Free Republic

In case you missed it, John Boehner has hired Rebecca Tallent. Tallent worked for the left-of-center “Bipartisan Policy Center,” and is a serious amnesty advocate. She helped John McCain and Ted Kennedy during the Bush era on that disastrous plan. Here’s what is going to happen. Boehner will wait until 2014, after qualifying for all the serious challenges to incumbents is over. Then he’ll get all these Republicans talking out of both sides of their mouths and the Democrats together for a bipartisan immigration reform push. The threat of primary challenges well passed, they’ll get their amnesty deal done. The...

<p>While the Senate majority leader is blowing up his institution, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) held an interesting press conference, giving some broad hints as to where that body is going.</p> <p>First, Boehner suggested that the House isn’t merely going to club the president over Obamacare.</p>

In light of a recent report, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) fears the National Security Agency may be spying on President Barack Obama. “They could well be spying on the president, for all I know,” Paul says, in an interview with National Review Online. “He has a cell phone, and, in fact, my guess is that they have collected data on the president’s phone.” Paul also believes the federal government may be tracking Pope Francis. “The most important question we need to ask the NSA is, ‘Are you telling us you’re collecting no data on the pope?’ And, ‘Did you...

Immigration reform advocates plan an aggressive campaign to bring the issue back — and the White House has signaled it’s on board. Can Obama emerge from the fiscal crisis with enough momentum to win the immigration fight? As the fiscal fight roiling Washington nears its end, the White House is already signaling that it plans to use the political momentum it has gained during the shutdown fight to charge back into the immigration debate. And this time, Democratic pollsters and advocates say, they could actually win. The final chapter of the current crisis hasn’t been written yet, but Democrats in...

Lets raise the Debt Ceiling to 100 Trillion dollars,it's all borrowed money anyway,digitized,monetized,whatever.We pay off the 17 Trillion dollar debt,send everyone in the United States a check for a 1000 dollars and there will be trillions left over to fund everything!

Is there such thing as “class” in America? Not if you ask Rick Santorum. The once and possibly future GOP presidential candidate spoke to a Republican gathering in Lyon County, Iowa late last week and shared this piece of advice with his party: “Don’t use the term the other side uses.” That includes the “middle class.” Santorum proceeded to tear into President Obama for constantly invoking the term “middle class” in his speeches about the economy. “Since when in America do we have classes?” Santorum asked. “Since when in America are people stuck in areas or defined places called a...

Sticks and stones may break bones, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just hopes his words are enough to get Republicans to back off Obamacare. “We’re not going to bow to Tea Party anarchists who deny the mere fact that Obamacare is the law,” Reid said this morning. That was just the start of it, though. Reid used words like "fanatic" and "extremist" to describe Republicans threatening to hold up a budget until Congress votes to defund Obamacare and its exchanges, which open for enrollment in eight days. “Are Republicans so intent on undermining President Obama and the signature health...

On Friday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer mocked the Republican tactic of using the budget process to defund President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care reform law. Krauthammer called the House’s vote to defund the law “Kabuki” and warned that it would come back to haunt congressional Republicans. “I think the Boehner speech is what you would expect,” Krauthammer said. “He didn’t want to do it. He had to do it, so he had to defend it, and that’s Kabuki. I think it’s going to go to the Senate and if we end up...

George Santayana, and before him the 18th-century British philosopher-politician Edmund Burke, had history in mind in observing that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Events five years ago hardly qualify as "history," yet the evidence is mounting that many supposedly well-informed people have forgotten what got the U.S. into—and out of—the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. How else to describe the common attitude toward the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Ben Bernanke? The Fed and Mr. Bernanke were instrumental in pulling the country—and ultimately the world economy—back from the abyss. Yet the heroic effort...

I belong to the stupid party. I’m a Republican. We specialize in self-destruction. The latest example is the recent decision by the Republican National Committee to ban CNN and NBC from covering any debates during the next GOP presidential primaries. Somehow, in head-up-your-butt land, that makes sense. But out here, in the real world, it’s insane. And petty, and one more sign that the people running this party are, in scientific terms, frigging idiots. Here’s the story. Apparently there is this she-devil named Hillary Clinton who wants to run for president. She’s the one who said we didn’t need more...

President Obama has “contributed to [Egypt's] descent into chaos” by providing foreign aid to the military regime while maintaining an otherwise “detached and abstract” position, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who called for an end to financial support. “President Obama’s detached and abstract statement yesterday on deteriorating conditions in Egypt is only the most recent manifestation of this administration’s failed policy in that country,” Cruz said. “As there can no longer be any reasonable doubt that what occurred in July was a military coup, the first step is to send an unequivocal message that the United States is a...

Former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich told a meeting of the Republican National Committee that his party needs to move beyond its image of steadfast opposition to President Barack Obama and convince voters its goal is to improve the country. “We have to get beyond being anti-Obama and we have to convince people you can have hope in America,” Gingrich said on Wednesday. “What we have to do, in a sense, is be a party of optimism and a party of hope and show actual cases of how it can work.” Speaking at a Boston hotel adjacent to where Republican...

In his latest book, Collision 2012, Dan Balz, a Washington Post writer, expresses his incredulity over “the inability” of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign to “humanize” its candidate. This is one reason why, in Balz’s estimation, Romney lost the 2012 election to Barack Obama. Yet there are two other reasons that he supplies to account for Romney’s defeat. The one pertains to the “technically superior” character of his rival’s campaign. The other is in regard to Romney’s “ambivalence” concerning his bid for the presidency. The first thing that should be noted is that if Romney’s consultants had difficulty in “humanizing” their...

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio warned Tuesday that some on the Republican side of immigration reform could come up empty-handed if the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” plan fails. In an appearance on WFLA’s “The Morning Show with Preston Scott” in Tallahassee, Fla., Rubio explained that President Barack Obama will be tempted to enact his own immigration reform measures by executive order if Congress does not pass an immigration bill. An Obama executive order would legalize 11 million undocumented immigrants, he said. “I have been saying now for over a year I believe that this president tempted, will be tempted, if...

Sen. Rand Paul outlined his fears about President Obama’s health care law on “The Daily Show” late Monday, arguing “dinosaur syndrome” has prevented well-intentioned authors of the law from crafting effective reforms. “I’m afraid it’s going to be unaffordable and that’s the real problem,” the Kentucky Republican told John Oliver, interim host of “The Daily Show” in Jon Stewart’s absence. “I’m afraid that everyone will pay a lot more for insurance. And I think precisely the people it was intended to help it may well hurt, because they may not be able to afford it.” Mr. Paul, a potential presidential...

Nearly a hundred top Republican officials sent a letter to the House GOP on Tuesday urging lawmakers to pass a bill that legalizes illegal immigrants, arguing that the current system is already allowing them to stay and so it makes sense to register them and bring them into the system. The donors, led by former Bush administration Cabinet officials Carlos Gutierrez and Spencer Abraham, also said that immigrants are potential Republican voters who can be won over — if the party can be seen as welcoming to immigrants. “Doing nothing is de facto amnesty. We need to take control of...

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio warned in an op-ed on Thursday that there is “mounting evidence” Obamacare creates more problems than it solves and he called on lawmakers to stop the “disastrous” law from taking effect. “It is time to admit that Obamacare isn't going to work, decide not to waste a single cent more on it, and replace it with market-based reforms that will give people more health insurance choices and options,” Rubio penned on the Fox News website. “It's still not too late. This September may be our last best chance to do anything about this disastrous law.”...

ObamaCare is at the center of a rapidly escalating fight that threatens to shut the government down this fall. Republicans have tried this maneuver in Obama’s first term, only to back off later to the chagrin of Tea Party leaders. This time, GOP lawmakers are emboldened by problems plaguing the administration’s ObamaCare implementation.

Two ranking Republican members of the US Senate Armed Services Committee urged the Obama administration on Sunday evening to take “decisive” action against the Assad regime in Syria. Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina spoke at a news conference in Jerusalem after meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders.

Earlier this year, Jeb Bush told ABC that both his father George H.W. Bush, and brother George W. recommended he run for president in 2016. Mama Barbara Bush is not keen on the idea, declaring in April that “the nation’s probably had enough Bushes.” But in the constantly shifting equations of potential Republican hopefuls for future president and vice president, the former Florida governor’s name has been tied with another former governor: Sarah Palin. The pair have now been framed as a “the GOP’s only chance” in the race by American Thinker contributor Michael Sheppard. “Would Jeb Bush have as...