Free Republic

At the end of the day, senators care more about protecting themselves and their colleagues from unpredictable, inconvenient floor votes than they do about passing legislation.Official Washington’s conventional wisdom about the Senate filibuster is a fairy tale. It is utterly unmoored from the choices being made by individual senators, party caucuses, and the body as a whole. Every person who has ever told you that the mean, nasty, outdated legislative filibuster is the source of Senate gridlock and the obstacle to common-sense legislating in Congress has either swallowed, or is peddling, a lie. In an op-ed in the Washington Post...

Most of the time, Congress is incapable of working in a bipartisan fashion. While the infrastructure bill is a recent exception, the Build Back Better spending bill will clearly be a Democrats-only bill. If you look at the approval numbers for Congress, you can tell that the American people are discouraged about the future and whether our lawmakers can get anything done across party lines. There is at least one issue, though, where both Republicans and Democrats can work together to address a pressing problem facing employers and workers. With recent news of record numbers of Americans dropping out of...

Federal agents in a sweep targeting the most dangerous criminal immigrants arrested 15 people who have been allowed to remain in the U.S. under President Barack Obama's executive action intended to protect children who came to the U.S. years ago with their parents, the Associated Press has learned. Fourteen of the 15 had been convicted of a crime, the Homeland Security Department confirmed late Thursday. In at least one case, the Obama administration renewed the protective status for a young immigrant after that person's conviction in a drug case, a U.S. official briefed on the arrests said. One of the...

By Becky Pallack ARIZONA DAILY STAR A Tucson man who told authorities that he'd used video games to practice his driving skills is accused of leading officers on a 25-mile high-speed chase Thursday. Jose Manuel Lopez, 22, also crashed his car through a fence along Interstate 19 during the chase and into a yard on the South Side before running into a Mexican food restaurant, where he finally surrendered, officers said. Lopez, of the 5600 block of South Mission Road, was arrested on six felony counts and was taken to the Pima County jail. Investigators said he fled because he...