Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s trade agenda is running into potentially fatal opposition within his own party on the eve of a critical vote, and there might be only one person who can save it: Obama himself. Speaker John Boehner’s plan to bring a package of trade bills to the House floor Friday is proving to be a big gamble, as both senior Republicans and Democrats are privately wondering whether they have the votes to pass several key portions. The most pressing concern is over Trade Adjustment Assistance, a program to retrain workers who lose their jobs to free trade. The initiative...

Jesus and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 7% seem to have different ideas of what it means to be a good Catholic. On Friday evening, Pelosi lashed out at Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 81% for being a “polarizing” figure and not a good “mainstream” Catholic like her. When Rubio expressed his (very Catholic) opposition to same-sex marriage, Pelosi responded by pulling out her purported superior Catholic credentials, crowing that she had grown up in a “mainstream” Catholic family. She expressed her belief that Rubio’s opposition to same-sex marriage is “polarizing,” which threatens “mainstream Christian thinking.” Pelosi’s reasoning presents two enormous problems,...

Cut through the niceties couching the rhetoric of Democrat House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 7% on Friday’s MSNBC Live, and it’s hard to interpret otherwise than Pelosi saying Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 81% and any other Catholics who might not endorse gay marriage are hateful homophobes out of step with so called “mainstream” Catholics like herself. Naturally, it’s of no surprise that an MSNBC host conveniently set her up for the opportunity to denounce Rubio, as well as define Catholicism for everyone. I thoroughly disagree (with Rubio’s opposition to gay marriage), being raised in a Catholic family,...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday that Bill and Hillary Clinton will need to answer for the donations taken in by the Clinton Foundation. Pelosi told MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts that there’s “no question” the donation scandal “raises questions” that the former secretary of state will need to answer for. She made the remarks after Roberts asked her to respond to a New York Times story showing that former President Clinton appeared at a charity event, but only after they gave a $500,000 donation to the foundation.

Pundits glued to their Potomac seats, applying their usual Beltway explanations for everything that happens in America, would have it that House Speaker Dennis Hastert bollixed up the House page scandal because he is an unredeemed Republican partisan. Or that he doesn't care enough about congressmen hounding boys. Or that his conservatism made him do it.Blind partisanship, moral failings, hypocrisy, gay bashing or any of those other explanations that don't come close to the reality that Hastert was simply doing politics as it is practiced here, in Illinois.Hastert knows no other way, having been bred, born and raised in the...

That'll show 'em. MSNBC has a new show! It’s hosted by former Pennsylvania Representative Patrick Murphy (D-of course). It’s called “Taking the Hill” and this weekend it featured an appearance by everyone’s favorite former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Murphy asked Pelosi about Obama’s failing battle against ISIS, but Pelosi wasn’t interested in admitting that things aren’t going so well. Instead, she decided to highlight one of the areas where we are, apparently, making some truly “impressive advances” against our barbaric opponents. Are we bombing them back into the stone age? Not really. Are we killing them at a...

Congress should act immediately on President Obama's request for new use of force powers in the fight against Islamic militants, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday. “The ball is definitely in our court to take up this issue,” Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol. “There should be an authorization for the use of military force as we go forward. It's long overdue.” The remarks were a rebuke of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who earlier this week called Obama's war powers request “irresponsible” and urged the president to “start over” with a fresh proposal. “The president's...

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) speaking before voting on the Democrats' massive government takeover of health care: "... and look at how this bill was written. Can you say it was done openly? With transparency and accountability? Without backroom deals struck behind closed doors hidden from the people? Hell no you can't.

All 20 Republican lawmakers who voted against an amendment that prevents illegals from enlisting in the U.S. military refused to answer questions from Breitbart News regarding the expedited citizenship most illegals would have been eligible for once they joined the armed forces. They also each refused to answer whether they agree with House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) calling their Republican colleagues who voted for the amendment “xenophobic” and “un-American.” That means that for now, the 20 Republicans who defected and joined Democrats in opposing the amendment are allowing Pelosi’s comments to remain unchallenged. ... There is a core...

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi predicted Wednesday that Republicans will "rue the day" if the Supreme Court buys their arguments and invalidates tax subsidies for millions of people under President Barack Obama's health care law. Republicans have said they will try to ensure people don't lose insurance if the high court rules this summer against tax subsidies for health care coverage in certain states. But they haven't said how they would do it. Such a ruling would present a major challenge to the GOP. Without a congressional fix some 8 million people could lose subsidies, which help them pay for...

Washington Ellis "It's a very delicate balancing act, because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well." -Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. ... These people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. -Booker T....

President Barack Obama is hosting a rare gathering of lawmakers from both political parties at the White House to thank them for their work on legislation permanently changing how Medicare pays doctors. Democrats and Republicans, along with Cabinet and White House officials, are mingling on the South Lawn on a warm spring evening. Obama said the bipartisan achievement would not have happened without the work of House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, and Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

Pious, holier-than-thou Pelosi is about as much a Catholic as Barack Obama is a sincere Christian Everyone in the inevitably baleful Vale of Tears has a cross to bear in this life, but San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s cross Nancy Pelosi has more splinters than most. Turns out that pro-abortion, pro same sex marriage ‘Catholic’ Nancy Pelosi is chief agitator behind the ‘prominent’ Catholics attacking Cordileone with demands for the Vatican to remove him. Pious, holier-than-thou Pelosi is about as much a Catholic as Barack Obama is a sincere Christian. That the Archbishop Cordileone hatchet attack’s running its course in...

[ .... " Bayh, though, suggested the friction now could give way to better times soon for Democrats. “I do think with a new president, potentially new leaders, certainly for Democrats in the Senate --who knows about the House -- there may be a season for governing where people might actually find more common ground,starting all over with a blank sheet of paper,” Bayh said. “That would be a good thing for the country.”

WASHINGTON D.C. (CBS SF)– Two Democratic stalwarts from Massachusetts are suggesting that Rep. Nancy Pelosi should leave the party’s leadership team in Congress after big electoral loses last year and in 2010. Reps. Michael Capuano and Stephen Lynch made the statements on WGBH’s “Greater Boston,” with Lynch predicting outright that “Nancy Pelosi will not lead us back into the majority.” Asked by host Jim Braude if the answer to the question whether Pelosi “should go?” is “yes,” Lynch said, “Right.” Capuano was also asked if the 75-year-old Pelosi should quit leadership ranks. He said: “That, or she should change, one...

The House on Thursday overwhelmingly voted to repeal automatic cuts to doctors under Medicare, endorsing a rare bipartisan deal that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) negotiated with Democrats. The bill, which passed by a vote of 392-37, puts Congress on the precipice of ending a nearly two-decade-long fight over a formula known as the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR). Since 2003, lawmakers have put off cuts under the Medicare formula 17 times, perennially punting the solution through short-term “fixes” that, over time, ran up the cost of abolishing the formula to nearly $200 billion dollars.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh when I heard the advertisement. The voice blaring over the radio belonged to the junior senator from Texas, and he was calling for the Congress to defund ObamaCare. He was also urging listeners to donate to the Senate Conservatives Fund, an organization that’s spent millions of dollars attacking fellow Republicans for being what it deems insufficiently conservative. Ted Cruz, having burned his bridges in the Senate, now thinks his destiny lies in a race for the White House. Perhaps it does, but his assault on almost every one of his fellow Republicans during his...

**SNIP** Under the Affordable Care Act, people who remained uninsured last year must either pay a penalty with their taxes, one of the most contentious elements of the law, or claim an exemption. The Obama administration has said up to six million people would owe a penalty of $95 or 1 percent of their household income, whichever is greater. But as many as 30 million people are getting exemptions, mainly because they are too poor to afford health insurance or because they live in a state that refused to expand Medicaid last year under the health law. And people who...

I have a special St. Patrick’s Day greeting for you from my time vault; it’s a special performance from 2011, when all the gals - ValJar, Oprah, SanFran Nan, Hillz and Lady M - were still Bffs:Cherish this timeless memory because the time when you could get this group of dames together to don red wigs and do an Irish jig is long gone.This video was made before the Tea Party stole Nan’s control of the House, before Oprah was forced to cancel her own show, before the words “Benghazi” and “what difference, at this point, does it make” were...

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pushing back hard against conservative claims that the recent Republican letter to Iranian leaders, which has infuriated the White House amid delicate nuclear talks, is akin to her 2007 visit to Syria against the wishes of the Bush administration. The office of the House minority leader issued a scathing statement Wednesday night saying her meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad was part of a bipartisan effort — conducted through the Bush administration — to encourage peace in the region, and accusing Republicans of launching a "desperate" defense of their Iran letter to mask criticisms coming...