Free Republic

From now on, it’s the Zip-a-dee-doo-dah House. The political world stopped for a moment when Speaker John Boehner broke into the jaunty old Disney tune — “My, oh my, what a wonderful day” — after a news conference in which he threw in the towel on the debt ceiling fight. He found himself trapped between the immovable object of Democrats determined that they’d never again let Republicans take the nation’s credit hostage and the irresistible force of a dysfunctional, crisis-addicted GOP majority of which he is the putative leader. Boehner decided to skip away in song. Feb. 11, 2014, was...

The first Republican debate with former frontrunner Mitt Romney as a hungry challenger took place last night, and in many ways it unfolded largely as I predicted. Romney mainly stuck to his above-the-fray strategy except for a couple of notable exchanges in the beginning with the new frontrunner, Rick Perry. Perry avoided looking or sounding scary despite the best attempts of the moderators to make him stumble. Michele Bachmann may in fact have been the only real loser of the debate despite giving a credible performance. Let’s start with Perry, who was the focus of the attention for his first...

Boarded-up shops and a nearly empty parking lot provided the backdrop for former Masschusetts' Gov. Mitt Romney’s visit today to a struggling shopping center near the intersection of Victory and Laurel Canyon boulevards. Romney, presumed to be among the leading Republican contenders for the presidency in 2012, said President Barack Obama’s economic policies have contributed to the decline of this and many other malls across America. “Proposing raising taxes did not put people back to work. Obamacare made it less likely for employers to want to hire people. The talk about cap-and-trade and higher energy costs made it less likely...

Gov. John Kasich has a special round of golf coming up. Kasich will join President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner as the fourth member in a golf foursome that will take to the links June 18. Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols confirmed Kasich's place in the foursome, and the Cincinnati-area Republican Boehner said as much on his Twitter account. Obama and Boehner, both avid golfers, scheduled the golf outing to smooth over some of their differences as they seek a compromise over raising the national debt limit and cutting spending.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is unlikely to face a Republican filibuster, the Senate's second-ranking Republican said Sunday. "The filibuster should be relegated to extreme circumstances, and I don't think Elena Kagan represents that," Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CBS’s "Face the Nation." Kyl voted to confirm Kagan to be solicitor general, the top lawyer who argues the administration's cases before the Supreme Court. But Kagan shouldn't be count on his vote again, he said. "No," he said. "I explained at the time that my vote for the temporary position as the government's...

<p>WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- Rep. Ron Paul won the most support for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination in an unofficial straw poll of conservative activists attending an annual conference.</p>