Free Republic

House Speaker John Boehner sat down with Bret Baier today for an exclusive interview, covering everything from immigration to ObamaCare to Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Boehner charged the administration with antipathy toward Netanyahu, and he sounded off on plans to sue President Barack Obama over his executive action on immigration. […] Baier asked whether this Congress is Boehner’s “last time around” and if he thinks he can bring all Republicans together. He responded with a laugh and said “I’ll be here for a while,” before adding that he sympathizes with the concerns of the more conservative...

A retired United States Army colonel expects as many as 30 million like-minded individuals will descend on Washington, DC this week and demand that President Barack Obama and other members of his administration be booted from office. Those are just some of the demands that Col. Harry Riley, founder of “Operation American Spring,” said he’ll ask the Obama administration to adhere to when militia members and patriots of all sorts arrive in the nation’s capital on Friday and begin demonstrating against a government the group considers to be in violation of the principles established by the founders of the country....

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor won’t allow attempts next week to include a measure on a must-pass defense policy bill that would legalize young undocumented immigrants who serve in the military. A spokesman confirmed Friday that the legislation, known as the Enlist Act, will not be among those debated with the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill that sets policy for the Pentagon. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), the Enlist Act’s chief sponsor, had pledged to bring it up as part of the floor battle over the defense bill.

Ever since the emergence of the tea party in 2009, the media narrative has been pre-written and ready to deploy at opportune times. Embodying the intense frustrations of ordinary Americans with so-called limited-government Republicans who were forever raising taxes, increasing spending, and incurring more debt, the tea party demanded that their representatives keep their promises, and adhere to principle over politics. Otherwise, when the next election cycle rolled around, they would be fully prepared to throw the bums out. Not only did this seismic shift ruffle the feathers of Democrats and those who wanted to expand government in perpetuity, it...

SNIP Sal Russo of the Tea Party Express broke the news in an op-ed titled “Conservatives Need to Fix the Broken Immigration System,” published by CQ Roll Call early Wednesday morning. In that piece, the longtime GOP operative and consultant argued that “conservatives should be at the forefront of reform so the law reflects the just interests of the United States, not misty-eyed ideals of some of the liberal do-gooder reformers.” That means no special pathways to citizenship that allow undocumented immigrants to cut in line, Russo cautioned, but rather some reasonable procedures that require “the 11 million people who...

Think of every area where the GOP has strayed from its conservative roots. The bailouts. TARP. Out-of-control government spying. Job-killing corporate cronyism. There is one man in Congress consistently saying “no” to making government bigger and less accountable. His name is Justin Amash, and the establishment has taken notice. Big business wants to ensure voters elect Republicans who will keep the perks flowing -- from taxpayers’ bank accounts and right to their pockets. They’ve even created a feel-good way to describe such a Republican: Pro-business. And that’s exactly the kind of guy they’ve found in Amash’s primary challenger. Amash goes...

House Republicans have run out of patience with President Obama's administration, Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Wednesday. Issa, who has been investigating employee misconduct at the Environmental Protection Agency, demanded that deputy administrator Bob Perciasepe produce documents within one month.

The recent elections underlined a growing tension in political money circles: Business people are increasingly fed up with the activist wing of the Republican Party. It's a trend that will have broad implications for next year's midterm elections and the presidential race in 2016, political experts say. [Snip] And there's more to come. Business interests appear to be rallying behind moderate Republicans Brian Ellis, David Trott and Mike Simpson against tea party-approved challengers Justin Amash, Kerry Bentivolio and Bryan Smith for House seats in 2014 (Ellis and Trott are running in Michigan and Simpson is in Idaho). [Snip] "If the...

Just as the last refuge of the poltroon is patriotism, the last refuge of the GOP poltroon is comparing oneself with Reagan. WeÂ’ve seen this play on in humiliating clarity over the past several days with the behavior of freshman senator and presidential hopeful Rand Paul concerning the Russian anschluss with Crimea.In the Beginning He Was Pacifist Back when the, we must note, popularly elected government of Ukraine president flamed out in a wave of popular protests, some Republicans, notably John McCain, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be warned not to take advantage of the situation. Rand Paul,...

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a presidential hopeful and leading non-interventionist voice in the Republican Party, believes the United States should seek "respectful" relations with Russia and avoid antagonizing President Vladimir Putin over the ongoing political turmoil in Ukraine, where a Kremlin-backed government collapsed last week. "Some on our side are so stuck in the Cold War era that they want to tweak Russia all the time and I don't think that is a good idea," Paul said on Tuesday, in an interview with The Washington Post. Paul's comments underscore the latest foreign-policy fissure in the GOP, where the party's...

Ron Paul has just sided with Putin over the invasion of Ukraine. Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) appeared on the Fox Business Network’s The Independents on Wednesday night where he was asked for his thoughts about the worsening situation in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Paul said that the United States and the West have engaged in hypocrisy and alleged that they participated in the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovich’s government. He added that Russian President Vladimir Putinhas “some law on his side” in Crimea because Russia held a lease on a naval base in the Crimean city of Sevastopol.“This whole thing that...

(NEW YORK) -- It may be the opening salvo of the 2016 Republican primary. During an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl for This Week, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a friend, but drew a distinction between himself and the Kentucky senator on foreign policy, saying the U.S. “has a responsibility to defend our values.” “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul. He and I are good friends. But I don’t agree with him on foreign policy,” Cruz said. “I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. And I agree with him that...

Being an early frontrunner for a presidential nomination is not always a good thing and Sen. Rand Paul acknowledged as much the other night on Greta Van Susteren’s show. He must have channeled his inner Nostradamus because not more than a day later a man named Putin made his move on Ukraine. He could end up Paul’s worst nightmare. Now, many of us have been very attracted to Paul. His libertarian message seems, and indeed is, tailor-made for this era when the monumentally incompetent Barack Obama has exposed the farcical nature of big government almost as no one before him....

“Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan,” he wrote in an op-ed for Breitbart News, responding to an attack by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. “Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda. Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.”“[A]lmost all of us in the party are big fans of Ronald Reagan,” Paul told Sean Hannity on Fox News in yet another defense of his foreign policy. “I’ve always been a big fan...

In 2013, freshmen senators Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) seemed like two peas in a pod. Both railed at the NSA, backed the government shutdown, opposed intervention in Syria and championed the tea party faithful. But 2014 has been a different story. Cruz has become a serious, vocal proponent of a tough foreign policy and harsh critic of President Obama’s approach to Iran and Russia. He gave serious speeches on the importance of standing up to Vladimir Putin and on the folly of expecting Iran to give away its nuclear weapons program without stringent sanctions and/or the threat...

The Russian government today claimed there are more than 100 American 'mercenaries' from a defense contracting company disguised as Ukrainian troops in the embattled former Soviet nation, a claim the American firm and top U.S. officials deny. ... The latest news relesae from Greystone, as posted on a company blog, is from September 2012, titled "New business in Russia" and simply says the company "provided executive protection services in Russia." In April 2012, the company announced it had been awarded a similar contract in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. ...

Again and again, conservatives have cut Senator Rand Paul at least some slack when his pronouncements have moved in the realm of, but not fully shared, his father’s nuttiness on foreign affairs. It’s almost as if some nuttiness of his own was allowable as long as it didn’t go as far as his father’s did. But just about every fortnight or so, a new Rand Paul speech or a newly resurfaced old video or news report shows not only that the senator is dangerously neo-isolationist and militarily penurious, but that he is also bizarrely spiteful toward those who disagree. Worse,...

Frustrated with President Barack Obama’s reaction to Russian action in Ukraine, a group of Republican senators said Wednesday they will introduce legislation outlining a more muscular response. “What we’ve seen from the administration is a lot of rhetoric,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. The White House has been dealing “with the situation after something bad has already occurred,” he said. Earlier this week, violence flared up in another area of Ukraine that hugs the Russian border, as the new government in Kiev criticized local police...

Republican Party of Louisiana files formal complaint against Senator Harry Reid BATON ROGUE, La, April 23, 2014 — The Republican Party of Louisiana filed a formal complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics against Senator Harry Reid on Wednesday, April 23, 2014. The subject of the complaint was “Senator Harry Reid’s Use of Tax Payer Resources for Campaign Purposes” and dealt with the use of Senate staff and facilities for support of political candidates and for campaign programs defaming the Koch brothers with false and misleading attack ads in the last election cycle.

Chris Christie offered a challenge to critics who allege the New Jersey governor created a culture of intimidation that led to so-called “Bridgegate”: Prove it. The Republican defiantly made his case Thursday at a town hall meeting in Ocean County after an attendee told the governor that his friends and family believe that Christie must have cultivated a toxic environment that allowed such an abuse to take place. Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. resident Len Ludovico, 71, said he wanted to know what argument he could make to such critics, insisting he knows Christie would not risk his “political career and...