Free Republic

Just how worried is Hillary Clinton over the suddenly-surging Bernie Sanders? Concerned enough that key supporters are taking to MSNBC to attack the Vermont senator. But will it work, or backfire? Fellow US Senator Claire McCaskill, a Clinton supporter, delivered a scathing assessment of her colleague during today’s Morning Joe, repeatedly calling Sanders “a socialist” and accusing the media of giving him “a pass”. As co-host Joe Scarborough pointed out, however, most of Bernie’s supporters already know he’s a socialist and are quite happy about it. Did Senator McCaskill consider whether calling attention to that on MSNBC would actually hurt...

There is bad news to come regarding Social Security - not merely for the "1 percenters" but for ordinary Americans, who must either pay more to Social Security or receive less from it. Expanding Social Security, as some of members of Congress have proposed, isn't rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is like adding more passengers. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released its latest financing projections for the Social Security program, showing a long-term funding shortfall that has more than quadrupled since 2008. The program's trust fund, which in 2008 the CBO projected would last until mid-century,...

In the hot days of summer, the progressive revolution that took over cities and even the national government is frenziedly devouring itself. The media is pounding away at Hillary Clinton, not because it cares about her foundation’s dirty deals or the contents of her email server, but because it doesn’t trust her ideological commitment. If the media were sure of that, both stories would have been treated like Benghazi; mocked, ridiculed, falsely fact checked and then buried in a haunted Indian graveyard under the New York Times building at midnight. Instead the media pined for Elizabeth Warren. When the Native...

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tensions are building inside and outside the white marble facade of the U.S. Supreme Court building as the nine justices prepare to issue major rulings on gay marriage and President Barack Obama's healthcare law by the end of the month.</p>

In the final hours before the House votes on a new leadership-concocted scheme to sneak Obamatrade past the American public, it’s been revealed that pro-Obamatrade forces are now aiming to sneak a renewal of the highly controversial Export Import Bank into the deal to secure Senate passage later if the House passes it on Thursday. “I and all the other members there are looking for a guarantee … for a deal to be good it’s got to have enforcement, TAA, I think it’s got to have Ex-Im reauthorization,” Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat who’s angling for this in the deal,...

Michael Savage DESTROYS Bernie Sanders (S-VT) for comparing warming skeptics to holocaust deniers and challenges him to come on his show and debate the validity of global warming. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84xKx9dUVaM

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday night said Republican skepticism towards climate change science is a national “embarrassment.” “One of the embarrassments that goes on in this country today is that we have a major political party called the Republican Party that is rejecting what the overwhelming majority of scientists are saying,” Sanders told host Bill Maher on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” “That is, of course, climate change is real and caused by human activity,” said Sanders, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate. “That’s an issue we’re going to talk about a whole lot.” Sanders praised Pope Francis for...

You can’t have an event like the Charleston shooting take place during election season without all of the candidates being asked to weigh in on gun control. (Once again pretending that any of the currently proposed gun control laws might have prevented that attack.) And since he’s still being discussed as a serious contender for some reason, Bernie Sanders was no exception. But when reporters asked the Vermont Senator to offer his thoughts on gun control, he took a pass. Bernie Sanders says he wants to talk — at length — about guns.Just not now.Two days after a white man...

Hillary Clinton said she would vote against the "Fast Track" trade bill passed by the House on Thursday if she were still in the Senate, unless she was "absolutely confident" trade adjustment assistance would be provided. Clinton's comment that she would not approve "Fast Track," which is a tool for negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, came during an interview with Jon Ralston on Thursday night, following her appearance at the NALEO conference in Las Vegas, Nev. "At this point, probably not because it's a process vote and I don't want to say it's the same as TPP," Clinton...

The Republican field is crowded, which implies that primary voters have little information about where some of the candidates stand. That is particularly the case this season, with a few relatively unknown contenders who lack legislative experience or a long history of campaign contributions that would allow researchers to precisely identify where they stand on the liberal-to-conservative political dimension.However, one characteristic all candidates share is that they have active and popular Twitter accounts. And as I showed in an article published earlier this year in the journal Political Analysis — now freely available online as an Editors’ Choice article —...

Is it worth caring about this, knowing that a socialist from the northeast has zero chance of beating Hillary in a national primary, just for the ephemeral pleasure of watching Clintonworld dissolve into a pool of angst if they drop an early state?I’m leaning towards “yes.” According to a survey released Tuesday by Suffolk University, 41% of likely Democratic primary voters said if the Granite State presidential primary was held today, they’d vote for Hillary Clinton, with 31% saying they’d back Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.Until now, Clinton has been the overwhelming frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in just...

New Hampshire utility ratepayers will pay a Taiwanese company $1.22 million to build the state’s largest solar installation so that a small town can save about $500,000 in power costs over the life of the project. Taiwan’s Walsin Lihwa, parent company of Borrego Solar, will use Chinese-made solar panels in the 3.5-acre project, which is supposed to be finished in July. It will supply power to several municipal buildings in the area but only some of the time: the town of Peterborough (population: 6,284) gets only 197 sunny days per year. “What a great project,” deadpanned David Kreutzer, a senior...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leads the Democratic primary field by a wide margin in three early nominating states — though any Democrat who captures the party’s presidential title could be saddled with an albatross named Barack Obama. New polls conducted by Morning Consult show Clinton leading her Democratic rivals by huge margins, more than 40 points, in Iowa and South Carolina, two states she lost when seeking the Democratic nomination in 2008. Clinton takes 54 percent of the vote in Iowa, compared with just 12 percent for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 9 percent for Vice President Joe...

Bernie Sanders, the outspoken progressive U.S. senator challenging Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, urged her on Sunday to take a stand on a big trade deal that has divided the Democratic Party. Clinton aides appearing on Sunday television news shows said she would not weigh in until negotiations were complete. Sanders, a vocal critic of free trade, called on Clinton to join labor unions, environmentalists and other opponents of the trade package before it is brought up for another vote this week. Clinton is the front-runner among candidates to be the Democratic Party nominee for the November...

Hillary Clinton's Saturday campaign reboot isn't just her first public rally. Coming a day after President Obama suffered an embarrassing legislative defeat, it is a changing of the guard for the Democratic Party. Make no mistake: while House Republicans also voted overwhelmingly against the president on a key trade bill Friday, it was his fellow Democrats who handed him the most stinging rebuke. Just 40 Democrats out of 188 voted with Obama. Nearly 80 percent of House Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, went against him. A mere two of the 10 Democrats representing Obama's home state of Illinois in...

So who’s waiting in the wings with a humongous bankroll and a proven history of enforcing the type of big-government policies the Democrat faithful love? Click to the next page to find out. …when that time finally comes, and the inevitable euthanasia of Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions finally materializes, it won’t be Sanders who benefits. Nor will the other Lilliputian Democrat hopefuls, like Jim Webb, Lincoln Chaffee or Martin O’Malley. It’s going to be Mike Bloomberg.

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) says he doesn’t know whether Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) likes immigrants because he doesn’t hear him advocating on their behalf. In an interview that will air Tuesday with Larry King on ORA TV’s PolitiKING, Gutiérrez, who is backing Hillary Clinton for president, first failed to remember Sanders’s name before blasting him for not doing enough to push immigration reform. “We’ve got the socialist, uh I can’t remember his name. Bernie Sanders,” Gutierrez said. “I don’t know if he likes immigrants because he doesn’t seem to talk about immigrants. But sooner or later, he’ll tell...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants to give Americans a paid vacation, as part a "family values" agenda he outlined Thursday. Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he is introducing a bill, the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act, that would give 10 days of paid vacation to every employee that had worked for an employer for at least one year. The legislation would apply to employers with at least 15 employees. "What family values are about is that at least for two weeks a year, people can come together under a relaxed environment and enjoy the family," Sanders...

BENNINGTON, Vt. — A Russian-language ad offering services for illegal immigrants in the New York City area is drawing Ukrainian and Georgian foreign nationals to obtain driver’s privilege cards in Vermont, one of just 10 states offering formal identification cards to undocumented immigrants. Licenses are de facto citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the nation’s top ID card and essential to just about every service. Ongoing fraud related to Vermont licenses has many concerned that a weaker standard could make the state an entry point for terrorists seeking a formal ID card. In May, top officials at the Vermont Department of Motor...

Sen. Bernard Sanders‘ strong second-place showing in Wisconsin Democrats’ presidential straw poll has party leaders warning Hillary Rodham Clinton that she could have a real primary race on her hands. Mrs. Clinton, who is supposed to be the party’s all-but-inevitable presidential nominee, barely beat Mr. Sanders in the balloting this past weekend, garnering 252 votes to his 208, or 49 percent to 41 percent. “By golly, I think Clinton has got to pay attention to who’s out there,” said Gerry Lisi, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman for Barron County. “I know Clinton is listening, and I’m sure this will have an...