Free Republic

The Wisconsin Senate narrowly approved a "right-to-work" bill on Wednesday that would bar private-sector employees who work under union-negotiated contracts from being required to join their unions or pay them dues. The bill, which would make Wisconsin the 25th U.S. state with a right-to-work law on the books, cleared the Republican-led Senate on a 17-15 vote following hours of debate marked by periodic angry shouts from opponents in the Senate gallery. Supporters of organized labor chanted "Shame!" as the legislation was passed and sent for further consideration to the state Assembly, where Republicans also hold a majority. One Republican senator,...

".......More to the point, I take issue with his suggestion that I think “Republicans had better work with the media.” It is true that I don’t believe the media are inherently evil or “out to get you.” But I also think — and this is important for candidates to know — that the press are not your friends. Ed’s framing, I think, implies I support what might be thought of as collaboration or appeasement. But what Walker did was (inadvertently) work with the media — in the sense that he played right into their hands. He made this an irresistible...

Should workers have the freedom to make their own contracts? Long ago, they did. Back in 1905, the Supreme Court held in Lochner v. New York (which I discussed recently on Forbes) that the state could not dictate to bakery employees how many hours they were allowed to work in a week. Unfortunately, freedom of contract is one of those rights that “progressives” and collectivists regard as unimportant – one that legislators and bureaucrats can whittle away as long as they claim that doing so somehow advances “the public good.” One of the many federal statutes that interfere with freedom...

First the book, now speech lines? During her speaking event in Silicon Valley, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemingly snagged a campaign line from potential GOP 2016 candidate Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Clinton, the presumptive 2016 candidate for the Democratic Party, called on attendees at the conference to “unlock their full potential,” a line Fiorina uses. Ironically enough, Fiorina’s current Super PAC is entitled the “Unlocking Potential Project.” In fact, the mission statement for the Super PAC says the following: “Today, America suffers from self-inflicted wounds. Our nation has everything we need to lead, grow and...

Link only due to copyright issues:http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/dangerous-candidacy-scott-walker

"....In Walker's defense, Tim Graham of the Media Research Center (“Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias”) offers this exegesis: “Walker, the son of a Protestant minister, hears the question very differently: asking if someone is a Christian is a very personal question, asking whether someone has committed themselves to Jesus in their heart. It’s like asking if he knows how often Obama prays. His reluctance to answer for someone he doesn’t know is not a ‘No.’ " Nice try, but the political context of the question was clear and it’s the one Milbank mentioned: the conviction that “Obama is a...

"..........The right-to-work debate comes in the wake of the 2011 fight over Walker's law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers. That law also prohibited the automatic withdrawal of union dues for public workers, like the right-to-work measure would do in the private sector. Walker administration spokesman Cullen Werwie said between 1,800 and 2,000 people were inside and outside the Capitol at midday and there had been no arrests. After the rally, protesters filed into the Capitol rotunda and joined the ongoing hearing. While union members were vowing to fight the measure and try to sway Republicans to...

Political Wire publisher Taegan Goddard got a lot of flack on Twitter after mocking Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for claiming he could discern God’s will, only to admit that he had no idea Christians believed they could communicate with God through prayer. It all began with a rather snarky tweet about Walker’s comments that he was still waiting for “God’s calling” before he announced a presidential run. [snip] As Goddard received criticism from religious followers, he shot back at critics by claiming that he wasn’t showing disdain for people of faith, even as his tone became more and more sarcastic....

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who just took over leadership of the Senate’s space committee, hosted Buzz Aldrin and other former NASA astronauts on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a discussion on space exploration.Cruz opened Tuesday’s hearing of the subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness by calling for more NASA and commercial space activity. “The year 2015 is just as critical of a time for our national and commercial space programs as was the case a half century ago,” the Texas Republican said. “Future exploration is certain to present hardships. But it also promises high rewards. New resources, frontiers and economic opportunities.”Cruz...

'At what point is the lawlessness simply too much?' Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Tuesday opened the throttle on his effort to torpedo President Obama’s nomination of Loretta Lynch to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, tweeting his opposition and writing in Politico that her “radical positions” are more than alarming.WND has reported concerns about Lynch’s key role in the Obama administration’s decision not to prosecute the banking giant HSBC for laundering funds for Mexican drug cartels and Middle Eastern terrorists. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently conducted a two-hour session with HSBC whistleblower John Cruz in its investigation of Lynch’s...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is warning that Republicans who support Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch are complicit in what he sees as President Obama’s lawless action on immigration.While current Attorney General Eric Holder has drawn the ire of many conservatives, including Cruz, the freshman senator argues in a new op-ed that Lynch won’t have any noticeable difference in enforcing Obama’s policies, which he believes break the law.“Holder’s lawless behavior occurred after he was confirmed. It is altogether different for the Senate to confirm a nominee who tells us ahead of time she will ignore the law,” Cruz writes in a...

Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, laid out his case against Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s nominee to be the next U.S. attorney general, in a new piece in which he says senators will be approving “lawlessness” if they confirm her.He cited answers he deemed insufficient during Ms. Lynch’s confirmation process on issues like how she would be different from Attorney General Eric Holder and whether she supported Mr. Obama’s recent executive actions on immigration.“No senator who takes his or her oath of office seriously should vote to confirm such a nominee,” he wrote in Politico. “And Senate Republicans have all the...

The budding Cruz 2016 campaign is adding some fund-raising muscle, with the Texas GOP finance chairman joining the effort. Hal Lambert, a Fort Worth money manager who has served three years as the state party’s top fund-raiser, said Tuesday that he is stepping down to help Sen. Ted Cruz if he runs for president. Lambert supported the 2012 presidential campaign of then-Gov. Rick Perry, who – like Cruz – has been spending lots of time with Republican activists in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where early contests are critical stops on the way to the White House. “It’s not...

Santa Cruz County officials are asking the public to help identify the person who stuffed two dogs, a mother and her puppy, into sandbags and threw them from a moving car, killing the younger dog.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is not a fan of his Democratic colleagues' "disturbing" unwillingness to criticize President Barack Obama's executive actions that protected undocumented immigrants from deportation. "It's very interesting. Democratic senators privately will admit all sorts of things," Cruz mused during a Newsmax TV interview published Monday. "But it's really disturbing: Democratic senators have been unwilling to stand up to this president, really on almost anything." Cruz, a likely 2016 presidential contender, compared this alleged slavishness to Obama to how Republicans reacted when one of their own, former President Richard Nixon, was in the middle of the 1972 Watergate...

President Obama’s pick for the replacement for Eric Holder as Attorney General is Loretta Lynch, the current United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Senate Republicans have become decidedly cool to the idea of confirming her. Indeed, Monday Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and an opponent of most Obama policies, announced on Monday that he would oppose her confirmation.Cruz suggested that Lynch would be worse than Holder, who has come under criticism for his partisan, political approach to enforcing the law. “Unfortunately Mrs Lynch, through the course of the entire hearing,...

Ted Cruz never punts because he’s too busy staying on offense. Cruz never allows the media to control the narrative he forces them to follow his narrative. I think the best example of this was a while back when Cruz was on Meet The Press with Chuck Schumer. Gregory wanted Cruz to come out one way or another about the recent NRA ads talking about Obama’s children. Remember that?

Sen. Ted Cruz warned the administration Wednesday that it needs to stop even planning for an eventual amnesty for illegal immigrants, saying a federal judge’s broad injunction means it would be illegal for the Homeland Security Department to spend any money on President Obama’s immigration plans.The Texas Republican also said Judge Andrew S. Hanen’s ruling late Monday undercuts the basis of Senate Democrats’ ongoing filibuster to block homeland security spending, which the president’s allies have launched to try to defend the White House’s immigration policies.The warning to Mr. Obama to stop spending money on the amnesty opens the door for...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has erased U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s strong lead among Texas Republicans in the volatile and still-developing race for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll. Cruz’s 25 percentage-point lead over Walker in October has vanished: The Texan won the support of 20 percent of the state’s registered voters to Walker’s 19 percent — a statistical tie. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and author Ben Carson were tied at 9 percent, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was next at 8 percent. “Scott Walker is clearly breathing some of the...

The federal court ruling that placed a temporary halt to President Obama’s plans to grant amnesty to four million illegal aliens by executive fiat has emboldened Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, according to a Wednesday story in the Washington Times. Cruz suggested that even administration moves to prepare for the mass amnesty in anticipation of an eventual favorable outcome in the courts is in violation of the ruling. In Cruz’s view, the Department of Homeland Security must stop spending money forthwith toward such efforts.Cruz also artfully suggested that the basis of the Democratic filibuster of the DHS spending bill that prevents...