Free Republic

This week, the average price for a gallon of gas reached yet another all-time high of $4.37. Adding to the bad news, the average price for a gallon of diesel fuel has also reached a new record-high of $5.55 as of this writing. No wonder, according to a new poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports on behalf of The Heartland Institute, 82 percent of likely voters say they are either “very” or “somewhat concerned” about rising energy and gas prices under the Biden administration. Since Joe Biden entered the Oval Office, the cost of energy (especially gasoline and diesel fuel) has...

Court-packing - the attempt to enlarge the size of the Supreme Court for short-term political purposes - used to be a dirty word in the history of American jurisprudence. The tradition of a nine-person Supreme Court is now 153 years old. The last attempt to expand it for political gain was President Franklin Roosevelt's failed effort in 1937. FDR's gambit was so blatantly political that even his overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress rebuffed him. Yet now "court packing" is a law school cause celebre. It is hailed as a supposedly quick fix to reverse the current 5-4 conservative majority. Recently,...

Democrats are pushing student loan forgiveness hard currently, gaining momentum with resident Joe Biden saying he supports it. I’m buried in law school loans, due to the left canceling my legal career so I can no longer make a high income as a lawyer. I put off having children because of the huge debt, never ended up having any, and I work multiple jobs and don’t own a home. But that’s not something taxpayers should be responsible for rectifying. There are many sad stories about financial problems that are far more sympathetic, so why should we select primarily affluent, white...

The weird thing about Utah is that while its patriotic, conservative citizens will elect winners like the ever-amusing Orrin Hatch, they are also suckers for prissy invertebrates like Mitt Romney. And now Evan McMullin, the slightly less-lumpy doppelgänger of Brian Stelter (who is a potato), has taken a break from dodging his creditors from his last Toobin Zoom call of a presidential campaign to enter the Utah Senate race against conservative stalwart Senator Mike Lee. McMuffin has got the full backing of the Lincoln Project types, though it might be a hassle campaigning when his biggest supporters can’t come within...

The Joe Biden who swore his oath of office on the west front of the United States Capitol one year ago on January 20, 2021, is not the Joe Biden Americans see shuffling around the White House today. Last year, Biden presented his policies as a can't-fail way to "build back better," "shut down the virus," and lead the American economy out of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Flanked by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Biden's party controlled two-thirds of American government, and it seemed, on paper at least, that Biden would be able to do what he wanted. For those...

There’s a sense of panic setting in among Congressional Democrats in the wake of resident Joe Biden’s inflammatory speech about passing the two currently pending bills allegedly aimed at securing “voting rights.” Over at The Hill, the pair of measures were described last night as being “on the brink of defeat.” But like a magician who remains confident that he still has a couple more rabbits stuffed in his hat, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is cooking up a new plan to try to advance the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Unable to attract...

In a Dear Colleague letter this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warns that if Republicans refuse to support the Democrats' unconstitutional efforts to nationalize elections, he will move to eliminate legislative checks and balances by blowing up the filibuster. "As former Senator Robert Byrd famously said, Senate Rules 'must be changed to reflect changed circumstances,'" Schumer argued. "Put more plainly by Senator Byrd, 'Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past.'" And by the "past," Schumer means only a couple of years ago, when he led a record 300-plus filibusters during Donald Trump's...

Chuck Schumer, the Inspector Clouseau of Senate Majority Leaders in comparison to Mitch McConnell’s Sherlock Holmes, has decided to try to strong-arm Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema into dropping their opposition to killing the filibuster by making a big public show of it. Hey, that’s plan has worked great so far. I sure hope he succeeds – for once – for three reasons. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. As so often happens with the Dems, Napoleon’s injunction to never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake comes to mind. So does Br'er Rabbit’s plea to Br'er Fox not to...

With the anniversary of January 6th this week, Democrats are using it to push massive election reforms. They claim the reforms are necessary to save Democracy. Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says the situation is so dire that it is necessary to change long-held Senate rules so that Democrats can pass the bill on a pure party-line vote. The For the People Act of 2021 replaces state voter ID rules with a signed statement from the voter, and makes permanent the pandemic’s mail-in ballot voting. The mailing out of blank absentee ballots en masse would become a fixture...

"This is the end. My only friend, the end. Of our elaborate plans, the end." – The Doors It's not like the Biden Presidency was breaking any records or anything (other than the daily "oldest president in history" record he sets merely by waking up). But this weekend's "It's a 'no' from me, dawg" pronouncement from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) could very well be the beginning of a very long and pitiful coda to this accident of American politics. And while the media and erstwhile wannabe socialists across the political, academic, and entertainment spectrum insist on demonizing the West Virginia...

If you listen to the leaders of the Democratic party, our democracy is on life support. President Biden called recent state voter integrity bills “Jim Crow on steroids” and said they were part of “the worst attack on our democracy since the civil war.” Nancy Pelosi warned recently that “the clock is ticking on democracy” due to state election reform bills. Contrary to the hyperbole and spin from top Democrats, 2021 has been a landmark year for our democratic republic. The systems of checks and balances enacted by the Founders are indeed running smoothly: Ordinary Americans, concerned with the loopholes...

In the smoky backrooms I envision the Democrats still operate in – Schumer with a cigar and his interns with CBD oil vapes – something has surely occurred to Chuck, Nancy and team: without the massive and historical change in voting laws in 2020, would Joe Biden have beaten Donald Trump? If the spectrum swings back to center, even a little, and the rules return to anywhere near their historic norms, do they have any chance next time? After all the panic and fear and misinformation stirred up by Democrats and the Partisan Press, the cumulative result of all the...

A high priority for the radical left is a national takeover of our elections. They want the bureaucrats in D.C. running our elections. This is what S.1 or The Corrupt Politicians Act is all about—another big government power grab. Following the 2020 election, there is no doubt that many states need to reform their election laws. A national takeover is not the answer. Power is best left close to the people. Elections should be run at the state and local levels. The Corrupt Politicians Act sets out to turn all the states to the Pennsylvania election model of chaos and...

One year ago, Schumer incited a mob on the steps of the Supreme Court in order to bully justices to rule in Democrats' favor.nsible.” However, Sen. Josh Hawley’s efforts to censure Schumer for his violent threats were scuttled. The Washington Post write-up of Schumer’s threats focused instead on Republican opposition to them. “GOP seizes on Schumer’s remarks” read the headline. Schumer’s threats came just 17 months after the Supreme Court had been besieged and attacked by abortion activists upset at Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Like the Jan. 6 event, the October 2018 siege also involved Vice President Mike Pence being condemned by...

If there were devices designed to measure the amount of political hypocrisy in the air, they’d be exploding all over the country. There’s a new party in control of D.C., which means everything that was bad is now good and vice versa. If you were quoting Thomas Jefferson on January 19th, you’re more a Hamiltonian today. Time to lift those draconian coronavirus shutdowns in California, Michigan, and other blue states; it turns out they’re hurting the economy! Travel bans aren’t xenophobic; they protect us! The procedural filibuster is a Jim Crow law! For four years, Democrats and their media portrayed...

Far from being a helpless minority, Senate Republicans are in a powerful position to leverage their consent for key priorities from their voters.In a Senate that is now split 50-50, newly minted Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his counterpart, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, are negotiating a power-sharing agreement. Although Vice President Kamala Harris wields the tie-breaking vote for Democrats on the Senate floor, the two parties must negotiate how they will manage the day-to-day operations of the institution. What McConnell agrees to in the upcoming days will tell us a lot about how the Senate GOP plans to comport itself...

Source: Photo courtesy of Mike LindellMy wife Lori and I spent part of our rainy weekend rewatching the awesome Hugh Jackman film The Greatest Showman, his musical tribute to the master entrepreneur and entertainer P.T. Barnum.Taking nothing away from Jackman’s show-stopping performance (or the fact the movie glosses over many of the controversial details of P.T.’s real-life past) Barnum paled in comparison to Mike Lindell, best-known from his wild TV commercials as the ubiquitous inventor of My Pillow.But Lindell is far more than just a showman and an entertainer. He’s a job creator, a philanthropist, a true American patriot, and...

RUSH: You can find news stories. (Snort!) “News.” There isn’t any news. You can find, quote-unquote, “stories” in the media about the plan to impeach Trump now. I don’t know how widespread it is, but I’m telling you it’s real. There are people, a lot of maybe pundits, but you know as well as I do: It doesn’t matter where you find a leftist, they’re leftists. They’re either disguised as journalists or elected Democrats or what have you. So pundit, journalist, commentator, pick your poison. They are suggesting that Trump be impeached, that he is such a threat, that yesterday...

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the president pro tempore of the Senate and the longest-serving Republican in that body, sent out a tweet last week lamenting the imminent demise of an ancient and admirable Senate tradition. "US Senate has NEVER convened a Congress on Sunday out of respect," said Grassley. "Not once in 231 yrs," he said. Grassley went on to note that the Constitution calls for Congress to convene its new sessions on Jan. 3 each year but also allows Congress to enact a law changing that date. Historically, in those years when Jan. 3 fell on a Sunday,...

Jim and Jill were born a little more than a year apart to the same unmarried mother in Southern California. Jim was adopted by a working-class family in the San Fernando Valley, where the father made his living as an auto mechanic and the mother as a maid. Jill was adopted by an upper-middle-class family in Pasadena, where the father was a lawyer and the mother stayed home. Jim was a decent high school student and football player -- but not good enough at either to win a college scholarship. When he graduated from 12th grade, his father encouraged him...