Free Republic

We have already seen the entire media portray recalcitrant conservatives in the Republican party as ideologues. But the real culprits are progressives in both parties whose construct is the primacy of government regulations over free-market principles. While it may be too late for great Senators like Rand Paul to realize a free-market insurance model, it is the only viable solution to a government created catastrophe of immeasurable proportions which has consumed one-fifth (1/5) of the economy.

Just a reminder of how perfidious the Bush clad really is. In a better work they Bush clan would have been hanged for treason.

And yet Paul Ryan walked straight into the Barzini trap that president Trump set for him. By insisting that the voters desired "Repeal and Replace" when in fact all anybody wanted was "Repeal, full stop," Ryan's inner wonk superseded his duties as the speaker of the House to ensure the votes were there for the "Replace" part of the equation. That they weren't should be the end of his speakership. Apparently, Ryan had been listening to the die-hard never-Trumpers too much, and actually thought he could skate on his opposition to the insurgent outsider, whose entire campaign was based on...

Rep. Devin Nunes on Wednesday threw a huge wrench into the middle of the investigations surrounding President Donald Trump, his claims of being wiretapped by his predecessor, and Russia's meddling in the election. And he now finds himself in a central role after making Republicans and Democrats alike scratch their heads over what appeared to be an unprecedented move. Nunes, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, called for a sudden 1 p.m. press gathering Wednesday, with its subject unclear. But once it began, he fired off what sounded like a bombshell revelation: The intelligence community, he said, had "incidentally...

“Bring a halt to all business being done in the name of this potential felony suspect, Donald J. Trump.” Filmmaker Michael Moore on Wednesday urged the Democratic Party to declare a national emergency after the FBI said it was investigating whether members of Donald Trump’s campaign team had worked with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Of course, Moore made his point in a most engaging way on Instagram, using a red light — specifically, that of sentient computer HAL 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey” — to call on Democratic leaders to respond with...

President Donald Trump agreed to add fresh Medicaid curbs to the House Republican health care bill Friday, bolstering the measure with support from some conservative lawmakers but leaving its prospects wobbly. House leaders discussed other amendments calibrated to round up votes and scheduled a showdown vote Thursday. “I just want to let the world know I am 100 percent in favor” of the measure, Trump said at the White House after meeting around a dozen House lawmakers and shaking hands on revisions. “We’re going to have a health care plan that’s going to be second to none.” While the rapid-fire...

Meghan McCain didn't mince words Thursday when expressing her disdain of a possible run for political office by fellow political offspring Chelsea Clinton. "What fresh hell am I living in where I am going to have to sit through Chelsea Clinton running for office?" McCain said on Fox News' "Outnumbered," which she co-hosts. "What do I have to do to make a Clinton stop running for office?" The daughter of Republican senator John McCain was addressing unconfirmed and unsubstantiated reports that the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was eyeing a...

Iowa Rep. Steve King said Monday that blacks and Hispanics "will be fighting each other" before overtaking whites in the US population. King, a Republican, was on the radio responding to a question about Univision anchor Jorge Ramos' comment to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that whites would become a majority-minority demographic in America by 2044, a point Ramos used to make the argument that it is a multiracial country. "Jorge Ramos' stock in trade is identifying and trying to drive wedges between race," King told Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson on 1040 WHO. "Race and ethnicity, I should say...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dismissed President Trump's wiretapping charges against President Obama Friday as a smokescreen designed to cloud potential ties between Trump and Russia. “It couldn’t possibly be true, because that is not how our system works,” Pelosi said during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington. “We do not investigate, through a FISA court, Americans — here or abroad.” Pelosi noted that she was among the architects of revisions to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA Court, enacted after 9/11. The clandestine court overseas surveillance requests from the nation’s intelligence agencies. “There’s much more accountability...

Presented without comment: Dear Speaker Ryan, This week, the Committees on Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means will be marking up Republicans’ long-feared bill to dismantle affordable health care. The GOP legislation will have life or death consequences for tens of millions of families across America, and extraordinary impacts on state and federal budgets long into the future. The American people and Members have a right to know the full impact of this legislation before any vote in Committee or by the whole House.

The investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia is probably going to disappoint a lot of people, and by people I mean partisan Democrats. That’s the thrust of a report at Buzzfeed based on conversations with half-a-dozen people involved in the investigation, both Republicans and Democrats: Even some Democrats on the Intelligence Committee now quietly admit, after several briefings and preliminary inquiries, they don’t expect to find evidence of active, informed collusion between the Trump campaign and known Russian intelligence operatives, though investigators have only just begun reviewing raw intelligence. Among the Intelligence Committee’s rank and file, there’s a...

Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the new deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, suggested Thursday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions deserves jail time for failing to mention his meetings with Russia’s ambassador during his confirmation hearing in January. In a statement issued Thursday morning, Ellison asserted that Sessions “lied under oath” in his Jan. 10 Senate confirmation hearing about the meetings with Kremlin’s diplomat, Sergey Kislyak. “Since it has now come to light that Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath about meeting with Russian officials during the campaign, we must be entirely clear on one thing: perjury is a...

First, let’s get this out of the way. It is not a coincidence that within twenty four hours of Donald Trump giving a well received speech to congress that the New York Times runs a hit job on Jeff Sessions to distract from it, particularly after admitting the Obama Administration has been behind much of this disruption. Let’s review what happened. During Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing, he had this exchange with Senator Al Franken. “FRANKEN: OK. CNN has just published a story and I’m telling you this about a news story that’s just been published. I’m not expecting you to...

The idea that Democrats have to start taking the president more seriously as a political operator suddenly has more currency. The call to Steve Stivers, the chairman of House Republicans’ campaign wing, came on Tuesday evening, roughly an hour after President Donald Trump ended his speech to a joint session of Congress. On the other end of the line was a former candidate wanting back in on the action. “He said, 'The president did a great job. I’m thinking about this and I might want to run again; I want to be a part of something,’” said Stivers (R-Ohio). “He...

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is telling her rank-and-file members that she is confident a good portion of President Donald Trump's voters will eventually turn on him -- and Democrats just have to wait it out. She's using a colorful analogy to make her point -- comparing Trump to a friend's boyfriend who is a "jerk." "The way I told my members: It's like telling your friend the guy she's dating is a jerk. You can't tell her that. She has to find out for herself. You can give her clues and then eventually one thing will lead to another,...

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-New York) announced Tuesday morning that he will not stand on the aisle of the House floor to shake President Donald Trump’s hand ahead of his speech to a joint session of Congress -- the first time in his 29-year career in Congress that he has not shaken the president’s hand before a State of the Union or joint session speech. “I have deep respect for the presidency and I will attend the joint session,” he said on the House floor. “But that respect between branches must be mutual.” In the past, Engel has arrived on the...

A woman of virtually no accomplishments seeking relevance among the wreckage The rumors surrounding former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton and what the future holds for her never seem to die. Given her surname that’s more than understandable, but the political press has been chewing on this bone for long enough now that I’m beginning to wonder if the story is more than simply a way for reporters to occupy themselves between the issuance of Trump’s executive orders. Politico ran a lengthy piece this weekend which seeks to read the tea leaves and come to grips with what they describe as...

Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison appears to be the odds on favorite to win Saturday’s election to head the Democratic National Committee. That seems like good news for Republicans seeking to expand their congressional majority in 2018, a fact President Trump seemed to gleefully acknowledge this week. “One thing I will say about Rep. Keith Ellison, in his fight to lead the DNC, is that he was the one who predicted early that I would win!” Trump said in a Wednesday message on Twitter. It’s no secret that incumbent presidents usually have a tough time in midterm elections. President Obama lost...

Cornell William Brooks, President and CEO of the NAACP, was at loss for words Thursday night as former Reagan adviser Jeffrey Lord injected a hypothetical Congressional White Caucus into a debate on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. The racially charged exchange began during a discussion of President Trump having asked an African-American reporter from a black-focused new radio outlet if she knew the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) “Frankly I used to think the Congressional Black Caucus, when it was first formed, was a good thing,” Lord began. “I changed my mind on this. I don’t think there should...