Free Republic

With only a handful of legislative days left before Congress calls it quits for the holiday season, it appears increasingly likely that Democratic Leader Harry Reid will cede the Senate majority to Republicans without confirming a new attorney general, leaving Eric Holder with the job he quit almost two months ago until at least January. The process to confirm a new attorney general, which typically takes weeks, has barely begun as members of the Senate have turned their focus to the Keystone pipeline, a bill to curb the National Security Agency's powers, and dozens of lower-level administration nominees. Given the...

The US Senate has just voted down the USA Freedom Act by a vote of 58-42, leaving it just two votes shy of the 60 it needed. The bill would have ended the controversial phone record metadata collection by the NSA, but the Senate was not in favor of rolling back any of the NSA's broad surveillance powers. While telephone companies would have still collected the data in question, the records would have stayed in the hands of the phone companies and a new type of court order would have been needed by the government to access these records. Additionally,...

Are you a Democrat who can provide legal justification for President Obama issuing work documents to illegal aliens in his proposed executive order? If so then you need to contact Lawrence O'Donnell, host of MSNBC's The Last Word. O'Donnell has claimed that he spent days trying to track down such a Democrat but was unable to find any who could provide such justification. Among those Democrats unable to provide a constitutional basis for that part of the executive order was Representative Peter Welch of Vermont who presented the face of befuddlement when asked that question by O'Donnell.

Latest dispatch from the "dissent is patriotic" is dead front: Howard Dean has accused people who don't share his political views of being "authoritarian people who fundamentally don't believe in democracy." Poor Howard, who declared the times to be very "frightening and disconcerting," made his astounding accusation on today's Up With Steve Kornacki while attempting to explain the Republican sweep on the statehouse level. View the video here.

Howeird Dean-- once chair of the DNC, once Governor of Vermont, who grew up at the Maidstone Golf Club in the Hamptons, attended prep school both in the US and in the UK, went to Yale, dodged the draft-- is having a meltdown again.Once famous for melting down on the air after coming in third in the Iowa caucuses, thereby ensuring he won nothing else, Dean is complaining that Obamacare was written by a bunch of elitists who don’t understand Americans.Well, duh: They’re Democrats. “The core problem under this damn law is that it was put together by a bunch...

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber made $4 million pimping Obamacare. ** $400,000 from Health and Human Services ** $1.6 MM from other states, and that’s just four of them. ** Another $2 milion from HHS for other work. It was a nice gig. The dude made millions because of his central role in lying to get health care passed. Video surfaced this week of Jonathan Gruber admitting the Obama administration lied to “stupid” Americans in order to get Obamacare passed. Jonathan Gruber made $400,000 from HHS. He also made an additional $3.6 million for consulting with states. Glenn Kessler at The...

Vermont legislature will pick governor, the Associated Press reports. Neither Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin nor Republican challenger Scott Milne won the majority of the vote.

A bipartisan group of senators from across the political spectrum—from Elizabeth Warren and Patrick J. Leahy to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio—wants President Barack Obama to speak out and act to support Hong Kong’s democracy movement.They don’t specify exactly what they want Obama to do—they say “demonstrable, meaningful steps”—but note that a 1992 law “authorizes you to suspend trade and economic provisions should Beijing not provide sufficient autonomy for Hong Kong.”Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is president pro tempore and Judiciary chairman, leads the letter with Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rubio.“The people of Hong Kong have sent a strong...

IOWA CITY — Heading into the final month ahead of the 2014 midterm election, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders exhorted fellow progressives to plug away at the unglamorous nuts-and-bolts of the campaign against a “billionaire class whose greed knows no bounds.” “Everyone in this room understands participating in the political process is the most patriotic thing we can do,” Sanders, the U.S. Senate's longest-serving independent, told about 400 people Sunday at the Johnson County Democratic barbecue. The polls and prognosticators may paint a bleak picture for the party in the Nov. 4 election, he said, “but if we stand together, there...

Previously unpublished data from the last big election in Burlington, Vt., reveals a significant number of votes were cast by individuals whose names were not on the statewide checklist. In the 2012 presidential election, 17,383 votes were cast in Burlington, according to city-published data. According to data not published by the city, but made available to a reporter, 639 of those votes, or 3.7 percent, came from election day walk-in voters whose names were not on the voter rolls and whose registration status was unknown. As previously reported, votes by individuals whose names don’t appear on the checklist count whether...

A new government report confirms what pro-life advocates have long feared: President Obama's health care reform law allows for taxpayer-funded abortions. In a report to Congress, the Government Accountability Office found 28 states with no laws restricting qualified health plans that limit abortion coverage. In Massachusetts, only two of the 111 state-approved plans comply with the historic Hyde Amendment, which prohibits abortion funding except in cases of rape or incest. Five states (Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont) don't offer any qualified plans that follow Hyde's precedent, in place since 1977. That directly contradicts the president's 2010 executive...

In what may be the ultimate Nanny State move, Vermont has outlawed consuming or bringing brownies, cakes, or cookies to school. The mandates are part of a new program titled “Smart-Snacks-in-Schools” and will apply to lunch items, vending machines, and fundraising events between midnight and half and hour after school. Boston.com reported:

in Iraq and Syria but warned of an escalating conflict overseas and the need to focus on domestic issues. Sanders is often to the left of Obama and has said he is considering a presidential run in 2016 to the left of Hillary Clinton. But on Wednesday night, he backed the core of Obama's plan. "I think the president is right, that we've got to help the so-called Syrian moderates," Sanders said on MSNBC. "God knows how many of them that there are. I think airstrikes are an important part." "But let us be very mindful of Vietnam ... and...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...

ST. ALBANS (VT) — Police video and documents provided to the St. Albans Messenger show how an ordinary traffic stop last week degenerated into a physical altercation, which further disintegrated into the use of ethnic and homophobic slurs. Local attorney Peter J.R. Martin, 74, was stopped by Officer Mike Malinowski of the St. Albans Police Dept. (SAPD) Thursday, June 12, at 5:30 p.m. for having tinted windows, which are not legal in Vermont. The incident occurred on Lake Road near Cherry Street at St. Albans Bay. Martin was subsequently charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He has pleaded not...

The list of things that offend Muslims is long. Muslims are incensed, ready too often to murder offenders of their religion. The offenses range from substantive criticism: the Danish cartoons, The Satanic Verses, Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s film “Submission”; to the trivial: the Three Little Pigs banned from British schools, a teddy bear named Mohammed. A blog called the Amboy Times has compiled several hundred more.Add to this list a sign in Winooski, Vermont, a suburb of Burlington, that said, “Yield for Sneakers Bacon.” (Not “Yield Sneakers Bacon” as reported in numerous outlets.) Sneakers is a local...

The sign said “Yield Sneakers Bacon”: i.e., yield to the allure of the delicious bacon at Sneakers Bistro. But in the end it was the operators of Sneakers who yielded. For them, “diversity” means making the world a bit less diverse, by yielding to the Islamic supremacist demand that Infidels must conform their behavior to Muslim sensibilities. Remember the ironclad and ever-reinforced principle: in Muslim countries, non-Muslims must change their behavior to avoid offending Muslims. And in non-Muslim countries, non-Muslims must change their behavior to avoid offending Muslims.“Advertisement removed after resident expresses offense,” by Hannah McDonald, WPTZ.com, August 23, 2014...

MONTPELIER, Vt. - Former Vermont U.S. Sen. James Jeffords, who in 2001 tipped control of the Senate when he quit the Republican Party to become an independent, died Monday. He was 80. Jeffords died in Washington, said Diane Derby, a former aide to Jeffords. He had been in declining health, she said. Jeffords had announced in 2005 that he would not seek a fourth term, citing his and his wife's health problems.

- The Daily Caller - http://dailycaller.com - Member Of Dem. Campaign Sent Vulgar And Sacrilegious Tweets Posted By Lauren Eissler On 3:48 PM 07/23/2014 [Ben Gagnon with Governors Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, Peter Shulmin of Vermont and Congressman Michael Michaud of Maine at fundraising luncheon on the day before Gagnon was suspended for tweeting vulgar statements.] A team member of the Democrat’s nominee for governor of Maine tweeted a lot of sacrilegious and vulgar statements and was suspended for it. Maine Rep. Michael Michaud’s team member Ben Gagnon was suspended after tweeting sexist, expletive-laden statements. The tweets were taken down...

The number of Americans who see illegal immigration as the nation's most pressing problem has spiked from 3 per cent to 17 per cent since May, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. That percentage now tops government corruption, the U.S. economy, jobs, health care and every other hot-button issue, driven by a flood of tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children pouring across the U.S.-Mexico border. 'We are all connected. We can't just build a wall or a fence and say no more,' Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis tweeted on Tuesday. 'This is America. Our doors are open.' The...