Free Republic

When Elizabeth Warren announced her Senate candidacy in September 2011, President Obama had just signed into law the Budget Control Act, which raised the debt ceiling but also made concessions to Republicans that would eventually lead to $1 trillion in sequestration cuts. Deficit control was a top priority for both parties, and something that Obama pledged to continue to pursue in a rare address to a joint session of Congress that month on his jobs plan. But the speech Obama gave last week to a similar joint session of Congress felt very different. His 2014 State of the Union address...

Warren Mayor Jim Fouts squirmed, acting uncomfortable, when he answered questions from WXYZ-TV's Jim Kiertzner about a video that is circulating online that appears to show Fouts walking in Chicago, holding hands with his executive assistant, Amanda Mika. The pair also appears to show the pair checking into the Drake Hotel, dining and visiting an Apple store. Fouts is 71. Mika is reportedly 25. The six-minute video, which carries a November 2012 time stamp, is posted to YouTube by someone with the screen name Warren DeepThroat, and suggests the mayor’s assistant received a pay raise at a time when health-care...

As a Tea Party troublemaker and liberal lightning rod, former Florida Congressman Col. Allen West is used to fending off attacks from Democratic critics. But he admits getting nervous when he thinks about a certain Massachusetts Democrat running the White House. “I’m more ... concerned about Elizabeth Warren than I am about Hillary Clinton,” West said in an interview on Boston Herald Radio.

Just hours before her swearing in as Rochester’s first woman mayor, Lovely Warren released a statement regarding the criminal history of her husband, Timothy Granison, when he was a teenager. Warren said her statement came in response to a question posed today by a reporter about her husband’s past. She said in 1997, when Granison was 17 years old, he was “was involved in a situation instigated by other youth that resulted in an encounter with the criminal justice system.” “Because of his age and the nature of the alleged offense, he was adjudicated a youthful offender,” Warren said. “The...

WASHINGTON — Hank Ronan knew he would get the job. He had sailed through three rounds of interviews and hit it off with the doctors at the diagnostic center in Annandale, Va., where he had applied to be a driver for $11 an hour. Shuttling patients to appointments was a world away from his 20 years as a software engineer, but it was the best that Ronan could find after being laid off in 2011. He was eager to get back to work and granted the doctor’s office permission to run a credit check. Ronan never heard back, he said...

On Piers Morgan Live Friday, Morgan asked Pastor Rick Warren whether he thought Christians’ views on homosexuality and same-sex marriage would ever “evolve” as they had for other perspectives in the Bible that “seem very anachronistic.” Warren replied no, adding, “I fear the disapproval of God more than I fear your disapproval or the disapproval of society.” Morgan invited Warren to discuss several topics, including Warren’s opinion of the new Pope, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage. In a mutually respectful dialog, the two differed on many issues, most notably same-sex marriage. Warren: Tolerance, Piers, used to mean we treat each other with mutual respect, even if you...

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, on Friday defended President Barack Obama’s decision to allow health insurers to issue plans for one more year that do not meet the standards set out by the Affordable Care Act, as a transitional move. “What the president’s done is said no one for a year, no insurance company, needs to cancel its coverage because of the Affordable Care Act,” Warren said, speaking to reporters after an Associated Industries of Massachusetts breakfast at the Westin Hotel in Waltham. “They’re trying to make the transition work. They’re trying to do everything they can to...

WALTHAM - U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, on Friday defended President Barack Obama’s decision to allow health insurers to issue plans for one more year that do not meet the standards set out by the Affordable Care Act, as a transitional move. “What the president’s done is said no one for a year, no insurance company, needs to cancel its coverage because of the Affordable Care Act,” Warren said, speaking to reporters after an Associated Industries of Massachusetts breakfast at the Westin Hotel in Waltham. “They’re trying to make the transition work. They’re trying to do everything they...

In a speech to be delivered at the National Consumer Law Center's three-day Consumer Rights Litigation Conference starting today in Washington, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., talks about a myriad of issues including the battle to enact federal gun control legislation and the successes of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren, who took office a year ago in a pricey Senate race against Republican Scott Brown, reiterates her position in the speech that the system is rigged for corporations and big business. But she ads that with common sense solutions, government can be part of the solution rather than another...

The August LPS Mortgage Monitor was released this morning. It shows good news and bad news. The good news (if you are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). The GSE mortgage share (blue line) has risen since 2011. mtgmktshare The bad news? The percentage of mortgages that are “out of the money” for refinancing has topped 50%. Again. %inmoney The good news? The mortgage pipeline is shrinking rapidly, particularly in judicial foreclosure states. forecpipecl The bad news? Judicial foreclosure states like New York, New Jersey and Hawaii have stubbornly high foreclosure pipeline ratios. For non-judicial foreclosure states, Massachusetts leads the nation....

She’s reportedly waiting until 2014 before she starts thinking about 2016, but Hillary Clinton, according to one national poll, is your frontrunner for the White House — by a wide margin.And Elizabeth Warren is your fastest rising star.The former secretary of state and first lady dominated last week’s new Quinnipiac University survey, which showed her gobbling up 61 percent of support and beating any Republican challenger — be it New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul or Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz — by anywhere from 13 to 23 points.

In a speech given on Thursday from the Senate floor, Elizabeth Warren laid into what she called the House’s “anarchy gang” and defended a vision of government as what “we as Americans have chosen to do together.” “The anarchy gang is quick to malign government,” Warren said, “but when was the last time anyone called for regulators to go easier on companies that put lead in children’s toys, or for food inspectors to stop checking whether the meat in our grocery store is crawling with deadly bacteria, or for the FDA to ignore whether morning sickness drugs will cause horrible...

Since I will be chatting about housing finance reform (re: what to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), I am preparing a presentation that I will be posting next Wednesday. Chris Whalen has an interesting blog at Zero Hedge entitled: “Are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Really Profitable? Really?” His takeaway: “Given the above analysis, a strong case can still be made that FNM and Freddie Mac ought to be moved to receivership and liquidated. This process would extinguish the supposed claims by “investors” like John Paulson and move the assets of the GSEs into private hands as quickly...

On the heels of the news that Wells Fargo is cutting 2,300 workers from the mortgage production operations, we have learned from the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight that consumer mortgage relief has totaled $51 billion, averaging $80,000 per borrower. Now THAT’s a Big Twinkie! Here are the consumer relief highlights from the National Mortgage Settlement (NMS): Program to Date: March 1, 2012 – June 30, 2013 • 643,726 borrowers benefited from some type of Consumer Relief totaling $51.332 billion, which, on average, represents about $79,742 per borrower. This figure includes both completed Consumer Relief and active first lien trial...

On the heels of the news that Wells Fargo is cutting 2,300 workers from the mortgage production operations, we have learned from the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight that consumer mortgage relief has totaled $51 billion, averaging $80,000 per borrower. Now THAT’s a Big Twinkie! Here are the consumer relief highlights from the National Mortgage Settlement (NMS): Program to Date: March 1, 2012 – June 30, 2013 • 643,726 borrowers benefited from some type of Consumer Relief totaling $51.332 billion, which, on average, represents about $79,742 per borrower. This figure includes both completed Consumer Relief and active first lien trial...

Even if you're Warren Buffett--billionaire investor, founder of Berkshire Hathaway, and Democratic donor--it helps to have friends in high places. Through his holding company MidAmerican Energy, Buffett is currently atttempting to purchase NV Energy, a Nevada-based energy firm, and he's getting some big help from that state's senior U.S. senator, Majority Leader Harry Reid. Energy and Environmental Daily reports (subscriber content only) that Reid, who has been publicly supporting Buffett's acquisition of NV Energy and has criticized Nevada state regulators holding up the purchase, wrote a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requesting the agency give "close consideration" to...

US Senator Elizabeth Warren, the architect of the Consumer Financial Protect Bureau (CFPB), wants to put Glass-Steagall back into place. One of the purposes of the originial Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was to separate commercial and investment banking. “The four biggest banks are now 30% larger than they were just five years ago, and they have continued to engage in dangerous, high-risk practices that could once again put our economy at risk,” according to Senator Warren. Hmm. The enormous spike in excess reserves may be what she is thinking about. EXCRESNS But Senator Warren forgets a few things. First, the...

WASHINGTON — The escalating spying affair dogging the Obama administration now includes a bipartisan request for accountability from more than a fourth of U.S. senators, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. **SNIP** They said it is regrettable the information was revealed by a government whistleblower instead of the Obama administration. In a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the senators say it is time for the White House to come clean. They want him to provide straight answers to fundamental questions about the gigantic, clandestine and problematic government data collections that include huge stockpiles of information on ordinary Americans’...

She weathered Whitewater. She made it past Monica 
Lewinsky. Now Hillary Clinton is hoping to beat the rap on Benghazi and make it to the White House. The Clinton political 
machine is in full campaign mode already, preparing for 2016 and hoping voters forget by then that she had a key role in the Obama administration’s handling of the terror attack. But that’s becoming more difficult as the GOP appears to be laying the groundwork for tying Clinton to Benghazi and making sure it stays front and center in the next campaign.

RUSH: Senator Elizabeth Warren wanted to get in on the big press conference in Boston this morning that happened about 10:30. The first words out of her mouth were praise for Obama and government. "The president of the United States has pledged his full support in all efforts, both to keep the city safe, and to find the person who did this. We did not have to reach out to the president; the president reached out to us," Warren said. He called the governor. He called the mayor. He called the members of congressional delegation because the president is actively...

Just a few months into her first U.S. Senate term, Democrat Elizabeth Warren is generating increasing support among liberals as a White House contender — putting her on a potential collision course with presumed front-runner Hillary Clinton. Warren’s tough stand against the Obama administration’s proposal to potentially cut Social Security benefits has become a lightning rod for progressive groups looking for a more liberal standard bearer in 2016. “If Elizabeth Warren ran, millions of people would obviously support her candidacy enthusiastically,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, who helped draft Warren to run for U.S. Senate...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Elizabeth Warren "made it clear Wednesday in an e-mail to supporters that not only would she oppose President Barack Obama's plan to cut Social Security benefits through a cost-of-living adjustment known as chained CPI..." That's another thing. It's Obama's creation. The chained CPI is like the sequester. It's his idea, it's in his budget, and wait until you hear it! I've got three or four sound bites of Jay Carney and Obama denying it; accusing the Republicans of doing it. I dare say that 99-out-of-100 low-information people don't have the slightest idea what it is. "What do...

Rick Warren said it's been difficult to deal with some of the hate mail and online comments he's read since announcing Saturday that his son had committed suicide. "Grieving is hard. Grieving as public figures, harder. Grieving while haters celebrate your pain, hardest," Warren wrote on Facebook on Monday night. Warren has been deluged with words of support both at his Saddleback Church in Orange County and on the Web. “Kay and I are overwhelmed by your love, prayers, and kind words,” the pastor wrote. But there have also been many words of hate on various website comment boards, including...

The death of Margaret Thatcher and the suicide of Matthew Warren–the son of Pastor Rick Warren has brought to light the irrational rage that has been simmering in our society for some time.I experienced this when a colleague said in 2008 that any Catholic who knowingly voted for Obama should go to confession. His statement made the national news and his email box was suddenly flooded with hate mail. When he disabled his email they started sending their hate mail to anyone associated with the parish who still had an email box open. Some of it came to me. This...

ick Warren’s son has taken his own life. Matthew Warren, 27, had struggled with mental illness before his death. Evangelist Greg Laurie posted an e-mail the Saddleback Church pastor sent to this staff: “Only those closest knew that he (Matthew) struggled from birth with mental illness, dark holes of depression, and even suicidal thoughts. In spite of America’s best doctors, meds, counselors, and prayers for healing, the torture of mental illness never subsided. Today, after a fun evening together with Kay and me, in a momentary wave of despair at his home, he took his life.” Click here to read...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, suggested raising the minimum wage to $22 per hour is only logical if you look at the numbers. “If we started in 1960, and we said [that] as productivity goes up … then the minimum wage was going to go up the same … if that were the case, the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour,” the senator said, at a recent Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on “Keeping up with a Changing Economy: Indexing the Minimum Wage.” The current minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Ms. Warren wondered, in a...

In this clip, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren says it's rumored that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, but that unfortunately, too many went to Wall Street.

Elizabeth Warren rips into GOP, NRA By: Patrick Reis March 14, 2013 09:07 AM EDT Sen. Elizabeth Warren planted a liberal flag on Thursday, pushing the government’s right to regulate as she ripped Republicans, the National Rifle Association and anyone else who would stand in its way. In a wide-ranging speech to the Consumer Federation of America, Warren defended federal regulations as essential for safe consumers and a healthy economy. And at a time when “cutting red tape” is a key plank of Republicans’ plan for economic growth, Warren argued that regulations were a success story in America. “It’s thanks...

WARREN, Ohio (AP) — The 19-year-old woman behind the wheel of an allegedly stolen SUV when it smacked a guardrail and flipped into a pond, killing six friends, didn't have a valid driver's license, according to a report on the crash released Tuesday. Two teens who survived the crash told police the woman was speeding and driving recklessly before Sunday's accident. The State Highway Patrol report said one of the teens told investigators the driver, Alexis Cayson, sped up as she rounded what's known as "Dead Man's Curve." The other teen told a state trooper it felt like the SUV...

Forbes put Detroit Mayor Dave Bing on its cover in 2011 for a story with the optimistic headline: “City of Hope.” The premise was that the city had hit rock bottom and was poised for a turnaround. “Right now, it’s all about survival,” Bing told Forbes. Two years later, Detroit’s problems continue to multiply, sadly. It is still dealing with high levels of violent crime and unemployment. Home prices, already at historic lows, plummeted a further 35% during the past three years to a median of $40,000 as net migration out of the city continued. The latest blow was Tuesday’s...

Liberals all over America are just giddy over the way newly elected Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren blasted bank regulators in a Senate hearing this week. They are singing her praises as the champion of the consumer. The Huffington Post reported on her performance with the headline, “Elizabeth Warren Embarrasses Bank Regulators at First Hearing.” A YouTube video was also posted with the same title. The 4 minute video shows Senator Warren confronting top bank regulators from the FDIC, SEC, OCC, CFTC, Fed, and Treasury. The video is shown below. Another site, Gawker.com, reported the same story with the headline, “Elizabeth...

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is fighting to protect her “brainchild”, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). She also wants to support the nominated of Richard Cordray, the former Attorney General of Ohio, better known as “Robocop” for his attacks on banks and servicers over robosigning. True, robosigning foreclosures is sloppy, but there were apparently no economic harm to borrowers (that is, 100% of borrowers defaulted on their loans and the banks/servicers were trying to claim the house to mitigate losses). Yet the Attorneys’ General settlement went ahead despite no economic harm to borrowers. The settlement provides as much as $25...

Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced Friday that her office has hired Bruno Freitas as the new economic development director and a senior advisor to serve in Washington D.C. Freitas joins the Warren team from the office of another Massachusetts politician, former U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, who retired from Congress this year following the state legislature's redistricting process. Freitas, a New Bedford native, most recently worked as Frank's chief of staff and legislative director, although he has worked with the congressman in some capacity since 1994, when he helped design Frank's first website. Warren's office said that his previous work...

GRAYSON-WARREN 2016 No more teabaggers like Obama or Clinton! When is left not left enough? When it's Hillary Rodham Clinton. You see, to the DUmmies, Hillary is not hardcore-left enough. They pillory Hillary. To them, she's practically a teabagging Rethuglican. So is Obama, for that matter. The DUmmies have been looking ahead to 2016, and they do not like what they see. For it seems that HILLARY! will be the heir apparent, and she's not radical-Communist enough for their tastes. So the DUmmies have begun to search about, looking for a more progressive alternative. It doesn't matter if their choice...

Despite repeated claims she is “proud” of her Cherokee heritage, newly minted U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is keeping that pride under wraps and won’t be taking advantage of a chance to officially list herself as the Bay State’s first Native American U.S. senator. Aides said Warren, who describes herself as part Cherokee and part Delaware Indian, won’t contact historians at the Senate Historical Office to tell them she’s Native American. The office lists minority senators in its official directory. Warren’s aides refused further comment, but Betty Koed, an associate historian at the Senate Historical Office, said, “If her office...

You know the story: A relatively unknown politician from the far Left of the Democratic Party gives an attention-getting speech at the Democratic National Convention. Soon after, that speaker is a U.S. senator and — before even finishing one term — is the party’s nominee for president. Barack Obama? No, I’m talking about Liz Warren. She hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet, and already speculation has begun that Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren could be the Democrats’ pick for POTUS in 2016. “Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is already a liberal heartthrob,” political columnist Doyle McManus wrote in the Los...

Massachusetts' Democratic Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren raised $41.56 million – but still ended her campaign $401,000 in debt, owing money for mailings, printing and accounting services, according to her latest fundraising report with the Federal Election Commission. Warren defeated incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown in a race that was likely the most expensive U.S. Senate race in the country this election cycle. The basic numbers of Warren’s fundraising were announced yesterday by her campaign, which revealed the debt in an email to supporters asking for additional donations. In that email, the campaign chalked up the debt to higher than expected...

Warren asks for help to retire debtBy Alexandra Jaffe - 12/05/12 03:10 PM ET Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who defeated Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in one of the most closely-watched and expensive races in the nation, has asked for help to retire her campaign debt. Warren broke Massachusetts fundraising records with her $42 million haul, but she said in an email to supporters that she incurred some debt because of an "embarrassment of riches," in the form of the unexpected levels of support she says she received. "When my campaign team planned our final budget, we knew our Get Out...

REPORT: Elizabeth Warren Will Get A Seat On The Senate Banking Committee Linette LopezDecember 4, 2012 Huffington Post is reporting that Elizabeth Warren now has a seat on the Senate Banking Committee. The freshman Senator-elect and former Harvard professor is known for being an outspoken critic of Wall Street. After being passed over for the top spot at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she helped to form, she won a nail-biter Massachusetts Senate contest against Scott Brown. There has been a ton of speculation about which committee Warren would sit on. As a freshman, her picks take a...

A Michigan man has filed a federal lawsuit claiming his constitutional rights were violated when he was ordered to remove a Nativity scene from the median of a public road — a creche that his family has displayed at the location for 63 years. John Satawa, of Warren, Mich., filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Friday in an attempt to be allowed to put back the 8- by 8-foot nativity scene his late father built in 1945. After receiving a complaint by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation last December, the Road Commission of Macomb County told Satawa...

A Michigan man has filed a federal lawsuit claiming his constitutional rights were violated when he was ordered to remove a Nativity scene from the median of a public road — a creche that his family has displayed at the location for 63 years. John Satawa, of Warren, Mich., filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Friday in an attempt to be allowed to put back the 8- by 8-foot nativity scene his late father built in 1945. After receiving a complaint by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation last December, the Road Commission of Macomb County told Satawa...

ANN ARBOR, MI — After four years of litigation by the Thomas More Law Center, John Satawa will once again be able to erect a Nativity display on a public median in Warren, Michigan—a tradition that his family and neighbors have been observing every Christmas since 1945. Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, commented: “Every December, militant secularists declare war on Christmas celebrations. This is one battle they lost. And we are extremely pleased that Mr. Satawa and his neighbors will be able to resume their wonderful tradition just in time for this Christmas.” The Nativity...

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration named Holly Petraeus--wife of retired Gen. David Patraeus, who resigned last week as CIA director after revealing he had had an extramarital affair--to a $187,605-per-yer job in the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB, created by the Dodd-Frank law, was placed by that law under the umbrella of the Federal Reserve. The funding of the CFBP, which comes from the Federal Reserve, is not subject to congressional oversight. Mrs. Petraeus became a member of the CFPB Implementation Team on Jan. 12, 2011. She is now the assistant director for the Office of...

A chilly day in February came to a boil without warning. A frenetic CNBC reporter, Rick Santelli, took the floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 2009 to vent his rage against the U.S. government’s foreclosure-relief plan. “The government is rewarding bad behaviour,” he ranted to cheering traders. “Subsidized losers” didn’t deserve to have mortgages. The people who needed support were ones who “carry the water instead of drink the water.” Then, to louder cheers, “I’m going to have a Chicago Tea Party in July, all you capitalists that want to show up at Lake Michigan, I’m going to start...

The bruising Massachusetts Senate battle between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren is deadlocked just hours before Election Day, with both the candidates and the voters suffering from a barrage of attack ads, a new UMass Lowell/Boston Herald poll reveals. The poll shows Brown holding a 49-48 percent advantage over Warren among likely voters, dispelling earlier polls and Democratic claims of a small Warren lead. The one-point lead is well within the poll’s 4.1 percent margin of error.

We’ve been talking about the enthusiasm problem that the Democrats are facing. While Romney/Ryan events turn away thousands, Democratic events are smaller, and shrinking by the day. The latest example comes from the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, where Elizabeth Warren held a rally, and no one seemed to show up.

Massachusetts Democrats held an endorsement rally today for Elizabeth Warren. Besides the speakers, almost noone showed up. Except for Legal Insurrection: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/11/elizabeth-warren-holds-a-rally-nobody-shows-up-video/

In the second poll released this week, Republican Scott Brown has a two-point lead over Democrat Elizabeth Warren in the Massachusetts Senate race. A new poll from Kimball Political Consulting, a firm based in Massachusetts affiliated with the GOP, finds 49 percent support Brown while 47 percent support Warren. A Boston Globe poll released on Monday also showed a two-point lead for Brown, 45 percent to 43 percent.

I’m now beginning to think that the Boston Globe poll released on Monday was probably an outlier: A new poll released today shows Elizabeth Warren leading Senator Scott Brown by 7 percentage points, one of the Democratic challenger’s largest leads in any poll taken in recent months. The poll, by Suffolk University/News 7, was released a day after a Boston Globe poll showed a much tighter race, with Brown leading by 2 percentage points. The Globe poll showed an exact tie when including responses from voters who did not express an initial preference but said they were leaning in one...

A new poll released today shows Elizabeth Warren leading Senator Scott Brown by 7 percentage points, one of the Democratic challenger’s largest leads in any poll taken in recent months. The poll, by Suffolk University/News 7, was released a day after a Boston Globe poll showed a much tighter race, with Brown leading by 2 percentage points. The Globe poll showed an exact tie when including responses from voters who did not express an initial preference but said they were leaning in one direction.