Free Republic

Prostitution. Bribery. Blackmail. Thuggery. Hypocrisy. Those were just some of the incendiary words thrown around the U.S. Senate last week, and that doesn’t count what people said in private. The Senate may still have a reputation as a genteel club, but lawmakers seemed to abandon rules of decorum completely last week in arguments about whether Congress should be treated like the rest of the country when it comes to Obamacare. Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has demanded a floor vote on his bill to end an exemption that members of Congress and their staffs are slated to get that...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says he hopes the White House will act within a week to address the growing concerns that labor unions have over the new health care law. … Unions want members to be eligible for the same federal subsidies available to low-income workers in the new health exchanges. …

The Internal Revenue Service is still targeting tea party and conservative groups in their applications for tax-exempt status, a full three months after the scandal first erupted. "In plain English, the IRS is still targeting tea party cases," an aide to Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told The Washington Examiner.Camp, a Michigan Republican, released a transcript of testimony from an IRS agent who told a Ways and Means investigator that the agency was still targeting such groups, the Examiner reports. The testimony was given in a closed-door session on Aug. 1, according to the...

America has a two-party system. But it’s not Republicans versus Democrats. It’s the ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — against everyone else. Consider how President Obama just gave Congress its very own Obamacare waiver. Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased. Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer....

<p>To adapt H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the cynicism and self-dealing of the American political class. Witness their ad-libbed decision, at the 11th hour and on the basis of no legal authority, to create a special exemption for themselves from the ObamaCare health coverage that everybody else is mandated to buy.</p>