Free Republic

Candidates for high political office usually grovel for newspaper endorsements. Not Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Breaking from a decades-old tradition, the governor isn't even bothering to meet with editorial writers, much less ask for their blessing. The way Perry sees it, newspapers are old news and have lost much of their influence. In a rapidly changing media climate, Perry said he decided before the March primaries that seeking their endorsements was a waste of time. After winning by 20 percentage points, the governor said he sees no reason to switch strategies in his race against Democrat Bill White. "The most...

I am Live Tweeting America's Fiscal Choices conference at the Newseum in Washington, DC 2 minutes ago via TweetDeck # Teresa Ghilarducci wants a new "mandatory" government retirement plan to replace 401k, IRA; admits preferred euphamism is "universal" 10 minutes ago via TweetDeck # "Social Security is affordable and extremely efficient." We should have a national "conversation about expanding it." 22 minutes ago via TweetDeck # Teresa Ghilarducci is on panel; she wants to get rid of 401ks and IRAs and create a new government retirement system 24 minutes ago via TweetDeck # @juliemrobison Indeed, they have! 26 minutes ago...

This election is far too important to assume those around us understand why we must throw Democrats out to save our freedoms. We can’t take a single vote for granted. The media is lying for the Democrats and in some cases it is working. Here is a list of rating conservative interest groups of Democrat incumbents. They are NARAL, American Conservative Union (ACU), The Club for Growth,(FfG) National Taxpayers’ Union (NTU), Gun Owners of America,(GOA) SEIU. Ala. 2 Bobby Bright NARAL 0% ACU 72% CfG 16% NTU 58% GOA not rated, SEIU 18%. Most vulnerable on taxation issues. Florida 2...

3M Co., citing new federal health laws, said Monday it won't cover retirees with its corporate health-insurance plan starting in 2013. Instead, the company will direct retirees to Medicare-backed insurance programs, and will provide reimbursement for that coverage. It'll also reimburse retirees who are too young for Medicare; the company didn't provide further details. The company made the changes known in a memo to employees Friday; news of the move was reported in The Wall Street Journal and confirmed Monday by 3M spokeswoman Jackie Berry. In its memo, the company said the new health-reform act would create new opportunities for...

It's times like this that I miss J. Edgar Hoover.

. . . . . April Fools!  No, better than that.  It's the OCTOBER SURPRISE! In a post-show conversation with my producer Dave "ThirdWaveDave" Logan this evening, he posited a scenario that spooked us.  We searched to see if anyone else had come up with the same awful idea.  We found there had been. First, the process of elimination: The Number One possibility -- the only other thing that would outdo the horror scenario we've come up with, and push the Tea Party movement to the sidelines -- would be if the economy miraculously turned around overnight, a week or so...

California's largest public employees union has seized on charges that Meg Whitman knowingly hired an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper, funding a Spanish-language TV spot that calls the Republican nominee for governor a "woman of two faces." The campaign ad seeks to damage Whitman's standing among Latino voters, a typically Democratic constituency in California that the billionaire and former eBay CEO has courted in her tight race against Democratic rival Jerry Brown. "Whitman attacks undocumented workers to win votes, but an undocumented woman worked in her house for nine years," a narrator says in Spanish in the ad, launched...

....Could the plates beneath this election be shifting? Obama's trip to Madison was therefore more than a journey down memory lane. It reflected the White House's realization that Sanders is right that there is no substitute for a president making a coherent argument, taking on opponents who are eviscerating him daily, and acknowledging his dependence on those who brought him to office. "I need you fired up!" he declared in a stump line that could not have been more accurate. "You can't lose heart!" .... Thus the irony: A president who largely disdained a mobilizing strategy for his first year...

As he mounts an outrage-filled campaign for governor of New York, Carl P. Paladino has vowed to forcibly rid Albany of the wayward officials and misbehaving bureaucrats who he says have demeaned state government, promising to “take out the trash.” But some of the people whom Mr. Paladino has recruited to run his campaign are plagued by brushes with the law and allegations of misconduct, an examination of public records shows. His campaign manager failed to pay nearly $53,000 in federal taxes over the last few years, prompting the Internal Revenue Service to take action against him. An aide who...

WASHINGTON -- Former Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, the failed 1988 presidential nominee, recently visited the White House and delivered his strategy for the midterm elections: pound key precincts across the country with the message that Republicans want to implement the same policies that led to the Great Recession. Dukakis, who said in a telephone interview that he "popped in" to the White House while on a trip here several weeks ago, said he told aides to President Obama that Republicans "want to go back and do exactly what got us in this mess in the first place." "It seems...

President Barack Obama opened a four-state trip with events drawing in two groups, Hispanics and college students, that the administration is counting on to help defend Democratic congressional seats in November. The president spoke this morning about the economy and education in New Mexico, where two freshmen House Democrats are vying to retain seats they won two years ago on the coattails of Obama’s win in the 2008 presidential election. ...The president told the Albuquerque audience his policies have had “some success” in helping pull the U.S. out of the worst recession since the 1930s and that improving the nation’s...

In a shortage economy, rationing forces some hard choices. Democrats running for Congress in both chambers have discovered this as donors have begun closing their pocketbooks or tapping out, and the desperation for dollars has them competing not against Republicans but each other. Politico reports that a dwindling pool of patrons are being pitched by Senate campaigns to skip sending any money to House candidates as Republicans will take control in the next Congress anyway: House and Senate Democrats are increasingly competing against one another over a small universe of deep-pocketed donors who could make a financial difference in the...

The decision by Senate Democratic leaders to delay a vote on the Bush-era tax cuts until after the election has put the payroll industry on high alert. If Democratic leaders fail to determine the tax rates by Dec. 10, it could be too late for payroll administrators to withhold the right amount of tax from workers’ paychecks, according to industry officials. “The closer you get to the end of the year the more problems there’ll be,” Michael O’Toole, senior director of publications and government relations at the American Payroll Association (APA), told The Hill. “If [the IRS] issues [withholding tables]...

Democrats are hoping to build a firewall with cash infusions and special attention from the president around a group of incumbent senators to preserve a majority in the upper chamber. But the latest round of Fox News battleground state polls suggests Democrats have their work cut out for them, especially in Wisconsin where incumbent Sen. Russ Feingold is trailing his Republican challenger badly. The latest surveys were conducted on Sept. 25 in Wisconsin, Washington, Colorado, Ohio and Illinois by Pulse Opinion Research for Fox News. Each survey included 1,000 likely voters and has a margin of sampling error of three...

We do the job because the government and media lackeys will not. Massive alleged voter fraud is uncovered by a group of concerned citizens down in Texas. The culprit? The Democrats and Barack Obama's favorite "union" - the thugs at the Service Employees International Union. A group of people took it upon themselves to work at polling places in 2008 and observed - and were shocked - by what they perceived to be voter fraud. Their next step was to create a citizen-based grassroots group to collect publicly available voting data and analyze what they found (with the help of...

Charles Krauthammer: Dems' tea-party fairy taleA desperate party lashes out at a new movement to hold off a November tsunami. By Charles Krauthammer Posted on Mon, Sep. 27, 2010 When facing a tsunami, what do you do? Pray, and tell yourself stories. I am not privy to the Democrats' private prayers, but I do hear the stories they're telling themselves. The new meme is that there's a civil war raging in the Republican Party. The tea party will wreck it from within and prove to be the Democrats' salvation. I don't blame anyone for seeking a deus ex machina when...

Congress is deadlocked over virtually every major issue still pending this year, including key economic matters such as a detailed federal spending plan and extending Bush-era tax cuts, yet lawmakers still hope to leave Washington by Friday and not return until mid-November. Chances are they'll approve a stopgap budget to keep the government running, maybe vote on extending the Bush administration tax cuts and call it a day. This desire to punt on the day's biggest issue could be one more reason for voters to turn against incumbents of both parties in November.

Michael Barone, one of media's sharpest observers of America's political scene, has noted an interesting trend in Democrat politics: unions are knocking out regular liberal Democrats in America's big cities. Barone calls it a civil war raging in the Democrat Party. He points to several big city campaigns in which unions rose up to defeat the "gentry liberals," as Barone calls them, and have replaced them in primaries with union backed, ultra liberals. For proof Barone points to several races in New York, Maryland, and Washington D.C. In each there was a split between the public employee unions that do...

SAN FRANCISCO — What is the quietest spot in Washington, D.C.? The Rose Garden? The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Actually, it’s the Justice Department’s Voting Section. Justice’s unit that allegedly fights disenfranchisement lately has been caught dozing while at least nine states too slowly deliver absentee ballots to overseas GIs. Too many military votes thus may go uncounted in November. In yet another outrage, the Voting Section is static while the rolls of at least 16 states evidently list ineligible voters, including non-residents, disqualified felons, and – yes – dead people. Justice’s response? “ZZZZZZzzzzzz......” Even worse, the Big Sleep...

In the U.S. Senate race, Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tops Republican Joseph DioGuardi 48 - 42 percent. Sen. Gillibrand leads 86 - 9 percent among Democrats while DioGuardi leads 88 - 8 percent among Republicans. Independent voters split with 42 percent for DioGuardi and 41 percent for Gillibrand.