Free Republic

Two key senators have reached a deal to expand background checks to firearms sales at gun shows and on the Internet, sources close to the negotiations said early Wednesday. Sen. Pat Toomey, a conservative Pennsylvania Republican, plan to announce the deal Wednesday with West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who holds an A rating from the National Rifle Association. The two have been working on a compromise proposal that could draw Republican support for expanding background checks. On Tuesday evening, the two had an agreement in principle, and spent the night hammering out the final details.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is close to a deal with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on background checks for gun show and Internet gun sales, his office said Tuesday night. The two are planning a joint press conference for Wednesday morning. A Toomey spokesperson on Tuesday told NBC News that the two senators have agreed on all but the final details of a compromise. Manchin told reporters Tuesday that the compromise would close the gun show loophole by mandating background checks for those transactions and also require background checks for all Internet gun sales.

Full title - "There’s Always One: Will Pat Toomey Help Democrats Save Gun Control? Why All Modern Politics Is National." Somewhere, Arlen Specter is smiling. Two influential senators, one from each party, are working on an agreement that could expand background checks on firearms sales to include gun shows and online transactions, Senate aides said Sunday. If completed, the effort could represent a major breakthrough in the effort by President Barack Obama and his allies to restrict guns following last December's massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., could nail down an accord...

Harry Hay, the founder of the homosexual movement, began his manifesto for the Mattachine Society with these words: "We, the androgynes of the world.." Homosexual writer and activist Paul Varnell explains how Hay gave androgyny vital importance in the homosexual movement: "Hay's 'idealism' had three components: a) gays are qualitatively different from heterosexuals, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, not just in 'what they do in bed;' b) the core difference lies in the natural androgyny of homosexuals, that they embody both male and female elements; and c) in order to help promote their acceptance gays need to explain the contribution this difference...

“I think Mitt Romney is a conservative, and I think if elected, he’ll govern as a conservative,” Toomey told reporters during a press conference at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, an annual gathering of conservative activists in the Keystone State. Toomey's remarks came during a week in which prominent Republicans have been urging their party to unite behind a presidential candidate. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed Romney on Wednesday. On Thursday, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina--like Toomey--praised Romney without endorsing him.

<p>Conservatives, frustrated by the Republican leadership’s role in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Senate primary victory of liberal Sen. Arlen Specter, publicly are directing their anger on one of their own — Sen. Rick Santorum. “The person our members are most infuriated at is Rick Santorum,” said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, which helped lead a conservative crusade in support of Rep. Patrick J. Toomey’s Senate primary bid against Mr. Specter. In one of the most fiercely contested Republican Senate primaries in recent memory, Mr. Specter eked out a 51 percent to 49 percent victory on Tuesday. “Santorum undermined fellow conservatives in a really ignoble way, telling people a conservative can’t win. Our members won’t forget that for a long time,” said Mr. Moore, whose national organization contributed $1 million to the Toomey campaign and spent another $1 million in television ads on the candidate’s behalf.</p>

While there’s still a lot of road ahead in the 2012 presidential race, one fact is already clear: The eventual GOP nominee is probably going to leave a certain number of conservative Republicans wary, or even skeptical. The selection of a running mate will be even more important than usual, as it will be the biggest decision of the campaign and the clearest signal the nominee can send to GOP doubters looking for reassurance. For Mitt Romney, numerous conservatives just don’t trust him. Between the health-care plan and individual mandate that he signed into law in Massachusetts and the leftover...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sidestepping controversy, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., declined to take sides Monday on a proposal for higher taxes backed by fellow Republicans on Congress' supercommittee, yet expressed confidence the panel would agree on a deficit-reduction plan of at least $1.2 trillion by a Nov. 23 deadline. A proposal for $300 billion in higher taxes has stirred grumbling within the ranks of congressional Republicans, for whom opposition to such measures has been political bedrock for more than two decades. One prominent conservative, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, said in a published commentary during the day that "our...

The federal government has rescinded it's bizarre deadline to change all the street signs in the country and credit goes to Sen. Pat Toomey. The Federal Highway Administration in 2009 mandated that street name signs throughout the nation be upper/lower case with a deadline of 2018. For the historically challenged, 2009 is the first year of the Obama era. It would have been a costly and wasteful endeavor with the burden falling on municipal governments. The cost to replace a street sign is about $50. It adds up. The expense to New York City was estimated to be $28 million....

Aug. 20, 2011, 2:50 p.m. EDT ‘Super committee’ Republican: Simplify taxes More spending ‘very bad idea,’ tea-party favorite Sen. Toomey says By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The 12-member “super committee” tasked with cutting the U.S. budget deficit has a “great opportunity” to simplify the tax code, Sen. Pat Toomey says. What it won’t do, if the Pennsylvania Republican gets his way, is spend any government money in an attempt to boost economic growth. Spending, the former Club for Growth president said in a phone interview with MarketWatch, is “an artificial way that the government tries to conjure up...

Who's been cozying up to the members of the new Congressional super committee? With the committee set to decide on a whopping $1.5 trillion in federal deficit reduction this fall, lobbyists and corporations are trying to figure out which industries are best connected to the 12 members of the new panel. You can bet that those connections will be pressed to the limit in coming months as companies and sectors scramble to ensure that federal spending they like and tax breaks they depend on aren't slated for elimination. As it looks at the new committee members, Wall Street may like...

Note to President Barack Obama: Telling the American people how to feel is not leadership. In his weekly radio address today, the president claimed it is "partisanship and gridlock" that have "hindered our efforts to grow the economy," that we have a right to be frustrated and we should let members of Congress know that we are. In short, the weak economy his policies have made so much worse is the fault of his political opposition so please join him in blaming them for his failure.

WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Here is a look at some of the top donors to election campaigns for the 12 members of the U.S. Congress named to a deficit-fighting "super committee." Known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the panel is expected to be the most heavily lobbied body in Washington ahead of its Nov. 23 deadline for making recommendations on $1.5 trillion in additional budget savings. Unless specified, donations below combine members' campaign committees and leadership PACs (political action committees). Data is from www.opensecrets.org. SENATE DEMOCRATS Patty Murray of Washington state * Software giant Microsoft Corp...

The 12 lawmakers appointed to a new congressional supercommittee charged with tackling the nation's fiscal problems have received millions in contributions from special interests with a direct stake in potential cuts to federal programs, an Associated Press review of federal campaign data has found. The newly appointed members — six Democrats and six Republicans — have received more than $3 million total during the past five years in donations from political committees with ties to defense contractors, health care providers and labor unions. That money went to their re-election campaigns, according to AP's review. Supporters say the lawmakers were picked...

LOUISVILLE, KY – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell Wednesday announced his appointments to the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction tasked with reducing the deficit by $1.5 trillion more than the cuts already identified in the Budget Control Act. McConnell appointed Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “Chronic joblessness, out-of-control deficits and debt, and an unprecedented credit downgrade represent an historic challenge but also an historic opportunity for lawmakers in Washington to show they can work together on a plan that puts America back on the path to prosperity. All three of these...

LOUISVILLE, KY – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell Wednesday announced his appointments to the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction tasked with reducing the deficit by $1.5 trillion more than the cuts already identified in the Budget Control Act. McConnell appointed Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “Chronic joblessness, out-of-control deficits and debt, and an unprecedented credit downgrade represent an historic challenge but also an historic opportunity for lawmakers in Washington to show they can work together on a plan that puts America back on the path to prosperity. All three of these...

Former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who this week referred to Tea Party lawmakers as "hobbits," publicly criticized Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey Sunday during an unusual unscripted debate on the Senate floor. McCain, who appeared to be having a great 'ol time during a back and forth with Democrat Majority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin, referred to Toomey and those who share his views as "terrible." (snip) "...the terrible obstructionists on this side of the aisle, the terrible people, their flawed philosophical views about the future of America..."

Sens. Lee, Toomey and Paul Introduce Cut, Cap and Balance Act Thursday, Jul 7 The Cup, Cap and Balance Act cuts spending for fiscal year 2012 and caps spending over the next 10 years. These cuts and caps are based on levels contained in Sen. Toomey's 10-year balanced budget proposal (S. Con. Res. 21) and his Cap Spending Act of 2011 (S.1290). In addition, the legislation raises the debt limit by $2.4 trillion contingent on a balanced budget amendment passing in the House and the Senate. Sen. Toomey's remarks are below:(heavily exceprted due to space constraints) That's why I am...

There is broad consensus in Washington that a “balanced approach” between spending cuts, controls, and increased revenue is the only possible way to reduce our $14.3 trillion national debt and avert a Greek-style debt crisis. I share this perspective. As the ongoing debt negotiations advance, members of Congress should evaluate the components of a debt package through one question: Will this make it harder or easier for the American people to create jobs? For my part, I have never met a job creator in Florida that has told me they are waiting for Congress to pass another tax hike before...

Coburn, Toomey: Drop the Policy Riders April 8, 2011 1:03 P.M. By Daniel Foster Here’s Senator Toomey: “I’d like to defund Planned Parenthood, but I understand that Republicans don’t have complete control of the elected government,” Toomey said on MSNBC. “I think what we should do is cut spending as much as we can, get the policy changes that we can, but move on, because there are other, bigger battles that we are fighting.” And here’s Senator Coburn: COBURN: The one thing I’ve learned in my years here is there’s one reason to talk about something, if you want to...