Free Republic

As California Congressman Henry Waxman promised, he has introduced a Bill to ban the sale of “Parts kits” for “Assault Rifles, Assault Shotguns, and Assault Pistols." This also includes a ban on Receiver blanks. The Bill defines an “assault weapons parts kit as: “ any part or combination of parts not designed and intended for repair or replacement but designed and intended to enable a consumer who possesses all such necessary parts to assemble a semiautomatic assault weapon…” Which raised the question of vagueness in the law as to which components of an “Assault Weapons Parts Kits” could be sold...

The president said that Republicans have one unifying principle - denying 30 million Americans the right to health care. Ummm... The CBO said that there would be 30 million without insurance even with ObamaCare fully implemented. Obama. Mixed up. Fail.

The Mainstream (Establishment) Media is trying to once again do the Republican vs Democrat thingy: that Obama has proposed some serious (cough, laugh) changes to the NSA spying program, and those wascally wepubs (Rep. McCaul and Peter King (R-GOP-e) are trying to thwart him. I never thought that I would see a recent liberal rally where hundreds marched (not reported by the MSM-e) where a person would be carrying a sign that said Snowden, patriot and Pelosi, traitor. And even the New York Times (Editorial Board, June 6th: Obama administration has lost all credibility on the issue of the NSA...

Joseph E. Schmitz' Perspective: The Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, and 19 House colleagues co-sponsored H.Res. 153 on April 12, “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 violates article I, section 7, clause 1 of the United States Constitution because it was a ‘Bill for raising Revenue’ that did not originate in the House of Representatives.” The Supreme Court has never before addressed an Origination Clause challenge that was so blatantly obvious. The only surprise is that no one raised...

Tea party groups have publicized their desire to find primary challengers for Republicans they don't like as well as vulnerable Democrats who are already in office. Here are a few tell-tale signs that a tea party challenger might jump into a race near you.

Republicans relish the idea of impoverished people across the nation dying slow agonizing deaths without access to healthcare. At least, that’s what our President believes. Holding a press conference right before his luxurious vacation in Martha’s Vineyard (which I hear is fantastic this time of year) the President said that “the one unifying principle the Republican Party has, is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health-care.” The comment was absurd, disingenuous, and indicative of Liberal’s inability to defend their ideas. The comment was made in regards to three conservative Republicans who are leading an effort to essentially defund...

See I don’t need a lot of Republicans to help me. And that’s why I so admire John McCain. John McCain and I came to the House together 31 years ago. We came to the Senate together at the same time. He and I have fought over the years but we’re also very very good, good friends. And he broke away from the pack. He said, in effect, we have to get some things done. So he doesn’t control the Republican caucus but he controls probably 10 people there. That’s all I needed. And we were able to get a...

Vice President Joe Biden is calling Democrats to action to stop grassroots conservatives from electing more Republicans in the mold of Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX). In a fundraising letter for the Democratic National Committee, first reported by Ed Krayewski at Reason, Biden wrote told prospective donors that a “group of freshmen senators are running the show in the Republican Party” and played up the possibility of a government shutdown over ObamaCare.

As I wrote about in my earlier post....the whole system was designed to fail and either lawmakers were too stupid to understand this or knew it from the beginning, and wanted it: From the administration’s point of view, conceding that key parts of Obamacare cannot be implemented isn’t a failure if the effect is to swell enrollment on the exchanges. The insurance subsidy entitlement, administered through the exchanges, is the single-payer scheme at the heart of the law. If you peel away provisions like the employer mandate and Medicaid expansion, what’s left is a universal health care entitlement—enforced through the...

Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. Daily results are based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 national adults; Margin of error is ±3 percentage points.

In response to a question at a town hall event this week, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) suggested that a majority of House Republicans support granting amnesty through a GOP version of the DREAM Act to young illegal aliens who were brought to America as minors by their parents. Schock, a member of the whip team led by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, was laying out for constituents his stances on immigration and the House GOP leadership’s plan to deal with the issue later this year. “They’re going to move one bill after another dealing with all the various issues that...

Photobombed: McConnell Holds His Nose To Campaign As Conservative Friday, August 9, 2013 | CR PAC Staff | Constitutional Rights PAC This morning McConnell Instagrammed this picure in response to reports that Jesse Benton, his campaign manager said: “Between you and me, I’m sort of holdin’ my nose for two years because what we’re doing here is going to be a big benefit to Rand in ’16, so that’s my long vision...” But it appears that this isn't the first time Mitch McConnell has been caught on camera holding his nose. It seems that he holds his nose every...

Jackson Lee Tweets Praise That Staffers Free From Health Care Exchange Requirement August 8, 2013 - 1:15 PM By Penny Starr (CNSNews.com) – Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) tweeted her approval Wednesday for the Obama administration’s decision that members of Congress will not have to join health care exchanges and their health care coverage will be subsidized by American taxpayers. “It’s official: Members of Congress and congressional staff will keep their health subsidies under Obamacare!” Jackson Lee tweeted on her official Twitter account. Jackson tweeted next: “And some staffers will not have to join the health exchanges at all.” The...

President Obama was described as “exotic” by one senator from a Southern state during a closed-door meeting, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) claimed Wednesday. Harkin said the remark was made at a private event attended by nearly the entire Senate on filibuster reform. “I'm not naming any names, but one senator got up from a Southern state and said, ‘Well, you've got to understand that to my people down here, Obama seems like he's exotic,’ ” Harkin told the Des Moines Register’s editorial board on Wednesday. “That he's just exotic, he doesn't share our values.” Harkin spoke in response to a...

Arizona Senator John McCain is in Egypt with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham just weeks after the new government, run by the Muslim Brotherhood, was overthrown by the military. Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was heavily protested by millions of people as he tried to turn the fragile State into a dictatorship under Sharia law. More from The Daily Beast: During their whirlwind tour of Cairo Tuesday, two top GOP senators held the most extensive meeting to date between U.S. officials and senior officials in the embattled Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters are fighting in the streets to overturn last month’s...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday evening with a delegation of 36 American congressmen headed by Congressman Steny Hoyer. During the meeting Netanyahu claimed that though Iran's president said pressure wouldn't help, in the last two decades pressure was the only thing that helped. snip

Is the recent news concerning U.S. embassy closures in 20 countries and that the NSA program uncovered this, how did they manage to miss the overseas calls from at least one of the Tsaernaev brothers? Will this bolster the case for the NSA? Is this action a result of Benghazi fatigue as some pundits have said on cable news? Swcondly, are McCain and Graham the only U.S. Senators allowed to go to Syria? Where are the Democrat senators? No Dem Senators to go for Obama?

Members of Congress are brazenly insisting the laws they pass apply to everyone but themselves. Republicans and Democrats, who can agree on almost nothing else, are planning to exempt themselves and their staff from Sect. 1312 (d) of the Affordable Care Act that requires them to get their health insurance on the newly created insurance exchanges and pay the same premiums the public will have to pay... Currently, members of Congress and their staff are covered by plans they chose through the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program, with taxpayers picking up 75 percent of the tab. The thinking behind the...

A congressional select committee could offer immunity to the CIA’s dispersed, intimidated survivors. You can always tell the depth of an event’s illegality by the measures people take to cover it up. By that measure, the conduct of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and David Petraeus leading up to the terrorist attack that killed four Americans on 9/11 2012 must be must be so sufficiently wrongful that, if revealed, they could lead to the president’s impeachment.How else can we gauge what is apparently the most energetic coverup in modern history? We know, from several sources, that the survivors of the attack —...

Interesting developments: Matt Bevin is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky GOP primary. Checking his biography, I’m glad to see that Bevin is a graduate of Washington & Lee University, a U.S. Army veteran, and a small business owner — exactly the kind of outsider “not a politician” profile anyone would want in a Tea Party candidate. If grassroots conservatives in Kentucky rally behind Bevin, I think we can start chilling the champagne for Mitch McConnell’s retirement party. However, defeating the party’s Senate leader in a primary would be completely unprecedented. If this is Star Wars, Luke...

MAYFIELD, Ky. – That Mitch McConnell really does have a reelection fight on his hands was apparent to me even before I got to Fancy Farm, the glorious western Kentucky combo of county fair and old-fashioned political hoedown. I could tell it as soon as I stepped inside the community center in Calvert City that was hosting the local GOP warm-up event on Friday night, the evening prior. If the room had been any more low energy, they might’ve had to bring in one of those wind turbines that people like to scorn in coal country, just to keep the...

America has a two-party system. But it’s not Republicans versus Democrats. It’s the ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — against everyone else. Consider how President Obama just gave Congress its very own Obamacare waiver. Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased. Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer....

Nothing focuses the mind of a politician quite like a competitive race. In the wake of Liz Cheney's primary challenge, Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi has now taken a hard-line on funding ObamaCare. He has joined the efforts led by Sens. Lee, Cruz and Paul to strip funding to implement the health care law out of any measure to fund the government. “U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., will not support a continuing resolution that funds further implementation or enforcement of Obamacare,” his office explained in a statement highlighting his support of the defunding effort. Behold the primary challenge effect. Enzi was...

(CNSNews.com) - House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives would not take up the immigration bill that was approved by the Senate, but would instead take a "step-by-step approach" in which illegal aliens would go "on probation" before they were eventually allowed to "get a green card." "So what we're going to do is take a step-by-step approach to get immigration right, not a big massive bill, but separate bills so people know what's in these bills," said Ryan. "We don't have control of our border," said Ryan....

(CNSNews.com) - Asked which Republicans he admires, conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh named two of them. "I admire any who are bold enough and brave enough to speak about what they truly believe," Limbaugh told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren in an interview that aired on Friday. "(Sen.) Ted Cruz is one. Sarah Palin is another -- any of them who are fearless and have the courage of their convictions and have no compunction about saying it. They're not embarrassed of themselves. They're not insecure. They firmly believe what has to be done and are willing to stand behind it....

It’s official, the United States has a Ruling Class and it is no longer being hidden or denied.  Obama and the Congress have just decided that they don’t want to play by the same rules as the rest of us. Big surprise that the Office of Personnel Management, under pressure from Capitol Hill and Obama, has said that they will issue a ruling that states government can keep making contributions to the health care premiums of members of Congress and their aides.  In other words, “we” the “serfs” will be paying for Congress and their staff to keep their “Cadillac...

Senators, representatives, and their top aides will be able to stay under the current subsidized health care system. That means they will continue to get a taxpayer-funded contribution to help pay for their health care premiums. A last-minute deal worked out before Congress went on their five-week summer vacation gets lawmakers out of the original language of Obamacare, which said members and their aides had to use its health care plans. Republicans like Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana slammed the move, calling it a "behind-closed-doors deal, announced right after Congress is safely away from the crime scene." "This is exactly...

<p>Obamacare would keep running even in a government shutdown, a new congressional report suggests.</p> <p>The new health care law draws funding from sources that are not subject to the congressional budget process, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Also, the revenue collected under Obamacare is considered to be part of a category that ensures the "safety of human life or the protection of property," which makes it immune to government shutdowns, the report said.</p>

House Republicans will take a carefully orchestrated, staunchly anti-Washington campaign to voters this month, blaming President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats for Americans’ unhappiness with government. “Every day I serve in Congress, I work to fight Washington,” says a suggested op-ed in a richly detailed “planning kit” distributed to all 234 House Republicans ahead of the August recess. Running against Washington is an old strategy. Ronald Reagan summarized it only minutes after being sworn in as president in January 1981. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem,” he told the country. “Government is the...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says the House of Representatives will vote on a series of immigration bills in the fall, but wouldn’t commit to a vote on a measure similar to what the Senate has passed that provides a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country. “We’ve said we are not going to be bringing the Senate bill up — we don’t believe that that’s the right path toward an immigration reform bill,” the Virginia Republican said in an interview broadcast on “Fox News Sunday.” “We will have a vote on a series...

On his Friday radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh dissected Thursday’s revelations about last September’s Benghazi scandal aired on Jake Tapper’s CNN program, saying that Republicans “Waiting for CNN to do this isn’t going to cut it.” According to the report, there were dozens of CIA operatives on the ground at the time terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Limbaugh said there was something more here: that the Obama administration was going around the law, and House Republicans, particularly House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, should be...

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) is accusing the Obama administration of a massive cover-up in the deadly Benghazi, Libya, terrorist attack, saying it was “dispersing” witnesses around the country and changing their names in an effort to hide the truth about what happened. In an interview Thursday with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, Gowdy said the administration is "changing names, creating aliases" of U.S. agents who were in Benghazi on the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks.

On Thursday, CNN’s Jake Tapper reported that the Central Intelligence Agency is now pressuring agents who were on the ground in Benghazi, Libya on the night of September 11, 2012 to keep silent and not talk to Congress or the media. The Hill reports: The CIA allegedly had “dozens” of agency operatives on the ground at the U.S. diplomatic annex in Benghazi, Libya, during last year’s deadly terrorist attack that ended with the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Langley is taking extreme measures to mask the agency’s operations in Benghazi and in northern Libya at the...

In an interview with the Daily Beast published Friday, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) suggested Tea Partiers are the "same group" who fought for segregation during the Civil Rights movement.

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- The White House has approved a deal that will exempt members of Congress and their staff from some of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, Politico reported late Thursday. Under the law, popularly referred to as Obamacare, lawmakers and their aides were required to source health insurance "created" by the law or offered through one of its exchanges, and without the subsidies they currently enjoy, the members of Congress would have faced thousands of dollars in additional premium payments each year, the report said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor promised his Democratic colleagues that they would put the food-stamp portion of the traditional “farm bill,� which they split from its usual “agricultural policy� copilot earlier this month, on the agenda in short order. Republicans, however, have been cooking up a new plan for the food-stamp program just about certain to send all Congressional Democrats into an almighty uproar, via Reuters: U.S. House Republicans plan to propose a $40 billion cut to the nation’s food stamp program, the head of the House Agriculture Committee said on Thursday, twice the cuts previously sought by conservatives.Committee Chairman...

House Democratic leaders launched an effort this week to curb racial discrimination in the nation’s criminal justice system, arguing that the current process treats minority groups unfairly. The lawmakers are examining what Congress can do — if anything — to fight racial profiling, iron out sentencing disparities and rein in other deep-rooted biases they say plague both the legal process and the country as a whole. The push comes weeks after George Zimmerman, a Florida neighborhood watch volunteer, was acquitted of murder charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager, in a gated subdivision last year. The...

Welcome to The Hill's annual 50 Most Beautiful list! This year marks the 10th anniversary of the list and brings in a slew of new faces as, for the first time, White House and executive branch employees were eligible for consideration.

Nearly a hundred top Republican officials sent a letter to the House GOP on Tuesday urging lawmakers to pass a bill that legalizes illegal immigrants, arguing that the current system is already allowing them to stay and so it makes sense to register them and bring them into the system. The donors, led by former Bush administration Cabinet officials Carlos Gutierrez and Spencer Abraham, also said that immigrants are potential Republican voters who can be won over — if the party can be seen as welcoming to immigrants. “Doing nothing is de facto amnesty. We need to take control of...

Do you believe that Mary Landrieu has performed her job as US Senator well enough to deserve to be reelected or do you think it is time to give a new person a chance? TOTAL RE-ELECT 39.2% TOTAL NEW PERSON 50.6% See here the complete poll results. Magellan Strategies BR surveyed 1,800 likely Louisiana voters between July 29th and July 30th, 2013. The margin of error was 2.3% at a 95% confidence interval. This survey was not authorized or paid for by any campaign or political organization. The survey was conducted using automated telephone technology.

Just two weeks after Janet Napolitano announced her resignation as Secretary of Homeland Security, the Congressional Black Caucus has suggested Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston fill her spot. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/29/cbc-recommends-sheila-jackson-lee-homeland-securit/#ixzz2aaJUgZSD Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Rep. Frank Wolf wants to know why Gen. Ham is willing to talk about Benghazi to people paying to hear him speak but only speaks to Congress behind closed doors. Also he raises other questions based on what Ham said about his response to Benghazi.

Paul needled him last night on Hannity’s show for taking a “gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude towards federal spending on Sandy relief. Here’s Christie needling him back by accusing Paul and his home state of Kentucky of being a couple of deadbeats: “I find it interesting that Sen. Paul is accusing us of having a ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’ attitude towards federal spending when in fact New Jersey is a donor state and we get 61 cents back on every dollar we send to Washington,” Christie said. “And interestingly, Kentucky gets $1.51 on every dollar they send to Washington. So if Sen....

Just two weeks after Janet Napolitano announced her resignation as Secretary of Homeland Security, the Congressional Black Caucus has suggested Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston fill her spot. A letter dated July 25 and signed by Rep. Marcia Fudge, Ohio Democrat and caucus chairwoman, urges President Obama to consider Miss Jackson Lee for the position, calling the Democrat a “voice of reason” that the agency could stand to gain, the Houston Chronicle reported. “Representative Jackson Lee would serve as an effective DHS Secretary because she understands the importance of increasing border security and maintaining homeland security,” the letter reads....

The Senate voted 64-34 Tuesday to end debate on the nomination of Kent Hirozawa to serve on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). That vote sets up eight hours of debate time, which could be waived to allow a quick vote on the nomination. After Hirozawa, the nominations of Nancy Schiffer and Mark Pearce to join the NLRB will follow. More than 10 Republicans voted with Democrats to advance Hirozawa's nomination. Republicans agreed to hold up-or-down votes on President Obama’s NLRB nominations as part of a deal to avoid Senate rule changes limiting the minority's right to filibuster executive branch...

Obama: 'There Is Only So Much I Can Do on My Own' 11:36 AM, Jul 30, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER In his latest email to supporters, President Obama bemoans his lack of political power. The email, sent today, is signed by Obama and sent to the list of Organizing for Action, his former reelection campaign group. "Daniel," the email begins. "There is only so much I can do on my own." The special interests know it, and they're counting on you to be silent on gun violence and climate change. They hope you're not paying attention to creating jobs...

July 29, 2013 Congressional Black Caucus recommends Sheila Jackson Lee for Homeland Security Secretary Hannah Jeffrey Conservative bloggers went wild Monday when they got wind of the Congressional Black Caucus’ suggestion that President Obama pick Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston for the post of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Rich Cooper, avid blogger for Security Debrief, responded to the news of the Jackson Lee recommendation in a post by saying, “Apparently, it is not a joke. For reasons that baffle any sense of reality, it is a serious gesture on the part of the Congressional Black Caucus...

Over the past few months, I’ve been advocating for a proactive strategy on immigration. It would be great for conservatives to go on offense and highlight Obama’s callous disregard for the rule of law. They should pass enforcement bills and block funding for Obama’s amnesty programs in budget bills. Unfortunately, because we are not blessed with control over the levers of power, any attempt to address this issue – even in a conservative pro-active way – will backfire. Earlier today, Politico quoted a leadership aide who summed up exactly what we believe to be leadership’s strategy on immigration: “Our members,...

As long as the interest payment - around $475 billion dollars over 12 months - of the federal debt outstanding (around $17 trillion dollars) is made, then a default can be averted; Hence, no need for a shutdown if the current revenues are allocated to make the interest payment(s) first. After that, current revenues would then cover Social Security payments, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP benefits, unemployment benefits, and the rest would cover around half of the $580 billion dollars currently being called for, for military spending. And thus, we would need to borrow absolutely no more than $400 billion - and...

House members voted Tuesday to bar the use of federal funds to hire “atheist chaplains” at the Department of Defense after Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) reminded his colleagues that the concept didn’t make any sense. “It’s just total nonsense, the idea of having a chaplain who is an atheist,” Fleming told fellow House members. “When it comes to the idea of an atheist chaplain, which is an oxymoron—it’s self-contradictory—what you’re really doing is now saying that we’re going to replace the true chaplains with non-chaplain chaplains.” Speaking about the current DOD rules for chaplains on the House floor, Fleming said:...