink, eat and rack up more than $10,000 in costs for city crews to clean up the mess, ironically just...

President Obama had another tough week in a second term filled with bad news and blunders — and he’s only 10 weeks in. While the White House suddenly decided to drop its budget Friday in an effort to control the news, there was no covering up the disastrous jobless numbers: 90 million Americans out of the workforce, the highest level since 1979; another 663,000 joining the ranks of the long-term unemployed; a measly 88,000 jobs “created.” But what seems stuck in the craw of a lot of you readers out there was last week’s column on the Obamas’ 1 percent...