Free Republic

Sen. Elbert Guillory of Opelousas made national news by defecting from the Democrats to become the Louisiana’s first African-American Republican state senator since Reconstruction. Guillory’s move was more of a homecoming, as he had switched from Republican to Democrat before first running for the Legislature. His YouTube video explaining his latest switch went viral, prompting calls for him to run for the U.S. Senate, even president. If you take a look at this Louisiana poll, State Senator Guillory, who hasn’t stated if he was going to run for the US Senate sits tied with current Senator Mary Landrieu as a...

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe said Wednesday that he will seek a fourth term in the U.S. Senate, telling supporters be believes liberals are endangering the country and saying he had a successful track record of fighting the president’s administration. “Washington liberals have our country on a crash course, and it’s doing damage right here at home,” Inhofe said in a statement announcing he was running. “The Obama administration’s destructive policies have resulted in the hollowing of our military, a staggering job market from excessive regulations and a struggling economy from big government spending.” His re-election bid was anticipated for...

Three New Jersey Democrats running in a special U.S. Senate election got their first crack Monday night at the front runner, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, in the first debate among all four candidates in the abbreviated campaign. At times, they tried to gang up on Booker to show he’s less liberal than them on issues such as using public money to send children to private schools or revising health insurance laws even further. But largely, the four candidates found themselves in agreement and their differences were relatively nuanced. The four are running in a hastily scheduled Aug. 13 primary to...

After a contentious fight over some of President Obama’s nominees, the Senate confirmed five members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).On Tuesday, the Senate voted to clear all five nominees — Harry Johnson III, Philip Miscimarra, Nancy Schiffer, Kent Hirozawa and Mark Pearce.Republicans agreed to hold up-or-down votes on the NLRB nominees as part of a deal to avoid Senate rule changes limiting the minority's right to filibuster executive branch nominations. Two of the NLRB nominees confirmed were GOP picks — Johnson and Miscimarra — and Schiffer, Hirozawa and Pearce were Obama's nominees. As part of the deal, Obama...

Rand Paul: I’ve got Mike Enzi’s back vs. Liz Cheney Paul said he considers his colleague 'a good conservative.' | AP Photo By ALEXANDER BURNS | 7/11/13 11:44 AM EDT If Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi ends up facing a primary challenge from Liz Cheney, he might be able to count on some help from one of his highest-profile conservative colleagues. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told POLITICO Thursday that he considers Enzi “a good conservative,” and said he wasn’t familiar with Cheney’s interest in running against the incumbent Republican. “I don’t know much about her or her politics, really,” Paul...

Senate leaders struck a deal on Tuesday to avoid the “nuclear option,” as Republicans relented and allowed a series of President Barack Obama’s stalled nominees to move forward toward confirmation. As a sign of a break in the stalemate, Republicans allowed a vote Tuesday morning to advance the nomination of Richard Cordray to permanently lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, passing 71-29. In exchange, Democrats backed off their threat to unilaterally change Senate rules—the so-called “nuclear option”—to allow for presidential nominees to be confirmed by a simple majority vote, an historic rules change which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.,...

EqualProtectionforPosterity.comUnited States Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Your demeanor and plain words on many subjects have been refreshing, Senator, since your election. But your support for the so-called 'twenty week' or "fetal pain" abortion legislation that was just passed in your home state, and which is similarly being proposed in the great national legislative body in which you now serve, is a huge disappointment. Such support destroys your credibility and disqualifies you. Do you think it would be right, or just, or moral, or constitutional, if a "law" were passed that explicitly allowed all paraplegics to be shot to death,...

Kuemper Catholic High School alum Scott Schaben of Ames says he plans to run for the U.S. Senate in the November 2014 election. … Schaben said he is a different variety of conservative. “I am not your far-right candidate,” Schaben said. For example, he supports gay marriage. He’s opposed to abortion, but says the party needs to be smart about managing the issue. “I would vote to make it illegal, but I wouldn’t expect it to pass,” Schaben said. Schaben’s own family would bring racial diversity to the GOP, he said, noting that his wife, Latoja, an assistant coach for...

For months now I have written extensively in numerous national publications about the treacherous legislation that is the “scamnesty” bill that will pass out of the U.S. Senate this week. When you have a “gang” writing legislation you get gangster government just like this. All of the people -- and by all I mean all -- claiming to be conservative who are either still advocating scamnesty or defending those that are fall into one of four categories: 1) Woefully uninformed to the point that they should no longer criticize anyone else for being a low information voter, and should perhaps...

This is a by-party breakdown of the vote.Measure Number: S. 744 (Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act )Measure Title: A bill to provide for comprehensive immigration reform and for other purposes. Bill passes 68-32. Democrats for (52): Baldwin (D-WI) Baucus (D-MT) Begich (D-AK) Bennet (D-CO) Blumenthal (D-CT) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Coons (D-DE) Cowan (D-MA) Donnelly (D-IN) Durbin (D-IL) Feinstein (D-CA) Franken (D-MN) Gillibrand (D-NY) Hagan (D-NC) Harkin (D-IA) Heinrich (D-NM) Heitkamp (D-ND) Hirono (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kaine (D-VA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Landrieu (D-LA) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Manchin (D-WV) McCaskill...

Massachusetts voters are heading to the polls to pick a new U.S. senator. Democratic U.S. Rep. Edward Markey and Republican Gabriel Gomez scrambled to energize supporters and mobilize get-out-the-vote efforts in the hours leading up to Tuesday’s special election to succeed John Kerry in the U.S. Senate. Both candidates made a series of campaign stops Monday, culminating with election eve rallies while their campaigns cranked up their all-important ground games designed to get as many of their voters to the polls as possible on a day when statewide turnout was expected to be light. …

And dumb enough to support this immigration bill given the Senate's 54-43 rejection of the Cornyn plan for a border security 'trigger'? The CBO dynamically "scored" (with numbers supplied to it by Dems) the immigration bill (S. 744) and found that it - low & behold - will DECREASE federal deficits over the next 20 years. Hmmm. How are those CBO-scored ObamaCare numbers working out for ya? They were only $2 TRILLION DOLLARS off when predicting the cost of ObamaCare. But no way they could botch this....right? I wonder what the odds are of these 4 getting primaried, given that...

Two weeks ago I reported on the $250 million real estate boondoggle by the General Services Administration whereby the GSA is moving the Coast Guard out of an existing, below-market lease at the cost to taxpayers of $250 million dollars.  Today I’m reporting on another, MORE EXPENSIVE real estate boondoggle by the GSA, which leads me to believe that if Congress is really serious about making real cuts to federal expenses that they can start with some easy cuts on federal real estate and personnel costs at the GSA. That’s because according to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,...

The issue of judicial nominations causes an outbreak of hypocrisy in both political parties, and President Obama isn't immune. In fact, he seems to have come down with a particularly bad case lately. On June 4, the president went to the Rose Garden to deliver a peevish and lecturing speech announcing three candidates for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Noting that it is the president's constitutional duty to nominate judges and the Senate's duty to provide advice and consent, a clearly frustrated Obama said, "Time and again, congressional Republicans cynically used Senate rules and procedures...

Ask Democrat Ed Markey or Republican Gabriel Gomez about guns or ObamaCare or each other's qualifications to be the next US senator from Massachusestts, and out come the canned talking points and put-downs that anyone following the Senate race quickly wearies of. But what if you toss them some questions from off the beaten path? I put some nonstandard queries to the two nominees, hoping their answers might be illuminating – or at least unexpected. Herewith excerpts from their replies. (The candidates' full responses are posted online: Click here for Markey's and here for Gomez's). 1. Are TV shows getting...

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) backed down from a previous promise his spokeswoman made to Breitbart News that he would consider voting in favor of amendments to the Senate's immigration bill that would close a loophole allowing illegal immigrants immediate access to state and local welfare.

...Who will run for Iowa's Open US Senate Seat on the GOP-e "side"?

A group organized as The Tea Party Leadership Fund is trying to draft former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to run for the U.S. Senate in 2014. The fund claims that the former Fox News analyst would be favored to unseat incumbent Mark Begich (D-AK), whose polling numbers have suffered recently. But the organization has not even discussed its effort with Gov. Palin, and she has never expressed any real desire to be a U.S. Senator. The fund's Niger Innis says the interest of Tea Party members in a Palin run, however, is clear. "We...

Massachusetts Rep. Edward J. Markey won the Democratic nomination for Secretary of State John Kerry’s old Senate seat Tuesday, advancing to summer special election campaign against Republican Gabriel Gomez which the Democrat will be heavily favored to win. With 60 percent of precincts reporting, the Associated Press called the race for Markey, who led Rep. Stephen F. Lynch 57 percent to 43 percent. Three years after Massachusetts Democrats nominated Attorney General Martha Coakley, a flawed candidate who was upset by Republican Scott Brown in the race for late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, Democratic leaders sought to clear the field early...

The landscape: David Brooks Is Unimpressed With Senator Ted Cruz - says it doesn't help that Sen. Cruz looks like Joe McCarthy. Ron Paul fans furious over Rand Paul's drone flip-flop Marco Rubio’s Radio Row on immigration