Free Republic

It’s has been widely assumed this morning by some immigration advocates (and by yours truly, too) that the new immigration reform plan’s process of citizenship for the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants is contingent on a commission of Southwestern officials declaring the border secure. Not true. I’ve now got clarification from Senate staff working on the bill, and it turns out that the enforcement commission’s judgments will only be advisory, and are entirely nonbinding. Congress’ actions will not be dictated by what this commission concludes; neither will actions taken by the Department of Homeland Security. The citizenship process will be...

Egypt's president is a current member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is the ideological parent of Al Queda and other violent Jihadist groups waging war against the U.S. in particular and the West in general. As recently as 2010, President Morsi labelled Jews as "descendants of apes and pigs." The current administration rightly called those remarks "deeply offensive." We have no reason to believe Mr. Morsi does not still hold those beliefs, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. He has recalled no transformative event which caused him to change his thinking. Thus, Egypt's Morsi should not receive any more...

Congressional committees and hearings are not necessary to prove without doubt that the administration deliberately lied when it attributed the Benghazi consulate attack solely to demonstrators. A simple Google search for September 11-12 brings up dozens of media reports indicating that at the very least an organized attack took advantage of a possible demonstration as cover (we now know there was no demonstration). Experts from around the world were quoted as insisting that the attack was organized, with many naming names. Furthermore, evidence of an organized attack is multitudinous in these reports. For the administration to have claimed it had no information that...

All, What is the real status of the military vote? I see ballots destroyed in a crash, I hear nothing from Boehner, I hear a few rumblings from Graham and McCain, but the biggest stink raised was from Josh Mandell in Ohio. Does anyone know any facts or the real latest of military voting (I guess I mean overseas)? Why is Boehner silent? Makes me believe he'd be fine with 0bummer winning.

Those in the CIA Annex requested permission to aid the consulate. Were told to stand down at least twice. Went anyway after being told to stand down the second time

WALKING AL QUIDA IN BENGHAZIWHY AMBASSADOR STEVENS AND THREE OTHER AMERICANS DIED(Update october 24, 2012) As horrible as it may be to contemplate, is it possible that the gruesome death of our Ambassador in Benghazi was acutally a part of a Al Quida Gun Running scheme gone horribly awry? I believe that somehow it could be something along those line, because of all the unanswered questions there, the unbelievably chaotic and rushed manner in which the Obama administration tried to cover it up...and continued to cover it up well past all rational thinking would indicate that they were doing...

House Speaker John A. Boehner on Thursday demanded that President Obama explain why his administration has struggled to handle the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in a move that could raise the political peril to the White House. In a letter to Mr. Obama, the Republican speaker demanded that the president answer five questions including why his administration turned down requests for more security at the diplomatic post, and why the White House didn’t do a better job of acknowledging it as a terrorist attack until well after the fact. “Our country will not be able...

Anyone who was following the news, this week, had to be shocked at the immediate, smash-mouth response from the Obama White House to the Supreme Court's ruling to uphold the most important part of the Arizona immigration law. He ordered his entire administration and all the government agencies to IGNORE any immigration violations reported by Arizona law enforcement. "If Arizona calls, hang up" is basically what he told his people. At the same time he provided a toll free number for illegals to call to report any perceived profiling by Arizona authorities. And, of course, the harassment of sheriff Joe...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday praised Republican Leader Mitch McConnell for putting forth a plan to raise the debt ceiling, calling it a “serious proposal” that he’s continuing to study. “He spent a great deal of time working on this. I commend him for his thoughtful and unique proposal, something that we have to look at very closely,” Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said on the Senate floor. “I’m heartened by what I read. This is a serious proposal, and I commend the Republican leader for coming forward with it.” McConnell laid out his plan on Tuesday as he...

President Barack Obama’s administration is quietly offering a quasi-amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, while aiming to win reelection by mobilizing a wave of new Hispanic voters, say supporters of stronger immigration law enforcement. The new rules were quietly announced Friday with a new memo from top officials at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. The “prosecutorial discretion” memo says officials need not enforce immigration laws if illegal immigrants are enrolled in an education center or if their relatives have volunteered for the US military. “They’re pushing the [immigration] agents to be even more lax, to...

So what if the pre-2002 Taliban government of Afghanistan harbored terrorists that were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. And never mind if more recently the Taliban reacted to the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with a pair of suicide bombers – they’re not really our enemies. That’s the takeaway from public radio host John Hockenberry, whose show “The Takeaway” appears on NPR stations all over the country. In an interview with Christine Fair, assistant professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Hockenberry challenged the notion of the Taliban...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday that a resolution he’s spent months crafting on Libya will likely call on the White House to increase its communication with Congress, an addition that could help pick up support for the stalled measure. Last week the Foreign Relations Committee postponed a mark up of McCain’s resolution, written in partnership with Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), fearing the measure would not get enough votes. “I think as the situation has evolved in Libya, and frankly the lack of consultation and reporting to Congress has gone on, then we will be working on more...

President Barack Obama's guarantee on $1 billion of Egyptian Eurobonds is poised to reduce the country's borrowing costs, helping the transition to democracy after six decades of autocratic rule. The support that Obama pledged last month may cut yields on the five-year debt by 200 basis points, or the equivalent of $100 million, according to the median estimate of five fund managers surveyed by Bloomberg. Yields on Egypt's one-year bills jumped to the highest level since November 2008 following the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak in February. The country last sold international debt in April 2010. "The American backing...

Late last year, Republican Congressman Fred Upton, who co-sponsored the infamous ban on the current generation of inexpensive incandescent light bulbs included in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, was desperate to secure conservative support for his bid to become Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the same committee in which he had introduced the despised ban three years earlier. He therefore promised that one of his first acts would be to advance legislation that would repeal the very light bulb ban he had once championed. Upton’s ploy succeeded, and in January of this year, Speaker of the...

As the deadline for raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling approaches, House Republicans are discussing a temporary extension of the cap so the country can avoid default and they can continue to negotiate large spending cuts with the White House, the FOX Business Network has learned. The discussions among key Republican staffers are by no means written in stone, according to people with knowledge of the matter. But they do reflect the tightrope Republicans must walk if they don’t reach an agreement with the Obama Administration. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has said that if the ceiling isn’t raised by August...

Pending legislation that would grant the President of the United States the power to pull the plug on the country’s internet access in a declared “emergency” returned to the forefront this week on the same day Egyptians faced a nation-wide blackout designed to curtail widespread government protests. Egypt flipped it’s so-called “kill switch” — will the U.S.? The bipartisan bill is sponsored by Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The bill — called “The Protecting Cyberspace As A National Asset Act of 2010” S.3480 — was approved by a Senate panel...