Free Republic

On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced the “Deterring Undue Enforcement by Protecting Rights of Citizens from Excessive Searches and Seizures,” or DUE PROCESS, Act. The reforms contained in Grassley’s bill would significantly alter the federal civil asset forfeiture landscape, dramatically improving the lot of innocent property owners caught up in a skewed and unfair forfeiture system. Civil asset forfeiture laws target property, not people. As a result, no criminal charges or convictions are needed in civil forfeiture cases. Rather, the government need only prove by a preponderance of the evidence that there is a nexus between...

The Senate may take steps to end a Justice Department slush fund that has channeled millions of dollars in banking settlements to outside organizations, including left-wing groups such as La Raza and NeighborWorks America. Four Republican senators—James Lankford of Oklahoma, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Utah’s Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee—said they would introduce legislation Friday to prohibit federal settlement agreements that require donations to third parties. The Justice Department currently allows corporations found guilty of wrongdoing to pay a portion of their financial penalty as a donation to certain preapproved nonprofit groups.

America’s troops – who haven’t seen a raise over 2 percent in years – could soon see their monthly pay actually go down in some cases if a Senate plan to overhaul the military housing allowance goes through. Right now, the Defense Department pays service members a set housing stipend based on several factors including rank and zip code. These rules allow bargain-hunting soldiers who find cheap housing to pocket the difference -- and use it for groceries, utilities or other expenses. Under the new Senate proposal, members of the Army, Navy and Air Force would get only the exact...

Before Ted Cruz framed his presidential campaign as a crusade against the Washington “cartel,” he engaged in a series of skirmishes with fellow Republicans, in particular Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky....

And, though many haven’t noticed yet, the bipartisan cooperation has been good for our politics. A standard criticism of this approach is that it elevates process over policy or, worse, that it amounts to a kind of ideological surrender by Republicans. But if you want to be a U.S. senator, you need to be at peace with imperfect outcomes. The answer to Barack Obama and the left is not to rail against one’s fellow conservatives. It may turn out that Americans on the left and right don’t want the two parties to work together in an effort to reach consensus...

The survey, which interviewed 1,700 adult (18 and up) Californians, was conducted from May 4 to May 16. Looking to November, there’s tepid support for the two likely nominees. Clinton leads Trump, 45 percent to 33 percent, with Libertarian Gary Johnson polling at 4 percent and 8 percent considering a write-in candidate;

Donald Trump's campaign has alerted Senate Republicans that he won't have much money to spend fending off attacks from Hillary Clinton over the next couple months. The notice came when Paul Manafort, Trump's senior advisor, met with a group of Senate Republican chiefs of staff for lunch last week, sources familiar with the meeting told the Washington Examiner. The admission suggests that Trump will be far more dependent on the GOP brass for money than he has led voters to believe, but it's consistent with his reliance on the Republican National Committee to provide a ground game in battleground states....

On Wednesday, the Senate passed a joint resolution that will effectively put an end to one of the most egregious programs that exists today: the U.S. Department of Agriculture catfish inspection program. It’s actually disappointing that the vote was as close as it was—55-43. It may sound a bit silly, admittedly, but this program created in the 2008 farm bill is a classic example of legislators pushing a program for the benefit of a very narrow special interest without regard for the harm to taxpayers, consumers, and other industries.

Last Friday, May 20, 2016, something happened in the U.S. Senate you won’t hear about in the mainstream media. You can read about it here. Gary Aminoff comments in the following short video.

Utah lawmakers recently approved a resolution calling on Congress to ratify an amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealing the Seventeenth Amendment. Ratified in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established direct election of U.S. senators by popular vote. Before the amendment’s ratification, senators were elected by state legislatures. The resolution, approved by the House of Representatives and sent to the state’s lieutenant governor for filing in March, was sponsored by state Sen. Alvin Jackson (R-Highland). ‘A Formal Check’ Todd Zywicki, a professor of law at George Mason University, says the Seventeenth Amendment removed a necessary safeguard against...

The Lee Amendment to defund President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation failed in the Senate yesterday because not enough Republicans backed it. The Amendment was tabled by a vote of 60-37. Jeremy Carl aptly describes this vote as a defeat for conservatism, community control, and common sense. It is a victory, as Carl says, for turning the federal government into a National Zoning board, forcing high density housing on unwilling cities and towns, and letting bureaucrats decide the racial, ethnic and income balance of local communities.

President Barack Obama said Monday he believes the Senate has a constitutional obligation to vote on a president’s nomination to the Supreme Court, staking out a position at odds with Republicans and some legal scholars. Obama made the claim in an online video interview about his stalled nomination of U.S. Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland. Asked if he thought the Constitution’s language about “advice and consent” meant the Senate had an obligation to hold a vote, Obama told BuzzFeed News: “I do.” […]The GOP has pointed out that in 2005, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid argued that the Constitution doesn’t...

The CIA inspector general’s office — the spy agency’s internal watchdog — has acknowledged it “mistakenly” destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved, Yahoo News has learned. Although other copies of the report exist, the erasure of the controversial document by the CIA office charged with policing agency conduct has alarmed the U.S. senator who oversaw the torture investigation and reignited a behind-the-scenes battle over whether the full unabridged report should ever be released, according...

The U.S. Senate’s first spending bill of 2016 spends more than President Barack Obama requested and lacks significant conservative amendments, but it still sailed to passage in the Republican-led Senate Thursday. An overwhelming number of U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle approved the energy and water development appropriations bill by a vote of 90-8. Conservatives had objected to the higher spending levels and lack of policy riders in the weeks leading up to the vote.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff bowed out defiantly on Thursday, suspended from office after the Senate voted to put her on trial for breaking budget laws in a historic decision brought on by a deep recession and a corruption scandal. Rousseff, in office since 2011, will be replaced by Vice President Michel Temer, for the duration of a Senate trial that could take up to six months. Rousseff, speaking shortly before she left Brasilia's Planalto presidential palace, said was notified of her suspension on Thursday morning. "I may have made mistakes but I did not commit any crime," Rousseff said in...

Rep. Alan Grayson angrily confronted Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday, disrupting a meeting of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in front of dozens of staffers and members of Congress.Grayson (D-Fla.), whose bid for the open Florida Senate seat Reid vehemently opposes, arrived at the meeting with Reid’s February statement in hand, according to two sources in the room. In that statement, Reid said Grayson has “no moral compass” and “used his status as a congressman to unethically promote his Cayman Islands hedge funds.” ...The Florida Senate candidate said in a statement afterward: “I have a low opinion of Reid’s...

MANILA - Boxing hero Manny Pacquiao is virtually assured of a seat in the upper house Senate, according to election results Tuesday which take him a step closer to his dream of the Philippines presidency. Pacquiao, 37, whose rise from desperate street kid to boxing superstar has made him one of the nation's biggest heroes, retired from boxing last month to become a full-time politician. With over 91 per cent of voting centres accounted for from Monday's polls, the winner of an unprecedented eight world championships had garnered 14.94 million votes, more than enough to enter the Senate. Pacquiao placed...

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid vows that a Democratic takeover of the Senate is fairly certain in the November elections. Discussing the race for president, Reid said he was confident that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton would win the party's nomination and then the general election. He stressed her intelligence and ability to grasp the issues on a wide variety of subjects. Reid harshly criticized Republican front-runner Donald Trump, saying that he "can't imagine how the establishment Republicans feel about somebody who’s about as far from anything that anyone believes in as Donald Trump. I can’t imagine this man being the...

But many senators left wiggle room to back away from Trump if necessary; Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), who is in a tough reelection battle back home, said he intends to support the nominee "unless something crazy happens." And according to our March survey, at least 22 Republicans aren't sure or wouldn't say. Newly minted Indiana GOP nominee Todd Young hasn’t said anything we could find about whether he'd support Trump. Only one Republican senator — Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.) — has said clearly that he won't be on Team Trump.

It is both my pleasure and extreme displeasure to have the first post of this blog be about treason as perpetrated by the Senate; it is pleasurable because it is a deeply interesting subject, displeasure because it illustrates & proves just how little our Senators care about our country and, by extension, us. So, without further ado, I present to you a case of treason: It is fairly common knowledge that the Iran is an enemy of the states, as Iran has been officially recognized as a state sponsor of terrorism since the beginning of 1984 — Figure 1 shows...