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Earlier today, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy started a filibuster on the Senate floor on the subject of gun violence. Murphy has been perhaps the most passionate gun safety advocate since the Sandy Hook shooting occurred in his home state in 2012. Over the past few hours, Sen. Murphy has been joined by a number of his colleagues including Pat Toomey. Pennsylvania’s junior Senator has been one of the few Republican members to advocate in favor of gun safety measures. “I’m of the view that it’s time to get something done here,” Toomey began. “We’ve done a lot of talking.” Sen....

An effort by liberal groups to pressure Republicans to allow Senate consideration of President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee got off to a modest start Monday as small groups of demonstraters rallied outside lawmakers’ offices around the country. A bigger election-year battle ramped up as both sides brought their viewpoints to television, social media and supporters’ email inboxes. Five days after Obama tabbed federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland for the vacant seat, about 25 people appeared outside the Columbus, Ohio, office of GOP Sen. Rob Portman, who is backing Republican leaders’ insistence on awaiting the pick of whoever is...

Watching the fight unfold between President Barack Obama and Senate Republicans over who should choose the next Supreme Court justice, Michael A. Bowden got angry at what he saw at the latest affront to the first black president. And then his thoughts turned from Washington to his own state. Obama won't be on the ballot this fall, but Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey will - and Bowden has made defeating him in November a priority. [...] Democrats are pressuring senators in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Illinois and Wisconsin to back down from their refusal to confirm or even consider Obama's...

Washington - Even though the Democratic majority vowed to return Congress to a path of fiscal responsibility, the 2008 appropriations bills were stuffed with wasteful pork projects. While Representatives John Campbell, Jeff Flake, Jeb Hensarling, Scott Garrett, and David Obey (1 amendment) offered 50 amendments to strip outrageous pork projects from the appropriations bills, only one amendment, offered by Rep. Jeff Flake, passed. The Club for Growth has compiled a RePORK Card of all members' votes on all 50 anti-pork amendments (see below). "Taxpayers have a right to know which congressmen stand up for them and which stand up for...

Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey endorsed Marco Rubio for president Wednesday, describing the Florida senator as a "thoughtful conservative leader" he believes will appeal to voters in Pennsylvania and across the country. Just hours later, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum quit the presidential race and also endorsed Rubio, calling him a "born leader" who shares his views on the central role of the family and on the national security threats facing the country. The support from Toomey and Santorum comes as Rubio is seeking to solidify backing from the GOP establishment after his third-place finish in Iowa. Toomey, a Republican from...

With Donald Trump continuing to dominate the Republican presidential primary field, many of the GOP's senior leaders are beginning to contemplate the down-ballot consequences of having the controversial outsider atop the ticket. Typically, control of the Senate and House are heavily influenced by the outcome of the presidential contest, and a bruising general election contest between Trump and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton almost certainly would affect the outcome of some of the congressional races.

We cannot continue to cripple future generations WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today issued the following statement praising the passage of Rep. Tom McClintock’s (R-Calif.) Default Prevention Act in the House of Representatives:“First and foremost, Congress must enact critical reforms to restore fiscal sanity for our nation and reverse the continued upward trajectory of our spending. We cannot continue to cripple future generations. The House took a significant step today in that regard and passed the Default Prevention Act, which ensures that our nation’s debt will be paid in full and on time. “This legislation allows the United...

PPP's new Pennsylvania Senate poll fi nds that Pat Toomey continues to have weak approval numbers, and leads his potential Democratic opponents by only 3 to 7 points. Only 28% of voters approve of the job Toomey is doing to 43% who disapprove, with a lot (29%) having no opinion one way or another. Those numbers are consistent with where we've found him in our polling all year- he was at 30% approval in May and 28% approval in February when we polled the state. Snip General election match ups for President in Pennsylvania are a mixed bag. Hillary Clinton...

The polling isn’t frequent given that we're over a year away from the 2016 elections, but incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) is looking as if he will be in decent shape (for now) to fend off another Democratic challenge from his 2010 opponent, former Rep. Joe Sestak. Recently, Toomey released the first of what will probably be many television ads, but it’s nothing hard-hitting yet. In fact, it highlights a policy initiative that he worked on with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) that helps schools better identify child sex offenders. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette): Fifteen months before he will face voters in the...

WASHINGTON -- Advocates of a saner approach to guns need a new strategy. We cannot go on like this, wringing our hands in frustration after every tragedy involving firearms. We said "Enough" after Sandy Hook. We thought the moment for action had come. Yet nothing happened. We are saying "Enough" after Charleston. But this time, we don't even expect anything to happen. What's needed is a long-term national effort to change popular attitudes toward handgun ownership. And we need to insist on protecting the rights of Americans who do not want to be anywhere near guns. None of this should...

Yesterday’s procedural vote in the Republican-controlled Senate to give Obama Trade Promotion Authority, or “fast track” as it used to be called, passed by just one vote – that of Florida’s Republican Senator and presidential aspirant Marco Rubio. Why would Rubio vote to give Obama more power? No one knows for certain, but Senator Jeff Sessions, in a statement released after the vote gave us some insight into the dynamics of what went on on Capitol Hill prior to the vote. “Americans increasingly believe that their country isn’t serving its own citizens. They need look no further than a bipartisan...

It took Republicans three tries to win control of the US Senate and consolidate Congress under their leadership. In the end, the landscape left by the 2008 Democratic triumph left them uniquely vulnerable in the sixth-year midterm of an unpopular presidency. The tables will turn in 2016, warns National Journal’s Charlie Cook, as the gains of 2010 will make Republicans highly vulnerable to losing control of the Senate once again: Today, The Cook Political Report puts two Republican-held seats in the “Toss Up” category—the open seat in Florida and Kirk in Illinois. That toss-up column will certainly grow as...

Republicans are debating whether their path to the presidency in 2016 runs through the blue-collar Rust Belt states, or the demographically changing new South and Sunbelt states. For Democrats looking to retake the Senate, however, the formula is more clear-cut: Win back white working-class voters, or be consigned to a longer-term minority. Most of the Senate battlegrounds run through the Midwest—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio—along with New Hampshire, which carries demographic similarities with those older, whiter Great Lakes states. To defeat the vulnerable Republican incumbents, Democrats have a challenging task ahead: Making inroads with blue-collar voters, who have been stubbornly resistant...

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...

The conservative Club For Growth released its annual scorecard for 2013 on Monday, bestowing two Republican U.S. senators — Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah — and four GOP congressmen with 100 percent ratings for their voting records “based on issues relating to limited government and economic growth.”The four congressmen with perfect ratings for 2013 are Republican Reps. Matt Salmon, Trent Franks and David Schweikert of Arizona and Tom McClintock of California. Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan got a 99 percent rating in 2013 “but because of rounding has a 100 percent LifeScore,” the group said.“2013 saw...

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...

Few congressional observers ever expected that U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) would cosponsor the “Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act,” to abolish the corn ethanol Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires that increasing volumes of this biofuel be blended into gasoline. Their collaboration again proves the adage that politics often makes strange bedfellows. The RFS was a mistake when enacted ten years ago. Since then, despite attempts to curtail it, the program has expanded and had more lives than Freddy Krueger. Perhaps the senators are now paraphrasing William Shakespeare and Marc Antony, saying “I come to bury...

Unless there is any doubt, the vast majority of Democrats value partisan support for a failed president over support for our own national security and for that of Israel. Hence, they want to delay once again a vote on the Menendez-Kirk bill imposing sanctions on Iran unless it agrees to an acceptable final deal. The bill was introduced more than a year ago. The timing just isn’t right, you see. Will it ever be? A letter by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) signed onto by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.),...

WICHITA, Kan. — Tea Party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) waded into the Kansas Senate race Thursday, touting beleaguered Republican incumbent Pat Roberts as the contest’s only true conservative. The conservative hero's support is crucial as Roberts tries to energize his campaign and ward off a challenge from well-funded independent Greg Orman in a race that could jeopardize the GOP's hopes of winning Senate control. Cruz vouched for Roberts despite raising money earlier in the cycle for the Madison Project, a conservative group that supported Roberts’s primary challenger Milton Wolf. Wolf has not yet endorsed Roberts in the general election....

Remember these sixteen names when they run for office again. The sixteen Republicans who voted to proceed were Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), Susan Collins (Maine). Bob Corker (Tenn.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Dean Heller (Nev.), John Hoeven (N.D.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), John McCain (Ariz.), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Roger Wicker (Miss.). List courtesy The Hill.com. As reported by RedState yesterday, this bill would allow doctors to add a person’s name to the national database currently used for background checks, and list them as...