Free Republic

House Democrats said Tuesday they will offer an amendment to push to overturn stand-your-ground self-defense laws in states like Florida. The amendment, which would withhold some grants from states that have such laws, will come as part of the House's debate on the Commerce Department spending bill. Emphasis added

In his marvelous book "Decision Points," former President George W. Bush cites the comment of a general during a review of flagging American policy in Iraq. Bush quotes the general as saying, "Don't get stuck on stupid." U.S. strategy there, he said, needed changing to something different and more successful. The Democratic Congress is now embarked on a lame-duck session that ought to be history's last. This is the same Congress that gave the nation a program of socialized medicine it doesn't want and various "stimulus" measures that haven't worked -- spending measures that hardly have nudged the needle on...

Sen. Rockefeller, in a more rare and honest moment, says that he is tired of the Right and the Left and that we’d all be better off if the FCC would shut down Fox News and MSNBC. That’s interesting, because the FCC doesn’t have any jurisdiction over cable whatsoever. At least not yet. You see, Rockefeller says he hungers for quality news and believes that the FCC should play a part in facilitating that end. He believes that without the extremes of Fox News and MSNBC, the American people would have more faith in their government, would have better political...

... to Pilfer and Sabotage Operative word for conservatives: VIGILANCE The so-called progressives aren't done with their date-rape of this country just yet... As legislators return to the Hill today, don't let the reported "slow start" to the congressional lame duck session lull you into complacency... rather expect the worst and keep your guard up for a sharp left-hook at anytime over the coming weeks. From it's deathbed, the fading Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate is apt to ram-through anything they can get the votes for: it's not like they'll be restrained by any scruples- and you already know what they think of...

snip The article recommends that President Obama govern from executive order to push through a progressive agenda. snip Demonstrating the close relationship between the DSA and the Progressive Caucus, two weeks ago WND reported the Democratic chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee was caught on tape meeting with DSA leaders to discuss how the group can cooperate to strengthen President Obama and advance their "one-world" plans.

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Most people who voted in Election 2010 on the East Coast think the average Democrat in Congress is more liberal than they are and describe the views of most congressional Democrats as extreme. These results come from a Rasmussen Reports telephone polling of people who have already voted in states in the Eastern Time Zone. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of these voters say the average Democrat in Congress is more liberal than they are. Only 10% say that member of Congress is more conservative, while 27% see his or her views as about the same as theirs. Fifty-five percent (55%) say...

Democrats in the Senate on Thursday held a recess hearing covering a taxpayer bailout of union pensions and a plan to seize private 401(k) plans to more "fairly" distribute taxpayer-funded pensions to everyone. Sen. Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee heard from hand-picked witnesses advocating the infamous "Guaranteed Retirement Account" (GRA) authored by Theresa Guilarducci. In a nutshell, under the GRA system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a "fair" pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions. ***...

Low-income workers stand to lose the most if lawmakers fail to reach a consensus on the Bush-era tax cuts, according to a new report from the Tax Foundation. The report states that on Jan. 1 the doubling of the child tax credit, increased standard deductions and income credits and the creation of the 10 percent tax bracket — all of which primarily aimed at non-wealthy taxpayers — will vanish if gridlock persists in Washington. While wealthier taxpayers pay more in taxes and stand to lose more money if the tax cuts expire, the impact on low-income taxpayers will be far...

Congress left Washington without addressing the massive tax hikes that will come at the end of the year as the tax-rate reductions of 2001 and 2003 expire. Absent action on Capitol Hill, those increases will take $4 trillion out of the economy over the next ten years — and even if the lower tax bracket reductions get extended, $700 billion of capital will get redirected from the private sector to Washington. How will that impact economic growth in the US? Peter Ferrara argues that it will create not just a double-dip recession, but a second economic collapse — one worse...

A deeply unpopular Congress is bolting for the campaign trail without finishing its most basic job - approving a budget for the government year that begins on Friday. Lawmakers also are postponing a major fight over taxes, two embarrassing ethics cases and other political hot potatoes until angry and frustrated voters render their verdict in the Nov. 2 elections.

Ending the deferral of foreign income is another tax on U.S. employment. Democrats may be dodging a vote on the Bush-era tax cuts, but that doesn't mean they don't want to raise taxes before November. Witness this week's showdown in Congress over increasing the tax on the profits of American companies with foreign subsidiaries to punish firms that relocate plants overseas. How much more harm can this crowd do before it's run out of town? Like so many others, this tax increase is being promoted by President Obama, who declared last week that "for years, our tax code has actually...

The decision by Senate Democratic leaders to delay a vote on the Bush-era tax cuts until after the election has put the payroll industry on high alert. If Democratic leaders fail to determine the tax rates by Dec. 10, it could be too late for payroll administrators to withhold the right amount of tax from workers’ paychecks, according to industry officials. “The closer you get to the end of the year the more problems there’ll be,” Michael O’Toole, senior director of publications and government relations at the American Payroll Association (APA), told The Hill. “If [the IRS] issues [withholding tables]...

Piece by piece, America being given away “It’s too late; it’ll just have to be stopped in the Senate,” Tom, the young male answering the phone in U.S. Rep. John Boehner’s (R-Ohio)Washington D.C. office, said about HR 3534 (CLEAR Act). This is the globalist bill designed to give away our land, oceans, adjacent land masses and Great Lakes to an international body, and makes us pay $900 million per year until 2040. HR 3534 is a thinly disguised permanent roadblock to American energy which drives American companies out of the Gulf, delays future drilling, increases dependency on foreign oil, implements...

They won’t take no for an answer. So we have to give them both barrels again. On July 27, the Senate voted down the Democrats’ union-friendly, loophole-ridden, Orwellian-titled DISCLOSE Act. The bogus campaign finance reform bill was, as Sen. Mitch McConnell put it, a “transparent attempt to rig fall elections” that was written “behind closed doors” with help from lobbyists and riddled with political carve-outs for labor and other deep-pocketed organizations. Now, the hide-and-seek hypocrites on the Hill have resurrected their union pay-off. Priorities, you know. Hapless Harry Reid is leading the charge:

Public approval of Congress now sits at 18 percent, lower than it has been in any prior midterm election year since Gallup started polling public approval of Congress in 1974, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted Sept. 13-16. In March, approval of Congress actually sank to 16 percent, the second-lowest approval rating Congress has ever received in the Gallup poll. After that, it climbed to 23 percent in April and then started declining again, hitting 21 percent in May, 20 percent in June, 20 percent in July, and 19 percent in August. “Congress’ current approval rating is now approaching...

Sometimes answers to our problems must come from the grave. Since Democrats seized Congressional power in 2004 and hijacked the presidency in 2008, they have been unwilling to listen to rational and reasonable voices concerning the economy. Instead, they have implemented policies and legislation that will produce the greatest tax increases in U.S. history. Charles Dickens’ story, ‘A Christmas Carol’ told of a man impervious to the reality of people suffering all around him. So self-absorbed was he that it virtually took an other-world experience from ghost of the spirit world to reach him. Today we have YouTube and video...

Just as the government is trying to prevent people from investing in anything other than T-Bills by raising taxes on taxable interest and dividends to confiscatory levels, it's also trying to prevent you from parking your wealth in assets, like gold, that compete with the paper dollars issued by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. A press release from Rep. Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, not yet (as of this instant) posted on Mr. Weiner's Web site, announces that a September 23 hearing of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection (a subcommittee of Rep. Henry Waxman's Commerce...

Obama has danced away trillions of dollars to the tune of wealth redistribution. Now we must pay the piper. When Carter played this game he brought double digit inflation upon America along with 20% loan rates. America had to pay the interest on its debt at these higher rates. That set up a loop that almost destroyed the USA economy. Regan turned that disaster around. The Obama disaster will dwarf Carter's debacle. As interest rates payed upon the trillions we owe rises, we fall. Inflation will explode to the sound of trillions of dollars being printed by the Federal Reserve....

Here's some pressure for lawmakers: If they don't reach agreement on extending soon-to-expire Bush-era tax cuts, nearly all their constituents back home will get big tax increases. A typical family of four with a household income of $50,000 a year would have to pay $2,900 more in taxes in 2011, according to a new analysis by Deloitte Tax LLP, a tax consulting firm. The same family making $100,000 a year would see its taxes rise by $4,500. Wealthier families face even bigger tax hikes. A family of four making $500,000 a year would pay $10,800 more in taxes. The same...

What a great idea! With voters rising up to wrest control of Congress away from Democrats in large part because of overspending and regulatory overreach as well as a failing economy, Barack Obama has decided that the next few weeks on Capitol Hill should be dedicated to more ad hoc spending: Despite coming under daily assault from Republicans over spending, the Obama administration is pushing a $20 billion-plus pre-election shopping list on its Democratic allies in Congress as they prepare must-pass legislation to prevent a government shutdown next month. Republicans are protesting the spending requests, which include $1.9 billion for...

(Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday there is "no justification" for extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, saying the nation cannot afford the price tag. Democrats largely back President Barack Obama's plan to extend lower taxes for middle and lower income groups only, but a small minority favor renewing tax cuts for all Americans, including the wealthiest three percent. Republicans are insisting that high-income people be included in any tax-cut extensions. The lower tax rates date to the Republican administration of President George W. Bush.

Congressmen Weiner and Waxman Set Gold Hearing

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the delegate representing Washington D.C. in the House, called a lobbyist earlier this month and, after not reaching him, left a revealing voice mail. Her voice message notes that the lobbyist had contributed to other members of the Transportation and Infrastructure committee that Ms. Norton is a senior member of and drops hints that she has the power to give or deny favors. "We particularly, uh, need, uh, contributions, particularly those of us who have the seniority and chairmanships and are in a position to raise the funds," she tells the lobbyist. She then details her role...

“When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.” So wrote James Dale Davidson. This is what our government has been doing in an unprecedented scale for the past four years since Liberal Democrats took over both the US Senate and House of Representatives. Bashers of Conservatives seem not to know this. People seem to forget it was the Democrat Senate and House majorities, along with eight Republican Senate defectors that voted for the Bank bailout known as TARP in 2008. Yet the Liberal media keeps saying it was Bush’s and the Republicans fault. Well it was partly...

43.6 Million Americans Living In Poverty Is The Highest Number Ever Recorded Joe Weisenthal Sep. 16, 2010, 10:31 AM This was expected, but it still hits you in the gut. Poverty in America has hit the highest level the Census has ever recorded, according to a new report out today. Image: Census[snip]

The “extend and pretend” approach of the Treasury Department, through HAMP, has reached its end, and foreclosures are surging higher than ever. Lenders took back more homes in August than in any month since the start of the U.S. mortgage crisis. The increase in home repossessions came even as the number of properties entering the foreclosure process slowed for the seventh month in a row, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. In all, banks repossessed 95,364 properties last month, up 3 percent from July and an increase of 25 percent from August 2009, RealtyTrac said. August makes the ninth...

WASHINGTON -- The number of people living in poverty has climbed to 14.3 percent of Americans, with the ranks of working-age poor reaching the highest level since at least 1965. The Census Bureau says that about 43.6 million people, or 1 in 7, were in poverty last year. That's up from 39.8 million, or 13.2 percent, in 2008. The number of people lacking health insurance rose from 46.3 million to 50.7 million, due mostly to the loss of employer-provided health insurance during the recession. Congress passed a health overhaul earlier this year to extend coverage to more people. The statistics...

Just heard the news alert on Fox. Moderator: please await article from their website.

It’s a darned good thing that Austan Goolsbee is “young, energetic, and looks good on TV,� because otherwise this would look a lot like Jimmy Carter’s “Malaise� speech. Chris Wallace tries to get Goolsbee to discuss what kind of changes have been made to White House economic forecasts in 2010, while Goolsbee wants to talk about how difficult it was … in 2007, in Europe, or anywhere else than the US after almost two years of the Obama administration policies. The big takeaway is that Goolsbee and the White House expect no appreciable decline in the unemployment rate for the...

CLICK ON ABOVE LINK FOR COMPLETE EXPLANATION AND CHARTS HERE's A SUMMARY : * 45 million Americans were living in poverty in 2009 * 2009 saw the largest single year increase in the U.S. poverty rate since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959 * The U.S. poverty rate is now the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the OECD * Household participation in the food stamp program has increased 20.28% since last year * The number of Americans on food stamps surpassed 41 million for the first time ever in June * As of...

September 10, 2010 A little election reminder: Congress has not passed a 2011 budget Monte Kuligowski Byron York has a great piece out that highlights the awkward position of congressional Democrats who voted for ObamaCare. With the midterm elections fast approaching, the once-celebratory Democrats are now silent about their "historic" achievement. Healthcare "reform" was so urgent and important that no one had time to read its two thousand pages, much less have honest debate before C-SPAN cameras as Obama promised. Reading it alone would have taken "two days and two lawyers to find out what it means" and they simply...

The wealthiest members of Congress grew richer in 2009 even as the economy struggled to recover from a deep recession. The 50 wealthiest lawmakers were worth almost $1.4 billion in 2009, about $85.1 million more than 12 months earlier, according to The Hill’s annual review of lawmakers’ financial disclosure forms. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) tops the list for the second year in a row. His minimum net worth was $188.6 million at the end of 2009, up by more than $20 million from 2008, according to his financial disclosure form. While the economy struggled through a recession during much of...

Nancy Pelosi had some choice words for the American public yesterday: Shut up. If you’ve got an opinion about the N.Y. mosque controversy, better keep it to yourself or you could end up under investigation in the House Star Chamber. Pelosi says she wants to know how opposition to the mosque is being “ginned up.” She wants to know who’s funding this anger. She wants to know what the hell is wrong with the 61 percent of Americans who evidently disagree with her views. (Her disingenuous view being that this is a “zoning issue” only and all the national controversy...

WASHINGTON (AP) - American taxpayers will pay the imam behind plans for a mosque near the Manhattan site of the Sept. 11 attacks $3,000 in fees for a three-nation outreach trip to the Middle East that will cost roughly $16,000, the State Department said Wednesday. The department said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will get a daily $200 honorarium for the 15-day tour to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which is intended to promote religious tolerance. Airfare is included, as well as the standard federal government per diem for expenses and lodging in each of the cities he will...

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) today called for an investigation of those opposing the mosque being planned for construction a block away from the site of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York City that toppled the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center complex in lower Manhatten and killed nearly 3000 people.Speaking to reporters in San Francisco, Pelosi at first deferred to New Yorkers on the mosque, calling it an "urban development question" for them to decide."I think everybody respects the right of people in our country to express their religious beliefs on...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Homebuilder confidence dropped for the third straight month in August as the struggling economy and a flood of cheap foreclosed properties kept people from buying new homes. The National Association of Home Builders said its monthly index of builders' sentiment about the housing market fell to 13, the lowest reading since March 2009. The index is adjusted for seasonal factors. Readings below 50 indicate negative sentiment about the market. The last time the index was above 50 was in April 2006.

The left has collapsed. Its political support has collapsed. Public opinion polls point to a historic repudiation of the president and the Democratic party this fall, something on the order of a 60-seat Republican gain in the House. The GOP has an outside shot at taking the Senate as well. Its claim to intellectual integrity has collapsed. Paul Krugman, Ivy League professor, New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate (the holy trinity of the liberal establishment), has humiliated himself with a startlingly dishonest attack on Paul Ryan's budget proposal. Krugman, called out by Ryan, rebuked by honest analysts and unwilling...

The link at Thomas.gov for HR 1586 doesn't work because Congress doesn't want the details of this bill revealed. Congress paid for the teacher bailout with defense cuts. Here are some of the "recissions":Sec. 303. Of the funds appropriated in Department of Defense Appropriations Acts, the following funds are rescinded from the following accounts in the specified amounts: ‘Aircraft Procurement, Army, 2008/2010’, $21,000,000; ‘Procurement of Weapons and Tracked Combat Vehicles, Army, 2008/2010’, $21,000,000; ‘Procurement of Ammunition, Army, 2008/2010’, $17,000,000; ‘Other Procurement, Army, 2008/2010’, $75,000,000; ‘Weapons Procurement, Navy, 2008/2010’, $26,000,000; ‘Other Procurement, Navy, 2008/2010’, $42,000,000; ‘Procurement, Marine Corps, 2008/2010’, $13,000,000; ‘Aircraft...

News headlines worryingly point to "US jobless claims hit six-month high," "Wall Street Slides Further on More Signs of Slowdown," or "Latest US Jobless Claims are a Bad Omen." Quite a contrast from news headlines just a month ago touting: "New jobless claims fall to near two-year low." What could happen in just a month? Has there really been that much of a worsening in the fundamental jobs picture in that short of time? There is actually a very simple answer for the change. While a month ago those who filed for unemployment insurance would only get 26 weeks of...

The Democrats and their profligate spending indicate clearly that they are motivated by the question: How much money can we spend? Not how many jobs can we create. And their spending, rather than slowing, is gaining momentum like a snowball rolling down a hill. Faster, more furious, unstoppable. Trillion after trillion after billions zoom by to the point of eyes glazing, minds numbing. A giant blur of dollar signs. Expansive, exploding, multiplying like a deadly virus, unreal in its magnitude and potential for calamity. Yet despite the spending, the unemployed remain so, in fact their numbers have ballooned. The job...

American Observer recently created a video to show the record job losses since Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid took over Congress in 2007. It’s not a pretty picture:

Most U.S. voters believe the Democratic congressional agenda is extreme, while a plurality describe the Republican agenda as mainstream. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of Likely U.S. Voters think the agenda of Democrats in Congress is extreme. Thirty-four percent (34%) say it is more accurate to describe the Democratic agenda as mainstream. Voters are more narrowly divided when it comes to the agenda of congressional Republicans. Forty-five percent (45%) of voters view the GOP agenda as mainstream, but nearly as many (40%) say it’s more accurate to call it extreme. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided....

Anyway, the last time the House was called back early like this, it involved emergency legislation to deal with Hurricane Katrina. So what's so important this time around? Apparently, it's The ______Act of____. Yes, The ______Act of____. It appears that our friendly Senators were in such a rush to get this bill through that they forgot to name it.

Thanks to CATO’s Jim Harper, we discover that the slovenly work of Obama’s Congress is so bad that they are now passing bills that they haven’t even bothered to name. It’s been bad enough that the Democrats have affixed to bills names that are entirely Orwellian in nature, but now they aren’t even bothering to think that hard. In the recent past we’ve gotten bills named in ways that convey the precise opposite nature of what the bill does. We’ve had the “Employee Free Choice Act” that actually takes away worker’s choice, we’ve had the “Uniting American Families Act” that...

Per Foxnews, a local affiliate is reporting Rangel has struck a deal. FNC is working to confirm...

(Fifth item) "The lifting gets lighter when you drop the ball. Congress is about to adjourn for a six-week summer recess — the longest in memory. This despite the fact that Democrats have completely failed to address Americans' worries about the economy, unemployment, reckless spending, skyrocketing debt, job-killing tax hikes, rising health care costs, endless bailouts, and Washington's obstruction of private sector success," says the Republican Study Committee.

The White House said on Wednesday it was "surprised and disappointed" by attacks on its policies from some corners of the business world, as it pushed back hard against criticism from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "The stakes are far too high for us to be working against one another," White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama's top adviser, said in a letter to the chamber, a top lobby group for U.S. businesses. "That is why we were surprised and disappointed at the rhetoric we have heard from some in the business community --...

All tax increases are bad, but there are some that are just plain unfair and punitive for no logical reason. The marriage penalty, the small business penalty, the retirement penalty, and the death penalty are in that category.Everyone except the most clueless “mushrooms� of our society know that tax rates will return to 2000 levels if the Democrat-controlled Congress does nothing to stop them.And they have shown a real skill for doing nothing but legislative carnage to this country in the last 18 months. That carnage has included the publicly unpopular Health Care Deform bill, the House-passed Cap and Trade...

Democrats in Congress haven’t made any moves to extend the Bush tax cuts of 2006, so workers of all income levels can expect to see a 5% increase in their income taxes, and additional tax increases from a number of other areas. The taxes affected include the capital gains tax, the alternative minimum tax, education deductions, sales tax exemptions. They also include small tax increases, like a rollback in tax breaks for tuition expenses and donations of books to public schools. "If you believe the current consensus, we could potentially see the top income tax rate hiked back up to...