Free Republic

New evidence suggests that a former top staffer for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) may be directing the post-election efforts of Fusion GPS, a Democrat-linked political opposition research firm, to vindicate a series of memos alleging illegal collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Russian officials

So from where is all this newfound interest in Arlington County’s sustainability bonafides coming? From Amazon.com, it seems. The vast majority of the traffic to the page over the past week that can be tracked came from what appears to be an internal Amazon.com page devoted to its HQ2 search. Arlington, of course, is in the running as one of the potential landing spots for the company’s second headquarters.No other page on ARLnow.com has a similar level of traffic coming from Amazon. Last week a noted NYU professor who has written about the company opined that New York City and...

[JURIST] The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) released two [Goodlatte, PDF] letters [Nunes, PDF] on Thursday stating that it would consider requests from two Congressional Representatives to release the hearing transcripts which caused former Trump advisor Carter Page to be put under surveillance. Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) wrote to the FISC in January requesting the transcripts, and Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) [official websites] sent a second letter at the beginning of February. Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote in her response that "the Court has never previously received a request from Congress for the contents of any specific FISA application or order,...

Republicans label Friedman the 'Jon Ossoff of 2018' after Streisand, Soros, Raitt donations Alison Friedman, a Democrat who moved to Northern Virginia last year to challenge Republican representative Barbara Comstock, received nearly half of her $1 million in donations from California, most of which came from the liberal strongholds of the Bay Area and Los Angeles, federal election records show. The campaign for control of Virginia's 10th district promises to be of the closest contests of 2018 as the two-term Comstock tries to hold onto the Northern Virginia district against a crowded field of 11 Democratic challengers, including Friedman. The...

WAYNESBORO — President Trump's national infrastructure plan announced Monday that calls for a $1.5 trillion investment in roads, bridges and the rest of America's crumbling infrastructure, provides for about $200 billion in federal funds. The remainder of dollars would have to come from state, local and private sources. For the Shenandoah Valley, the good infrastructure plan news includes funding to help with the maintenance backlog in the national parks, including Shenandoah National Park, where there is a $56 million maintenance backlog. However, a couple of local government officials and one of Virginia's U.S. senators interviewed expressed doubt about the trickle...

House GOP leaders are forging ahead with their own hardline immigration bill, as the Senate threw in the towel Thursday on legislation to protect hundreds of thousands of young, undocumented immigrants from deportation. The main author of the House bill, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), said Thursday that he’s building support for his measure, even as other GOP colleagues said an initial vote tally this week was well below the 218 votes needed to pass the bill. Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) “instructions to me are ‘get this bill done,’ and we’re working hard to accomplish that,” Goodlatte said in an...

The Schumer-Rounds-Collins immigration bill would be a total catastrophe. @DHSgov says it would be “the end of immigration enforcement in America.” It creates a giant amnesty (including for dangerous criminals), doesn’t build the wall, expands chain migration, keeps the visa... lottery, continues deadly catch-and-release, and bars enforcement even for FUTURE illegal immigrants. Voting for this amendment would be a vote AGAINST law enforcement, and a vote FOR open borders. If Dems are actually serious about DACA, they should support the Grassley bill!

HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) -- A group of 16 Virginia lawmakers has penned a letter to Virginia's Congressional Delegation (comprised of Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Representatives Bob Goodlatte, Barbara Comstock, and Morgan Griffith) asking for federal assistance to improve Interstate 81. The interstate has long been a source of frustration for people in the Shenandoah Valley, with the Virginia Department of Transportation reporting at least a 12-percent increase in traffic in just the past five years and a 55-percent increase of delays from crashes, construction, or bad weather. In 2014, Delegate Steve Landes introduced a state budget item...

The Senate shot down Sen. John McCain’s latest immigration legalization proposal Thursday as lawmakers finally began their long-awaited floor fight over the fate of “Dreamers.” Mr. McCain and Sen. Chris Coons, Delaware Democrat, had proposed an amnesty for perhaps 3 million illegal immigrants in exchange for a study of border security and a promise of action by 2021. But the plan had been rejected by President Trump and garnered only 52 votes in support, which was well shy of the 60 senators had set as the needed threshold for action. Votes were expected in quick succession on a plan to...

The Senate on Thursday rejected immigration legislation crafted by centrists in both parties after President Trump threatened to veto the bill if it made it to his desk. In a 54-45 vote, the Senate failed to advance the legislation from eight Republican, seven Democratic and one Independent senators. It needed 60 votes to overcome a procedural hurdle.

President Trump issued his first veto threat of the immigration debate on Thursday, with the White House saying the plan being offered by Senate Democratic leaders and a handful of GOP rebels would make border security worse, not better. In a statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House said the plan would prevent agents from going after illegal immigrants unless they arrive after June 30, 2018. Analysts have said that creates an incentive for people to flood the border now, hoping to get into the U.S. before the deadline — and it also protects perhaps 10 million...

A bipartisan group of senators reached a deal on immigration Wednesday as President Trump attempted to preemptively undercut the proposal by delivering an ultimatum: Pass my plan or risk a veto. The self-dubbed “Common Sense Caucus” of senators late Wednesday circulated legislation that would fulfill Trump’s calls to grant legal status to 1.8 million young immigrants and would appropriate $25 billion for southern border security construction projects over the next decade — not immediately, as Trump wants. The bill also would curb family-based immigration programs, but not to the extent Trump is seeking, and would not end a diversity visa...

The President will veto the Senate Democrats’ draft amnesty bills, a White House official told Axios.com. The site reported late on February 13: A senior administration official said Tuesday night that President Trump “will veto any bill that doesn’t advance his common-sense immigration reforms” — a hardening of the White House bargaining position as the Senate begins an epic debate … In discussing the White House’s strategic thinking, the administration official asserted confidence on immigration, saying Democrats who resist Trump’s approach will “be walking into a political suicide march.”

A broad bipartisan group of senators reached agreement Wednesday on a narrow rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws that would bolster border security and resolve the fate of the so-called Dreamers, even as President Trump suggested he would veto any plan that does not adhere to his harder-line approach. Their compromise legislation sets up a clash pitting the political center of the Senate against Mr. Trump and the Republican congressional leadership. Senators in both parties have been racing against a self-imposed end-of-the-week deadline to write legislation that could win wide support by increasing border security while at the same time...

Bipartisan group of senators says it has a DACA deal Bipartisan group of senators says it has a DACA deal 2 Hours Ago | 01:04 A bipartisan group of senators working on immigration legislation has reportedly reached a consensus. The deal will be announced later Wednesday, senators involved in the so-called Common Sense Coalition told reporters after a closed-door meeting. "It's going to be ready today," said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., The Hill reported. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the deal would establish a pathway to citizenship for the nearly 2 million undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children...

A bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday said they have reached an immigration deal as lawmakers try to break a logjam on the Senate's debate. "It's going to be ready today. It's going to be ready today," Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told reporters after a closed-door meeting. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who was also in the meeting, confirmed that they would be releasing an agreement on Wednesday saying members were working to "tidy up the language." But members remained tight-lipped about the content of the deal and if it would line up with President Trump's demands that any agreement include...

A fifth Republican is now running in the June primary for a chance to challenge Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia in November. News outlets reported Tuesday that Bert Mizusawa has entered the Republican primary and is expected to plan an announcement this week. He is a retired major general in the U.S. Army Reserve and foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports Mizusawa filed a statement of candidacy Friday. His campaign manager, Mike Wade, tells The Washington Post that frustration over the recent three-day government shutdown helped motivate Mizusawa to enter the race. Mizusawa...

Newport News police said they found a man's body inside and that he had been dead for several years. Officers believe the man was in his late 60s. Other neighbors told WTKR they think the situation is strange. Some thought the man could've possibly been sent to a nursing home or moved away with his family, but instead he was inside his home the entire time. The neighbor who did the initial welfare check and called police said the man's family is in California and he lived alone taking care of himself. "He was very secluded. He didn't want to...

Video at link. VIRGINIA BEACH, VA — Dr. M.G. "Pat" Robertson returned to The 700 Club today, 10 days after sustaining an embolic stroke . On Friday, February 2, the 87-year-old Dr. Robertson was admitted to Sentara Norfolk General after a family member recognized the onset of stroke. He was administered the clot-busting drug tPA approximately 80 minutes after the onset of symptoms, and within minutes of receiving tPA, Dr. Robertson was awake and responsive and able to move all of his limbs. He returned home on Sunday, February 4, and after a short recovery, made his return to the...

Mark Warner was texting a Russian oligarch using an encrypted app, Signal, and his messages were set to automatically delete. FoxNews broke a huge story about Senator Mark Warner, which has been discussed elsewhere. What I haven’t seen anyone else cover is the fact that the “text messages” were not ordinary messages. Warner was communicating via Signal, an encrypted app. Moreover, Warner had his messages set to disappear. (The hour glass icon in the text exchange.)