Free Republic

Water, Carried: Politico‘s Seung Min Kim and Carrie Budoff Brown sum up “How immigration reform died.” Some questions for them: 1) Is it true “reformers largely won the August recess [of 2013]? That sure wasn’t my recollection. My recollection is that initial opposition to amnesty at town halls was muted, in large part because frightened GOP congressmen simply stopped holding town halls. Reporters sympathetic to the “reformers” immediately rushed write stories claiming that “Immigration Reformers are Winning August.” (SNIP) You never seem to carry water for opponents of “comprehensive” legislation. Do we need to leak to you more? Take out...

In the "card check" bill, if a newly unionized employer can't reach an agreement with the new union, an arbitrator will step in and impose a two-year contract. I thought Jennifer Rubin must be wrong when she said that this arbitrator would be a government employee: snip But it turns out Rubin is right. Or at least she might be right. The arbitration parts of the card check bill are so vaguely drawn that nobody knows who the arbitrators will be. The job of appears to be delegated entirely to the Federal Mediation Service. The FMS might decide to use...

""...Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where...

My colleague Bruce Reed says that President Bush waived the Davis-Bacon "prevailing wage" rules for post-Katrina federal construction projects "because a group of conservative members of Congress saw a convenient opening to drive liberal members crazy." _______Snip_____________ Let's hear from someone who does know something about Davis-Bacon! Kausfiles has received an e-mail from a seemingly well-informed source deep within the federal bureaucracy:. I am a Federal Government Contract Specialist (job title: means I award contracts on behalf of the government) and know a lot about this law and have dealt a lot with this law. ... [I]f you want to...

Editor falls to bloggers’ rapid poison Sarah Baxter, New York THE New York Times boasts on its masthead that it contains “all the news that’s fit to print”, but the internet is challenging its pre-eminence as a provider of news and opinion in America. A proliferating band of independent writers known as “bloggers” (short for web loggers) is pumping out personal takes on the news, and one of the most persistent themes of their websites has been that Howell Raines, executive editor of The New York Times, would have to resign or be sacked. The bloggers got their man last...