Free Republic

Today was supposed to be simple. The Senate Judiciary Committee was set to vote on advancing the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Senate floor. It was going to be a party-line vote. It was going to be dotted with Democrats once again whining about the process. They also want an FBI investigation to look into the sexual misconduct allegations lobbed against Kavanaugh. One of the women, Christine Blasey Ford, testified before Congress yesterday in an intense day of testimony. Judge Kavanaugh addressed the committee in the afternoon, in a fiery speech defending his name, reputation, and career....

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who was diagnosed with brain cancer in July of 2017, has died. It’s the same form that took the life of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in 2009. Cortney wrote on Friday that Mr. McCain would be suspending medical treatment. For the past year, the Arizona Republican has been fighting the disease, which has kept him from Washington D.C. Sen. McCain cast the deciding vote in the GOP’s failed attempt at the so-called skinny repeal of Obamacare. The measure went down 49-51. He has remained in Arizona for medical treatment since the end of 2017. Senator...

Gina Haspel, President TrumpÂ’s nominee for Central Intelligence Agency Director, has earned the support of one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), but her nomination process is far from finished. And her confirmation is not yet certain. ItÂ’s quite possible that other red state Democrats who will be fighting for their political lives this season will follow suit. In the meantime, we have to choke on the bipartisan hypocrisy over her nomination. Haspel has had a lengthy and honorable career as an intelligence operative and official. SheÂ’s spent over thirty years at the CIA. SheÂ’s beyond qualified to lead the agency....

While President Donald Trump took swipes at Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress over the social media giant’s allegations of data misuse, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that it’s quite possible that hearings for a Supreme Court nomination could occur within the coming months. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy is said to be mulling retiring from the bench.It was not the meat of the story. Grassley was merely warning the president not to fire Mueller, or anyone in the DOJ, like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which would burden the...

Another day has passed and we’re getting closer to a government shutdown. The money runs out midnight on Friday unless a deal is struck on immigration. Let’s not forget that Senate Democrats once thought tying immigration reform to matters of the budgets was insane. Sen. Chuck Schumer, now Senate Minority Leader, said it would breed “governmental chaos” five years ago. The negotiations have hit a snag after it was leaked that President Trump asked why are we letting in people from “s**thole countries.” The liberal media blew a gasket. While Sen. Dick Durbin has confirmed the president said this DHS...

It's (nearly) over.  By a 51-48, strictly along party lines, the US Senate has passed a GOP-backed tax reform package that will cut taxes for more than 80 percent of all Americans (raising taxes on a tiny, disproportionately wealthy fraction), benefit small businesses, and make America's extraordinarily high corporate tax rate -- both statutory and effective -- far more internationally competitive.  All Democrats, including every alleged "moderate."  voted 'no,' while every Republican voted 'yes.'  The only Senator not voting was John McCain, who is fighting cancer at home in Arizona.  This is a very significant victory for the White House...

There are a few topics that usually elicit startling hypocrisy from both major political parties, depending on whether or not they hold power. One is judges and filibusters (although the GOP's application of the Reid Rule seems to have ended that debate), another is deficit spending (after applauding President Obama for nearly doubling the national debt over eight years, Democrats have rediscovered this problem, wielding it to oppose a plan to let Americans keep more of their own money), and yet another is good governance 'process.' The party in control tends to prize victory over pristine process, whereas the 'out'...

FINAL UPDATE - The votes are in, and the ayes have it.  After a marathon evening of debating and considering amendments, the US Senate has approved the GOP's tax reform bill, which would simplify the tax code and cut taxes for the vast majority of American households, small businesses and corporations.  Every Republican voted yes, except for Tennessee's Bob Corker.  Democrats uniformly voted no.  This is a big legislative victory for the GOP, which overcame a great deal of ferocious opposition -- much of it rooted in misinformation -- to pass the legislation.  Up next, a conference committee with the...

The mainstream media discovered Republican statesmen. Men of principle willing to sacrifice their careers to do what is right. Men of stature willing to take on the president. They are Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee. They got their extra 15 minutes of fame while being lionized by Democrats. Like heroes of ancient myth, Flake and Corker sought to hold the barbarians back from Washington’s gates. “Enough!”, shouted Flake as he defended the sacred status quo. The nation’s capital long has showcased the phenomenon of “growing in office.” A conservative gets elected. Then he embarrasses himself...

The Democratic Party is regional. It’s mostly confined to the urban areas and states that touch salt water. That spells certain doom for a healthy party that’s incapable of winning rural areas. It’s not impossible. They’ve done it before, though it was before the toxic ethos of political correctness and identity politics were thrown into the mix. Now, the party’s hard left turn on immigration and abortion is starting to make moderate to right-leaning Democrats, ones who can win in these regions, difficult to find, let alone support. To complicate matters, there are still healthy numbers of Democrats who think...

With much of the media is fixated on Russia, Comey, and potential obstruction, other goings-on inside the Beltway are getting relatively scant attention.  The White House is ramping up its focus on rebuilding US infrastructure (a common Trump campaign refrain), Republican Senators may be forging ahead with some progress on desperately-needed reforms to Obamacare's failing status quo, and the president has unveiled another substantial roster of nominees to fill federal court vacancies.  Three names on the list are slated to serve on important and influent circuit courts of appeal -- including a woman Trump has tapped to assume Supreme Court...

Senate Republicans have agreed to a deal that strips an amendment protecting religious freedom for faith-based organizations from a defense spending bill, making the measure more favorable to signature by outgoing resident Barack Obama. Obama threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) if the bill included the Russell Amendment, which applies religious freedom exemptions to federal grants and contracts. The NDAA is an annual piece of legislation that addresses Department of Defense budget and expenditures. The Russell Amendment restated current United States law via the First Amendment. The measure would have protected, for example, faith groups that run...

Kicks of mules ObamaCare is in big trouble. With the election of a Republican president and the survival of Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, ObamaCare should be history. But ObamaCare is not dead yet. The effort to repeal and replace it is going to face some serious obstacles - some of which are policy-related, like the problem of how you deal with people with pre-existing conditions, or of how you transition people who have signed up for subsidized policies. The left wants you to think that repealing ObamaCare means ripping people’s health care away from them. The...

The Coming Cruz Senate Apocalypse? That's Joe Scarborough's baleful prophesy, should the senator from Texas snatch the Republican presidential nomination. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough asserted that "Ted Cruz is the worst-case scenario for [GOP] Senate candidates, even worse than Donald Trump." So bad, in fact, that Joe agreed with Mike Barnicle that Cruz as nominee = Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader. In making his case against Cruz, Joe said "there's a reason why in 2008 there was not a single Republican representing anybody in all of New England in Congress." Kind of strange tarring Ted for the absence...

"Ain't gonna happen." This one probably requires a bit of a memory refresher. Last July, Ted Cruz took to the Senate floor and revealed publicly the sort of thing that traditionally U.S. senators keep to themselves: In a private meeting, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had looked Cruz in the face and lied to him about whether a sneaky back-room deal had been cut to re-authorize the Export-Import Bank. McConnell had insisted three times to Cruz’s face, “There is no deal, there is no deal, there is no deal.” That was a lie. Hardly an earth-shaking development. McConnell lies all the...

How often does someone get pre-emptive Pinocchios? Barack Obama got three of them today in his speech regarding the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Obama offered a pre-emptive argument of his own, accusing Republicans of “an abdication of their constitutional duty” if they refused to give Garland’s nomination a hearing and a floor vote: resident Obama: The Senate must fulfill constitutional duty At a time when our politics are so polarized, at a time when norms and customs of political rhetoric and courtesy and comity are so often treated like they’re disposable — this is precisely the...

ONE: Barack Obama's pulling the same scam he pulled with the Toomey-Manchin gun control package. Remember the State of the Union refrain: "They deserve a vote!"? So the gullible Republicans gave "them" a vote. And what happened? We won, by the skin of our teeth -- no thanks to the Republicans' partial surrender. (Had Lisa Murkowski flaked, there is no doubt that Reid would have picked up the four "swing Democrats" he had in reserve and achieved victory.) But the GOP paid a horrible price for letting the process go further than it should have gone. Kelly Ayotte, Dean Heller,...

Ever since Harry Reid's Democratic majority blew up decades of precedent to significantly weaken the filibuster in order to grease the skids for President Obama's left-wing judicial and executive appointments, some conservatives have wondered if the GOP would answer in kind upon regaining the majority. On Wednesday's edition of the Hugh Hewitt Show, John Thune -- the third ranking member of Senate Republican leadership -- told Hugh and me that an option is under consideration that would further erode the minority's filibuster tool: Benson talks w/ Sen. Thune on action to change filibuster rules on appropriations bills Thune says Senate Republican leadership...

With Donald Trump continuing to dominate the Republican presidential primary field, many of the GOP's senior leaders are beginning to contemplate the down-ballot consequences of having the controversial outsider atop the ticket. Typically, control of the Senate and House are heavily influenced by the outcome of the presidential contest, and a bruising general election contest between Trump and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton almost certainly would affect the outcome of some of the congressional races.

The Senate seems poised to pass a bill that will gut parts of Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood for a year. President Obama will most certainly veto this legislation, making this possible legislative victory a symbolic gesture. But it would represent some progress in Republican efforts to repeal the presidents' signature domestic achievement, which has been marred by failure. Just as Democrats used the process of reconciliation to pass Obamacare back in 2010, Republicans alluded to using it during their winter meeting in Hershey, Pennsylvania in January. After months of wrangling over deadlines for the reconciliation process, the Senate agreed to start...