Free Republic

RICHMOND — Virginia Republicans will reject Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s pick for the state’s newest Supreme Court justice and install their own choice, igniting a political firestorm that will come to a head when lawmakers return to Richmond in two weeks. McAuliffe’s nominee, Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush, has already been sworn in, meaning Republicans will take the rare step of unseating a justice after she has taken the bench. Leaders of the GOP-controlled General Assembly announced they plan to elect Virginia Court of Appeals Judge Rossie D. Alston, Jr., who previously served on the Prince William County circuit...

"......When Mr. [Tony] Rodham was short on cash in 2010, Mr. Clinton helped get him a job for $72,000 a year raising investments in GreenTech Automotive, an electric car company then owned by Terry McAuliffe, an old friend of Mr. Clinton’s and now the governor of Virginia. “I was complaining to my brother-in-law I didn’t have any money. And he asked McAuliffe to give me a job,” Mr. Rodham said during the court proceedings, which were the result of a lawsuit over unpaid legal bills filed by his lawyer in a child support case. A brother down on his luck...

Try as they might, when proponents of early federally funded pre-school education ala Head Start try to make the case for their cause, they can’t quite seal the deal. “There is one study that shows that the benefits of pre-K education will wash out after four years,” Governor Terry McAuliffe, D-VA, claimed at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Friday, April 10, 2015. He then said, “I’ve talked to kindergarten teachers who say it makes a difference.” But kindergarten would fall within that four-year window and he offered no examples of studies that show differing conclusions. Maybe this is...

The newly released documents buttress a report issued late last month detailing how an immigration director was swayed with respect to hundreds of millions of dollars in film and TV investments under the EB-5 visa program. The U.S. Department of Homeland SecurityÂ’s inspector general has released hundreds of pages of emails plus other documents in support of its investigation of improper influence on the EB-5 immigration program. Many of the documents discuss hundreds of millions of dollars in financing for film and television productions from Sony Pictures and Time Warner with prominent politicians including former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendall and...

BRISTOL, VA (WJHL) - Applications for state jobs in Virginia will no longer will include questions regarding a person's criminal history. Governor Terry McAuliffe signed an executive order removing criminal history questions from state employment applications Friday. Under the order, employment decisions won't be based on an applicant's criminal history unless it's specifically related to the job they are being considered for. While it only applies to state employment applications, the order also encourages similar hiring practices for private employers throughout the Commonwealth. Some business owners we spoke to in Bristol, Virginia are not on board with the idea.

candal: Hillary's emails may be only the tip of an iceberg that could include Clinton Foundation donations to shield Boko Haram from being designated a terrorist group and her brother's involvement in a Haitian gold mine. We doubt Team Hillary was thrilled or her critics surprised Tuesday when the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security named Mrs. Clinton's brother, Tony Rodham, in a report about a firm that allegedly received preferential treatment from the Obama administration. The firm, Gulf Coast Funds Management, with Tony Rodham listed as its chief executive, allegedly benefited from what the report says was...

Two of the leading minds tasked with saving Terry McAuliffeÂ’s 2013 Virginia gubernatorial bid from controversy over his shady business dealings will likely serve prominent roles in Hillary ClintonÂ’s presidential campaign. Robby Mook and Josh Schwerin, who served as campaign manager and spokesman, respectively, in McAuliffeÂ’s successful bid, are all but certain additions to the growing Clinton team as the former secretary of state preps for a White House run. Back in 2013, the McAuliffe campaign became embroiled in questions surrounding the ongoing investigations into their candidateÂ’s Mississippi-based electric-car manufacturing company, GreenTech. Thanks in large part to Mook and Schwerin,...

The latest baggage threatening to dog Hillary Clinton’s expected bid for the White House comes in the form of her brother, who allegedly got help from the Department of Homeland Security in smoothing a business deal. The department’s inspector general found that Tony Rodham was given special treatment by DHS’ No. 2 in securing visas for foreigners connected to a deal. Rodham was CEO of an electric car company owned by another longtime Clinton pal, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, when he got help from DHS official Alejandro Mayorkas securing the visas for investors in the firm. It is not clear...

Many of the key figures cited in a scathing inspector general’s report this week are allies of Hillary Rodham Clinton, marking the latest in a series of stumbles for the former first lady and secretary of state that likely forced her to delay her planned presidential campaign announcement.A Democratic strategist familiar with her team’s thinking said they are scrambling to limit the damage and readjust the campaign rollout schedule after the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general revealed an apparent cronyism scandal that ensnared Mrs. Clinton’s brother, Anthony Rodham, and two of her political confidants, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and former...

The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department intervened several times in projects with connections to insiders, including Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and a brother of Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a report issued by the department's watchdog Tuesday. Alejandro Mayorkas, while head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, created an "appearance of favoritism" in a program that offers visas to wealthy foreigners willing to invest in American companies, the report says, though it stops short of saying Mayorkas was guilty of wrongdoing. More than 15 whistle-blowers came forward to complain that Mayorkas was giving special treatment to...

The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department improperly intervened on behalf of foreign investors in three cases involving the U.S. government soliciting investments in exchange for American visas, the agency's inspector general said Tuesday. Investigators said he helped secure the visas, and created the appearance of favoritism and special access. The investigation could not suggest a motive for the official's involvement.

"The long-anticipated report found no evidence of law-breaking. But members of the department’s staff perceived Mayorkas’s actions as “politically motivated,” and the report concluded that he had 'created an appearance of favoritism and special access.'"

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has been hospitalized following a horse-riding accident over the Christmas holidays in Africa that left him with seven broken ribs and fluid around his lungs, a spokesman said Monday. Spokesman Brian Coy said doctors had expected the weeks-old injury to heal on its own, but after identifying increased fluid around the governor’s lungs, they admitted him around noon Monday for a procedure. McAuliffe (D), who attended a Martin Luther King Jr. event in Norfolk on Monday morning and was interviewed by local media there, was admitted hours later to Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond....

One of the top possible candidates to lead Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has dropped out of contention. That has left the door open to the presidential of a leading pro-abortion group to become her campaign manager should she decide to run for presidential in 2016.Clinton is a longtime pro-abortion activists, opposing any pro-life limits on abortion and backing taxpayer funding of abortions. That gels with the views of Emily’s List, which opposes even a late-term abortion ban and requires that all of the candidates it endorses support forcing Americans to fund abortions.Now, reports indicate that Emily’s List’s president may run...

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe says Hillary Clinton will know whether she's running for president in 2016 within the next 60 days. That's the timeline the Clinton confidante outlined to U.S. News' Nikki Schwab Thursday night during a conversation at the Knock Out Abuse gala, an anti-domestic violence charity event held at The Ritz-Carlton in Washington.

This week the New York Post [1] reported that Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has emerged as a leading contender for the top spot at DOJ. The race to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder has included the controversial Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and like Perez, MayorkasÂ’ tenure in the federal government is filled with a considerable amount of ethics-defying shadiness.Prior to taking his current position as the number two man at DHS, Mayorkas was head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is mandated to administer the biggest immigration system in the world...

A funny thing happened on the way to Medicaid expansion in Virginia: it didn’t happen. Governor Terry McAuliffe demanded expansion. The Washington Post and other state-worshiping media outlets insisted on its passage. The Post explained, “there remains only one reasonable solution: Republicans must ultimately compromise on expanding Medicaid.” But Republican legislators stood strong in the face of months of pressure — proving that it is, indeed, possible for them to maintain their principles. After a long legislative tug-of-war seemingly headed toward a government shutdown, the state senate suddenly flipped. It went from evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, 20-20, to...

To the untrained eye, Virginia’s political scandals are beginning to become indistinguishable from one another. Reading reports last night of yet another brouhaha in the mother of states, my tired eyes struggled to place the words on the page in their appropriate context. For a brief moment at least, “McAuliffe” and “McDonnell” were one and the same; “Macca” slurred effortlessly into “Macaca”; and the cardinal sins of job-selling, gift-taking, and good old-fashioned bribery melted into a single morass, leaving me to wonder whether there is anyone left in Richmond who is on the level. Americans are accustomed to wrongdoing in...

Last week Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe announced his intention to proceed with Medicaid expansion even without the General Assembly’s approval. After revealing a more modest plan this week, his approach is less certain. But one thing is clear: if lawmakers surrender to executive bullying, they will do far more damage than saddling the state with dependency and debt. They will be complicit in an act of lawlessness. Abusing the legislative process has become part and parcel of rolling out the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). Since it became law in 2010, the Obama Administration has...

Virginia’s bleak financial outlook just got gloomier. Gov. Terry McAuliffe told members of the joint state House and Senate money committees on Friday that Virginia is projected to rake in $2.4 billion less than it’s budgeted to spend during a three-year period. […] Even as he emphasized that cuts need to be made, however, he also made another thing clear—he’s going to find a way to expand healthcare options for Virginia’s poor, and he’s ready to use the power of his executive office to do so. …