Free Republic

The US Congress is on a collision course with the United Nations by threatening to cut its annual budget by tens of millions of pounds, which would disrupt its work on the ground. Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the house international relations committee, is circulating an 80-page draft bill suggesting cuts to UN programmes congressmen regard as inefficient or worthless. Republican senators have waged a long campaign against the UN, much of whose work they oppose on ideological grounds. Their case has been aided by recent scandals, ranging from sex abuse by UN peacekeepers in Africa to the mishandling...

House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.) has promised disgruntled conservatives that the House's top priority in the 109th Congress is passing legislation that bars illegal aliens from obtaining driver's licenses, language the Senate stripped from the just-passed intelligence bill. House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wis.), a strong proponent of the driver's license provision, secured Hastert's assurance once House leaders agreed to vote on the intelligence bill last week. Sensenbrenner helped thwart a November 20 vote on the legislation because the provision was removed. Hastert's spokesman, John Feehery, said the speaker wouldn't hesitate about attaching the language to an Iraq supplemental bill,...

This year, the Democrats may change their policies on judicial nominees. During President Bush’s first term the Democrats used the filibuster to stop Bush’s nominees. Now the Democrats would like to do the same thing to President Bush’s new nominees. Former Senator Tom Daschle believed that the filibuster would be a winning strategy leading up to the 2004 election. But instead it proved to be a losing strategy. Daschle and four other senators lost their seats in the Senate. Unfortunately Southern Democrats believe that the judicial nominees did not have any effect on the election. The Southern Democrats believe that...