Free Republic

Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi will be able to review and offer edits to the committee’s closely watched report this month, despite their repeated opposition to the panel’s work, according to Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). Gowdy on Sunday issued a blistering, 1,800-word attack on Democrats’ efforts to undermine the panel’s work through “abject obstruction” and “serial” leaks to the media. But the panel’s five members will nonetheless have access to the report before it is made final, Gowdy wrote in a letter to top Democrat Elijah Cummings (Md.). “Despite your efforts to undermine and obstruct our fact-centered...

The desperate search for an acceptable Republican Party presidential candidate continues. Republican leaders apparently are pushing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who previously said no, to jump into the race. The GOP's frustration is palpable. Mitt Romney has been running for four years but generates little enthusiasm. Rick Perry was an instant front-runner before losing much of his support after unimpressive debate performances. Michelle Bachmann briefly streaked across the political firmament but now barely registers in the polls. Newt Gingrich committed political seppuku shortly after announcing his candidacy. Ron Paul's support is fervent but limited. However, the real Republican problem...

One of New York's best-known Republicans is calling on pres idential hopeful Rick Perry to choose Rudy Giuliani as his running mate for next year's election. Former state GOP Chairman William Powers, a longtime Giuliani friend and a key player in his first mayoral election in 1993, told The Post that such a move by Perry could deliver key swing states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio to the Republicans. "He'd be the best No. 2 anybody in the world could pick," said Powers, who has a longstanding relationship with leading Texas Republicans like Karl Rove, former President George W....

New York businessman James Lieto was an innocent bystander in a fraud investigation last year. Federal agents seized $392,000 of his cash anyway. An armored-car firm hired by Mr. Lieto to carry money for his check-cashing company got ensnared in the FBI probe. Agents seized about $19 million—including Mr. Lieto's money—from vaults belonging to the armored-car firm's parent company. He is one among thousands of Americans in recent decades who have had a jarring introduction to the federal system of asset seizure. Some 400 federal statutes—a near-doubling, by one count, since the 1990s—empower the government to take assets from convicted...

Senate Candidates Rubio, Buck Say GOP Needs to be Held Accountable for Spending and Balanced Budget Promises. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican Senate nominee aligned with the Tea Party movement, went on the offensive against the GOP on CBS' Face the Nation Sunday, saying that both the Republican and the Democratic parties are to blame for the country's problems. Rubio said that politics today is "full of people that think they can say or do anything, because once they get elected they think they'll raise so much money they can make you forget." Rubio took on Florida's popular incumbent Governor...

So who wants to join Rand Paul's "tea-party" caucus? "I don't know about that," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) replied with a nervous laugh. "I'm not sure I should be participating in this story." Republican lawmakers see plenty of good in the tea party, but they also see reasons to worry. The movement, which has ignited passion among conservative voters and pushed big government to the forefront of the 2010 election debate, has also stirred quite a bit of controversy. Voters who don't want to privatize Social Security or withdraw from the United Nations could begin to see the tea party...

Sarah Palin cranked up her 2012 presidential campaign another notch today, with the release of a campaign video aimed directly at women. The basic math is simple. If she gets half of the female primary voters and caucus attenders to support her, then she standing starts at roughly 25% of the total vote. Throw in a third of the male vote and she's at roughly 40%. Forty percent wins the Iowa caucuses, handily. Which then sets up New Hampshire as the place where the not-Sarah candidate emerges. In all likelihood, that will be former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who finished...

Gov. Charlie Crist personally signed off on his former Republican Party chairman's confidential fundraising role with the state party, according to Jim Greer's attorney, whose allegation contradicts the governor's statement that he "didn't know anything" about the deal now part of a criminal investigation. State investigators say Greer and the party's former executive director, Delmar W. Johnson III, secretly set up a shell company called Victory Strategies to divert party money and enrich themselves. Greer was charged Wednesday with fraud and money laundering. But Greer's attorney, Damon Chase, said Saturday that the deal giving them a 10 percent cut of...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele offers a simple explanation for why the GOP all too often lost touch with typical Americans since the Ronald Reagan era: "We screwed up," he claims in a new book offering a blueprint for the party's resurgence. That "we" includes the last two Republican presidents and the most recent Republican candidate for president. In "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda," released Monday by Regnery Publishing, Steele says the GOP should acknowledge where "we most glaringly compromised our principles" in the past decade and hold its elected officials accountable....

The temporary increase in the national debt ceiling approved this month — combined with the prospect of a huge trillion-dollar-plus increase early next year — has once again prompted criticisms of President Obama for runaway spending and record deficits. All this borrowing is only necessary, we are told, because Obama ran up $1.4 trillion of debt in his first year. It's true that the White House is pushing big spending items, not least of which is his multitrillion-dollar scheme for government-run health care. But many critics, either out of ignorance or malice, are blaming Obama for deficits that are not...

Congressman Henry Brown's "Stand Up for Christmas" resolution is just another example of Republican politicians' long history of exploiting social and cultural issues to distract voters from their big government records.

George W. Bush is gone from Washington but his legacy, like an abandoned toxic waste dump, lingers on. Like President Franklin Roosevelt before him, President Bush helped redefine American freedom. And like Roosevelt's, Bush's changes were perversions of the clear vision the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. What did freedom mean in the era of George Bush? In Iraq in September 2004, the U.S. military constructed Camp Liberty, a tent compound to house Iraqi detainees next to the Abu Ghraib prison. (The torture scandal and photos had been revealed in late April.) Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller declared that Camp Liberty...

This week the Senate grinches stole Christmas. The Obama Nation is getting Obamacare. It’s easy to blame the sixty Democrats, as the Wall Street Journal does, for "the worse bill ever." It solemnly declares: "These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command--and control regulation." True enough. But what's the root cause of this permanent disaster? Sorry, friends, but it’s not the Democrats, nor the American people who elected them. The real culprits are two Republicans who ran the show the previous eight years: George W. Bush and his "master political strategist" Karl Rove....

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) will deliver the weekly Republican address Saturday, December 19, 2009. WHO: U.S. Senator John McCain WHAT: Weekly Republican Address WHEN: Saturday, December 19, 2009, 6:00 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Senators negotiating a bipartisan climate change bill on Thursday unveiled the broad outlines of their plan to combine greenhouse gas limits with expanded offshore drilling, more nuclear power and protections for refiners in a bid to attract support from wary lawmakers. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., announced their proposal as international leaders at a summit in Copenhagen were trying to devise a plan to combat global warming. President Barack Obama is set to attend the Copenhagen meeting next week. Graham said the group “did this just for Copenhagen … to give the...

After Lying Low in Wake of 2008 Presidential-Election Loss, Arizona Senator Mounts Opposition to Obama's Top Priority. BY NAFTALI BENDAVID & GREG HITT Sen. John McCain kept a relatively low profile for months after he lost the 2008 presidential election to Barack Obama. Those days are over. In the health-care battle, the Arizona Republican has suddenly emerged as the John McCain of old -- a vigorous political combatant. He has publicly hammered Democratic proposals, engaged in heated exchanges on the Senate floor and lent his voice to automated telephone calls pressuring Democratic senators in Arkansas, Colorado and Nebraska on their...

Barack Obama began his presidency with an open hand toward the man he had just defeated in a race that was at times bitter. "There are few Americans who understand this need for common purpose and common effort better than John McCain," said Obama at an inauguration-eve tribute dinner to his former foe. But in the year since that evening of comity and collegiality, McCain has emerged as one of the leading critics of the new president. On foreign policy, his traditional area of expertise, and domestic affairs, where McCain has shown new passion, the 72-year-old Arizonan is making it...

Republicans like to point to Ronald Reagan for inspiration. However, we have to resign ourselves to the fact that Ronald Reagan is dead. Worse, his legacy was killed off by his own party, the same Republicans who say he inspired them. The only lasting legacy to George W. Bush was the nomination of two constructionist judges and a fading response to terrorism. For eight years, we saw GW insist more on getting along than being right. Even the war in Iraq was fought on the cheap, probably out of fear of the cost of waging war, which defies the logic...

I'm all for Ralph Nader running again. I'd love for Howard Dean to get fed up or some other Democrat to get fed up with Obama and I'd love for a third party of Democrats and liberals to establish itself. I want all kinds of liberals to line and up run in third parties. That's how we weaken their side. As for our side, the focus must be to take back the Republican Party. That's the way you win. You can draw attention to yourself by denouncing both parties at the same time, and you can think that you're relating...

If you liked George W. Bush's brand of big-spending, big-government conservatism, you'll love Mike Huckabee. BY MICHAEL D. TANNER Most of the leading Republicans running for president show some support for Bush's ideology, but no other candidate so completely embodies it. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee dramatically increased state spending. During his two-term tenure, spending increased by more than 65 percent — at three times the rate of inflation. The number of government workers increased by 20 percent, and the state's debt services increased by nearly $1 billion. Huckabee financed his spending binge with higher taxes. Under his leadership, the...