Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Senators said Wednesday they don't want to be involved in certifying whether the border is secure, saying that putting that question before a political body could keep illegal immigrants from being legalized.
Former Rep. Allen B. West said on Wednesday he would consider a run against Sen. Marco Rubio in the 2016 Republican primary in Florida.
Party like it's 2009? Fourteen Republican lawmakers, media mavens and liberty-minded activists will crowd onto the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, ready to rumble as they did four years ago when the tea party first crackled to life.
Villains abound in the great immigration scam, now playing out in Congress, and not all of them are Democrats. Some are fat cats of the Republican persuasion, and the satisfied smiles on their faces suggest Cheshire blood lines.
Speaker John A. Boehner said Tuesday that he won't bring an immigration bill to the chamber floor unless it can win the support of a majority of House Republicans, creating hurdles for those hoping to see Congress legalize illegal immigrants.
Senators on Tuesday rejected building the 700 miles of double-tier border fencing Congress authorized just seven years ago, with a majority of the Senate saying they didn't want to delay granting illegal immigrants legal status while the fence was being built.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said that the Republican Party needed to pass more pro-immigrant policies — and quickly, because the GOP was facing a "demographic death spiral."
At 1,075 pages long, it's not the biggest bill to come through in recent years — that honor still belongs to the health care law — but the immigration legislation pending in the Senate is challenging the ability of voters to get their brains around its complexity.
Ralph Reed's now annual Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington last week drew a surprisingly small audience of mostly Protestant evangelical political activists — but still attracted a bevy of Republican political stars.
The Obama administration confirmed it was sending weapons to Syrian rebels and Sen. Marco Rubio threatened to walk out on the Senate immigration bill if a gay marriage amendment was added. Here's a recap, or wrap, of the week that was from The Washington Times.
The Democrats pushing immigration reform want the issue, not the reform, and they think a defeat they could hang on the Republicans could give them a shot at keeping the Senate and taking the House next November. Then they could enact a law to give everybody who wants one an American passport. This would guarantee unanimous election results, like those in the squalid places the illegals are fleeing.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, often overshadowed by some of the chamber's more high-profile conservatives, won the warmest reception on the opening day of a major gathering of Christian conservatives in Washington on Thursday, ahead of two certified crowd-pleasers: fellow Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Even as President Obama extolled the contributions of gay citizens Thursday, a clash over gay rights on Capitol Hill was threatening to unravel his cherished goal of immigration reform.
The year started with great expectations, but has turned out to be a dud. Only the most routine matters have made — or seem likely to make — progress in 2013.
The era of good feelings surrounding the immigration bill collapsed Wednesday, less than 24 hours into the Senate's debate on the issue, after Republicans and Democrats couldn't even agree on how vote on amendments.
Mr. Rubio has said he cannot vote for the bill he wrote unless it includes stiffer border security.
"That's a pretty heavy lift because you're talking about running against a sitting senator, and then, of course, that creates that schism that the other side would love to see happen," he said in The Hill.
Ex-Rep. Allen West mulls Senate run for Marco Rubio's seat →
