Free Republic

A just-released poll, conducted February 12-15 by FM3 Research for Flip the 49th! Neighbors in Action has a cautionary tale for Democrats seeking to replace retiring Congressman Darrell Issa in the 49th Congressional District. The good news is the Republicans’ brand is so tarnished that a generic Democrat could win over a generic Republican by 7 points or more. The bad news is that the current line-up of Democratic candidates is likely to split primary voters in such a way that two Republicans will face each other in the general election. The FM3 poll is unique in that was conducted...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released new Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents that include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity. The newly obtained records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing...

Conservative Republicans are pushing to release a memo containing classified information about the federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign, sparking new controversy in a case that has already caused deep partisan rifts. The contents of the four-page memo, which was written by staff working with Rep. Devin Nunes have not been publicly revealed. But President Trump’s allies in Congress say that they are explosive. Democrats on the committee have dismissed the memo as a dishonest attempt to undermine the Russia investigation, and Rep. Jackie Speier called it a “pack of lies.” Rep. Matt Gaetz said the information...

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) faced the closest race of his career in 2016. I was not completely surprised. In 2013, one article polled public attitudes about the congressman, who had a net negative, just 43 percent. IssaÂ’s standing with Republicans in general had wavered as well, since many people see him as more of an Establishment get-along/go-along type. But all of that startling negative polling was just hot air, at least for that year. Election 2014 was beyond any kind of outlier that I had ever seen. The turnout was so low, that long-standing Democratic lawmakers like Lucille Roybal-Allard won...

Darrell Issa, who built a reputation in Congress as an imposing conservative attack dog, has got a brand new bag. With Democrats closing in on his seat last fall, Issa mailed a campaign ad praising President Barack Obama for signing a victims rights bill Issa supported -- the same Obama he unrelentingly criticized while serving as the high-profile chairman of the House Oversight Committee. The pro-life congressman, who squeaked out reelection to a ninth term by 0.7 percentage points, told constituents at a town hall March 11 that he opposed fellow Republicans’ call to defund Planned Parenthood. Despite a lifetime...

Maher undoubtedly wants Team Trump, and indeed President Trump, to be prosecuted. But on what basis? What crime are Trump’s people thought to have committed? What is the basis for believing they committed it? Maher didn’t say. Neither did Issa. Until there is good reason to believe that someone working on Trump’s behalf committed a crime, there is no reason to call for a special prosecutor. Moreover, Maher got his facts just about completely wrong when he tried to invoke as precedent the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Loretta Lynch did not recuse herself from the decision whether to prosecute Clinton;...

Republican congressman Darrell Issa is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the possible connections between Trump officials and Russia. Appearing on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night, the California Republican said that it would be inappropriate for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to handle the investigation...

It took three weeks to confirm it, thanks to California’s excruciatingly slow ballot counts, but Darrell Issa will return to Congress in January. Democrats had targeted his seat in order to push out one of the most conservative Republicans in the House, and to send a message to Barack Obama’s critics. Instead, Issa managed to eke out a narrow win over Doug Applegate in the toughest race of his career.Note, though, the way the Associated Press leads this story as it calls the race for Issa: The wealthiest member of Congress is keeping his job.Republican Darrell Issa narrowly defeated...

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, held a slight lead today in his bid for re-election over Democratic challenger former Marine Col. Doug Applegate. Issa had 51 percent of the vote Wednesday morning compared to 49 percent for Applegate, with mail-in and provisional votes still to be counted. First elected to Congress 16 years ago, Issa won a bare majority of votes in the June primary election after years of being re-elected by double-digit margins.

It’s a Real Clear Politics toss-up seat, and the Democrats are pouring in millions to try an unseat Congressman Darrell Issa as revenge for his uncompromising oversight of the Obama administration’s corruption. The challenger is a vet like Issa – in fact, that’s his sole selling point. But voters who support our past and present troops need to look beyond former ranks and campaign mailer pictures of camo-clad candidates to see who will truly stand up for them.

EXCERPT Issa said: We are in a crisis because Hillary Clinton, if the voters do not stop her, will be the next President of the United States. She will, in fact, on Day One say, “Pardon me,” and she’ll mean it. She’ll have pardoned herself. She will have, in fact, gone from being a criminal involved in a criminal enterprise. Obviously, Clinton Cash depicted that and somebody who flaunted the security laws, the privacy laws, the presidential and the Federal Records Act, and gotten away with it.

Democrats shouted "Shame! Shame!," but seven Republicans switched their votes and defeated a measure to protect gay rights. The final vote was 213-212 after the chaos on the House floor. That was enough to defeat an amendment by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., aimed at upholding an executive order that bars discrimination against LGBT employees by federal contractors. Maloney and other Democrats were incensed. "They literally snatched discrimination from the jaws of equality," Maloney said. He said he had approached Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as McCarthy worked on GOP colleagues to vote against the measure. McCarthy told Maloney to...

Wednesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), a supporter of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told host Wolf Blitzer that 2012 GOP presidential nomination former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) needs to get past notion that his first choice to carry the Republican banner in this fall’s presidential election did not win and that he should get behind Trump.

A pair of House committees is forming a bipartisan working group of eight lawmakers to prepare for possible legislation addressing how the widespread use of encryption affects law enforcement investigations. "The bipartisan encryption working group will examine the issues surrounding this ongoing national debate," House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Energy and Commerce Committee Fred Upton. R-Mich., said Monday. As chairman of the two committees that have jurisdiction over encryption issues, Goodlatte and Upton are ex officio chairs of the working group. They released that statement jointly along with Michigan Rep. John Conyers and New Jersey Rep. Steve...

… While Trump and other GOP presidential candidates push for a giant wall between the United States and Mexico, San Diego is literally building a bridge. In December, an international group of developers, which includes real estate magnate Sam Zell, plans to open a pedestrian walkway that bypasses the regular U.S. border crossings and directly connects San Diego to Tijuana’s international airport. Meanwhile, all five members of San Diego’s congressional delegation, including stalwart Republican Reps. Darrell Issa and Duncan Hunter, have successfully advocated for the $500 million in additional funds needed to expand the main border crossing. And the city’s...

Sen. Cruz Leads Bicameral Letter Asking GAO to Determine Whether Obama Administration Has Power to Give Away the Internet Judiciary Chairmen Grassley and Goodlatte, with Rep. Issa, join Cruz to get answers on whether Administration’s plan violates the Constitution WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), along with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) requesting an affirmative determination of whether the Obama Administration’s plan...

Outspoken Republican Congressman Darrell Issa tried to crash a deposition Tuesday on Benghazi, but was promptly escorted out from the closed-door panel on Capitol Hill. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, had no qualms about personally kicking out Issa, the former House Oversight Committee chairman. "I'm a prosecutor, we always follow the rules," Gowdy later told NBC News. "[Issa] is not a [Benghazi] committee member and non-committee members are not allowed in the room during the deposition. Those are the rules and we have to follow them, no exceptions made." The moment just...

The Benghazi affair is beginning to shape up as a bi-partisan scandal — making Trey Gowdy’s life doubly difficult, of course. But the former prosecutor has been doing a bang-up job with his select committee, demolishing the mantra that there is “nothing new” to be learned about Benghazi and building a sober, far-reaching inquiry. Without Gowdy, recall, there would be no Clinton secret server, no Sidney Blumenthal trail, no new emails, and no upcoming testimony from Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle . On the latter, Gowdy is holding firm, saying he will not schedule testimony until all relevant emails...

1.) Eleanor Holmes Norton Doesn’t Think We Have the Right to Know When Our President Is Selling Us Down the River Totalitarian Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting House Delegate from D.C. believes the American people and their representatives in Congress haven’t the right to know all that is going on in government. “You don’t have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government,” claimed Norton. “That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government.” Norton’s statements were made in reference to subpoenas created by Congressman Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. According to Norton,...

A so-called “war on the American worker” has intensified in the Golden State. Massive layoffs are being spearheaded by the multi-billion dollar Southern California Edison utilities company, which is terminating scores of American IT workers and replacing them with immigrant IT workers, from a slew of foreign counties, who are willing to work for far less compensation. These immigrants are in the U.S. on an H-1B visa program. “We don’t need foreign workers. We have plenty of Americans who are fully capable and equipped to carry out these jobs. It’s an absolute issue of corporate greed; nothing more nothing less,”...