Free Republic

Special election races for Congress have arguable value as bellwethers for upcoming general elections. Mostly these races get decided on local issues rather than national themes, as in Louisiana, where the Republicans ran a lousy candidate, considered the only person who could have lost the seat. They do demonstrate the strength of national party efforts, though, and when one party loses three special elections in districts previously thought safe, that sends a message — and rightly has Republicans worried about their chances in November: A Democrat won the race for a GOP-held congressional seat in northern Mississippi yesterday, leaving the...

PART 1In just one year. Remember the election in 2006? Thought you might like to read the following: A little over one year ago: 1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high; 2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon; 3) The unemployment rate was 4.5%. Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we have seen: 1) Consumer confidence plummet; 2) The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon; 3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase) 4) American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses)...

For years, Texas has been planning a privately financed super turnpike from Mexico to the Oklahoma border. But like rush-hour traffic, the plan for a Trans-Texas Corridor is only inching along. "It ran into a firestorm of controversy in Texas,” said Neal McCaleb, a former Oklahoma transportation secretary. Critics have a wide range of concerns about the corridor, which has a key stretch that would parallel Interstate 35. (Another stretch would extend from the Texarkana/Shreveport area to Mexico.) Particularly upset are landowners who may be in the corridor's path. The Texas Transportation Department calls many concerns myths. The department says,...

Some Republicans groaned at Gov. Rick Perry's announcement that he plans to seek another term in 2010, but Mayor Bill White's camp reacted with glee. White has made no effort to hide the fact that he is looking to run for governor after being term-limited out of the mayor's office next year. And Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the biggest vote-getter in Texas history, has been more than hinting that she plans to "come home" to run for the same office. She outlined to Texas Monthly last November a plan to resign the Senate in 2009 to make the race, while...

DENVER - A judge denied a request to subpoena Dick Cheney in a lawsuit filed by a man who claims he was wrongfully arrested for comments he made to the vice president about the Iraq war. Steve Howards' attorney, David Lane, had argued that Secret Service agents involved in Howards' arrest in Beaver Creek in June 2006 told different versions of the incident and that only Cheney could clear up what happened. In denying Lane's motion Tuesday to have U.S. marshals serve Cheney with a subpoena, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer said Lane had "not made a sufficient showing to...

ABC’s April 11 “World News with Charles Gibson” is showing they finally get it – ethanol production and high energy costs are causing food shortages worldwide. “[P]rices are rising across Africa, pushed up by the cost of oil and demand for biofuels,” ABC correspondent Jim Sciutto said. “Those biofuels are in fact a large part of the equation,” ABC correspondent David Muir added. “Many farmers around the world, who once grew wheat and rice, now grow corn and sugar cane instead, to produce ethanol a more lucrative market.”

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. An indictment in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary. In exchange, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. The lawmakers are not mentioned but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and...

BARACK OBAMA (D-IL) Top Contributors (for 2006) 1 University of Chicago $156,054 2 Kirkland & Ellis $143,138 3 Henry Crown & Co $79,500 4 Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal $74,950 5 Northwestern University $72,930 6 Exelon Corp $71,850 7 Sidley, Austin et al $71,432 8 Mayer Brown $69,960 9 Jenner & Block $62,710 10 Soros Fund Management $61,605 11 Goldman Sachs $61,500 12 Clifford Law Offices $59,550 13 Simmons Cooper LLC $58,500 14 Tejas Securities $57,250 15 JP Morgan Chase & Co $56,600 16 Ariel Capital Management $55,650 17 Skadden, Arps et al $54,071 18 Winston & Strawn $52,450 19 Piper...

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Jacqueline Klingebiel Report: During a Monday interview with ABC's Dallas affiliate, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., did not flatly deny the DrudgeReport's charge that her campaign leaked a photo of rival Barack Obama in traditional African dress. She then turned the tables on her Democratic rival and accused him of using the controversy surrounding the alleged leaking of the photo to distract the public's attention from deficiencies in his platform and experience. "I know nothing about it," Clinton told ABC affiliate WFAA. "This is in the public domain. But let's just stop and ask yourself: 'Why...

"A time for choosing: It appears that a significant number of our members are so disgusted with the GOP's failure to secure our borders against illegal aliens that they are willing to risk all by voting them out of office, even if it means Pelosi, Reid, Hillary, et al, are allowed to take charge. Is this the best course of action or should we be working harder than ever to hold the line and actually try to make a difference by getting more constitutionally-minded conservatives elected? Are you willing to give it all up or are you more determined than...

Embattled Muslim aide to leave Pentagon job Hesham Islam's 'resume didn't add up,' official says WorldNetDaily February 11, 2008In a stunning turn of events, a high-level Muslim military aide blamed for costing an intelligence contractor his job will step down from his own Pentagon post, WND has learned. Meanwhile, his rival, Maj. Stephen Coughlin, a leading authority on Islamic war doctrine, may stay in the Pentagon, moving from the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the office of the secretary of defense. However, sources say a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey is trying to block...

RUSH: I want to go back to the archives of this program. I want to illustrate for you my prescience. When I tell you that you are on the cutting edge of the societal evolution if you are a regular listener here, this will establish it. October 18th, 2006. This is prior to the November elections, the midterms, and I was getting phone call after phone call from conservatives saying they were not going to vote. They were mad as hell. They were sick and tired of the Foley thing and Macaca. They were sick and tired of Republicans not...

TAMPA, Fla. - Touch-screen voting machines likely performed properly and were not to blame for the large number of undervotes in a congressional race in 2006, as the loser has suggested, federal investigators said in a draft report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press. The U.S. Government Accountability Office plans to present the report Friday to a House task force that has been investigating the 13th Congressional District election. Republican Vern Buchanan beat Democrat Christine Jennings by 369 votes to win the seat 15 months ago. At issue was whether malfunctioning ATM-style voting machines failed to record more than 18,000...

A top political adviser in Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign helped arrange an introduction in 2006 between McCain and a Russian billionaire whose suspected links to anti-democratic and organized-crime figures are so controversial that the U.S. government revoked his visa. Rick Davis, who is now McCain's campaign manager, helped set up the encounter between McCain and Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska in Switzerland during an international economic conference. At the time, Davis was working for a lobbying firm and seeking to do business with the billionaire. There is no evidence that McCain did anything for Deripaska after they met at...

The thread below is from Al-Ekhlaas terrorist forum, the largest terrorist forum on the internet. The author of the thread is expressing his optimism that America will be defeated for many reasons but one of them is that Hillary Clinton may become President. He said:“ Look at the woman that may soon be in charge of the White House. Can the defeat of America be any more evident?”. The thread was written in English not in Arabic and posted in the Ekhlaas English section. The text of the thread: "I'm optimistic Not because things are going well or because the...

ATLANTA - Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years. The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies, too. An Associated Press review of birth numbers dating to 1909 found the total number of U.S. births was the highest since 1961, near the...

JANUARY 10--In our continuing quest to publish the "riders" of politicians (like Dick Cheney, John Kerry, and Rudy Giuliani), here's how Bill and Hillary Clinton like to roll on vacation. When the couple spent a long Easter weekend in 2006 at the swanky Goldeneye resort in Jamaica, hotel staff were provided the below memos describing the Clinton dietary requirements, lodging details, and menus. At the Goldeneye--which is where Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond books--the Clintons stayed in a $3000-a-night private house with friends (and fundraisers) Brian and Myra Greenspun. Along with a Secret Service detail, the Clintons also traveled...

This fell off from underneath the front passenger side of my car (06' Toyota Camry) about a half-hour ago, while I was driving: Anyone know what it is? Is it important to get it back on ASAP? I kind of new it was going to eventually come off as it was making noise and hanging low, flapping the past couple weeks. I fed a wire hanger through the hole two Fridays ago, and hooked it up using the front grate of the car. I knew it probably wouldn't stay on forever.Can't find much on the Toyota forums. There is another...

Had only married women been allowed to vote in the 2006 elections, Republicans might still control the House of Representatives. Fifty percent of married women voting in those elections, the network exit poll revealed, opted for a Republican candidate for the House. Only 48 percent went for a Democratic candidate. On the other hand, had only unmarried women been allowed to vote, the House today might be almost entirely composed of Democrats. While 53 percent of the overall vote in U.S. House races in 2006 went to Democrats, 66 percent of the unmarried-woman vote went to Democrats. What does this...

I am a bit late with this, and you have probably already seen it, but I thought it was worth commenting on anyway. Anjem Choudhury of the Omar Bakri group of jihadists in Britain here appears on the BBC's Hard Talk (thanks to Hana). He is entirely ready to condemn attacks on innocent civilians, but he notes that because non-Muslims have rejected Islam, none of them are innocent. Therefore attacks like 9/11 and 7/7 are perfectly justified.