Free Republic

**SNIP** After all, a Senate seat is a plum job anywhere, but especially for Democrats in California, where it’s been decades since any of them lost a reelection bid for statewide office. Whoever takes Boxer’s place can expect to become the state’s senior senator after 2018, when the then-85-year-old Dianne Feinstein is also widely expected to retire. But ambitious Democrats should beware: Their eagerness, even greed, could do in their party’s hold on Boxer’s spot. It has happened before in California, and very recently. The field of potential Democratic candidates for Boxer’s slot is large, possibly going beyond obvious prospects...

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer is mulling a run for Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat, according to a person close to the former hedge fund trader. “My sense is that he will take a look at it and consider it over the next few days or so,” the person said. The person added that Steyer has been approached by some in the liberal community to run for Boxer’s seat, while others have urged him to run for governor of California in 2018. Another option: running for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat if she retires in 2018. Almost as soon as Boxer announced that...

For a five-month period that ends this week, every single elected Republican in Congress was a white Christian. Let me repeat that: every elected GOP Member of the House and Senate was a white Christian.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A battle is shaping up between Sens. Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Cruz, the conservative firebrand, are competing for influence among the Senate’s 12 Republican freshmen. The outcome, writes the Hill, will potentially shape the agenda for 2015 and beyond. Cruz has reached out to freshman Republicans in hopes they will join his effort to pressure GOP leaders to pursue what he calls a “bold agenda.” McConnell, meanwhile, has consistently told colleagues the only way they can have an impact is by getting legislation to President Barack Obama’s desk. That means...

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) on Wednesday fired back at Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) characterization of the chamber as dysfunctional during eight years of Democratic control. McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor this week, has repeatedly characterized the upper chamber as a body paralyzed by Reid’s iron grip on the agenda. The new Republican majority leader pledged Wednesday to “restore the Senate” by returning to regular order and getting committees working again. Reid said McConnell’s narrative is off-base. “The new majority leader claims the Senate has not achieved, in his words, ‘squat,’ in recent years. The numbers in...

Not everyone wants a kiss from uncle Biden. **SNIP** But on Tuesday during the swearing-in for the 114th Congress, it didn't go over so well. Maggie — the young daughter of Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) — was not having it. And it was pretty awesome.

I'm not a huge fan of McConnell or the current GOP leadership, but I'll take it over what we had.If nothing else gets done until 2017 at least we have this...

WAAAAAAH!!! I don't like my Windows 8 so I think I'll dump it! Okay, no big deal. Most of us are not pleased with that operating system. However, Dylan Matthews of General Electric Vox displays the same glibness which, while perhaps appropriate to switching computer operating systems, is completely absurd when wanting to toss over 200 years of constitutional federalism overboard by deciding to abolish the U.S. Senate because he has decided it is "anti-democratic." Here is Dylan making the case that the Founding Fathers were in error:

Democrats are looking to reclaim their Senate majority in two years, but after losing nine Senate seats in 2014, their path back to that majority won't be easy. **SNIP** Florida: Will Marco Rubio be running for a second term? Jeb Bush's decision to run for president complicates Rubio's own interests for higher office. With many of the freshman senator's most reliable donors lining up with Bush, it's increasingly possible that Rubio will opt to run for reelection. But what's bad for Rubio's national ambitions would be good for the GOP's chances of holding onto the swing Senate seat. If Rubio...

Harry Reid suffers severe injuries from freak exercise equipment accident. Rubber band breaks and smacks him in the face and he falls. Broken bones in face and ribs.

Republicans just won the Senate majority last month. But can they keep it? A cursory glance at the 2016 Senate map shows a slew of endangered Republicans up in two years — with few opportunities for offense as in 2014, when the GOP won nine Democratic-held seats to grab control of the chamber.

The "CRomnibus" government funding bill passed handily last weekend, but not before Senators Lee and Cruz had their say. In a controversial move, the two senators managed to put their colleagues on record voting for or against funding President Obama's latest unconstitutional executive power grab. Many Republican senators, however, protest too much, claiming that Lee and Cruz may have allowed the Democrats to pass a number of executive nominees because of their insistence upon making their point. As the story goes, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had promised to adjourn the Senate after passing the CRomnibus and a couple...

Hey, Jeb, Ted, Rand, Marco, Bobby, Chris and the dozen or more others I'm forgetting, here's something to write on your bathroom mirror in 2015 and beyond: The "P" in POTUS stands for "President," not "Pundit." I understand that the Seinfeldian faux-holiday Festivus is behind us, but I want to get at least this one grievance in for next year a bit early. Republicans have a tendency to tell, not show. They feel the need to explain why they are saying something, rather than work at simply saying what they need to say convincingly. I call it "reading your stage...

Unlike his predecessor as host of Meet the Press, Chuck Todd is an approachable, un-phony presence. He knows politics and clearly enjoys politics. But, boy, is he excitable, especially on the subject of immigration, where he often lets the drama of the moment cloud his judgment. [You need three examples-ed. Got em.] 1. It’s November 7, 2012. Romney has just lost the presidency, something many analysts immediately blame on his poor showing among Latinos. The Beltway mind instantly draws but one conclusion: Republicans need to assuage Latinos by legalizing illegal immigrants, stat. Obama’s ‘immigration reform,’ Todd says, will get “80...

To incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), it is more important for Republicans to be the party of yes than go all-out to defund President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty.According to the New York Times, McConnell “acknowledges that changing the mind-set of opposition” in the next Congress “will be crucial to advancing legislation that will attract Democratic support and force” Obama “into difficult choices over whether to sign measures pushed by his adversaries.” The Times notes “that is why his focus will be lawmakers he thinks he can meld into a governing coalition.”“All of us from time to time make a point,” Mr. McConnell told the...

Today, Senate Conservatives Action (SCA), the super PAC arm of the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), released three new radio ads holding GOP House leaders accountable for voting to fund the president's unlawful executive amnesty. The ads will air for one week in the home districts of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA). Over the past week, freedom-loving Americans from across the country pledged to donate over $117,000 to hold these leaders accountable if they voted to fund the president's amnesty. The three radio ads released today carry out...

Once hailed in the press as the Democratic candidate in 2014’s “marquee race,” which could see the Republican Senate minority leader unceremoniously defenestrated by Kentucky’s voters. Grimes’ loss to Mitch McConnell was among the first heartbreak of election night for liberal Democrats when her race was among the earliest to be called for the Republican candidate. When all the votes were counted, Grimes lost by just over 15 points. It wasn’t even close. If you missed Kentucky’s secretary of state, she was not gone for long. Having failed in her mission to oust McConnell, the former Democratic U.S. Senate...

Sen. Mark Begich can still return to the Senate.Even though lawmakers who will not be returning to Congress in January might feel downtrodden, they can find solace in the fact that they retain some congressional perks. Those perks, ranging from floor access to permanent identification cards, were outlined in the Congressional Research Service’s Dec. 5 report titled “Selected Privileges and Courtesies Extended to Former Members of Congress.” CRS American National Government specialist R. Eric Peterson wrote in the report, “Some [privileges] are derived from law and chamber rules, but others are courtesies that have been extended as a matter of...

The new Republican-controlled Senate's first act in January will be approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday. McConnell told reporters that the bill would be based on a measure that failed in the Senate last month that was co-sponsored by North Dakota Republican John Hoeven and Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu. "It'll be open for amendment," McConnell said. "I will hope that senators on both sides will offer energy-related amendments but there'll be no effort to try to micromanage the amendment process." Landrieu pushed for a Keystone vote in November in a last-ditch effort to...

Ted Cruz privately apologized to GOP senators Tuesday for interrupting their holiday schedules by his surprise tactics that effectively brought the Senate into session over the weekend. According to five senators who attended Tuesday’s caucus lunch, Cruz offered the apology in unsolicited remarks, saying that he regretted if any of his colleagues’ schedules were ruined by his maneuvering. He didn’t say whether he would do something similar again, senators said. And unlike a contentious lunch last year after GOP senators pointedly blamed Cruz for prompting the government shutdown, no sharp words were directed at the Texas freshman at Tuesday’s lunch,...