Free Republic

President Barack Obama said on Friday that the deal he and the leaders of five other major powers are trying to cut with the Iranian regime headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is a “political agreement” and “not a formal treaty.”As such, he said, Congress should not ordinarily have authority to sign off on this kind of deal.Obama made the statement when discussing legislation sponsored by Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and approved unanimously by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that would give Congress 60 days to review an Iran nuclear deal made by the administration. During that 60 days,...

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — Ties between Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, political allies for more than a decade, are fraying as the Republican presidential campaign picks up. In public, mentor Bush and protege Rubio have avoided criticizing each other since Rubio announced his candidacy. But Bush allies have started quietly spreading negative information about Rubio's record. Also, supporters of the two Miami politicians are drawing contrasts between Rubio, a 43-year-old son of Cuban immigrants, and 62-year-old Bush, a member of one of the nation's most powerful political dynasties. "Sparks are going to fly," said Al...

People close to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder have formed a fund allowing him to travel the country to more aggressively tell of the state’s rebound under his watch, raising the prospect of a potential Republican presidential bid. A spokesman for the governor told The Associated Press on Friday that a 501(c)(4) group, Making Government Accountable, was established within the past month. “Once we get into May, the governor will travel more out of the state and promote Michigan, particularly the remarkable economic comeback,” Jarrod Agen said. An aide close to the governor said Snyder is considering a presidential run and...

Republican Sen. Rand Paul split with senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to vote for a healthcare bill Tuesday night that will add about half a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next several decades.Paul sided with the overwhelming majority of senators and representatives who voted for the bill, in a decision almost certain to come up in the primary race, where he is currently joined by Cruz and Rubio.The “doc-fix” bill solves a recurring problem in the way Medicare payments are made to doctors, extends a children’s health insurance program, and requires higher-income seniors to pay higher...

Three months after they voted against John Boehner's third term as speaker, two Republicans have been removed from a key committee in retaliation for their dissent. The House Rules Committee announced on Tuesday that they have filled two positions temporarily vacated by Reps. Richard Nugent and Daniel Webster, who were taken off the panel after they joined 24 conservative Republicans in voting against Boehner in January. Reps. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., and Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., will fill the positions, meaning that Webster and Nugent have been permanently ousted. The two lawmakers served on the Rules Committee in the 113th Congress, but...

Georgia middle schooler CJ Pearson is no fan of Hillary Clinton, and her pledge to be a “champion” for “everyday Americans” likely isn’t going to change his mind. “Hillary Clinton, I’m done with you,” the 12-year-old student declares in his latest viral video. “Why? Because you are one of the most narcissistic, power-hungry, self-absorbed politicians of this day. “You have no accomplishments to point out, except, oh, I was married to Bill Clinton.”

Lawrence Wilkerson is a contradictory figure. Wilkerson is a career military man, who served as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell; but he has also voiced reluctance to involve American forces in foreign conflicts, and slammed the Bush administration for its handling of the Iraq War. He is also a lifelong Republican who, far from just criticizing his party, has actually gone on the warpath against it at times. When Powell was attacked by conservatives in 2012 for endorsing Barack Obama for reelection — Mitt Romney surrogate John Sununu famously suggested that the endorsement was motivated by...

The Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) has launched an effort to defeat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), bashing him for failing to uphold the principles of a “true conservative” just hours after he announced his intention to run for reelection. “There are few Republicans who have betrayed our conservative principles more than John McCain,” SCF President Ken Cuccinelli said in an email to supporters Tuesday of the party's 2008 nominee for president. “John McCain lost his way a long time ago and it's time to replace him with a strong conservative leader who will support and defend the Constitution.” Cuccinelli’s email links...

<p>Only six of 54 Republican members of the Senate signed a pro-traditional marriage legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court that was submitted on Friday. USA Today noted, “By contrast, 44 Democratic senators and 167 Democratic House members filed a brief last month urging the court to approve same-sex marriage. The brief included the full House and Senate [Democratic] leadership teams.”</p>

Does anyone know if Indiana or Arkansas have Gubernatorial recall options?

The greatly anticipated “fix” to the Indiana religious freedom law has been released by the Indiana legislative committee, and it is far worse than conservatives feared. According to law professor Mark Rienzi, the new fix will allow the state to prosecute Christians criminally for denying gay weddings their professional affirmation.Rienzi, of the Becket Fund and Catholic University School of Law and who was lead attorney in the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case that upheld a claim under the federal religious freedom law, said this would “criminalize religious objectors.”

Voters are more concerned with finding a candidate to restore their personal economic outlook than they are with how conservative the Republican Party is, expected GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told Face the Nation on Sunday. Huckabee told host Bob Schieffer he knows there will be a “big brouhaha” over which Republican candidate will be most conservative, but added, “there really isn’t an outright liberal in the whole bunch.” There may be degrees of conservatism from policy to policy, he said, but, “compared to the current administration, all of us are conservative.” Huckabee said voters don’t care about the horizontal...

U.S. Capitol police on Wednesday arrested seven pro-life protesters while they were praying outside the office of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Those arrested, who included prominent pro-life activist and nurse Jill Stanek, were protesting the House Republican leaderships’ failure to call a vote on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would prohibit aborting an unborn child in or after the 20th week of gestation. The House Republican leadership shelved the bill less than 24 hours before it was set to come up for a vote on Jan. 22 after some Republican congresswomen, led by Rep. Renée Ellmers (R-N.C.)...

There was more talk at the White House Thursday about whether President Obama really would “close tax loopholes” on his own. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president “is very interested” in working with Congress, but nothing’s “off the table” when it comes to Obama exploring the options for using his executive authority. There’s nothing to announce right now, he added. “So to the extent that there’s a lot of fretting and hand-wringing on Capitol Hill, I would urge them to not lose any sleep over this, but rather maybe it’s worth burning a little midnight oil to try...

Let's get this out of the way now: As far as big deals coming out of Washington, this year is already junked. With the midterm elections in view for jittery lawmakers, chances for a breakthrough on an immigration overhaul, a rewrite of the tax code, or a major jobs package have all but vanished. (Take a bow, partisans.) But we could wake up Nov. 5 with a very different political order. President Obama, at that point, would still have two years in the Oval Office to seal his legacy. Certainly the President himself will help shape that future. Beyond that,...

Senate GOP leadership is staying away from a proposal to ensure illegal immigrants don’t get tax break payouts from the government, with the party still smarting from a battle over Department of Homeland Security funding. Senior Republicans generally say they support the goals of the bill from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that seeks to keep immigrants protected from deportation by President Obama’s executive actions from claiming several years’ worth of earned income tax credits. But with the most recent immigration fight having just finished, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has said he’s still examining the...

Kentucky is one place in America where a tea-party firebrand and a Republican from the governance wing amicably meet.For two Republican senators from the same state, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell could not be more mismatched. Senator Paul is a man in a hurry, with presidential stars in his eyes after a mere four years of serving Kentucky in Washington. The loquacious libertarian is a darling of young conservatives – a relaxed jeans-and-boots kind of guy. Senator McConnell, after three patient decades in office, has finally reached his dream job of Senate majority leader. A man of few words, he’s...

Signers include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sens. Susan Collins and Mark Kirk and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie BakerMore than 300 veteran Republican lawmakers, operatives and consultants have filed a friend of the court brief at the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage late Thursday. The amicus brief, organized by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, was filed for the four same-sex marriage cases the Court will hear on April 28 that could legalize the unions nationwide. In 2013, Mehlman marshaled a similar effort for the case that overturned California’s Proposition 8, which had banned same-sex marriage...

It's over. After bringing us within hours of a shutdown on Friday, congressional leaders backed down and voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security through the rest of the year today. That didn't happen because they suddenly came to their senses and decided to stop playing political games. It happened because they knew they couldn't get away with it any longer. They heard the voices of hundreds of thousands of Americans who stood up to let them know we were ready to hold them accountable. They saw reasonable members of Congress standing united, and refusing to budge. And you...

We all have bad days at work. John Boehner, too. For the House speaker, “Friday wasn’t all that fun,” he says, though “most days” he likes his job. The Ohio Republican and his leadership team in the GOP-controlled House had a stunning defeat when a three-week spending bill for the Homeland Security Department went down, thanks to a group of angry conservatives. …