Free Republic

IN POLITICS, there’s nothing harder than realizing that it’s time to go. For Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that moment has arrived. With the Democrats’ midterm losses, the two 74-year-olds should announce that when this session of Congress ends, they will relinquish their roles as leaders of their respective Democratic caucuses. And if Reid and Pelosi don’t soon come to the conclusion on their own that it’s time to bow out? Well, then, their fellow Democrats, recognizing that you can’t begin a new era with old leaders, should let both know that the time has come to go.

Senate Democrats are split over whether to ram through the White House's stalled nominees. Reid’s approach would keep the holiday season from ending in a series of bitter midnight sessions and could avoid antagonizing Republicans. But other Democrats argue Republicans may have little interest in approving the bulk of the president’s nominees regardless of what happens in the next few weeks, so it’s now or never to act on a slate of new judges, ambassadors and perhaps even the confirmation of attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch. “Let’s clear the decks, unless we can get some agreement with Republicans,” said Sen....

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has reached out to his presumed successor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying that he hoped they could work together “to get things done” in Washington. In a statement, according to Mediaite, Reid said, "I’d like to congratulate Senator McConnell, who will be the new Senate Majority Leader. The message from voters is clear: They want us to work together. I look forward to working with Senator McConnell to get things done for the middle class." McConnell’s resounding victory in Kentucky over Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes started the GOP wave on election night. Democrats...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Saturday urged progressive activists to get out the vote for Bruce Braley, calling Iowa crucial to Democratic hopes to keep the Senate. “If we win Iowa, we’re going to do just fine,” Reid said on a call organized by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Iowa is a key for what we do.” During the call, Reid said Joni Ernst, the GOP Senate nominee in Iowa, would be a disaster for issues key to progressives, like protecting Social Security and raising the minimum wage. Ernst, a state senator, and Braley, a four-term congressman, are...

REBECCA KAPLAN November 1, 2014 Harry Reid: Senate Control Hangs On One Key Race Republican takeover of the Senate will likely depend on the outcome of the Iowa Senate race. "What Joni Ernst would mean, coming to the United States Senate, is that Mitch McConnell would be the leader of the Senate, someone who agrees with her on virtually everything. Think what that would mean to our country," Reid said Saturday, according to Roll Call. Republican Joni Ernst is neck and neck with Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democratic candidate. Reid was participating in a conference call organized by the Progressive...

Public Enemy No. 1 for rural Utah sheriffs just happens to be a fellow peace officer: Dan Love, the Bureau of Land Management’s special agent in charge. Elected law enforcement officers from Nephi to Blanding call him an arrogant and dishonest bully who has little regard for local authority and dodges accountability, derailing a collaborative approach to police work on the state’s federal lands. Love reportedly just laughed when Garfield County Sheriff James "Danny" Perkins relayed ranchers’ complaints about federal officers removing plastic feed tubs from the range and threatening the ranchers with litter citations. He drew early controversy during...

Chances Democrats Win the Senate: 33% -- Daily Kos, 9/29/14 Dear Friend, Put another way -- as is stands today, Koch-backed Republicans have a 66% chance of taking control of the U.S. Senate. We’ve got a month to keep control of the Senate. Let’s make sure we’re fighting as hard as we possibly can. We need $42,OOO this month to keep our grassroots efforts going. Can you contribute $5? If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately: Express Donate: $5 Express Donate: $10 Express Donate: $25 Or donate another amount. The obstruction of...

Democrats have reversed the partisan imbalance on the federal appeals courts that long favored conservatives, a little-noticed shift with far-reaching consequences for the law and President Obama’s legacy. For the first time in more than a decade, judges appointed by Democratic presidents considerably outnumber judges appointed by Republican presidents. The Democrats’ advantage has only grown since late last year when they stripped Republicans of their ability to filibuster the president’s nominees. Democratic appointees who hear cases full time now hold a majority of seats on nine of the 13 United States Courts of Appeals. When Mr. Obama took office, only...

Senate Democrats started their campaign-season drive Monday for a constitutional amendment aimed at curbing special interests’ financial clout in elections, a doomed effort the party hopes will help them make a populist appeal to voters. The measure would allow Congress and the states to limit the money raised and spent in election campaigns by outside groups, candidates and others, curbs that the Supreme Court has weakened in recent years. It has no chance of winning the two-thirds majority needed to clear the Senate, let alone even being considered by the Republican-run House. Democrats brought the measure to the Senate floor...

Speaker John A. Boehner outlined the September legislative agenda in a Wednesday afternoon conference call with House Republican lawmakers, describing a scheduled 12-day session that will be “brief, but busy.” The most pressing item on the agenda is a short-term spending bill to avert a government shutdown on Sept. 30, but Boehner also spoke strongly and at length, according to a read-out from a source on the call, in favor of using the remaining legislative days before the November elections to draw “a very stark contrast between ourselves and the Democrats who run Washington.” The Republican-led House, Boehner said, “is...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was asked Monday if Democrats will move a carbon tax bill after the midterm election. “I sure hope so,” he told a “clean energy” conference call. […] A carbon tax bill won’t advance unless Democrats retake the House and retain control of the Senate in November. With that goal in mind, President Obama was heading west on Tuesday to raise money for his party. …

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is a shady operator. From changing the Senate rules which allowed him to increase the tax-raising power of the Senate Democratic majority, ties to shady lobbyists, and numerous scandals in Nevada, it is little wonder how a guy on a relatively modest public servant salary has become obscenely wealthy. Now, Reid has been linked to a new massive bribery case that had two state attorneys general arrested already. Utah prosecutors on Tuesday filed criminal charges against two former state attorneys general in a court filing that makes tantalizing references to a possible pay-to-play influence...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday asserted the southern border is secure despite the massive surge of illegal minors from Central America that has overwhelmed federal agencies. "The border is secure,” he told reporters after the Senate Democrats’ weekly policy lunch. “[Sen.] Martin Heinrich [(D-N.M.)] talked to the caucus today. He’s a border state senator. He said he can say without any equivocation the border is secure.” Reid said lawmakers need to worry less about border security and focus instead on President Obama’s $3.7 billion request to help process the tens of thousands of children from Honduras, Guatemala...

Harry Reid is the da Vinci of distraction. The moment any scandal, policy failure or political defeat crashes down on him — and there have been plenty the past few years — the Senate majority leader unleashes outrageous rhetoric that’s better suited for a sandbox than what once passed for the world’s greatest deliberative body. Worse, the Nevada Democrat has become especially fond of slinging race cards just to crank up the outrage. Last week, Sen. Reid was in rare form following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn part of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. The 5-4 ruling...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that Democrats will take up legislation in the “coming weeks” to address last month’s Supreme Court decision that allowed some employers with religious objections to opt out of Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Democrats on Capitol Hill have overwhelmingly criticized the high court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case and are working to craft a response that would restore the coverage, though no specifics have yet been outlined. “We’re going to do something about the Hobby Lobby legislation,” Reid said on the Senate floor Monday as he ticked off the Senate’s to-do list over the...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has sold his home in Searchlight, Nevada, to a mining company for $1.7 million and is moving to Las Vegas, his office announced Monday. Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, sold his house with 110 acres of land to Nevada Milling and Mining, which plans to develop a gold mine in Searchlight. The $1.7 million deal closed Friday, according to the Las Vegas Sun. Mr. Reid grew up poor in the dusty mining town of Searchlight, about 60 miles south of Las Vegas, but as a lawmaker he managed to accumulate a personal fortune estimated at $5...

The billionaire Koch brothers, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s favorite whipping boys, announced Friday that they are donating a $25 million grant to the United Negro College Fund. The grant will be used to provide “nearly 3,000 merit based awards to African American …students seeking scholarship assistance,” according to the Charles Koch Foundation’s press release. …

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was only too happy to point out just how “disconnected from reality” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is for saying he’s “glad” the five most senior members of the Taliban held at Guantanamo were released.

A refashioned bill to address problems plaguing the Veterans Affairs Department should be approved by the Senate as soon as possible, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would give the VA authority to immediately remove senior executives based on poor job performance while preventing “wholesale political firings” that Sanders said could be allowed under a similar bill approved by the House. The Senate bill also would allow veterans who can’t get timely appointments with VA doctors to go to community health centers, military hospitals or private doctors and would authorize VA...

After much apparent pleading from the contractor, Nevada made the decision to drop their individual ObamaCare website builder Xerox and is now the next state hitching its wagon to the federal online exchange. It all looked like it could have gone so well back in October, until users started trying to actually sign up for health insurance and began to uncover the more than 1,500 defects embedded in the site, according to a report from Deloitte last month, and the Silver State has finally realized that the situation cannot be salvaged any time soon — and certainly not in...