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On Tuesday, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will face a challenge from a small handful of Republican lawmakers who are dissatisfied with his leadership as speaker, demanding that a more principled conservative lead the GOP in the House. U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) is one of a few Republican lawmakers who believe they would make a better speaker than Boehner. Most politicos agree that while approximately 17 Republicans will vote against Boehner, and it is still not enti

The $560 billion National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2015 may have been forgotten by the mainstream media, but some of the details of the bill remain troubling for military families. Military members will receive a one percent pay raise and lower housing allowances in addition to paying higher prices for medications. However, the NDAA also contains provisions that have nothing to do with national defense and is set to cost millions of dollars -- dollars that could go to service

On Wednesday, December 10, Congress passed a bill called the "Intelligence Authorization Act for 2015." Not very many people have heard of this bill, much less its passage since the media's main focus is on the CIA torture report. However, the Act contains language that U.S. Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich) calls "the most egregious sections of law" he has encountered during his time in Congress. "It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every Amer

Editors note: An agreement was announced late Tuesday and the $1.1 trillion spending bill will be debated today. The spending bill funds the government - with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security - until September 30, 2015. A House vote is expected to take place tomorrow.On Monday, December 8, funding negotiations were bogged down over disagreements over peripheral programs attached to the spending plan. Congress must pass an appropriations bill that will fund the federal governm

"Once there are things you refuse to do, you have things to do."--Mencius Torture is wrong. I don’t intend to try to prove this by a lengthy process of ethical deduction or by appealing to sacred texts or philosophical authorities. Being part of a body politic means accepting some political and ethical norms as starting points for political discussion. In any society that I would ever want to live in, one of these norms is "don't torture people."Today, the Senate Intelligence Committee released

WASHINGTON, D.C.— A federal official with the nation’s top auto safety regulator vowed at a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday that the agency would consider every legal measure available against a Japanese auto parts supplier suspected of providing car manufacturers with faulty airbags that investigators have linked to the deaths of at least five people, four of them Americans. David Friedman, deputy administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told lawmakers that

Historically, the position of defense secretary is quickly filled either from the beginning of a president's administration or after a sitting defense secretary resigns. While the confirmation process can vary in time (still always relatively fast), it doesn't take a president long to name a successor to the previous or retiring defense secretary. on The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity's website, this is a major problem for President Obama. According to the Paul, " However, as forme

"No Taxation without Representation," was a major rallying cry of the American Revolution. At the heart of it was the fact that Colonial Americans had absolutely no say in the legislation process that created taxes. I have often wondered what our early Founders did toward taxation after the Revolution, yet never had the time to really research it or had access to the documents to find out. The Internet is an incredible invention -- vast amounts of material is available at a moment's notice. On

On Thursday, November 13, Rasmussen Reports published a new survey they say reveals that a majority of Americans object to net neutrality. According to the polling group, 61 percent of respondents "strongly oppose so-called 'net neutrality' efforts that would allow the federal government to regulate the Internet." However, after looking over the questions Rasmussen asked, it is clear that there is a misunderstanding over what net neutrality is actually about. A Quick Explanation of What Net Ne

While the news is focusing on the newly-elected Republican Congress wrangling with whether or not to overturn Washington, D.C.'s decriminalization of marijuana, the "War on Drugs" continues to be lost on all fronts.The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports heroin use is on a dramatic rise since 2007,  with numbers reaching all-time highs. The cause of the problem: cheap street heroin due to a large market supply. The sad reality, though, is that our War on Terror in Afghanistan is the sole