Free Republic

State lawmakers began work Monday, three months after most of them were elected. Depending on how things play out during the first weeks of the 2015 Legislature, three months from now some of those lawmakers could find themselves on the ballot again — before the end of the regular session. Conservative activists are laying the groundwork to recall new Assembly Speaker John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas, freshman Assemblyman Chris Edwards, R-Las Vegas, and other moderate Republican legislators who refuse to flatly reject the tax increases proposed by GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval. If those activists go forward with recall petitions — under...

Moving to quash a conservative GOP insurrection, Assembly Speaker-designee John Hambrick on Saturday harshly rebuked Assemblywoman Michelle Fiore, telling her to stop playing “childish games” and undermining him by insisting she’s still Republican majority leader. Hambrick said in an email to Fiore that he had full authority as the elected leader of the Assembly Republican Caucus to remove her as majority leader and as chair of the Assembly Taxation Committee. He said he removed her last month for insubordination and for how she’s handling a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over unpaid payroll taxes for her home health care...

Things are pretty volatile in the Chaos Caucus. Every since Republicans took over the Assembly, things have been anything but smooth. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise. After all, even the GOP itself didn’t expect to be in charge of the lower house, and the last time the party was in charge, Ronald Reagan was in the White House and the pinnacle of technology was the Apple IIe desktop computer. You already know about the disastrous election of Ira Hansen, R-Sparks, as speaker. He was undone by ugly sentiments penned in a Sparks newspaper over a long career as...