Free Republic

Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that the release of a U.S. Senate report investigating the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the CIA is a “terrible idea” and is likely to cause “violence and deaths” abroad. Rogers told CNN that the report's findings could be used by extremists to incite violence, harming American interests around the world. “Our foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths,” Rogers said. “Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths. ... We have seen what happens when other incidents are...

In a lengthy interview on Friday afternoon, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) exposed how House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise strengthened President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty with procedural trickery former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber would envy—and they did it all in the name of pushing a bill that they told Republicans would block Obama’s executive amnesty. What’s more is that a series of interviews and recent developments indicate that Boehner’s gambit here is placing several of his top lieutenants—including at least two committee chairmen—at political risk of serious primary challenges...

December 7, 1941 began as a perfect Sunday morning for the troops serving the US fleet at Pearl Harbor. Under a early morning South Pacific sun, softball teams were lining up on the beach. Pitchers warmed up their arms, while batting rosters were finalized and the wives and kids came over from seaside church services.

Conservative talkradio host Mark Levin made news Thursday when he addressed the annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a "non-partisan membership association of state lawmakers," and it wasn't just because he reiterated his call for an Article V "Convention of the States" to propose new amendments to the Constitution. Levin's call for an Article V Convention of the States has been well known since the publication of his best-selling book, The Liberty Amendments, more than a year ago. On Thursday, Levin framed the Article V Convention of the States as the beginning of the process in which...

Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) luck ran out Saturday night. The Democrat’s colleagues talk about her as a fighter who has won tough runoff elections in red Louisiana before, even if she was the underdog against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.). But in 2014, a host of factors conspired to keep her from ultimately falling short for a fourth term. Collapse among white voters Landrieu’s support among black voters in Louisiana is nearly universal, but strategists in the state wondered if there were enough of them to counteract Cassidy’s huge lead among white voters. There were not. Landrieu’s percentage of the...

BATON ROUGE, La. | Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy handily defeated Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, denying her a fourth term and extending the GOP’s domination of the 2014 midterm elections that put Republicans in charge of Capitol Hill for the final two years of President Obama’s tenure. With Mr. Cassidy’s victory, the GOP will hold 54 seats when the Senate convenes in January, nine more than they have now. Republican victories in two Louisiana House districts Saturday — including the seat Cassidy now holds — ensure at least 246 seats, compared to 188 for Democrats, the largest GOP advantage since the...

The 18-year long reign of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has finally come to an end in Louisiana. In a landslide victory in Saturday’s runoff election, Republican Bill Cassidy defeated the incumbent and captured the ninth Senate seat for the GOP, capping off a victorious midterm election for his party. The road was rocky for Landrieu from the start. The public found out about her improper use of taxpayer funds, then the fact she doesn’t even own a home in Louisiana. Then, she dissed her constituents. Because of all her missteps and Cassidy’s growing lead, Democrats quickly gave up on Landrieu...

A Naval engineer is facing charges that he gave an FBI undercover agent posing as an Egyptian intelligence officer secret documents about the new Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier while discussing how to sink the vessel with a missile. Mostafa Ahmed Awwad, 35, of Yorktown, Va., was arrested Friday on an FBI affidavit that reads like it came from a Tom Clancy novel. Federal prosecutors in Virginia say that during his conversations with the undercover, Awwad arranged to use a dead-drop location along a secluded hiking trail to pass secrets about the Ford, which is being built in Virginia for...

President Obama has “destroyed” immigration enforcement in the U.S., Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) concluded Friday in reaction to the release of new Department of Homeland Security data. DHS data obtained by The Los Angeles Times reveal that last year’s total deportations represented the lowest of Obama’s presidency, despite a surge of illegal immigration at the border. The decrease in deportations included a 23 percent decline in interior removals since last year and represented fewer than half the interior deportations since 2011, when then-ICE Director John Morton issued the infamous Morton Memos placing restrictions on immigration enforcement. According to Sessions, the...

Pakistani soldiers killed a top al-Qaida operative Saturday who was indicted in the U.S. for his alleged involvement in a plot to bomb New York's subway system, the military said in a statement. The death of Adnan Shukrijumah is the latest blow to the terror organization still reeling from the 2011 killing of leader Osama bin Laden and now largely eclipsed by the militant Islamic State group. It also marks a major achievement for the Pakistani military, which mounted a widespread military operation in the northwest this summer. The military announced Shukrijumah's death in a statement, saying that he was...

Former ‘body man’ Reggie Love will be penning a book on his experience working alongside President Barack Obama. “Power Forward: My Presidential Education,” will be released Feb. 3 by Simon & Schuster and will follow Love’s five years working for Obama, including his time as the president’s personal aide. It is described by the publisher as “a professional coming of age story like no other.”Expect plenty of basketball talk too, as Love, who began working for then-Sen. Obama in 2006 and left the White House in 2011, will also draw on his time under Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, where...

House Speaker John Boehner’s top committee chairman says he wants an immigration bill that would allow millions of foreign migrants to stay and work jobs sought by Americans. “I’m going to use my assets and resources in the new year to work with this Congress… to have a well-understood agreement about what the law should be, and how we as communities, and farm communities, and tech communities, create circumstances where we can have people be in this country and work, and where not one person is quote ‘thrown out’ or ‘deported,’” said Rep. Pete Sessions, the chairman of the powerful...

Rep. Raúl R. Labrador has a message for Republican leadership as they decide how to respond to the president’s executive action on immigration and funding the government beyond Dec. 11: Keep a government shutdown as an option. “I don’t think anything is off the table,” Labrador told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday. “I don’t think anybody is thinking about a shutdown, but, in negotiations, you never take anything off the table. That’s the first rule of negotiating, and apparently it’s not one that’s been learned in Washington, D.C.” Asked if leaders are too “gun shy” about a government shutdown, the...

The administration is trying to preempt Obamacare sticker shock in 2015 by pleading with Americans to shop around in the marketplaces instead of automatically re-enrolling in the health plans they chose last year. Officials said Thursday those who don’t look around and compare plans during open enrollment could see their costs rise because the so-called benchmark plans are more expensive this year.But the Health and Human Services Department said there are more insurers offering more plans this year, meaning that in most states consumers can choose from three or more issuers. And HHS said those options mean most consumers who...

NEW YORK – Did President Obama just set up Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to be a candidate for impeachment instead of himself if conservatives convince the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate that his “executive actions” on immigration are unconstitutional? The inquiry begins with the question: Where are the executive orders Obama supposedly signed to permit up to 5 million parents of young illegal aliens to remain in the United States for three years? The White House appears to have engaged in administrative sleight of hand, changing U.S. immigration law not by executive order but...

You have given up your right to complain about Barack Obama’s amnesty plan. Just shut up. Stop complaining. You know why? Because you did not do the one thing that could stop it. You did not call your congressman despite me making it very easy for you to do so. I’m in Washington, D.C. right now. Last night I had several members of congress tell me that they’re barely hearing from anybody. So stop your bellyaching about amnesty if you can’t even be bothered to call. If you aren’t willing to call your congressman and demand he defund amnesty, stop...

... Pantaleo who applied the lethal chokehold on Eric Garner was supervised by an African-American female NYPD sergeant. Having that black sergeant in charge of that crime scene takes race out of the equation. As awful as Pantaleo’s actions appear on that video, at no time does that black sergeant order Pantaleo to stop choking Garner. With a population that is 70% white and 10% African-American, when a Staten Island grand jury is presented with a white cop supervised by a black sergeant applying a lethal chokehold, it eliminates the racial component. The grand jury was then left with the...

Press reports say House Speaker John Boehner will ask Rep. Nancy Pelosi to help him overcome “snowballing” GOP opposition to the GOP leadership’s draft 2015 government budget bill.Boehner’s draft bill funds the entire government for 2015, but makes merely token efforts to stop President Barack Obama’s agencies from implementing his unpopular amnesty, according to rank-and-file GOP legislators.That claim of snowballing opposition was boosted early Wednesday evening, when aides to House Speaker John Boehner said they would change their funding bill to reduce the number of months of funding for Obama’s immigration agencies.Late Wednesday night, the Washington Post reported that top...

By Editorial Board December 3 at 7:32 PM THE WHITE House has defended President Obama’s unilateral decision to legalize the presence of nearly 4 million undocumented immigrants as consistent, even in scope, with the executive actions of previous presidents. In fact, it is increasingly clear that the sweeping magnitude of Mr. Obama’s order is unprecedented. Central to the administration’s argument is its contention that the 4 million covered by the president’s order — some 36 percent of the estimated undocumented population of 11 million — is in line with the percentage covered by a comparable action by President George H.W....

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Wednesday called for his colleagues to reject an annual defense bill because of the “extreme land grab” tacked onto the measure. The bipartisan proposed bill, released late Tuesday, includes a variety of public land and energy provisions, including designating new national parks and wilderness areas, and speeding the permitting process for oil and gas drilling, and energy and mineral measures. Cruz called the provisions and the decision to attach them to the National Defense Authorization Act “an extreme land grab to the NDAA [that] is a disservice to members of the Armed Forces.” “With the...