Free Republic

To everyone's surprise, Nancy Pelosi wants to return as the Democrats' leader in the next Congress. But if she's hoping for a big Democratic year in 2012 that would give her the speaker's gavel back, she might want to look closer at Tuesday's results: Based on the breadth and scope of their losses, it is going be almost impossible for Democrats to retake the House in the next 10 years. While Democrats’ historic loss of at least 61 seats (results are still pending in a handful of districts) can be traced to a diverse set of factors, the majority of...

Reporters walking into House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office Tuesday morning noticed an open supply cabinet with a tape measure on the shelf. It was a strange bit of office equipment. Are Democrats so resigned to defeat that they're expecting Republicans to stop by and take measurements of the majority offices? They still have their largest majority in decades, but the Democrats have succumbed to paralysis in the closing days of the legislative session. Congress has yet to pass a budget or a single one of the annual spending bills. Plans to spur the economy with tax cuts await action....

Politics: The GOP has been invited by the administration to a health care summit. Will it be an effort to pass real reform, or an attempt to lure Republicans into a bipartisan disaster? When Democrats thought their absolute majorities in the House and Senate guaranteed the passage of government-run health care, they had no use for either GOP input or transparency. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were quite content to fundamentally transform one-sixth of the American economy behind the closed doors of a Senate room. They dismissed the rising anger of the...

Health Care: Will the administration seize the moment of Scott Brown's victory to work out real solutions, or will it follow Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over the cliff? Or is it just about government control? Before Sen.-elect Brown became the Scott heard 'round the world, House Speaker Pelosi was asked what his victory in the bluest of blue states would mean. "Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts," she replied in a bit of an understatement. The dynamic has changed, yet the Democrats, as the country song goes, apparently don't know when to hold them...

Health Care Reform: Failure to buy health insurance in the just-passed health care bill could get you five years in jail with a $250,000 fine. How can violating a law that's unconstitutional be a felony? The passage last Saturday night of the House health care measure by a fragile 220-215 margin may well prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. In polls, townhall meetings and tea parties, Americans have shown they don't want a "reform" that costs a staggering $1.2 trillion yet fails to meet the left's desire of insuring all the uninsured. And they certainly don't want a bill that...

War Strategy: When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan? Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq. Democrats hoped for a show trial. MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the commanding general of our efforts in Iraq "General Betray-us." Then...

Homeland Security: Provisions of the law that spared New York another 9/11 are set to expire Dec. 31. So why do Democrats want to gut this law and remove the immunity telecom companies have for helping protect America? To borrow a British expression from World War II, it was a very near thing. The capture, arrest and indictment of 24-year-old Afghan immigrant Najubullah Zazi before he could set off bombs made from store-bought chemicals prevented a tragedy of potentially devastating proportions. It wouldn't have happened if the critics of Patriot Act had their way. The capture of Zazi was made...

On the eve of the August recess, members are reporting meetings that have gone terribly awry, marked by angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior. In at least one case, a congressman has stopped holding town hall events because the situation has spiraled so far out of control. “I had felt they would be pointless,” Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO, referring to his recent decision to temporarily suspend the events in his Long Island district. “There is no point in meeting with my constituents and [to] listen to them and have them listen to you if what is basically an...

On Thursday, August 27 at 6:30pm, Congressman Tim Bishop will host a Town Hall meeting at Brookhaven Town Hall, located at 1 Independence Hill in Farmingville. The meeting is open to all members of the public. Congressman Bishop has spent the month of August focused on health care policy, including meeting with dozens of constituents to discuss where they stand, hosting tele-Town Hall meetings with thousands of people, studying the legislation that is currently before the House of Representatives, and personally calling constituents who have contacted his office. Congressman Bishop is currently undecided on how he will vote on health...

Leadership: Scores of congressmen and women are trying to hide from their constituents this August recess as the revolt over ObamaCare continues. If you haven't seen him or her lately, you might try your refrigerator.IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For FailureIt's amazing how frightened of the community the party of the great community organizer has become now that the community has organized itself against his attempt to impose socialized medicine on the country. They cheered when he told them to get in the faces of their opponents. Now they won't show their faces, period. Senate Majority Whip Dick...

IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure Discourse: At a town hall last week in Dallas, an elderly "mob" with "manufactured" outrage questioned AARP's support for nationalized health care, asking: "Do you work for us or do we work for you?"There were no swastika-wearing grannies at Tuesday's meeting, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might claim. Nor were they "taking their cues from talk show hosts, Internet rumor-mongers . . . and insurance rackets," as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said. But they were mad as hell at the perception that AARP was selling them out in the...

Health Reform: If Democrats in Washington think their health care reform with a public option is a good thing, why have they exempted themselves from it? Why isn't what's good for their constituents good for them?During ABC's June 24 infomercial for government-run health care broadcast from the White House, President Obama was asked if he and his family would abide by the restrictions and limitations that came with his proposed reforms. In what Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com called "Obama's Michael Dukakis moment," President Obama refused to make such a pledge and confessed that if "it's my family member, if it's...

...Here's a little secret that congress isn't telling you about. Even if you won't be forced to switch to Uncle Sam Care, you will be forced to switch to Managed Care Plan so your health care can be rationed. Congress has even placed provisions in their bills to accelerate the process. .

Politics: The career of Roland Burris, a political cipher from Illinois who became a U.S. senator and the lamest of ducks, is over. He can now retire into the obscurity he so richly deserves.Having obtained the seat under a cloud of typical Illinois corruption, Burris announced Friday he won't run for a full term in 2010. He was appointed by the former and recently impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich who, among his other accomplishments, tried to auction off the seat formerly held by Barack Obama. Blagojevich was forced out of office and may soon join other Illinois governors who went on...

In January of 2007, the control of Congress was handed over to the Democratic party leadership under the mantra of “A New Direction”. After 11 months of control, the 110th Congress has one of the lowest approval ratings in history. The Democrats used the negative numbers in their campaigns last year to help retake control of both houses of Congress. Just before the November elections last year the Republican controlled Congress had a similarly low approval, but after a year of Democrat control, the voting public appears to have the same level of disdain for the way that the Democrats...

For many in Washington, the biggest unanswered question from Army. Gen. David Petraeus’ high-profile, low-satisfaction testimony last week was not about military strategy but about political tactics. Why has the anti-war movement been unable to translate the clear public mandate they claim into any clear change in our government’s Iraq policy? To most war opponents, the blame increasingly lies with the Democratic leadership in Congress, for not taking a hard enough line with President Bush and not fighting to cut off war funding. And their frustration is visibly bubbling over — the provocative group Code Pink, for example, has actually...

As a political party, the Democrats sure make lousy psychics. You may recall Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's famous utterance that the surge was a "failure" even before half the additional troops earmarked for Iraq had arrived. Now the Democrats have turned their powers of prognositication on the report to be delivered by General Petraus next week before Congress and are already dismissing it as unreliable despite the fact they haven't heard or seen it:

Seven months have passed since I handed the gavel to Nancy Pelosi, formally returning control of the House to Democrats for the first time in 12 years. In my remarks to the House that day, I offered a bit of advice to the members of the incoming majority. I told them: “A congressional majority is simply a means to an end. The value of a majority lies not in the chance to wield great power, but in the chance to use limited power to do great things. “The [American] people don’t care which party controls it; what they want is...

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (AKA Kos) has a reputation as an ideologue and a bomb-thrower. I wish this were true, since he succeeds in helping Democrats win elections. He also raises enough money and attracts enough attention to keep liberal memes afloat, even when they lose. Alas, this isn’t the case. Kos is far worse. He’s a power-monger with no ideas. Kos openly admits this. He once said he was not trying to be the next Jesse Jackson. What he meant was that he was a political tactician, rather than a movement philosopher. He describes himself as being all about winning....

WASHINGTON, July 24 — Congressional Democrats celebrated the first minimum wage increase in a decade on Tuesday with a festive labor rally across from the Capitol. But they know they will have to accomplish considerably more to avoid the sort of do-nothing labels they hung on Republicans not too long ago “It is not enough, but it is a great start,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said as she told the cheering crowd that the wage increase that took effect Tuesday was just one element of a middle-class economic program that includes college tuition help, expanded health care coverage and other emerging...