Free Republic

President Barack Obama won reelection last year warning voters about what he called an extreme Republican agenda that would roll back the social and economic victories of the previous years. But that agenda is on the move in the states, and on the ballot in next year’s most competitive governors’ races — all of them in places he won in both 2008 and 2012: Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Maine and Michigan. The White House has committed to its first Democratic Governors Association fundraising event of the cycle and pledged to help candidates next year, people familiar with the discussions confirmed...

Coburn says he has a rare type of prostate cancer and that he has given a lot of thought to whether he wants to stay in the Senate for the next three years. Q: The safety net would be for people with pre-existing conditions ... A: Or people who are very, very poor. And so you create a safety net. That's a function of government that it can do, but it can't be managed from Washington. You know Oklahoma could run Medicaid a whole lot better than they're running it now if we get the (federal) government out of it....

Dan Bongino resigned from the Secret Service in 2011 to run for a US Senate seat in Maryland (as a Republican). Bongino believes the “toxic” Obama administration is using government as a weapon exclusively to intimidate enemies. "We’re in a very dangerous place. There are so many scandals, and any one of them could be absolutely catastrophic for what this country stands for.” Bongino's book, “Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All,” published by WND Books hit the NYT best-seller list.

With the “nuclear option” in place, President Barack Obama needs only 51 votes to see his executive and judicial nominations brought to a vote. Liberals are seizing the opportunity, pushing Obama to nominate people with a left-of-center ideology, The Hill reports. Senate Democrats invoked the “nuclear option” on Nov. 21, changing the rule that 60 votes were needed to bring judicial or executive nominees to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote. With only 55 members on their side, Democrats had been unable to prevent Republican filibusters. …

**SNIP** At stake is Illinois' $100 billion pension shortfall that affects teachers outside Chicago, public university employees and state government workers. The worst-in-the-nation deficit is gobbling up tax money that otherwise could go to education and other programs, and has resulted in Illinois holding the lowest credit rating among the states. Illinois' pension problem also is being blamed in part for the state's struggling economy and high unemployment. **SNIP** The measure would have offered pensioners a choice of keeping their 3 percent yearly compounded cost-of-living increases in return for giving up access to state health care. Cullerton maintained that such...

Four more years. 10 trillion more dollars in debt. And by the end of it, we’ll have a nuclear war in the Middle East and mandates forcing you to buy everything from electric cars to Michelle Obama’s trademark Soy and Asphalt pie.The motives behind the Washington Post op-ed argument are… revealing. I watch President Obama, whose approval rating has dipped to 37 percent in CBS News polling — the lowest ever for him — during the troubled rollout of his health-care reform. Many of Obama’s fellow Democrats have distanced themselves from the reform and from the president. Even former president Bill...

Virginia Republicans should nominate for US Senate for 2014 a highly-respected, conservative African-American woman Kay Cole James. That is necessary because male Republicans appear unprepared to counter Democrat "war on women" smears. Republican strategist Ralph Reed explained last week that the GOP needs to pick up seven U.S. Senate seats to control the Senate. Reed identifies seven strong opportunities. But the GOP must win all seven States. If a strong candidate runs in Virginia, that would make eight. A strong candidate in New Hampshire would put nine States in play. Michigan could make ten. In Virginia, despite Terry McAuliffe being...

The National Journal ranks U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., as No. 7 on its list of the 15 most vulnerable Senate seats. The Washington publication notes that fortunes have changed since Hagan and Gov. Bev Perdue were swept into office in 2008 on the Obama wave. Democrats are betting that voters will see the subsequent Republican revolution in North Carolina as overreaching, and that current frontrunner Thom Tillis, the speaker of the state House, will suffer for it. Just the opposite could be true. But, as the magazine points out, polls so far show voters don’t know much about Tillis.

Fresh off a Public Policy Polling survey showing her in statistical ties with four potential Republican opponents, a new poll from Elon Unversity shows North Carolina voters are increasingly unhappy the job performance of Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) and that healthcare is single most important issue on their minds. The Elon Unversity poll found that 37% of voters approve of Hagan’s job performance, while 44% disapprove, a net-negative of 7 points. In September, the North Carolina-based school showed her approval rating slightly above water at 38/35. North Carolinians have continued to sour on President Barack Obama. His approval rating is...

Last week, President Obama's pollster Joel Benenson sent a memo to congressional Democrats encouraging them to refocus attention on the economy and ignore the health care chaos that has consumed the administration for the last two months. The three-page set of talking points argued that the media's relentless focus on the Obamacare website is a "distraction" from more important work on the minds of voters. But for Senate Democrats who backed the unpopular legislation, avoiding the subject isn't so easy. Republicans are armed with reams of polling data showing how the health care law could overturn the Democrats' majority, and...

For Republicans, winning enough races next year to take control of the Senate and expand their current majority in the House is suddenly oh so easy. Democrats are already underwater because of a flood of clear and compelling evidence that Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster. And there’s no end in sight to the rising tide of bad news, which won’t begin to ebb until painfully close to Election Day 2014. Horrendous as the stories about the damage Obamacare has inflicted upon the individual market have been, certain to be even worse will be news yet-to-come about its damage to both...

The collision is unavoidable. Barack’s pathological narcissism will ultimately face the fierce, direct opposition of the political best interests of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton, most House Democrats and virtually all Senate Democrats in 2014 and 2016. These two massive, ideological forces will rip apart the Democrat Party and badly weaken the mainstream media’s corrosive influence in America. The widespread toxicity of ObamaCare will impact all federal elections, driving the majority of office seeking Democrats to choose self-preservation and party-preservation over saving Obama’s personal legacy. Checkmate. America wins. The expanding nightmare of ObamaCare, with policy cancellation victims exceeding five million in...

On Tuesday, November 12, Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse walked into Mitch McConnell’s office to clear the air. Contrary to the rumors, Sasse wanted to say, he hadn’t secretly vowed to oppose McConnell’s leadership if elected. In fact, he hadn’t been asked to make such a pledge and would never have even considered it. That was the plan, anyway. As soon as Sasse sat down, McConnell lit into him, criticizing him for working with the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) as well as for posting a viral YouTube video in which he demanded “every Republican in Washington, starting with Minority Leader...

Revolutions are breaks from the norm; like a hand grenade in a room, their results are unpredictable. The ordinary coup in a third world nation is not a revolution, but rather the norm in power transfers. In a coup, the base rules of thuggary are unchanged, whereas a revolution requires a rewrite of the rules, usually with unintended results. This week, the US Senate opened the door to revolution by suspending decades of tradition regarding Presidential Advise and Consent. While the immediate results are clear – left-wing courts and agencies – nobody who voted to abolish Cloture likely understands the...

As many are painfully aware, the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed in price from Q4 2007 to Q4 2008. Fannie Mae stock was trading at $60.81 on September 28, 2007 and fell to $1.71 by September 30, 2008. That is quite a drop. But Fannie Mae’s equity is now at $2.73 while Freddie Mac’s is at $2.52 per share. Both started showing signs of life in March 2013, spiked on May 28th, fell again, but has regained upward momentum since September. Who is in the running to purchase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and provide private market...

Yellen currently serves as vice chairman of the Fed and as a reliable dove would represent continuity with Bernanke. She has consistently supported Bernanke’s easy-money policies and even seems open to more aggressive moves to fight stubbornly-high unemployment. "I consider it imperative that we do what we can to promote a very strong recovery," Yellen said during her confirmation hearing. Yet Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced plans on Thursday to enact the so-called "nuclear option," which would change Senate rules to allow him to approve certain motions with a simple majority rather than 60 votes. Yellen, who was among...

The Senate vote Thursday to curb the use of filibuster against judicial nominees, over the objections of the Republican minority, can only be seen as a terrifying development. Why, next thing you know we could be deciding all sorts of things by majority vote. The average American may think deciding things by majority vote is the basic idea of our democracy. But say something like that, and you risk getting a lecture on how America is not a democracy but a constitutional republic, and that the framers took care not to give too much power to the people, and that...

Dcapetto wrote: Where does it say god given anything? Here is our constitution find me the passage that says god given. The Newest Liberal Criminal Assault The Right To Self Defense Dear Comrade Cap, Books are for reading, not just for burning. "Man ... must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.... This law of nature...is of course superior to any other.... No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force...from this original." -...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLQebqVQKcc The Senate, by not passing a budget, and by saying fund all or nothing, has taken away the House's power of the purse to defund courts or an other agency that goes beyond its power. If the House impeaches a judge, the current senate would neither try nor convict and remove from office. If the House abolished a court, or limited its jurisdiction, that law would never get through the senate. Every means by which the people can rein in a courts power would be halted by the US Senate and then by former Senator Barack Obama. Therefore, we...

Congress is broken, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday before holding a party-line vote that disposed of rules that have guided and protected the chamber since 1789. Democrats were fully justified in stripping Republicans of their right to filibuster President Obama’s nominees — yet they will come to deeply regret what they have done. Reid’s remedy — calling a simple-majority vote to undo more than two centuries of custom — has created a situation in which the minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is expected to use the minority’s remaining powers to gum up the works, and to get...

Mississippi GOP Sen. Thad Cochran announced he will be deciding his re-election plans at the end of the month, amid growing signs that the six-term senator could be heading for the exits. Cochran, the second longest-serving Republican in the upper chamber, is facing the prospect of a competitive Republican primary. An outspoken conservative leader in the Mississippi legislature, state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R), announced a primary against the incumbent last month. Cochran raised only $53,000 in the last fundraising quarter -- a paltry sum for the longtime appropriator. Announcing at the end of the month would mean Cochran would be...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev) move to eliminate the rule that required a 60-vote majority to end debate has “grievously irked” his GOP counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken). “Harry promised he would never use this so-called ‘nuclear option,’” McConnell complained. “When you put this together with the false promises of ‘if you like your insurance you can keep it’ that have been made by the president and virtually every Democrat over the past three years we see a pattern of deception that has destroyed the Government’s credibility. I’m fighting mad.” McConnell says he places most of the blame...

“...I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires....” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Senate Rule XXII has “guided and protected the chamber since 1789.” It was last revised in 1975 following a rancorous debate that lasted months, not minutes, to require three-fifths of the entire Senate, or 60 votes, to end a filibuster.Oh sure, there has been some noisy posturing from both sides of the aisle from time to time about changing this. Butt until last week nobody was brave, or stupid enough, to actually launch the nuclear option. Primarily because,...

**SNIP** Viewpoints change. Allegiances shift. Voting patterns are not chiseled in stone. The GOP will again win control of the Senate and the White House – and sooner than many Democrats seem to think, thanks to the debacle that is Obamacare. When they do, and they will, they will use these new rules to their own advantage, while the Democrats and their left-liberal allies in the major media yelp like scalded dogs about the unfairness and undemocratic nature of what is going on. In the end, what Reid has done will make it easier than it has been for conservatives...

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) warns sports stadiums are at risk from the "sea level rise effects of climate change," and that climate change specifically threatens hockey and skiing. "We see significant sports facilities, the palaces of - of sport that are at risk from the storm, climate, sea-level rise effects of climate change," Sen. Whitehouse said today following a closed-door climate discussion with executives from the NFL, NHL and NBA.

On Thursday, Don Imus, whom MSNBC fired in 2007 after he referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy headed hos" on the network, said he could not believe MSNBC President Phil Griffin is going to keep Martin Bashir on the air after he suggested someone should urinate or defecate in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's mouth.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on a conference call organized by Karl Rove’s Crossroads organization for large donors and their advisers on Oct. 30 that the Tea Party movement, in his view, is a “nothing but a bunch of bullies” that he plans to “punch … in the nose.” On the call, according to a donor who was on it, McConnell personally named Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) as Tea Party conservatives he views as problematic for him. “The bulk of it was an attack on the Tea Party in general, Cruz in particular,” the source,...

The Senate vote Thursday to lower the barriers for presidential nominations should make it easier for President Obama to accomplish key second-term priorities, including tougher measures on climate change and financial regulation, that have faced intense opposition from Republicans in Congress. The move to allow a simple majority vote on most executive and judicial nominees also sets the stage for Obama to appoint new top officials to the Federal Reserve and other key agencies — probably leading to more aggressive action to stimulate the economy and housing market. And it frees Obama to make changes to his Cabinet without the...

Well. . . Harry Reid has gone nuclear. Yesterday the Senate, with cheerleading from Democrats in the House of Representatives and our honesty-deprived White House, passed a rule that would strip the minority party of its right to filibuster most Presidential nominees. The move itself (known as the “nuclear option”) usurps the Senate’s traditional eye toward minority rights, and dismantles the republican form of deliberation for which the Senate is known. The truly audacious part of the Senate Democrat’s power grab, however, was their blatant hypocrisy. After all, in 2005 they voted against this very rule change. Now don’t...

I realize there is not a whole lot we can do about the vote yesterday in the Senate regarding the rule change. However, I did call both of my senators from TN (Alexander and Corker) expressing my displeasure. Basically, I told them that this is what the appeasement from them (my two senators) has gotten us. The Dems want total control and inch by inch the GOP is giving it to them. I told both offices I would like to see some fight from them (I know, good luck!). I urge you to call your Senators and express your displeasure...

President Obama will get a short-term lift for his nominees, judicial and otherwise, but over the immediate horizon, the strong-arm move by Senate Democrats on Thursday to limit filibusters could usher in an era of rank partisan warfare beyond even what Americans have seen in the past five years. Ultimately, a small group of centrists — Republicans and Democrats — could find the muscle to hold the Senate at bay until bipartisan solutions can be found. But for the foreseeable future, Republicans, wounded and eager to show they have not been stripped of all power, are far more likely to...

....Reid clinched support for changing the rules at the weekly Tuesday Senate Democratic caucus lunch. .....Reid, without mentioning the colleague’s name, told his caucus that one of its senior members who had long opposed filibuster reform, recently had a change of mind and privately urged him to trigger the controversial tactic. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) then rose before the room full of Democrats and identified herself as the recent convert. “She got up right afterward and said, ‘He was talking about me,’” said a Democratic senator..... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not know if he had the votes...

"...As Majority Leader Harry Reid orchestrated the change in the rules governing executive nominations and lower-court appointments, his opponents cried tyranny, though they also promised that when they took power they would go further, applying the new standard to Supreme Court nominations. In other words, tyranny—but we promise we'll give you more of it. The new rules fit with that kind of Senate. ...Whoever is ultimately at fault for the rule change—the Democrats who forced it or the Republicans who blocked the nominations requiring the new rules—the result is that the minority will have less power. That means elections will...

......Sen. Carl Levin (Mich.), one of just three Democrats who opposed his colleagues’ naked power grab, read those words on the Senate floor Thursday after Reid invoked the nuclear option. The rumpled Levin is not known for his oratory. But he is retiring next year and free to speak his mind — and his words were potent. “We need to change the rules, but to change it in the way we changed it today means there are no rules except as the majority wants them,” Levin said. “This precedent is going to be used, I fear, to change the rules...

Mark Levin opened his show with another epic monologue explaining that what’s really going on with this so-called nuclear option is that Obama wants to run this nation out of the Oval Office. Listen:

<p>We should have known this was coming. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has warned he would do something along these lines. He has proven, in this instance, at least, that he can be trusted to do what he said he would do.</p>

In April 2005, when Democrats were blocking a list of Bush nominees and Republicans were threatening to invoke the “nuclear option,” the newly elected junior senator from Illinois, Sen. Barack Obama, took to the floor and sanctimoniously proclaimed that the nuclear option would not only be a violation of democratic principles, but that it would worsen partisanship. Here are few excerpts from his remarks: Everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster – if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and...

So in 2005 it was bad when GWB was in power but in 2013, its good because he is Pres. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q6aqw_SfU0&feature=youtu.be

President Barack Obama said Thursday that he supports Senate Democrats’ dramatic action to change the chamber’s rules for presidential nominees, saying "enough is enough" when it comes to gridlock on Capitol Hill. "The vote today, I think, is an indication that a majority of senators believe as I believe that enough is enough," Obama said at the White House. "The American people’s business is far too important to keep falling prey day after day to Washington politics." Decrying the past "abuse of arcane procedural tactics" to block legislation and nominations, Obama conceded that neither party is blameless in creating gridlock...

November 21, 2013 Thanks Obamacare: Prostitutes Say It Is "Truly a Blessing" Sarah Jean Seman 11/20/2013 Taxpayers will be happy to know they not only fund abortions under the Affordable Care Act, they also help prostitutes stay healthy. Prior to Obamacare, brothel workers at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Nevada said they were unable to find coverage under their profession. Prostitute “Caressa Kisses” explained to WOAI NBC News: “They equate us to illegal working girls who have very high STDS and AIDS rates. Which we have none of the above, we’re legal, licensed prostitutes. I see the doctor every week,...

The Senate is on the verge of striking down the long-standing filibuster rules for most presidential nominations, potentially doing so on a party-line vote that would alter nearly 225 years of precedent. Democrats, infuriated by what they see as a pattern of obstruction and delay over President Obama’s nominees, expect to trigger the showdown by bringing up one of the recent judicial nominees whom Republicans blocked by a filibuster. According to senior Democratic aides, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) will set in motion a complicated parliamentary process that ends with a simple-majority vote setting a new rule that will...

The Senate Majority Leader is threatening again that he will break Senate rules to change the rules—so he can do anything he wants with the bare minimum number of votes (51). ...This would mean effectively ending the use of the filibuster, Senators’ ability to speak at length against measures they oppose. That would be bad news, as this Senator explained: "Everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster—if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate—then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse."...

On Jan. 1, 1943, Robert Gene Baker arrived in Washington at the height of World War II to become a Senate page. Two decades later, this son of a mailman from Pickens, S.C., had become the reigning Washington wheeler-dealer and fixer of his day as secretary to the Senate’s Democratic majority. In the era of President John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, Baker was indispensable on Capitol Hill: The Man Who Knew Too Much -snip Still, prosecutors eventually caught up with Baker, if not his patron, and he ended up serving 18 months in prison on federal tax evasion charges. In...

Republicans see Montana’s open Senate seat as a key piece of their puzzle to win the chamber next year — and a new poll suggests that Rep. Steve Daines, the top GOP candidate in the race, is in good shape to pick up the seat. He leads both Democratic candidates, current Lt. Gov. John Walsh and former Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger, by double digits in the survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. Against Walsh, national Democrats’ preferred candidate, Daines leads by 17 points, 52 percent to 35 percent. Bohlinger does slightly better than Walsh, but he’s still far...

The Senate voted 38-53 against breaking a filibuster of the nomination of Judge Robert Wilkins to the court, after blocking votes on two other D.C. Circuit nominees -- Patricia Millett and Nina Pillard -- earlier this month. "I am deeply disappointed that Senate Republicans have once again refused to do their job and give well-qualified nominees to the federal bench the yes-or-no votes they deserve," the president said in a statement. "The American people and our judicial system deserve better," he later added. "A majority of the United States Senate supports these three extraordinary nominees, and it is time for...

While the relentless multiple expansion (if not so much earnings growth and certainly not revenue contraction) looks set to push all three main stock indices over the key psychological levels of 16000, 1800 and 4000, with the all time bubble high on the Nasdaq increasingly looking like the next big target, the stock market mania has nothing on Bitcoin, which only yesterday crossed $500 for the first time ever, and as of this morning is already 20% higher, having just crossed $600 minutes ago. Which means that anything prices in Bitcoin has entered bear market in just the past day....

Sharron Angle. Christine O’Donnell. Todd Akin. Richard Mourdock. After Republican primaries produced that horror show of candidates in two consecutive elections, probably costing the party control of the Senate, GOP leaders vowed that 2014 must be different. But as President Barack Obama learned the hard way, promising change is one thing, producing it is another. And while the GOP clearly has made headway this year curbing intraparty, resource-draining firefights that yield outside-the-mainstream nominees, it’s less apparent that the progress will be enough to net the six seats it will take to make Sen. Mitch McConnell majority leader. The encouraging news...

President Obama nominates Vivek Hallegere Murthy for surgeon general By JENNIFER HABERKORN | 11/14/13 6:16 PM EST The White House said Thursday that President Barack Obama intends to nominate Vivek Hallegere Murthy to be the next surgeon general. He is the co-founder and president of Doctors for America, which began as Doctors for Obama in 2008. He is a hospitalist attending physician and instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. He would succeed Regina Benjamin, who announced her resignation from the post in July.

See the corruption, your gut instincts are correct.