Free Republic

I had fallen out with Senator Pat Toomey in the last year when I realized his plan to balance the budget in ten years was no plan at all. I consider a balanced budget to the be the top issue and that when a politician says they have a plan to do something in ten years, they are not serious. Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush promised 100 percent proficiency in math and reading by 2014 when No Child Left Behind was made into law a decade or so ago. Now, Senator Toomey has stepped into the waters of tearing...

-- IMAGE HERE -- “So what does a traitor look like?” That is a very good question. After all, a traitor is different than an enemy. An enemy declares himself and opposes you openly. But in order to become a traitor, someone first needs to enjoy your trust. Those of us in the gun rights community have plenty of enemies … people who have openly declared war on the Second Amendment and the Constitution. Heck … practically every Democrat in the country seems to have signed up for a frontal assault on gun owners. But to be betrayed by one...

Well, assembled sophisticates, you’d better pull that extended arm back toward you and rescind the offer of the Martini, for I’m about to drop off society’s tightrope and out myself as one of those people naïve enough to advance a “slippery slope” argument in public. And about guns, no less. Arguendo, let’s presume that the much-vaunted Toomey-Manchin “compromise” makes it out of the Senate unalloyed, and then that it then passes the House with nary a squeak from the right. Let’s then postulate that a majority agrees with the president that expanding background checks is a “reasonable” thing to do...

n. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) panned an agreement to expand background checks on gun sales that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) unveiled on Wednesday. "The Manchin-Toomey proposal is a good faith but unworkable plan," Coburn said in a statement. "The proposal will impose new taxes and unreasonable burdens on law-abiding citizens."

Senators Joe Manchin (R) and Pat Toomey (D) today announced a so-called "compromise" bill/amendment which they claim would increase gun safety through improving "background checks," but is in truth a flawed piece of legislation, WHICH IS WHY YOU SHOULD ACT NOW TO STOP THE MEASURE (or click here for more options). The title of their bill is Orwellian: "The Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act." It is double-speak, as their measure infringes on the Second Amendment -- it doesn't "protect" anything. It will in fact push the U.S. towards the establishment of a national gun registry, the eventual...

So it appears a Republican lawmaker has been bought off to put his stamp on the new gun bill headed for the Senate. Yesterday: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns is on the air in Pennsylvania Tuesday with a TV spot targeting Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is in talks to sign on to a proposal that would require background checks for all commercial gun purchases. Today: Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns is pulling its ads in Pennsylvania, citing Toomey's work on compromise bill. Sure appears to me that in exchange for the attack ads to stop...

SEN. PAT TOOMEY: I’m a gun owner, and the rights that are enshrined in the Second Amendment are very, very important to me personally, ..... I don’t consider criminal background checks to be gun control. I think it’s just common sense. If you pass a criminal background check, you get to buy a gun, no problem. It’s the people who fail a criminal or mental health background check that we don’t want having guns.

Urgent action required. It is urgent that every gun owner call their Senators today and demand that they oppose the "See a Shrink, Lose your Guns" sell-out bill that is being authored by Senators Pat Toomey (R) and Joe Manchin (D) - but which also has Chuck Schumer's fingerprints all over it. Call senators immediately at 202-224-3121 and click here to send pre-written or free-form emails to senators about the Toomey/Manchin "compromise" (scroll to bottom to send).See a Shrink, Lose your Guns. The anti-gun "ranters" have spent the last week telling us that Republican Senators can't filibuster Harry Reid's gun...

Sellout is worse than the Feinstein gun ban! Urgent action required. It is urgent that every gun owner call their Senators today and demand that they oppose the “See a Shrink, Lose your Guns” sell-out bill that is being authored by Senators Pat Toomey (R) and Joe Manchin (D) - but which also has Chuck Schumer’s fingerprints all over it. See a Shrink, Lose your Guns. The anti-gun ”ranters” have spent the last week telling us that Republican Senators can’t filibuster Harry Reid’s gun control bill; that they can’t cut off debate to a bill they haven’t seen yet. “Let...

I just talked to someone familiar with the Toomey-Manchin proposal who raises a serious concern based on his understanding of the legislation. Everyone on all sides agrees that we need better help for those with mental health problems who need treatment. Unfortunately, the person I talked with is concerned that the Toomey-Manchin proposal could discourage people from getting help. The proposal will allow a doctor to add a patient to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) without ever telling the patient he or she has been added. There would be no due process requirement. Not all doctors will...

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) told reporters on a conference call moments ago that his compromise bill with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on gun background checks “doesn’t change in any way” his “conservative record or views.” The former Club for Growth president acknowledged he was out of his usual legislative area on the issue, but “it became clear to me a bill of some sort was very likely to reach the floor” that would be “badly flawed,” so he reached out to his friend and neighboring state senator Manchin to sit down and talk. “You’re probably used to hearing me talk...

The National Rifle Association will oppose the background check bill introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) and Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) Wednesday, the pro-Second Amendment group told the Free Beacon. Manchin and Toomey held a press conference Wednesday morning announcing a bipartisan bill that would expand background checks for all commercial firearm sales, including gun shows and Internet sales. The bill is the latest effort by the Senate to introduce background check legislation, after negotiations between Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) and Democrats broke down earlier this year. Manchin’s office told BuzzFeed Wednesday that the senators had been...

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...