Free Republic

By John Di Leo - Reflections on the fall campaign, for fellow conservatives… others may find this inside baseball boring, and are welcome to disregard… In 1994, Congressman Dan Rostenkowski had been in Congress for 36 years. First elected to his solidly Democrat Chicago district in 1958, he could not possibly lose, and rose to great power in the House of Representatives. By 1994, he had been chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee for over a dozen years. His power was unparalleled; his seat secure… until the House Post Office Scandal erupted, and he became the very...

Retiring Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) criticized the National Rifle Association (NRA) for refusing to accept “reasonable” gun control regulations in an interview published Wednesday. Rooney, a gun owner and Second Amendment advocate, told Sarasota Magazine that he thought raising the minimum age for assault rifle purchases was a “reasonable” measure. “The problem is with the political arm of the NRA,” Rooney said. “I don’t know in the last 10 years whether there has been any compromise with guns by the NRA.”The NRA said in a February statement to the Washington Post that raising the age for purchasing assault rifles to...

In a stunning display of ignorance, the Illinois State Senate just voted 43-12 in favor of the resolution to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment. What makes this vote even more enraging is that Republicans Pam Althoff (R-Crystal Lake), Jason Barickman (R-Pontiac), Mike Connelly (R-Wheaton), Karen McConnaughay (R-West Dundee), Chris Nybo (R-Hinsdale), Sue Rezin (R-Morris), and Tom Rooney (R-Palatine) voted with Democrats on this partisan resolution.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee plan to construct a wall – a physical partition – separating Republican and Democratic staff members in the committee's secure spaces, according to multiple committee sources. It's expected to happen this spring.

Florida Rep. Tom Rooney wants to bring earmarks back to Washington – sort of – but House Speaker Paul Ryan has put up an obstacle named Donald Trump. The Republican has offered a proposal that would allow lawmakers to designate money for water projects under the Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation. “When I go home to my county commissioners, they say ‘Can you shore up the dike around Lake Okeechobee?’ I’m like, ‘no.’ I can write a letter and hope that they listen to me. Which, over at the Army Corps, they probably look at that letter...

As candidates are gearing up for the 2016 election cycle, many members of Congress have officially endorsed their favorites.Roll Call has compiled a list of the current public endorsements from sitting members of Congress among the Republican candidates.While some have racked up more endorsements than others (most candidates have none), we decided to filter the nearly 25 endorsements based on their different scores from three of the biggest conservative advocacy groups: The Heritage Foundation, the American Conservative Union, and FreedomWorks.Here are the three 2016 Republican candidates who have received the lion’s share of endorsements, matched with the average ratings from...

On Friday, Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL) introduced legislation revoking the ATF’s claim of power to regulate ammunition via “armor piecing” language in the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA). The ATF is specifically claiming the ability to regulate ammunition via the “armor piercing” language contained in the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act, an amendment added to the GCA in 1986. Their current focus is on banning the wildly popular M855 round for AR-15 rifles. Rooney’s bill would roll back the ATF’s powers to pre-1986 levels. According to The Hill, Rooney’s bill “would prohibit the ATF or any other federal agency...

U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., announced on Monday he was a co-sponsor of U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s, R-SC, “Local Control of Education Act” which would stop the Obama administration from making states “adopt a specific curriculum, and would void any previous federal requirements established for states that have already adopted Common Core.” Rooney explained why he was backing the bill on Monday. “The federal government has no constitutional business setting the curriculum for a teacher in a Florida classroom,” Rooney said. “If states, of their own volition, want to adopt a certain set of standards, then that’s their prerogative. I...

U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta With as many as 182,000 noncitizens on Florida's voting rolls -- no one knows for certain -- U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney is calling out the U.S. Department of Justice for failing to provide the state with the tools it needs to identify illegal voters. Mainstream media reports parroting the Obama administration and Democratic Party operatives persist in branding the state's efforts as a "voter purge." "That's absolute hogwash," said Rooney spokesman Michael Mahaffey. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department have claimed that a "90-day rule" bars Florida and all other states...

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 You know our country is broke, but did you realize our $14 trillion debt is a drop in the bucket compared to where we’re headed if we don’t make tough decisions now to control federal spending?Two years ago, the Government Accountability Office pegged the federal government’s unfunded liabilities – promises made to Americans that the government could not fund – at $62.9 trillion. Last year, that number grew to $76.4 trillion, and it’s now $99.4 trillion.When the debt reaches 60 percent as a share of the economy, you... Read more.

Join Congressman Tom Rooney for a Town Hall meeting at 7:30 PM on Tuesday, August 25, Lake Placid Camp and Conference Center, 2665 Placid View Drive, Lake Placid, Florida. Sponsored by the Highlands Republican Executive Committee and we encourage our citizens to attend.

On Monday, NewsBusters wondered how much coverage the sex scandal involving Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fl.) -- the Democrat Congressman who in 2006 won the seat previously held by the disgraced Mark Foley -- would get. Early indications suggest that as far as the television news outlets are concerned, the answer is "not much." In fact, though all three broadcast network evening news programs covered the Foley sex scandal when it was first revealed on September 29, 2006, not one of them felt that the man who replaced him admitting to having an affair with a former campaign staffer was at...