Free Republic

Two Democratic senators—Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana—who initially voted in favor of a Republican amendment reversing President Joe Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline later reversed themselves and voted with other Democrats to kill the amendment. Both Tester and Manchin voted late Thursday night for the amendment from Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., that would have reversed Biden’s Jan. 20 executive order ending further construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but changed their votes before dawn on Friday morning.

Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) 58% previously denied that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal impacted U.S. immigration; however, now that the full 5,544 pages of the TPP are public and being reviewed by experts, it’s clear Ryan’s statement was false. “The way we wrote TPP, it deals strictly with trade and not immigration,” Ryan told Newsmax six months ago, adding that the idea the TPP consists of immigration reform is “the latest urban legend.” However, in Chapter 12 of the TPP titled “Temporary Entry for Business Persons,” the word “immigration” is mentioned nearly 10 times....

Congress is in a hurry to pass the information-sharing bill even as opposition continues to mount among tech companies, security experts, and privacy advocates After spending months mired in the Senate, the latest incarnation of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) advanced to the floor this week and could face a vote as early as next week. The move to pass the CISPA rehash -- which the Obama administration has indicated it will sign -- comes despite mounting opposition from technology companies, security experts, and privacy advocates. Although CISA is branded a cyber security bill, it does nothing to actually...

The Healthcare Annex, according to WikiLeaks, “seeks to regulate state schemes for medicines and medical devices. It forces healthcare authorities to give big pharmaceutical companies more information about national decisions on public access to medicine, and grants corporations greater powers to challenge decisions they perceive as harmful to their interests.” Dr. Deborah Gleeson, who gave professional review and analysis to WikiLeaks said, “The purported aim of the Annex is to facilitate ‘high-quality healthcare’ but the Annex does nothing to achieve this. It is clearly intended to cater to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.” Gleeson added, “Nor does this do...

On his radio show recently, Glenn Beck urged his listeners to “defund the GOP.” Sarah Palin has threatened to leave the Republican Party; Rush Limbaugh calls it “irrelevant.” The Senate Conservatives Fund has targeted mainly incumbent Republican senators for defeat. Erick Erickson, one of the right’s most prominent commentators, wonders if what's coming is “a real third party movement that will fully divide the Republican Party.” Conservatives have declared war on the GOP. Tired of feeling taken for granted by a party that alternately panders to them and sells them down the river, in their view, Tea Partiers and others...

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has floated a proposal for a couple years now as a last-chance way to avert a crisis and allow the president to raise the debt ceiling without congressional approval, with Congress having the ability to strip that authority with a two-thirds veto – and that’s sort of what the bill to be voted on tonight provides for (see pages 24 ff. of the bill).Assuming it passes tonight, the debt ceiling will be suspended until February 7, meaning the treasury can borrow what it needs to fund obligations until then. Then within the next 14 days, the House and...

One pocket of internal Republican opposition focused on Boehner’s plan to slash government contribution to health insurance for Capitol Hill aides. Boehner and his top lieutenants had already proposed that lawmakers, Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and political appointees at executive-branch agencies should lose the subsidy. But when Boehner expanded that ban to thousands of Hill staffers, a solid bloc of GOP lawmakers told Boehner they would oppose the bill. Boehner still tried to press on. Another rebellious faction believes repealing the medical-device tax was nothing but a giveaway to corporate America, not a part of Obamacare that should be...

While calls for U.S. Attorney General Eric "Stonewall" Holder's resignation grow and the House GOP gears up for a contempt vote next week, it's worth remembering how we got into this mess. In two words: feckless bipartisanship. "I like Barack Obama and want to help him if I can." That was Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch in January 2009, just weeks before the Senate voted on President Obama's attorney general nominee, Eric Holder. Right out of the gate, upon Obama's election in November 2008, Hatch signaled that he would greenlight the administration's top law enforcer. "I start with the premise...