Free Republic

"A series of videos from several town halls in 2013 have surfaced showing that Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) supports amnesty for illegal aliens, despite claims from his re-election campaign that he is against allowing illegal aliens stay in America...."

In the tradition of Sarah Palin, black tea party leader Katrina Pierson is a beautiful God, family, country and Constitution loving conservative Republican. Fearless and outspoken, Pierson’s inspiring life story nukes the Democrats’ mythical Republican War on Women. Sad that I even have to go there, Pierson’s skin-color derails the Democrats’ deplorable narrative that Republican equals racist.

Pete Sessions is free to live wherever he likes, but a man whose home and wife is in Florida shouldn't claim to live in Texas.

(CNN) – Sarah Palin rallied Wednesday behind Texas attorney general Greg Abbott, endorsing the Republican gubernatorial hopeful and defending Abbott for appearing on the campaign trail this week with controversial rocker Ted Nugent."If he is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!" the former Alaska governor wrote on Facebook. Nugent, a fierce gun rights activist who's known for making outlandish comments about President Obama, campaigned with Abbott at two events Monday. Democrats pointed to some of Nugent's past controversial remarks in an effort to discredit Abbott.The campaign for Abbott, however, acknowledged it was simply inviting Nugent...

The White House said Thursday that President Obama still believes American Olympians shouldn’t have to pay income taxes on the medals they win. But a bill by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) never moved in the Senate. Three Republican lawmakers — Reps. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas), Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Pete Sessions (R-Texas) — proposed a bill similar to Rubio's before this year's games, but it has also failed to gain traction.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has said he will remain neutral in GOP primaries against Senate incumbents, but his dad is getting involved on behalf of a key House primary challenger.Rafael Cruz, who might be more outspoken than his son on conservative causes, is backing activist Katrina Pierson, a primary challenger to Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.).From the Dallas Morning News: On Monday, Cruz, the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, endorsed the Garland Republican in her bid to beat incumbent Pete Sessions in the March primary for the 32nd Congressional District seat.“She’s a strict constitutionalist. She’s a strong conservative and she wants to...

The White House and Senate Democrats may need a refresher course on how to leak a juicy story. The White House today was forced to backtrack on a rumor Obama administration officials started about a Republican House leader who purportedly insulted President Obama to his face, telling the president, “I cannot even stand to look at you.” Turns out, it never happened. How do we know? The same White House that was responsible for starting the buzz now says there was a “miscommunication” and a “misunderstanding.” Here’s how it went down: (Read the timeline at linked source)

A follow-up to yesterday’s post. Turns out Reid wasn’t at the meeting where Sessions allegedly said this, of course, and neither were the two Democratic senators who relayed what he said to HuffPo. Go figure. Sessions was indeed one of the House Republicans who met with Obama on October 10, but both he (“We’re all working together now”) and the White House (which described the meeting as “good”) seemed pleased afterward with the result. If Sessions said what he’s accused of saying, it’s awfully strange that Team Hopenchange didn’t leak that themselves, after negotiations between O and the GOP fell...

The White House admitted Thursday that it was the source of a phony quote attributed to a top House Republican, who had allegedly told President Obama during a tense Oct. 10 meeting that 'I cannot even stand to look at you.' Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate Majority Whip, claimed in a Facebook post on Sunday that an unnamed GOP lawmaker had delivered the verbal slap in Obama's face, but everyone involved with the story now says it never happened. Eighteen Republicans from Congress attended that meeting with the president during a 16-day partial shutdown of the federal government, with the...

All of the congressional Republicans with viable 2016 presidential ambitions voted against the bill enacted overnight to reopen the government and increase federal borrowing. So did two members of the Senate GOP leadership and three members of the party’s House leadership. The opponents also included a majority of the Republicans who are chairmen of House committees and most of the members of the House GOP caucus who aspire to election to the Senate next year. While the Democrats were unified in their support for the legislation, a review of Wednesday night’s back-to-back roll calls in Congress reveals just how divided...

[with AUDIO] House Republicans wouldn’t accept a bad deal on the government shutdown and the pending federal debt ceiling negotiations from President Barack Obama, House Rules Committee chairman Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions announced. “I will tell you we will not back down, but there is much, much that we must understand about what is out there and how to accomplish it,” Sessions said on an interview set to air on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Friday night. Hewitt asked Sessions about the possibility of a deal made by the first of the month to ensure the government fulfills certain...

The Tea Party group FreedomWorks is endorsing Rep. Pete Sessions's (R-Texas) primary opponent, the first sign Sessions might face a competitive race in 2014. Sessions, the chairman of the House Rules Committee and former head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, is being challenged by Tea Party candidate Katrina Pierson (R). "Katrina Pierson has led the fight to elect principled conservatives across the state of Texas for years. While incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions seems more concerned with keeping his seat at the leadership table, Katrina understands the importance of connecting to the grassroots at home and sticking to your guns...

The House Republican “leadership,” and we use that term in the loosest sense, is preparing to confirm once and for all that it is a principle-free zone by scheduling a phony vote to defund Obamacare. The smoke and mirrors procedure cooked-up by House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia calls for sending the Senate a stopgap spending bill together with a resolution that would alter the text of the bill once it’s enrolled for presentation to President Barack Obama – the so-called “enrollment correction” would bar funding to carry out Public...

Republican lawmakers are running away from town halls in August. In a New York Times piece about the frustrations of one citizen activist in Texas, some prominent Republicans who have not held an August town hall are listed. They include: Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL); Rep. Tim Griffin (R-AK); Rep. John Kline (R-MN); Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX); Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), the chair of the House Rules Committee; Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC); and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who has "not announced any town halls but did participate in them in 2009."

Obama proposals face quick opposition in Congress WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama set up high-stakes clashes over guns, immigration, taxes and climate change in a State of the Union address that showcased a newly re-elected president determined to mark his legacy, facing off against a deeply divided Congress with Republicans eager to rein him in.At the center of it all was a fight over the very role of government, with Obama pushing a raft of new initiatives to improve preschool programs and voting, boost manufacturing and research and development, raise the minimum wage and lower energy use. “It is...

The House approved a rule governing debate for the Republicans' Repeal of Obamacare Act on Tuesday. Members voted 240-182 in favor of the rule, which sets up five hours of debate that will take place Tuesday and Wednesday. Democrats strongly oppose the bill, a sentiment reflected in the rule vote. Only four Democrats supported the rule, and every voting Republicans favored it. Democrats voting for the rule were Reps. Dan Boren (Okla.), Larry Kissell (N.C.), Mike McIntyre (N.C.) and Mike Ross (Ark.). The vote came after a debate that seemed to raise the question of why five hours of debate...

The morning after the senior Republican U.S. senator was defeated by a Tea Party-backed challenger in Indiana, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Pete Sessions said he was confident that every GOP House member from Texas would survive Tea Party challenges in the May 29 primary. Speaking at a press breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, the Dallas Republican predicted that “each of our people (will) get out of it without a runoff.” Acknowledging that “a number of my (Texas) colleagues do have these challenges within our party,” he praised the Tea Party for “actively pushing each and every one...

Two government watchdogs are calling for an ethics investigation into the reception a House Republican held in the Capitol while the 112th Congress was being sworn in on Wednesday. The Campaign Legal Center and the Sunlight Foundation said Friday that the Office of Congressional Ethics should look into whether Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) violated House rules by soliciting campaign contributions for his swearing-in ceremony. And the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), on Friday called on Republicans to “use their investigative powers to clarify the circumstances surrounding the issue.”

During ObamaCare debates, past and present, Democrats point to the estimates of the Congressional Budget office which show that enacting Health Care Reform gives the U.S. $143 billion in savings over the first ten years (starting in early 2010), and repealing ObamaCare would 'wipe-out' these very savings. The crucial thing to understand is that the CBO is just a calculator: It only adds and subtracts the numbers Congress gives it. For example, a bill -- to be called ObamaCare -- that has $857 billion in expenses over the first ten years; approximately $500 billion in tax increases, in addition to...

The Congressional Budget Office, in an email to Capitol Hill staffers obtained by the Spectator, has said that repealing the national health care law would reduce net spending by $540 billion in the ten year period from 2012 through 2021. That number represents the cost of the new provisions, minus Medicare cuts. Repealing the bill would also eliminate $770 billion in taxes. It's the tax hikes in the health care law (along with the Medicare cuts) which accounts for the $230 billion in deficit reduction. Full email, from Edward "Sandy" Davis, CBO's Associate Director for Legislative Affairs, below.