The Obama administration has granted waivers or adjustments to five states and more than 1,000 unions, companies, and other organizations representing nearly 3 million people who no longer have to comply with healthcare-reform requirements — for now. That news comes despite two looming congressional investigations into whether politics influences who received a waiver — what one GOP congressman is calling “crony care.” Republicans allege that the administration has refused to state its basis for...
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Several Republican members of Congress are calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate possible "threats" against conservative Supreme Court justices, claiming the advocacy group Common Cause is providing a platform for inflammatory rhetoric. The congressmen, in a draft letter to Holder that has not yet been sent, allege that rallies held by the organization appear to "incite violence and encourage racial slurs," with Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virgin...
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Two years ago, the Tea Party movement launched itself, noisily, onto the political stage. By last November, it could take credit for helping to determine the composition of the new US Congress. But at the first annual Tea Party Policy summit in Arizona, there was no sign of complacency. Amid the booths selling anti-Obama t-shirts and guidebooks to political activism, the spirit of this grassroots insurgency burned brightly. The Tea Party may already have had a major impact on American politics, ...
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The 2,400 delegates attending the last night of the Tea Party Patriot American Policy Summit cheered on speakers who promised to keep pushing until constitutional government was restored in America. Rep. Louie Gohmert's (R-Texas) passionate and humorous speech got the crowd to its feet on Saturday in the Phoenix Convention Center when he insisted that the American people "deserved better" than what they had had in Washington, DC, for the last 30 years. Too often in America, Gohmert said, "we are...
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Topics including border security, national debt and defense, “don't ask, don't tell,” and Middle East-U.S. relations created questions and discussion at Wednesday's Great Decisions series at the Tyler Public Library. A vocal and engaged audience of more than 130 people attended the event where the guest speaker was U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler. Gohmert gave much of his focus during the address to national security concerns related to border security, terrorism, Islamic radicalism, the nation...
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Word that East Texas is a good place to live, work and retire seems to be spreading. Tyler's population is listed as 96,900 or 15.8 percent higher than the previous count, which figured the population at 83,650, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. Smith County's population rose to 209,714, a 20 percent increase from 174,706 a decade ago. As it sometimes does with unemployment and other statistics, Smith County mirrored the trend of the Lone Star State, for ...
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U.S. aid should not go to countries that oppose American positions at the United Nations more often than not, according to one of the hundreds of proposed budget-cutting amendments currently being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives. Whether successful or not, the measure put forward by Texan Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert draws attention to the issue of how many countries, including most major recipients of U.S. foreign assistance, regularly take positions at the U.N. at odds with th...
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After President Barack Obama's State of the Union address to the 112th U.S. Congress, some local and state politicians said that although the president made a good speech, he has not delivered on earlier promises of bipartisanship. “I thought it was an excellent speech. It was very uniting, but it sounded similar to previous speeches,” U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, said. During the health care debate, Gohmert said Obama claimed he had a policy of keeping an open door to Republicans who had i...
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Minutes before joining a Republican led vote to repeal ‘ObamaCare’ Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert spoke briefly with the News Herald. “This afternoon we’re going to go in and vote to repeal this 2000-page monstrosity that gives the government the power to take over all healthcare,” the congressman said via telephone from his Washington, D.C. office. Gohmert – a three-term Republican representing the 1st congressional district of Texas – was confident the House vote to overturn the Patient Pr...
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