Free Republic

ouse Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday agreed to Democrats' demands to hold a vote on legislation funding the Homeland Security Department through the end of the budget year, without any immigration measures attached. The move is a victory for the Obama administration and sets up a presumably swift resolution to the weeks-long standoff on Capitol Hill. Republicans had tried to use the DHS funding bill as the vehicle to reverse President Obama's controversial immigration executive actions. But Democrats repeatedly blocked the move, insisting they pass the spending bill with no riders attached. "I am as outraged and frustrated as you...

Senior rebel commander Eduard Basurin said on Tuesday pro-Russian separatists had gained control of more than 80 percent of the east Ukrainian transport hub of Debaltseve, which has been gripped by fighting despite a ceasefire deal.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Marines handed over their remaining weapons to Yemenis at the airport in the capital, Sanaa, on Wednesday before boarding commercial aircraft to leave the country following the closure of the U.S. embassy, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon said the Marines destroyed heavy weapons in their embassy arsenal, including machine guns, before leaving for the airport but remained armed with smaller weapons until the end to ensure a safe exit from the country. "The movement from the embassy to the aircraft required armed Marines," Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said at a briefing. The U.S....

Back in September, our fearless commander in chief, Barack Obama told us all with utmost confidence that he was totally on top of the war against ISIS and had a plan to win it. This came as a surprise to many who could see nothing but duplicity and ass-covering in the administration’s actions and thought that its strategy was best captured by that ancient military maxim: “when in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” This is what he said: This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out [the Islamic State] wherever...

The new border bills drafted by Republican leaders require the actual removal of at least 66 miles of weak border fencing between laborers in Mexico and employers in the United States. The border bills also only require for the construction of 27 miles of effective double-layer fencing along the 2,000-mile border. “It is a remarkable that the direction of our progress is going backwards, from a goal of building 700 miles of double-layer border fencing [in 2006] to only 27 miles [in 2015],” said a Hill staffer who opposes the leaders’ bills. “Where the double-layer fence has been put in,...

A backdrop to the massacre in Paris on Wednesday by self-professed al Qaeda terrorists is that city officials have increasingly ceded control of heavily Muslim neighborhoods to Islamists, block by block. France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, some of whom talk openly of ruling the country one day and casting aside Western legal systems for harsh, Islam-based Shariah law.

"We, at no point in time, have imposed our will against the Taliban. We have not vanquished the enemy from the battlefield," former U.S. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) told Fox News Monday night. West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was deployed to Afghanistan, spoke to Fox News Monday night, one day after the 13-year war in Afghanistan came to a formal end. The war may be over, but the fighting hasn't stopped. Four Afghan soliders were killed while repelling a Taliban attack on an army checkpoint in southern Helmand Province late Sunday, the Associated Press reported. Afghan government forces...

In July of 1870, King Wilhelm sent Foreign Minister Bismarck an account of his meeting with a French envoy who had demanded that the king renounce any Hohenzollern claim to the Spanish throne. Bismarck edited the report to make it appear the Frenchman had insulted the king, and that Wilhelm rudely dismissed him. The Ems Telegram precipitated the Franco-Prussian war Bismarck wanted. Words matter. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much greater impact can a motion picture have? We are finding out. Egypt has banned "Exodus: Gods and Kings," the $140 million 20th Century Fox biblical...

'We Still Have More Work To Do'' The State Department's Rose Gottemoeller, under secretary for arms control and international security, spoke at the Brookings Institution Thursday where she reaffirmed the United States' "unassailable" commitment to putting the nuclear weapons genie back in the bottle. Gottemoeller told the attendees at the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative-sponsored event that "the U.S. commitment to achieving the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons is unassailable." She went on to note that the nation's stockpile of active weapons is down 85 percent from maximum cold war levels, falling to 4,804 in 2013...

Mark Levin ripped Republicans a new one tonight as he opened his show tonight, saying that he is one inch away from leaving the Republican Party. He starts in hard, asking Republicans if they think this is a joke, if they think they can just lie to Republicans and conservatives with impunity about defunding Obamacare and fighting Obama’s illegal amnesty. He points out that Republicans go on and on about an imperial president and his illegal amnesty and they can’t even vote on a point of order challenging Obama. Levin says the Constitution is in tatters and that the Republican...

I will keep nothing from you. Today, let me share with you the truth. Republicans will not stop Barack Obama’s executive overreach. In fact, while you were enjoying your Thanksgiving there were a number of stories out that the Republican leadership wants to give its members an opportunity to express their outrage and opposition. Expression is not action. They will take no action to stop the President. In fact, a few days ago the House Appropriations Committee tried to convince everyone they do not even have the power to stop the President. Congress’s own research service disagrees. But Republicans have...

"........It may be argued that Truman “saved” Western Europe when he dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan a few weeks later – hitting Hiroshima on August 7 and Nagasaki on August 9. That brought the war against Japan to an abrupt end; it also extended a protective nuclear umbrella over Britain, France, and other U.S. allies in Western Europe. All of a sudden, Stalin faced the reality that the U.S. had a new weapon that could destroy whole cities and armies. He would risk his own annihilation if he started a third world war hard on the heels of...

It’s as if the November 4 elections never occurred. Today, the new House membership met in a private conclave and reelected every one of their top leaders by voice vote. This includes John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Majority Leader, Steve Scalise (R-LA) as Majority Whip, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) as Conference Chair. At a time of one of the worst constitutional crises in our nation’s history, when the president is threatening to imminently remake our society with immigration amnesty – a policy over which Congress holds absolute power – Republican leadership elections lacked any debate...

Politics 2014 Election McConnell: No Shutdowns, No Full Obamacare Repeal Jay Newton-Small/Hazard, KY @JNSmall 8:22 AM ET Sen. Mitch McConnell was giddy... Kentuckian... TIME’s interview ... Notably, a full repeal of Obamacare was not on his mind... ... ... get America back to work ... Keystone XL pipeline ... medical device tax ... 40-hour work week ... individual mandate ... bipartisan majority in the Senate ... agree on with the President ... comprehensive tax reform and trade agreements ... international trade ... nuclear option? ...we’ll discuss that... ... ... immigration reform? We’re going to discuss... What if ... executive action...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) conceded that the state of Wisconsin lost its fight to ban same sex marriage on Monday when the Supreme Court declined to hear gay marriage cases in multiple states. With the Supreme Court's punt back to the appeals court that struck down the ban, county clerks in Wisconsin have started issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. And Walker seems to have accepted that this is the end of the road for the state's ban....

DAVID FRUM, The Atlantic September 28, 2014If there has been one consistent theme to the Obama administration’s foreign policy, it has been the yearning for some kind of deal with the ruling Iranian regime. President Obama reportedly sent a sequence of messages to Iran’s supreme ruler, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the early months of 2009. The U.S. president held his tongue during the first 10 days of violently repressed protests against the falsified Iranian presidential election of 2009. Obama resisted the tough Kirk-Menendez sanctions against Iran’s central bank until the Senate approved them on a vote of 100-0. When...

Europe Balks at Joining Air Campaign Over Syria France and Other Allies Move Toward Action Against Islamic State in Iraq But Draw Line at Syrian Border By STACY MEICHTRY Sept. 24, 2014 PARIS—The U.S.'s aggressive airstrikes in Syria, backed by a modest coalition of Arab partners, have so far failed to muster the support of traditional European allies. The U.K. and other European countries took key steps Wednesday in lining up parliamentary support for airstrikes over territory that the militant group Islamic State has seized in Iraq, and France has already begun an air campaign over that area. But Europe...

An Islamic militant group said Sunday it has “secured” a U.S. Embassy compound in Libya’s capital city of Tripoli.

BROOKLYN BRIDGE -- Someone has replaced two American flags on the Brooklyn Bridge with mysterious white flags. The white flags - international symbols of surrender - fluttered Tuesday from poles on the stone supports that hold cables above the bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. One of the flags, viewed via video, appeared to have faint traces of stars and stripes on it. Police say it isn't clear what time they were placed there - or by whom.

New York City police Tuesday were investigating how the two American flags that historically sit on top of the Brooklyn Bridge's 273-foot towers were stolen and replaced with two white flags, which are known universally to symbolize surrender. The white flags were removed by noon, but police said they are investigating the issue, which may indicate a serious security breach on one of the city's most secured landmarks.