Free Republic

ANSING, MI -- Michigan Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema has cancelled plans to attend this week's GOP meeting in Washington amidst growing calls for his resignation. "My liberal critics within the Republican Party have chosen to elevate this discussion to the RNC Meeting and make it a drawn out fight between liberals and conservatives within the party," Agema said in a statement provided to MLive. "For this reason, I have decided it is best for the party that I not attend the meeting this week and instead have sent a proxy who will vote how I want on the Rules."...

Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York will be in Washington on Friday to pressure Republican lawmakers to take up an overhaul of immigration laws. The meeting, his first major public policy event since his term ended, is pegged to President Obama’s State of the Union address on Jan. 28. The meeting will include prominent Republicans and U.S. Chamber of Commerce representatives.

What if conservative FReepers/bloggers/online activists were to instigate a boycott of major donors to Karl Rove's 'American Crossroads' and 'Crossroads GPS' SuperPACs- so that underwriting Rove's war on the Gee-Oh-Pee's own base comes at as heavy a price as possible? Then perhaps they'll realize what they're doing is wrong.   Crossroads GPS is a 'dark money' PAC -thus not required to release donor info- but we've got enough on the original American Crossroads group to make our presence felt (via pain inflicted) while we try and sniff-out the rest. Karl Rove and his congressional allies need to be taken-out-at-the-knees...

Chris Christie is one of the GOP's brightest stars and one of its best hopes for 2016. But during his toughest hour, he simply hasn't been able to count on a chorus of national GOP support rallying full-bore to his side. -snip- Christie's rise in GOP circles is in no small part due to an invisible but immensely powerful donor and power broker class that loves him. This wing of the party tried to woo him to run for president in 2012, even after Mitt Romney was in the race. And they are expected to be there for him in...

U.S. investigators are looking into whether embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie misused about $2 million in Superstorm Sandy relief funds for an ad campaign that put him in the spotlight in an election year, a lawmaker said on Monday. Already enmeshed in a scandal over snarled traffic at the George Washington Bridge, Christie, a rising star in the Republican party, is now being audited by the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone Jr., a Democrat. The inspector is focusing on a federally financed $25 million Jersey Shore marketing...

Subpoenas could be issued as soon as Monday for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s former deputy chief of staff and campaign manager, whose heads rolled after explosive e-mails implicated them in the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal, sources said. And the ongoing Bridgegate investigation has paralyzed Christie’s office, with a ripple effect that’s frozen several top moves and appointments as a result of the mess. Sources said on Sunday that state Senate Democrats have delayed the confirmation hearing for Kevin O’Dowd, Christie’s nominee for attorney general, who is his current chief of staff. Sources said Democratic legislators want time to...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has given two different timelines of when he learned of lane closures on the George Washington Bridge after they were imposed by his aides, allegedly for political reasons. Local lanes of the bridge connecting New York City to New Jersey were diverted for five days in September, ostensibly for a traffic study. It later emerged that Christie allies had engineered the closures, which caused massive traffic jams in Fort Lee, N.J., whose mayor didn't endorse Mr. Christie. The governor said he had no knowledge of his allies' involvement in the closures.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says a traffic jam scandal won’t disqualify New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie from running for president. Appearing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Priebus says Republican primary voters could move past the scandal that has ensnared the administration as polls show Christie as a top contender in 2016. …

RNC chairman Reince Priebus on Tuesday predicted “an avalanche of information on Hillary Clinton” will be revealed ahead of her likely run for president in 2016, saying “scandal surrounds her.” “She wanders and scandal surrounds her,” Priebus said during an appearance on CNN’s “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer.

Christie, 51, leads the Republican Governors Association and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was one of the few members to stand in support with Christie, expressing her support after his press conference. Rudy Giuliani came out to support Christie on Friday and RNC Chair Reince Priebus praised Christie for his transparency.

Gov. Chris Christie’s load of bull: Fired aide Bridget Kelly merely a patsy in attempt to shelter Port Authority cronies, himself What did the governor know about the George Washington Bridge lane closures, and when did he know it? Ex-Port Authority executive David Wildstein pleaded the Fifth Wednesday, so we wait until an independent investigation can reveal the whole story. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s one-hour-and-forty-seven-minute self-serving, self-pitying display of contrition on Thursday was a climactic act in a brazen cover-up that threatens to further unravel his political career. Ever so thoroughly the governor scoured the thesaurus for words of...

New Jersey lawmakers investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal held a former Port Authority executive in contempt today for refusing to answer questions about his role in the controversy. After losing a bid to quash a subpoena, former Port Authority executive David Wildstein invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 20 times at a state assembly hearing, refusing to answer any questions related to the political payback scheme. Providing only his name and the town where he lives, Wildstein remained silent about even the most innocuous of questions, including where he worked and whether a message with his name...

Neighbors described the 91-year-old Fort Lee woman who lay unconscious as lane closures at the George Washington Bridge delayed first responders from attending to her as a private, as a religious person. A letter from the borough's EMS coordinator to the mayor said, in at least four instances, that emergency officials were snarled by traffic in responding to calls, including to one on Harvard Place involving an elderly woman who later died. The letter from EMS coordinator Paul Favia, to Mayor Mark Sokolich, said the call involving the elderly woman, who was in cardiac arrest, came in at 8:43 a.m....

A political retaliation scandal that erupted around Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday may be about to get worse. In September, according to a report from the Bergen Record, paramedics trying to reach an unconscious 91-year-old woman in Fort Lee, N.J., got stuck in a traffic jam that had apparently been created by Christie's associates as political punishment for the borough's mayor, a Democrat. Multiple lanes were forced to merge into one, gridlocking traffic for days. The woman later died at a hospital of cardiac arrest, according to a Sept. 10 letter that EMS coordinator Paul Favia sent...

The U.S. Attorney in New Jersey will probe the scandal surrounding the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, a scandal that has engulfed Gov. Chris Christie, the New York Times is reporting. Christie, a possible Republican White House candidate, is holding a news conference at his office in the state capital of Trenton this morning. The controversy erupted with the public release of incriminating emails showing that a top Christie aide played a key role in closing some lanes to the bridge, in a ploy to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, who didn't endorse Christie...

In the best possible light, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie built a top staff of lying thugs who threatened lives and safety to serve his political ends. If not, Christie is a lying thug himself. Emails and text messages among his close aides made public Wednesday documented that in September they gleefully engineered George Washington Bridge lane closures to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for failing to endorse their boss’ reelection. Local officials say the gridlock they caused delayed ambulances in responding to four calls, including one involving an unconscious 91-year-old woman who later died.

The controversial lane closures at the George Washington Bridge last September delayed emergency responders from attending to at least four medical situations in Fort Lee — including helping a 91-year-old woman who lay unconscious and later died, according to a report by The Record. Democrats have long accused Republican Gov. Chris Christie of ordering the lane closures as political retribution for Fort Lee's Democratic mayor refusing to endorse his re-election bid last year. Today, newly unveiled e-mails show that one of Christie's top aides knew about the closures in advance. The governor himself has denied being involved and today issued...

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 6, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a move that boosts social conservatives in an election year, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) has announced that he is delaying the RNC's annual winter meeting so he and others can attend the March for Life. The Washington Times reports that approximately 20 of the 168 members of the RNC were planning to attend the March before Preibus' announcement. With Preibus' backing, the RNC is now renting buses to take attendees from downtown D.C. to the March, which takes place on Capitol Hill.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) seems determined to undo the political advantage the GOP has gained from the disastrous implementation of ObamaCare. According to the New York Times, Boehner “has signaled he may embrace a series of limited changes to the nation’s immigration laws in the coming months,” bringing up a series of bills to advance that agenda. Apparently Boehner is holding firm to the belief that the need for some kind of “reform” outweighs the risks of alienating his core constituency. According to the Boehner’s aides, the Speaker is considering a “step by step” process, though they did not...

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio has signaled he may embrace a series of limited changes to the nation’s immigration laws in the coming months, giving advocates for change new hope that 2014 might be the year that a bitterly divided Congress reaches a political compromise to overhaul the sprawling system. Mr. Boehner has in recent weeks hired Rebecca Tallent, a longtime immigration adviser to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has long backed broad immigration changes. Advocates for an overhaul say the hiring, as well as angry comments by Mr. Boehner critical of Tea Party opposition to the...