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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican tea party forces are rejoicing and the party establishment is somber or altogether silent in the wake of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's primary defeat at the hands of political neophyte David Brat, an unflinching foe of loosening immigration laws. Speaker John Boehner praised Cantor as "a good friend and a great leader, and someone I've come to rely upon on a daily basis" in a statement that steered clear of the issue that Brat put at the center of his campaign and has divided the party for years.

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Some conservatives unhappy with House Speaker John Boehner's leadership are looking for a replacement, and recent moves by Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling are fueling speculation he wants Boehner's job in the next Congress. Hensarling, who was part of Boehner's leadership team two years ago but left to chair the House Financial Services Committee, gave an expansive speech last week hosted by Heritage Action for America, a group that frequently and publicly clashes with Boehner. Asked afterward if he was interested in running for speaker, Hensarling initially said he was "flattered," and said, "It's not something I've aspired to. It's not...

Here is exhibit A of why we don’t trust current Senate leadership to do the right thing if they were to win back the majority; they refuse to block new spending when in the minority. Last week, House leadership decided to pass the “doc fix” bill (H.R. 4302) by voice vote. This bill reimburses healthcare providers for the scheduled 24 percent cut in payments for services rendered to Medicare patients. The bill extends the payments through next March. It also continues some new programs created under Obamacare. They used a hodgepodge of tenuous offsets spread out mainly over the next...

Well, it is official. Eric Cantor and John Boehner — particularly Eric Cantor — have decided they don’t need or want conservatives and, more troubling, do not have any intention of trying to win at the polls by forcing Democrat hands on Obamacare. Our leadership is behaving badly. Last week and on Monday I mentioned Rep. Steve King’s effort to repeal Obamacare and start over. He’s filed a discharge petition. If he gets 218 signatures, Nancy Pelosi must hold a vote

SNIP To lead the Republican majority staff, Gowdy selected Philip Kiko, a key aide to Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., when the latter served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and more recently a registered lobbyist for the Smith-Free Group, a K Street lobbying firm with a diverse roster of clients. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, swiftly welcomed Gowdy’s choice, calling Kiko “a man of unquestioned integrity with a record of distinguished service” in and out of Congress... SNIP However, emails obtained by Fox News show that some conservatives are unhappy with Kiko’s appointment, chiefly because of his recent lobbying...

A retired United States Army colonel expects as many as 30 million like-minded individuals will descend on Washington, DC this week and demand that President Barack Obama and other members of his administration be booted from office. Those are just some of the demands that Col. Harry Riley, founder of “Operation American Spring,” said he’ll ask the Obama administration to adhere to when militia members and patriots of all sorts arrive in the nation’s capital on Friday and begin demonstrating against a government the group considers to be in violation of the principles established by the founders of the country....

Surprise action outside Denver's Brown Palace Hotel this morning, as a press release from a coalition of groups including Together Colorado and the Colorado Immigration Reform Coalition (CIRC) explains: Outside a fundraiser headlined by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) for Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) today, local leaders staged a rally to protest the fact that these three House Republicans are key obstacles standing in the way of immigration reform that would keep Colorado immigrant families together. It has been 322 days since the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill, but Speaker Boehner and House...

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett pulled back Friday morning from comments she made suggesting that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) had made a commitment to President Obama to take up immigration legislation this summer. Jarrett had told an investors conference in Las Vegas on Thursday that she believes that Boehner will allow a comprehensive immigration reform bill, or a package of bills, to come up for a vote after a series of GOP primaries this summer in order to avoid spoiling the chances of some Republican incumbents. Her comments echo the long-held beliefs of some observers of the...

House Speaker John Boehner’s staff says he has not made a commitment to the White House to move an overhaul of the immigration laws this year, pushing back against comments made this week by a senior advisor in the Obama administration made this week. Valerie Jarrett told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that she thinks there’s a window “this summer, between now and August, to get something done. “We have a commitment from Speaker Boehner, who’s very frustrated with his caucus,” Jarrett told the newspaper. Michael Steel, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican, said Boehner has not made a commitment to...

President Barack Obama's top adviser and confidant told a group of global elites on Thursday in Las Vegas, Nevada that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has made a commitment to the White House to try to pass amnesty legislation this year. After hailing the Senate's amnesty bill that the Congressional Budget Office determined would lower the wages of American workers, Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior advisor, told attendees at the yearly invitation-only SkyBridge Alternatives Conference that Boehner would help the White House make a push get immigration reform enacted in the next three months. “I think we have a window this...

Sal Russo, co-founder of the Tea Party Express, announced his support for amnesty on Wednesday, reversing his organization’s statement from a year ago that it would not take a position on immigration reform. If you take a look at Russo’s background, this isn’t exactly the revelation that some in the media are making it out to be. What’s interesting, though, is the dichotomy between Russo’s position and the principles of the organization he helped to create. The Tea Party Express bills itself as anti-establishment, but Russo’s immigration proposal is nearly identical to the principles pushed by GOP House Leaders --...

Barack Obama opens the prisons as Round 1 in his amnesty scheme A few thousand murderers, rapists, kidnappers and other violent thugs are on the streets, thanks to Barack Obama for handing out a “get out of jail free card” to aliens in the country illegally, no matter how many felonies he or she may have committed. The Center for Immigration Studies provides proof that, last year, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials “freed 36,007 convicted criminal aliens from detention who were awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings.” Those 36,000-plus perps weren’t in jail for jaywalking or keeping a...

The House may have voted to hold former Lois Lerner in contempt, but don’t expect John Boehner to authorize the sergeant-at-arms to arrest the former IRS employee at the center of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups. Instead, the speaker said the responsibility lies with the Justice Department and attorney general Eric Holder to prosecute Lerner. “Will he do it? We don’t know, but the ball is in his court,” Boehner told Fox News on Sunday. When asked why Boehner didn’t issue an arrest warrant himself, he said the provision has never been used before and he was “not sure...

A bill that reauthorized the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which was criticized on the right as unnecessary interference by the federal government in the free market, passed the House in violation of the so-called “Hastert Rule” Thursday. The bill passed 297-117 overall. 106 Republicans voted “yea” while 116 Republicans voted “nay.” One Democrat, embattled Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), voted no as well, while 191 Democrats voted yes. The Hastert Rule, the operating principle of former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, requires support from a “majority of the majority.” Hastert has criticized Boehner for relying on Democratic votes on...

House Speaker John Boehner would not say Thursday if the House GOP’s campaign arm should stop including the Benghazi attacks in fundraising appeals. Asked three times whether the National Republican Congressional Committee should be fundraising based on what they call Democratic obstruction of the Benghazi investigation, Boehner answered only: “Our focus is on getting the answers to those families who lost their loved ones. Period.” An NRCC email sent Wednesday morning included a link to “become a Benghazi watchdog” – which led to a page where supporters can donate cash. A separate website called “BenghaziWatchdogs.com” still contains a link encouraging...

Rep. Trey Gowdy, the tea party Republican tapped to lead the new committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks, made a telling slip Wednesday morning in describing his mission. Asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about the possibility that his panel’s work would continue into the 2016 election campaign, Gowdy replied that “if an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.” A trial? And the Obama administration is the defense? So much for that “serious investigation” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised; his new chairman intends to play prosecutor, proving the administration’s guilt...

..... As veterans from all aspects of Special Operations, we have no doubt that there’s a lot more to what happened in Benghazi than President Obama and his Administration are letting on. From the very beginning, he has attempted to mislead and outright lied to the American people about why the attack on September 11th, 2012 happened, how it happened, and what our government did or did not do to save the lives of our patriots abroad,” former Navy SEAL Captain Larry Bailey wrote in a statement to Breitbart News. The representatives from the retired military community want “a full...

In the summer of 2012, Michele Bachmann and four other House members sent a letter to the Inspector-Generals of key government agencies asking them to open an investigation into possible Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government.The letter to the Department of State specifically raised concerns over Huma Abedin, then-Deputy Chief of Staff and top personal aide to the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The letter stated that Abedin “has three family members—her late father, her mother, and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations,” and noted that the Department of State had “taken actions recently that have...

<p>The mainstream, media is still trying to figure out how they are going to push back against the recently-announced House Select Committee that will investigate Benghazi.</p> <p>With polls showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Obama engaged in a cover-up and want the investigations to continue, our media -- that from the beginning have fought to protect Obama, Hillary, and to ensure the truth is never known -- are in a tough spot.</p>