Free Republic

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has hired a new expert on immigration policy, a move that could signal a renewed House effort to act on the issue in 2014. Rebecca Tallent, director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, will start her new job as assistant to the Speaker on Wednesday. Her arrival was one of a series of personnel moves Boehner announced on Tuesday. Former Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.), a co-chairman of the think tank’s immigration task force, said Boehner’s decision to bring in Tallent was “affirmation of his strong desire to move legislation in 2014.”

Key senators yesterday announced that they will introduce a broad immigration overhaul with a multistep path to citizenship for illegal aliens and a new program for foreign workers that could increase yearly legal immigration by 400,000 people. The bill — sponsored by Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat — also calls for the government to produce a border security strategy, and encourages Mexico to crack down on immigrant smugglers and take steps to control its own borders. Sponsors said it is not an amnesty because it would require illegal aliens to pay all regular...

Speaker Boehner’s recent comment that there would be no conference on the Senate bill appears to have been a lawyerly evasion. He has now hired Rebecca Tallent to “lead immigration efforts for the House,” in the words of the press release. Until tomorrow, she’s director of immigration policy for the pro-amnesty Bipartisan Policy Center. She was McCain’s chief of staff, directing his participation in the 2005-07 amnesty battle. Before that she worked for Representative Jim Kolbe, also pushing amnesty.

This barely qualifies as news — Maverick being maverick-y, really? — but Drudge has been leading all day with that Daily Mail story claiming that zero Senate Republicans are backing the House’s budget bill. That makes it sound like McConnell and crew are set to kill this thing with a filibuster and put the two parties back at the brink of a shutdown in January. Not so. It’s sort of true that no Senate GOPer is supporting the deal in the sense that no one’s said yet that they’re voting for the final bill. But the final bill is irrelevant;...

Tuesday on the Senate floor, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took a swipe at his fellow Republicans who disagreed with him on support of the Ryan-Murray budget deal...

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain excoriated his conservative Republican colleagues Tuesday on the Senate floor for planning to vote against the House-passed budget deal, claiming their opposition “lacks some intellectual integrity.” The budget agreement cleared a key procedural block Tuesday morning, after the Senate voted 66-33 to end debate on the bill. Twelve Republican senators joined Democrats in supporting the move, but 33 others — mostly fiscal conservatives — voted against advancing the bill and are expected to reject the deal itself later this week. That didn’t sit well with Sen. McCain. “I understand that there are many of my...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he prayed Sarah Palin does not get involved in a GOP Senate primary fight in South Carolina. But the Arizona senator said he does not expect her to target the primary fight with his friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “Oh, I pray she wouldn’t do that,” McCain told The New York Times in a wide-ranging interview. “And you know, I find it hard to believe that she would.” ADVERTISEMENT Palin, McCain’s vice presidential running mate in 2008, has hinted about targeting South Carolina and a number of other states housing GOP incumbents up for reelection....

Sen. John McCain is starting to sound like a Tea Party “wacko bird.”In a new fundraising letter for the Republican National Committee released Friday, McCain lashed out at “Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Washington liberals,” who he claimed are destroying the United States.Liberals, he warned, “have taken us down a dark and dangerous path defined by record levels of debt, ever-expanding government, and a lead-from-behind defense strategy. There's not much time left to turn things around.”McCain’s name carries a lot of weight in fundraising because he was the 2008 GOP nominee and is a leading voice of establishment Republicans. But...

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) ripped Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) on the floor Thursday for his hypocritical role in bringing about the “nuclear option,” quoting directly from a Washington Free Beacon article during his impassioned speech. Reid said in a 2008 interview that, so long as he was the party leader, there would not be a nuclear option effectively stripping the Republicans of their ability to block President Obama’s judicial and executive branch nominees. However, on a near party-line vote Thursday, the Senate voted to approve the measure, 52-48. Reid previously called such attempts at a nuclear...

"...Please Arizona, Quit Working Against Us. You can do Better than this. John McCain is serving a six year term that doesn’t end until 2016. His career in which he has earned the title of “maverick” was built by betraying the fundamental principles upon which the Republican Party was founded and his name adjoins legislation sponsored and co-authored by the most odious of leftist Democrat legislators. John McCain has earned the right to retire as a recalled US Senator. Not all states enable their voters to do this but ... continued (couldn't post all material here due to charts, video...

The divisions were on full display at the fifth annual Washington Ideas Forum on Thursday, especially between Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Ted Cruz of Texas, who spoke right after each other. McCain said that while he “respected” the Tea Party Texan, he adamantly disagreed with Cruz spearheading a spending battle over defunding Obamacare, which resulted in a partial government shutdown last month. McCain said the reckless move forced a town in his district to rely on food flown in from food banks. “I have to say, “Stop. You’re wrong, you’re crazy,” said McCain. “If I sound angry, it’s...

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell likes to say, “If someone flicks a pebble at you, you hurl a boulder back at him.” His political team is just as emphatic. Some Republicans in Kentucky who flirted with working for his primary opponent, Matt Bevin, were told by the McConnell allies that they would get the “death penalty.” Another frequent warning: “Mitch McConnell doesn’t take prisoners.” McConnell’s team “shoots the wounded on the battlefield as a matter of course,” says University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato. A former GOP leadership aide who has seen the McConnell operation up close sounds terrified. “They’re...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will meet with President Obama at the White House Thursday afternoon to plot strategy for passing comprehensive immigration reform. McCain said Obama requested the meeting, which comes at a time political momentum for immigration reform is flagging. McCain and Obama need to shore up the support of wavering allies such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has backed off the push to overhaul the nation's immigration laws in a 1,200-page comprehensive bill. Rubio has said the Senate should not try to merge its comprehensive bill with a piecemeal measure coming out of the House. McCain's ally,...

Sometimes, there just are no words. Unfortunately, John McCain supplied them anyway. In an interview with Bloomberg out today, Senator McCain offered high praise to the Secretary of State whose philosophy on accountability for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi was, “What difference at this point does it make?” “Being a loser, I’m not sure what I have to say would be very impactful,” McCain told reporters, alluding to his 2008 loss to President Barack Obama. Then, the Arizona Republican offered plenty of praise for Clinton, who is also making an appearance in Chicago today. “I don’t think there’s...

"llinois Senator Dick Durbin is talking about the flap over his claim that a leading House Republican told President Barack Obama he couldn't stand to look at his face, and Durbin got some help dealing with it from an unexpected source."

(VIDEO) Marine Blaine Cooper calls out John McCain on his treason for aiding and abetting the enemy of the United States.

Passing immigration reform is a way for Republicans to get on a positive agenda and regain some of the approval of the American people, Sen. John McCain said Tuesday during a town hall in Tucson. He said the prospects of passing comprehensive immigration reform this year are still strong despite some Republicans saying the government shutdown and the way it was handled by President Obama affected any chance for compromise. But “the same people that said that are the people that oppose immigration reform. They are just trying to find another reason,” McCain said after the town hall meeting attended...

Sen. John McCain says his daughter Meghan can be a “giant pain in the ass.” But the 29-year-old daughter of the Arizona Republican is laughing off her father’s comment, which he makes in jest during an interview with Meghan in an upcoming episode of her new reality show, “Raising McCain.” “I feel like McCains are pains in the asses!” McCain told “Top Line.” McCain, who first rose to prominence by keeping a blog during her father’s 2008 presidential campaign, said that she and her father are both working through a shared frustration with the current state of the GOP. “We’re...

Sen. John McCain’s daughter says her dad is “depressed” and “frustrated” with the tea party faction of the Republican Party, which she called “the hyper-conservative wing.” A state of mind many in the tea party can relate to in their radical pursuit of a more fiscally responsible, limited federal government. “We’re both frustrated with the idea that only the hyper-conservative wing of the party is going to represent the masses,” Meghan McCain said during an interview with ABC and Yahoo News. Ms. McCain, who has her own reality show “Raising McCain,” said the last time her father was so depressed...

Sen. John McCain's daughter says the tea party revolution within the Republican Party has left him in a state of emotional distress. "I’ve never heard him this depressed other than maybe after the ‘08 election," Meghan McCain said. "He’s so depressed, so down-trodden. The way he’s talking about it, he's never seen it this bad in his 30-plus years in office." Meghan, who describes herself as a liberal Republican, said she shares his sense of despondency. "We’re both frustrated with the idea that only the hyper-conservative wing of the party is going to represent the masses,” said McCain, 29, who...