Free Republic

House Speaker John Boehner claims that next year Republicans will take the fight over executive amnesty to President Obama. “We’ve also made clear that early on we’ll make a direct challenge to the president’s unilateral actions on immigration,” the Ohio Republican told reporters Thursday in arguing the case for the House’s must-pass government spending bill. “You can expect that challenge to the president to include real action on border security.” He noted that the House is already working on the matter, and will pick it back up in January. “We’ll take this fight to the president on the strongest possible...

Wendy Davis, who lost the Nov. 4 gubernatorial election to Republican Greg Abbott, has won Texas Monthly magazine's coveted "Bum Steer of the Year" award for her "train wreck" of a campaign. The annual awards take a snarky jab at Texas politicians, odd news stories and personalities. Fromer winners include Anna Nicole Smith, Gov. Rick Perry, Lance Armstrong and Tom Delay. This year's cover depicts Davis stepping in a cow patty while wearing the bright pink Mizuno "Wave Rider" sneakers she donned during her 2013 filibuster against Texas' new abortion restrictions that brought her into the national spotlight. The magazine...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent her colleagues a letter Thursday afternoon saying it’s "clear" that House Republicans do not have the votes to pass a $1.1 trillion spending package. Shortly after coming out against the package in a speech on the House floor, the California Democrat thanked her troops for giving Democrats “leverage” to demand changes. "This increases our leverage to get two offensive provisions of the bill removed: the bank bailout and big money for campaigns provision," Pelosi wrote, referring to the two Republican amendments that have fueled the Democrats' revolt. "However you decide to vote in the...

Have you heard the story of the first-term senator who is a hero to the party base and the subject of intense 2016 speculation -- the one who's willing to buck leaders on big bills, and has even lobbied House members to stand against a funding measure to keep the government running? It's the story of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). This week, it's also the story of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Warren has emerged as the torchbearer of the liberal resistance on Capitol Hill to a $1.01 trillion bill to fund the government, which is facing the threat of a...

A Sacramento County sheriff's deputy has been placed on paid administrative leave after a video surfaced showing him using his foot to force a man's head against the ground and a flashlight to strike the man.

NEW YORK (AP) — The price of oil took another dive Wednesday, plunging to five-year lows amid mounting evidence that global supplies are far outstripping demand. The U.S. Energy Department reported a surprise increase in domestic oil inventories and OPEC projected that demand for its crude would sink next year to levels not seen in more than a decade. Benchmark U.S. crude slumped 4.5 percent, or $2.88, to close at $60.94 a barrel on Wednesday. Prices have not been that low since July of 2009. U.S crude prices have fallen 17 percent in two weeks and are now 43 percent...

America is a mess and the world can barely tear its eyes away from the unfolding train wreck.

News.com.au: Patients’ pain ends Ebola vaccine trial in Switzerland 3 minutes ago "A CLINICAL trial of an Ebola vaccine has finished early after some patients started complaining of joint pain. The trial was stopped a week early in all 59 volunteers “as a measure of precaution”, the University of …"

In August 1992, nearly three months to the day after the four LAPD officers that beat black motorist Rodney King were acquitted on nearly all charges by a jury with no blacks on it, Lourdes G. Baird, the United States Attorney for California’s Central District, stepped before a battery of news cameras and reporters and announced that three of the officers would face federal charges. The charges were violating King’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable arrest and with depriving him of his 14th Amendment due-process rights during his March, 1991 arrest. The officers would face up to 10 years in...

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blasted Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, his soon-to-be successor, and other Republicans, vowing Democrats will wage "a new battle" with the GOP when the Senate reconvenes on Jan. 6. “Is there enough they can do to help Wall Street? I don’t think so. Big banks? I don’t think so,” Reid told the New York Times in an exit interview published Wednesday. “That’s where the new battle is going to be.” The 75-year-old Nevada Democrat said Republicans are at odds with Americans when it comes to environmental protection laws. “They want to eviscerate Clean Air, Clean...

An American nurse who may have been exposed to the Ebola virus is going under watch at the National Institutes of Health outside Washington, the NIH said Thursday. The nurse, who is not being identified, was volunteering in Sierra Leone, currently the country hardest hit by the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. SNIP--- NIH watched another potential Ebola patient who arrived in September. He turned out not to have been infected. And there's an unidentified health worker under observation at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta after a possible exposure. Emory says there is nothing to report about whether the patient...

Jackson County Texas Sheriff Andy Louderback spoke at a press conference on Dec. 10, 2014 in Washington, D.C., in opposition to President Barack Obama's amnesty plan. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr) (CNSNews.com) – Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday in the nation’s capitol, Jackson County Texas Sheriff Andy Louderback said President Barack Obama’s plan to protect millions of illegal aliens from deportation amounts to “a large welcome sign and a saloon door mentality on our border.” "What we’re facing in Texas and in this nation is a large welcome sign and a saloon door mentality on our border," said Louderback, president...

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. The Community is invited to line the streets and welcome a hero home, to his final resting place. Captain William DuBois' body will arrive in Grand Junction on Thursday in preparation for funeral services this weekend. According to the Department of Defense, Captain DuBois was killed December 1, 2014 when his F-16 crashed near a coalition base in the Middle East. He was headed to support the U.S mission against Islamic State (ISIS) fighters in Syria. Here's the schedule of events provided Grand Valley Funeral Homes: Dec. 11th, 2014 12:15 PM Flight Arrives to Grand Junction Regional...

Did you bury a teenage girl alive after shooting her? Are you on death row after a string of crimes too gruesome to describe? Or are you just a member of Al Qaeda dedicated to destroying America? If so progressives will fight for you. Just dial 1-800-IAM-VICTIM and the leftist waiting to take your call will insist on your presumption of innocence. Its activists, reporters and lawyers will exploit every pretext to get you off the hook and they will call that justice. The judicial process, they will say, matters more than public safety, public outrage or the victims. When...

WASHINGTON -- A last-minute addition to a giant spending bill that would ease a 2010 law that put restrictions on risky investments by banks after the 2008 economic crisis is threatening to derail the legislation. A House procedural vote on the $1.01 trillion spending bill for the 2015 fiscal year almost went down to defeat via a 213-213 tie, until a Republican House member reversed his no vote to allow deliberations on the measure to continue. The bill had lost Democratic votes because of opposition to the language that changes safeguards in the 2010 Dodd Frank Law. The provision scaling...

Nevada Secretary of State Democrat Ross Miller, has certified a Nevada gun control initiative put forward by organizations funded by Michael Bloomberg.  The timely turn in of signatures and some signatures themselves have been challenged by a group of Nevada second amendment supporters.   Democrat Ross Miller lost the 2014 election for Attorney General.  Because of term limits, he was ineligible for a third term as Secretary of State, and is in lame duck status.  He also certified the Marijuana initiative.  From the AP article: Nevada's top election official is giving the go-ahead to two initiatives for the 2016 ballot:...

Brian P. McKeon, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, said U.S. cruise missile deployments are among a range of options being considered if Russia fails to return to compliance with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder hits Chicago on Friday to discuss law enforcement issues in the wake of violence that erupted after a Missouri grand jury declined to indict a white police officer who shot an unarmed African American teen in Ferguson, Mo. The Justice Department is conducting two probes — civil and criminal — of the incident. Chicago will be the latest of a series of meetings Holder is holding on "Building Community Trust." The Chicago session will include U.S. Attorney Zach Fardon and Mayor Rahm Emanuel will also attend. "The roundtable will serve as an opportunity to...

On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke at the 9th Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture at the Heritage Foundation. Among other things, he discussed the Anglo-American “special relationship,” ways both countries can work together to combat Islamic terrorism, and the numerous foreign policy blunders committed by the current administration. “We’re gathered here today to talk about one of the greatest resources that America’s traditionally enjoyed, which is the power of friendships across the globe,” he began. “One of the sad legacies we’ve seen over the last six years is the fraying of friendships and alliances across the world,” he continued....

James Buckley, former U.S. senator from New York of the Conservative Party (also the first and only senator ever elected from the Conservative Party), under secretary of state during the Reagan and Bush administrations, federal judge, and the Buckley in the landmark campaign finance decision, Buckley v. Valeo, has a plan that could singlehandedly shrink the federal budget by one-sixth, restore the balance of federalism and Constitutional order, return power to the states and the people, and in the process improve the services provided to taxpayers. The novel idea to achieve these ends is the subject of his slender but...