Free Republic

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will not appear at a “misconduct” hearing Tuesday where Republicans will lay out a case to impeach him for allegedly failing to comply with a congressional subpoena, the IRS told POLITICO. Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee summoned the tax chief to answer accusations from the House Oversight panel that he failed to preserve documents Congress requested for its probe of the IRS tea party scandal. They also say he never told the full truth about erased back-up tapes containing copies of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner. Some Republicans even suspect the IRS...

resident Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the U.S. has set a new goal to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by between 26 percent and 28 percent over the next 11 years as part of a climate change agreement with China. The new target is a drastic increase from earlier in Obama's presidency, when he pledged to cut emissions by 17 percent by 2020. By contrast, Obama's counterpart, Xi Jinping, did not pledge any reductions by a specific date, but rather set a target for China's emissions to peak by 2030, or earlier if possible. Xi also pledged to increase the...

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday is expected to approve the declassifying of the findings, conclusions and executive summary of its $40 million report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques, leaving it to the White House to decide just how much of the 6,300-page investigation will actually become public. President Barack Obama’s decision on what to release could either startle the nation with details already described by Sen. Dianne Feinstein as “un-American and brutal,” or offer a sanitized version of the controversial tactics used in questioning terror suspects.

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in...

The White House is delaying for one week the release of President Obama's budget for the 2013 fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, a decision that administration officials say was based on "the need to finalize decisions and technical details" but which Republicans say is a direct violation of law. "This will mark the third time in four years the president has missed his statutory requirement to present a budget on time, while trillion-dollar budget deficits continue to mount. As the president announces another missed deadline, tomorrow marks the 1,000th day Senate Democrats have gone without any budget at all,"...

FINAL ROLL CALL: 46-53. RINOS: Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Hagel (R-NE), Kyl (R-AZ), Lott (R-MS), Lugar (R-IN), Martinez (R-FL),McCain (R-AZ), Snowe (R-ME), and Specter (R-PA). Hats off to the Dems who voted agains this crap: Bayh (D-IN), Bingaman (D-NM), Brown (D-OH), Byrd (D-WV), Dorgan (D-ND), Harkin (D-IA), Landrieu (D-LA), McCaskill (D-MO), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Rockefeller (D-WV), Sanders (I-VT), Stabenow (D-MI), Tester (D-MT) and Webb (D-VA). It should be noted that the following Republicans switched their vote for “Yea” to “Na” from the bill earlier in the week. They include: Bennett (R-UT), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Burr (R-NC), Coleman (R-MN),...