Free Republic

New Jersey Sen. Jeff Chiesa will vote for the immigration reform plan pending in the Senate, his office said today. The Republican announced his decision the old fashioned way: on Twitter. His office confirmed that the new account, @ChiesaNews, is authentic. He later released this statement: “As a former Federal prosecutor and Attorney General for the State of New Jersey, I have looked carefully at this debate through the lens of public safety and law enforcement. This bill strengthens border security, E-verify and better identifies visa overstays through an improved entry/exit system. I will vote for this immigration bill because...

Vice President Joe Biden insisted to a subdued audience Tuesday that he and President Barack Obama “haven’t given up” on gun control. But his remarks came at the first White House event since the Senate’s failed April 17 background checks vote. And all that he had to show gun control supporters by way of progress was a list of completed or mostly completed executive actions — and a set of new guidebooks for churches and schools on how to deal with a mass shooting situation. Over the past two months, the White House has dramatically dialed back its gun push....

It’s all but a journalistic commandment: Thou shalt not have a vested interest in the story you’re covering. Otherwise, a personal entanglement could color a reporter’s neutrality or cloud public perceptions of fairness. An obvious area of concern: when a journalist’s relatives or spouse is part of the news. So what to make of all the family ties between the news media and the Obama administration? According to the news media, nothing much at all. News organizations say they’ve worked out the conflicts — real or potential — involving their journalists. But that hasn’t stopped a few eyebrows from being...

For the past five years, beginning with his first presidential campaign, Barack Obama has promised that his government would be the most open and transparent in American history. Recently, while stating that he makes “no apologies” for his Justice Department’s investigations into suspected leaks of classified information, the president added that “a free press, free expression and the open flow of information helps hold me accountable, helps hold our government accountable and helps our democracy function.” Then, in his National Defense University speech Thursday, Obama said he was “troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism...

Hey, these things happen: Penny Pritzker, President Obama’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department, understated her income by some $80 million and had to file a correction to her government-filed disclosures, Bloomberg is reporting. That might sound like a lot of money, but it’s all relative. Pritzker, whose family founded the Hyatt hotel chain, is worth about $1.5 billion. So it’s easy to see how a few million — or 80 — could go missing. Maybe she left it in the other purse? A spokeswoman told Bloomberg that the $80 million was “a substantial amount” and that Pritzker’s advisers corrected...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said embattled IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights and will be hauled back to appear before his panel again. The California Republican said Lerner’s Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination was voided when she gave an opening statement this morning denying any wrongdoing and professing pride in her government service. “When I asked her her questions from the very beginning, I did so so she could assert her rights prior to any statement,” Issa told POLITICO. “She chose not to do so — so she waived.” Lerner triggered...

Lawmakers pressing for more heads to roll at the Internal Revenue Service are going to be disappointed. “Why weren’t more people fired?” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) demanded at a hearing Tuesday on the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, channeling the frustration of his colleagues. Turns out it’s not so easy. In fact, it appears that no one has been formally reprimanded and a spokesperson for the union representing IRS workers said it hasn’t been called to help any employees yet. Most employees involved in the targeting program are covered by protections for federal workers that could drag...

The Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists’ phone records, perusing their e-mails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from gathering news. This heavy-handed business isn’t chilling, it’s just plain cold. It also may well be unconstitutional. In my reading, the First Amendment prohibition against “abridging the freedom . . . of the press” should rule out secretly obtaining two months’ worth of the personal and professional phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, including calls to and from the main AP phone number at the House press gallery in the Capitol. Yet this is what...

The South Dakota Senate race is turning into a tense feud between two longtime Democratic power brokers: Harry Reid and Tom Daschle. The rift between the current and former Senate Democratic leaders threatens their party’s effort to keep control of the Senate seat held by the retiring Sen. Tim Johnson since 1997. Reid and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wanted to recruit former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) as their candidate to replace Johnson in 2014. As he spent weeks attempting to clear the field for Herseth Sandlin, Reid met privately with Johnson and his wife to ask them to...

Welcome to Cincinnati – Ground zero of the exploding IRS scandal. Things started brewing earlier this month when Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington first admitted conservative groups were targeted for extra scrutiny by tax bureaucrats in Ohio's Queen City. By May 14 – three days into the mess -- IRS staffers in Cincinnati were hard to find as reporters descended on the city. At the home of IRS staffer Elizabeth Hofacre, who was caught up in the blossoming controversy, mail below the slot in her front door was noticeably piling up when an ABC News reporter stopped by last...

The fateful question came from a tax lawyer, in a room filled with dozens of them. It came at the end of a Friday morning panel, on the second day of the American Bar Association tax section’s big annual meeting at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington D.C. The moderator had announced that it would be the panel’s last question. “Lois, a few months ago there were some concerns about the IRS’s review of 501(c)(4) organizations, of applications from tea party organizations,” Celia Roady, a veteran tax lawyer, asked Lois Lerner, head of the IRS’ tax-exempt organizations division, a few...

...new information has emerged from both the Treasury Inspector General’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner... The clumsy way the IRS disclosed the issue as well as Lerner’s press briefing by phone were seen at the time as a public relations disaster. But even so, it is worth reviewing three key statements made by Lerner and comparing them to the facts that have since emerged. “But between 2010 and 2012 we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving and many of these...

The Internal Revenue Service scandal now devouring the Obama administration — the outrageous use of the federal taxing authority to target tea party and other conservatives — certainly makes for meaty partisan politics. But this scandal is about more than partisanship. It's bigger than whether the Republicans win or the Democrats lose. It's even bigger than President Barack Obama. Yes, bigger than Obama. It is opening American eyes to the fundamental relationship between free people and those who govern them. This one is about the Republic and whether we can keep it. And it started me thinking of years ago,...

A hotly contested gun-control law that was passed in 2007 is finally ready to be implemented, Attorney General Kamala Harris said Friday: a requirement that every new semiautomatic handgun contain "micro-stamping" technology that would allow police to trace a weapon from cartridges found at a crime scene. The law, signed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, made California the first state to require micro-stamping, which engraves the gun's serial number on each cartridge. But the legislation specified that it would take effect only when the technology was available and all private patents had expired. The gun owners' group Calguns Foundation tried to...

The State Department, under Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, created an arrangement for her longtime aide and confidante Huma Abedin to work for private clients as a consultant while serving as a top adviser in the department. Connect with NYTMetro Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for news and conversation. Ms. Abedin did not disclose the arrangement — or how much income she earned — on her financial report. It requires officials to make public any significant sources of income. The disclosure of the agreement that Ms. Abedin made with the State Department comes as her husband, former...

TWO years of political upheaval have battered tourism, a motor of Egypt’s economy. Much of the Nile cruise fleet lies idle. Trinket-sellers and would-be guides at the Giza pyramids are so hungry for custom that they often mob or simply jump aboard approaching taxis. And though the damage has been patchy, with beach resorts still thriving even as visitors shun the ancient monuments, lingering uncertainty over the future means it may be years before Egypt regains its place in the sun. In 2010, the last year before Egypt’s revolution, a record 14m tourists arrived. The industry was 13% of GDP...

Americans trust Clint Eastwood more than President Barack Obama. That’s right, the iconic actor ranked No. 13 on Reader’s Digest “100 Most Trusted People in America” poll, released Tuesday. Fifty-six percent of Americans trust Eastwood, compared with the 45 percent who trust Obama. Obama ranked No. 65 on the list. Eastwood stepped into the political spotlight last August when he spoke at the Republican National Convention in Tampa to an empty chair, pretending that Obama was sitting in it. Other politicos on the list who each ranked above Obama: First lady Michelle Obama at No. 19; former Secretary of State...

The sweeping gun control measure signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and hailed by Democratic leaders has a surprising critic: Hollywood. Officials in the movie and television industry say the new laws could prevent them from using the lifelike assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that they have employed in shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and films like “The Dark Knight Rises.” Twenty-seven pilots, television and feature projects, including programs like “Blue Bloods” and “Person of Interest,” are now in production in New York State using assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Industry workers say that they need to...

Magpul Industries, the Erie-based ammunition magazine maker that pledged to leave Colorado after gun control legislation was signed into law in March, is for the first time manufacturing its weapons accessories out of state. The company revealed the news in a Facebook reply late Monday night to a customer who expressed frustration with the lack of information about where Magpul planned to move its operations. “You have lots of people interested in this, might as well satisfy the masses and come out with it already,” Daniel Wooldridge wrote. This morning, the company provided a little more detail about what it...

The state NAACP branch's takeover of Bridgeport's long embattled local chapter surprised few people last week. For months the local branch of the civil rights organization, whose membership has dwindled over the years, had been bitterly divided over questions of financial impropriety, membership issues and election woes. But it's not alone. Last month, the same types of issues led the national leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to call for the reorganization of the Waterbury branch as well. And earlier this year, questions of election impropriety cast a shadow over the installment of a new...