Free Republic

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy is inarguably the most witty person in the U.S. Senate. With a folksy quip or quotation always at the ready, Kennedy can effortlessly dismantle an opponent’s argument with his deadpan delivery while keeping the whole room in stitches. And the reason why his delivery hits so well is that he makes sense — the common kind, which has become almost extinct in these woke times. For example, discussing some of his Democratic colleagues who support transgender athletes in women’s sports on Fox News’ “The Story,” Kennedy once said, “One of my Democratic colleague’s witnesses testified that...

Senate Democrats were left red-faced at a hearing on climate change as their 'expert witness' proved to be anything but when faced by veteran senator John Kennedy. Budget Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse invited Olympic skier Gus Schumacher to give his perspective as the committee considered the impact of climate change on the recreation industry. But it was all downhill for the 23-year-old as he struggled to answer basic questions and could not remember his tweets claiming the war on drugs was designed to jail black people, and calling for the police to be abolished. The excruciating exchange continued with Schumacher insisting...

"If you care about debt and deficits, you should want a well-funded, well-functioning IRS."Biden IRS Launches Audit Into Conservative Org That Helped Tank Nominees For Key Administrative Posts Meet the new IRS. Same as the old IRS. But with a lot more money to be put to the use of pursuing political enemies. In the latest series of Front Page Magazine’s investigative pieces on the IRS complicity in enabling leftist violence and terrorism, I profiled a nonprofit that is integrated with Hamas. The BDS National Committee referred to the Hamas atrocities as the “resistance of the oppressed” and the “powerful...

Top Senate Democrats announced Monday that a key committee will vote on legislation to set up a code of conduct for the Supreme Court, tighten financial disclosure rules and beef up recusal requirements for justices. The Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., will get a vote in the committee on July 20, they announced in a joint statement. “Whether you agree or disagree with the most recent historic decisions by the Supreme Court, we hope we can all agree on one thing — these nine...

It’s been a persistent drumbeat for many years: Fossil fuels are obsolete, and the facilities that produce them, along with any further facilities that might be built for that purpose, will shortly become worthless. These facilities will be “stranded assets.” And any energy company stupid enough to make further investment in fossil fuel extraction or use will inevitably suffer a total loss. Do you believe that prediction? Those making it are among the aggressive promoters of an energy transition to supposedly superior sources like the wind and sun. The prediction has been widely used in the attempt to bludgeon energy...

CNBC anchor Joe Kernen was fed up with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-RI) attempts to shift blame for the ongoing debt ceiling debacle in Congress. Whitehouse tried to put the onus on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) despite Congressional Republicans’ passage of a $1.5 trillion debt ceiling increase coupled with $131 billion in spending cuts. Whitehouse — who erroneously dubbed the bill a piece of “MAGA” legislation in a recent press release — accused McCarthy of “trying to avoid blame and responsibility but he is the only person in that meeting who is insisting that default remain a threat on the...

There is a cohort of elected officials in the United States presently engaged in an anti-capitalist crusade against free-market principles. No, they are not socialists. They are congressional Republicans, and they are attempting to prevent financial institutions from allocating capital in accordance with investor preferences and risk management principles. This attempted crackdown is purely ideological in nature — it is an exercise in political pressure to force a gross government overreach into U.S. capital markets. This campaign, which should offend anyone with even a modicum of pro-market sensibilities, is being championed from within the Republican Party. Republican state lawmakers and...

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., called for revoking a tax exemption for a conservative group for not masking up and socially distancing during the pandemic, insisted on a slew of investigations of other conservative groups, and pressed for the Internal Revenue Service to expand its reach. A total of 176 pages of correspondence from and to Whitehouse was obtained from the IRS by the conservative watchdog group American Accountability Foundation through the Freedom of Information Act and shared with The Daily Signal. “It’s abundantly clear that [Whitehouse] is trying to take the 87,000 new IRS agents and put them to work...

The freshly-militarized Internal Revenue Service will now predictably be used by the Left to target conservatives, and the process has already started. After adding 87,000 new armed “agents” this past summer, the tax-collecting bureaucracy is poised to target political dissidents and small business owners who are seen to be enemies to the regime. Now, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has demanded that tax exemptions be taken away from conservative groups who ignored masking orders and social distancing guidelines during the pandemic, the Daily Signal reported. The news has broken amidst the recovery of a 176-page document containing correspondence between Whitehouse and...

President Joe Biden's latest anti–free speech crusade would require groups that run political ads to dox donors. Biden is backing the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, which senators are expected to vote today on whether to take up. "Right now, advocacy groups can run ads on issues attacking or supporting a candidate right until Election Day without exposing who's paying for that ad," Biden said on Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) called the DISCLOSE Act "critical to fighting the cancer of dark money in our elections." But many see the measure...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is promising “strong executive action” to combat climate change, despite dual setbacks in recent weeks that have restricted his ability to regulate carbon emissions and boost clean energy such as wind and solar power. The Supreme Court last month limited how the nation’s main anti-air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Then late Thursday, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said he wants to delay sweeping environmental legislation that Democrats have pushed as central to achieving Biden’s ambitious climate goals. Some advocates urged Biden to use the moment to...

When asked whether someone who doesn’t know what a woman is should serve on the Supreme Court, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, “I think it’s pretty clear that Judge Jackson is a woman. So, I don’t think she has any doubt as to what a woman is." At the Capitol on Thursday, March 24, CNSNews.com asked Sen. Whitehouse: “Senator Blackburn, on Tuesday during the hearing, asked Judge Jackson to define the word ‘woman’ and Judge Jackson said, ‘No. I can’t.’ Should someone who does not know what a woman is serve on the...

"Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse are pushing a bill they say will help bring relief from high gas prices to Americans – as energy industry critics argue it would do the exact opposite. The proposal, which comes as Russia's war on Ukraine delivers a shock to global energy prices, is called the 'Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax'."

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) are urging President Biden not to nominate Jerome Powell to serve another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve, warning that his refusal to use the Fed to prepare the economy for the impact of climate change is a major problem. The Democratic senators join Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who are trying to steer Biden away from Powell, who was appointed chairman by President Trump, and toward picking Lael Brainard, the only Democrat on the central bank’s seven-member board. “Jerome Powell refuses to recognize climate change as an urgent and systemic economic...

A top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee says a preliminary investigation does not show that then-President Donald Trump was the mastermind of a “scheme” to get his Justice Department to work on overturning the results of the 2020 election.Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the committee, told Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, that according to an interim report released by the panel last week regarding allegations involving the former president, so far nothing has been found to indicate any nefarious plots directed by Trump.The Washington Examiner reports:Trump is said to have favored...

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” that former President Donald Trump was “neck-deep in this personally” in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Discussing the new Senate Judiciary Committee report on Donald Trump’s actions after the 2020 election, Whitehouse said, “I think really key takeaways from this, the first is a simple one, that’s how deeply personally involved President Trump was in all of this. Meetings and phone calls, and contacts in the Oval Office. He was neck-deep in this personally. That would be point one.”

Senate Democrats are set to unveil legislation that would tax energy companies responsible for major greenhouse gas emissions to pay for the costs of climate disasters. The Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), would require between 25 to 30 of the U.S. corporations responsible for the most greenhouse gas pollution to pay $300 billion into a fund over 10 years. The legislation would require companies to pay into the fund if they were responsible for at least .05 percent of global carbon dioxide and methane emissions between 2000 and 2019 based on data from...

The Black Lives Matter Rhode Island chapter is demanding Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse cut all ties with an exclusive Newport beach club or resign. "This is an issue that’s not going to go away, and Senator Whitehouse needs to address it. He needs to take it on," the group’s Mark Fisher told ABC6 on Wednesday. "If he thinks we’re just going to forget about it, if he thinks that it’s going to get swept under the rug, it’s not." Whitehouse came under fire in June after he accepted a local reporter’s premise that the Bailey’s Beach Club, of which his...

Black Lives Matter is giving a Rhode Island senator an ultimatum to cut all ties with a controversial country club accused of only admitting white people — even though he has already denied being a member. BLM Rhode Island told WLNE that Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse has until next Friday to either resign or cut ties with Newport-based Bailey’s Beach Club — or it will make his life miserable, the station said. “We’ll go to his club, we’ll go to his office, we’ll go to his home — wherever we need to go,” one of the chapter’s directors, Mark Fisher, vowed....

4,500 tips to FBI went uninvestigated following supplemental investigation, newly released FBI letter shows Washington, DC – Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray last evening requesting additional information on the FBI’s 2018 supplemental background investigation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The senators’ request follows a letter from the Bureau to Whitehouse and Coons revealing new details on the Kavanaugh background investigation, including that the FBI gathered over 4,500 tips in relation to the investigation without any...