Free Republic

Bill Kristol writes bluntly about the choice facing Republican senators next week. It is a piece that will circulate throughout the Beltway this weekend, hopefully to good effect. But even Kristol understates the fury that is building among party regulars towards senators who have thrown in with Carl Levin to, as Howard Dean put it, "repudiate the president's policy." (The same anger is building towards the House leadership's embrace of me-too defeatism embodied in Republican Leader Boehner's resolution, though there the error is a blunder, not a purposeful one, and might yet be corrected by the withdrawal of the resolution.)...

Devolites Davis wants to close “gun show loophole,” introduces about 30 other bills. An issue likely to be a centerpiece of Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis’ (R-34) re-election bid, gun control, is also one of her top pieces of legislation this year. Under current law, most dealers must perform a background check on prospective buyers before selling a weapon. Small dealers, or more often individuals, are exempt from this provision. The exemption is commonly called the “gun show loophole” since many of these private sales are made in these venues. Devolites Davis is proposing legislation this year which will close the...

One of the first key procedural votes in the Democrat-controlled House last week established legislative rules that Republicans say will make it easier to raise taxes by a simple majority vote. The straight party-line vote received little attention Thursday as Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, was elected speaker of the House. But Republican leaders and conservative tax-cut advocates said it opened up a huge loophole in a Republican-imposed rule drawn from the Republicans' 1994 Contract with America, which requires a supermajority, or three-fifths vote, to raise taxes. Democrats unanimously voted down a motion offered by Minority Leader John A. Boehner...

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- On the eve of stepping down after 22 years as a Republican congressman, Jim Kolbe says the national Republican Party lost its control of Congress in part because of its emphasis on gay marriage, abortion, stem-cell research and other social issues. He says the American public got tired of watching the party neglect its basic principles, such as fiscal discipline, smaller government and a strong national defense. Kolbe also defended his role in a camping and river-rafting trip he took to the Grand Canyon with two former congressional pages in 1996. He says the trip included...