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Report: Boehner Trying to Move Gun Control Bill in the House

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House Republicans are not ruling out passing gun legislation this year, according to a key GOP lawmaker.

The collapse of gun control in the Senate last month led many on and off Capitol Hill to believe the issue would not be revived in this Congress.

But House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) told The Hill on Friday that he’s had “a lot of discussions” with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on guns. Goodlatte suggested the Speaker is more involved in the behind-the-scenes wrangling of how to move a gun bill than the Ohio Republican has let on in public.

“We are trying to improve the system to keep people who are barred under the law from owning firearms, from getting access to them. We don’t think the things that were proposed in the Senate do that. So we have not backed away from trying to figure out how to improve that, but we’ve made no decisions yet about what to do,” Goodlatte explained.

Goodlatte, serving his first year as the head of the Judiciary panel, pointed out that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System needs to be reauthorized before year’s end. The reauthorization could be the vehicle through which the GOP tackles the highly charged issue. Goodlatte, who has an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA), said earlier this year he wants to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

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What?! Rep. Issa Says Hillary Isn’t a Target in Benghazi Probe (+video)

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A top GOP critic pushed back Sunday on charges that Republican efforts to investigate last year’s Benghazi attack are designed to inflict political damage on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“Hillary Clinton’s not a target,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa on NBC’s Meet the Press. “President Obama is not a target.”

Issa, who heads a panel probing the assault on the diplomatic outpost that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, said he will seek depositions from Benghazi review board heads Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The interagency process of modifying talking points in the wake of the attack scrubbed the fact that the incident was “a terrorist attack from the get-go,” Issa said Sunday.

“The American people were effectively lied to for a period of about a month,” he charged. “That’s important to get right.”

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GOP Ready to Push Benghazi Case Into 2014, Beyond

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Photo Credit: APSteady drips of information about a horrific night in Libya are fueling Republican arguments and ads designed to fire up the conservative base and undercut the Democrats’ early favorite for president in 2016.

Strategists in both parties disagree on the issue’s power to influence elections next year and beyond. But after eight months of trying, Democrats are still struggling to move past the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi last Sept. 11 that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Democrats insist that an independent inquiry, the dismissal of several State Department officials, and nine congressional hearings leave little new to say on the matter. But Friday turned up the sort of nuggets that feed conservative activists’ belief that a major scandal may be at hand.

Newly revealed communications show that senior State Department officials pressed for changes in the talking points that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used a few days after the Benghazi attacks. These senior officials expressed concerns that Congress might criticize the Obama administration for ignoring warnings of a growing threat in Libya.

The White House has contended it only made stylistic changes to the intelligence agency talking points, in which Rice suggested that spontaneous protests over an anti-Islamic video set off the deadly attack. The new details suggest a greater degree of political sensitivity and involvement by the White House and State Department.

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Boehner Stands Between GOP House and Special Select Committee on Benghazi

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Photo Credit: APSixty-two percent of the Republican members of the House of Representatives–143 of 231–are now co-sponsoring a bill that would authorize a special committee to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

The only thing standing between this super-majority of House Republicans and the special investigative committee they seek is House Speaker John Boehner, who controls the legislation the Republican majority brings to the floor for a vote.

“In the last few days the public has learned stunning new revelations about the Benghazi terrorist attack and the Obama Administration’s troubling response in the hours and days that followed,” Rep. Frank Wolf (R.-Va.), the principal sponsor the legislation, said today in a letter to Boehner. “Much of this new information has come as brave whistleblowers have sought to right the record and, in doing so, may have jeopardized their careers. Increasingly it is becoming clear that we have only scratched the tip of the iceberg.”

While applauding the hearing that House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) held yesterday, Wolf argued that that hearing actually demonstrated the need for the special investigative committee that a super-majority of Boehner’s Republican colleagues now seek.

“Chairman Issa’s hearing yesterday was a positive step forward in the effort to investigate the administration for its apparent cover up of key information about the nature of the attack and its response,” Wolf told Boehner. “I appreciate your leadership and that of the committees to advance the investigation to this point.

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Obama Admin. has been Working “for Years” to “Gut Welfare Reform”

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Photo Credit: APThe Obama administration was planning to weaken the welfare work requirements as far back as 2009, GOP lawmakers charge.

An internal Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) memo from 2009 released Tuesday by Senate Finance Committee ranking member Orrin Hatch and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp explores the legal justifications to allow the HHS secretary to waive work and other requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) that were part of the 1996 welfare reform law.

Last summer the Obama administration issued an Information Memorandum allowing states apply to waive the TANF work requirement. At the time, the administration said this was due to requests from some states for more flexibility and was meant as a way to test strategies “to improve employment outcomes for needy families.”

Republicans, including then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, charged that the action “gut” the 1996 welfare reform.

According to Hatch and Camp, the memo shows that the Obama administration was looking to find ways to get around the work requirement years in advance of receiving requests from states.

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Republican National Committee Picks Karl Rove-Linked Company for $15 Million Project

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Photo Credit: APThe Republican National Committee has chosen a Karl Rove-linked voter data project called Liberty Works to help it compete with Democrats in the digital arena.

Liberty Works will team up with Data Trust, whose chairman of the board is former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski confirmed to POLITICO.

“Basically, RNC is going to provide the data, and then Liberty Works will build the platform, and Data Trust will manage it all,” Kukowski said. “This is kind of in the beginning stages. There are legal issues that we’re going to iron out.”

Several data entities — one of which had connections to the Koch brothers — had been competing for the partnership, POLITICO previously reported. Roll Call first reported Wednesday on the selection of Liberty Works and Data Trust.

Rove, who had been working with Liberty Works’ founder Dick Boyce, pitched donors in New York last month for the $15 million-plus data project and also talked it up in March to top GOP insiders at an invitation-only conference in Georgia.

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After Failed Charm Offensive, Obama Back to Bashing GOP

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama’s charm offensive has been a dismal failure. Of course, he didn’t really try all that hard. He bought dinner for a few Republican lawmakers, vowed to meet them halfway, but within a week — after his gun-grab bill went up in flames — he called them “liars” and stomped off in a huff, taking his ball with him.

The midterm elections in 2014 will decide whether the president can actually implement his far-reaching socialist agenda or if he’ll have to settle for the federal takeover of one-sixth of the nation’s economy with Obamacare.

In the meantime, Mr. Obama, like Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him, is stuck with a divided Congress. Yet unlike his two predecessors, this president has almost nothing nice to say about the coequal branch or the men and woman elected by Americans to represent their dreams and goals. In fact, he’s spent the past four years setting Congress up as the fall guy for all his faults, even more so now that he no longer can blame Mr. Bush.

This week was no different. After injecting politics into the festive dedication of Mr. Bush’s library in Dallas by pushing amnesty for illegal aliens, the president upped the bitterness with a biting weekend screed directed at Republicans.

“Two months ago, Congress allowed a series of automatic budget cuts to fall across the federal government that would do the opposite,” he said. “Because of these reckless cuts, there are parents whose kids just got kicked out of Head Start programs scrambling for a solution. There are seniors who depend on programs like Meals on Wheels to live independently looking for help. There are military communities — families that have already sacrificed enough — coping under new strains. All because of these cuts.

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Rep. Louie Gohmert: A 'Conservative Firebrand'

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Below is the transcript of an interview conducted with Louie Gohmert as he walked back to his office after a Fox Business Network television appearance on Capitol Hill. In the interview, Gohmert discusses the state of the GOP, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and whether he has considered running for Senate…

What do you think the 2012 election said about the GOP? A lot of commentators say it showed that the GOP has to change on immigration or become supportive of gay marriage to remain competitive. How do you see it?

I think if we had done the things we promised that we wouldn’t be told that now we have to pander. You know, Scott Walker showed if you make promises and you do what you promise, you don’t have to pander. And, you know, Chris Christie has done somewhat the same thing. You make promises when you’re running, and keep your promises. And even when people disagree with you or don’t like you, they will look upon you as being a person of honor and they’ll respect you and you will be elected again. It’s just that people are so hungry for elected officials that will do what they say and say what they’ll do and keep those promises.

So you don’t accept the argument that the country is changing and the Republican Party has to change with it?

The country is always changing and we do need to change, and by changing we change the way we message, but there are some things — like honest, integrity — those kind of values that never go out of vogue. And I think people are hungry for honesty and integrity and I think that’s where we need to be — not pandering. And I also think if we start making the kind of changes that you’ve talked about policy-wise, even though they’re diametrically opposed to what we’ve said when we’ve been elected, I don’ think we’ll come back. People would rather have somebody of honor and integrity. I mean look at [George] Washington. People disagreed with him. He didn’t have 100 percent agreement on a whole lot of things, but he was a man of integrity and kept his word and that’s why we still celebrate him today, in addition to being very brave.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell's and RNC Chair Reince Priebus' Staff Attend Congressional Tea Party Caucus Meeting

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Photo Credit: APThe Tea Party Caucus is back in action with a new strategy and a growing membership.

Roughly 20 House Republicans attended a closed-door meeting Thursday evening in the Rayburn House Office Building, along with staffers from nearly 40 congressional offices, including those of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul.

It comes as conservatives continue to flex their muscle, making life difficult for GOP leaders in the House on issues like Obamacare, and as the debate on immigration legislation heats up.

Conservative mainstays such as Reps. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Tom Price (R-Ga.), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) were among those at the meeting. A source said the entire GOP House delegation from South Carolina was there as well.

Mike Shields, chief of staff to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, spoke at the meeting – an indication that the GOP establishment is making an effort to work with the tea party lawmakers.

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GOP Benghazi Report: Obama Admin. Lied, Set-Up Military for Failure

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Photo Credit: APHouse Republicans have concluded that the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies bear no blame for failing to halt the terrorist assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year, releasing a report Tuesday that said President Obama and the State Department set up the military for failure.

The report also found that plenty of intelligence presaged the attack, but the White House and State Department — including the secretary at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton — failed to heed the warnings.

In the most damning conclusion, House Republicans said Mr. Obama’s team lied about the attacks afterward, first by blaming mob violence spawned by an anti-Muslim video, and then wrongly saying it had misled the public because it was trying to protect an FBI investigation.

“This progress report reveals a fundamental lack of understanding at the highest levels of the State Department as to the dangers presented in Benghazi, Libya, as well as a concerted attempt to insulate the Department of State from blame following the terrorist attacks,” the GOP investigation concluded in its 46-page report.

The White House dismissed the report as a rehash of questions the administration has answered, and said it has provided extraordinary cooperation.

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