Free Republic

Tim Pawlenty, whose poll numbers have been stagnant in Iowa, has reserved roughly $200,000 of television advertising time in the state, the largest purchase yet by anyone in a 2012 presidential race that’s much more frugal with advertising dollars than four years ago. The ad buy represents a substantial wager for the former Minnesota governor, who reported Friday that he had $1.4 million to spend on the 2012 primary campaign at the end of June. Despite more than a year and a half of networking in his neighboring state of Iowa, polls show support for Pawlenty in the single digits....

Why is this man still in jail? Why was this man forced to spend seven years in solitary? Why is still confined, languishing, festering in jail for a total of twenty five years? Solitary confinement is the most barbaric of punishments. Few people can withstand this form of torture without becoming very ill, both physically and mentally. Am I talking about the Soviet Gulag? Or about some hell-hole in Afghanistan or Iran? Last year, The New Yorker ran a piece about solitary confinement. The article concludes that this punishment amounts to torture, that it can even induce “acute psychosis with...

Note: The following text is a quote: Swedish National Charged with Hacking and Theft of Trade Secrets Related to Alleged Computer Intrusions at NASA and Cisco Philip Gabriel Pettersson, aka "Stakkato," 21, a Swedish national, was indicted today on intrusion and trade secret theft charges. The five-count indictment includes one intrusion count and two trade secret misappropriation counts involving Cisco Systems Inc. (Cisco), of San Jose, Calif., which is a provider of computer network equipment and producer of Internet routers. According to the allegations in the indictment Pettersson intentionally committed an intrusion between May 12, 2004, and May 13, 2004,...

Expanding its existing relationship with NASA, Google on Wednesday said it plans to lease 42.2 acres of unimproved land at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., to construct up to 1.2 million square feet of offices and research space. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has provided a visual overview of the site on Google Maps. Under the terms of the 40-year lease agreement, Google will pay rent of $3.66 million annually. The lease allows for the possibility of five 10-year extensions, making the maximum term 90 years, assuming both parties agree. The lease allows for periodic rent increases. NASA...

AN ALLEGED attempt to kill a former Russian spy who defected to Britain was being investigated by police last night. Oleg Gordievsky was admitted to a hospital in Guildford after falling ill in November last year. And yesterday he claimed he had been poisoned with the highly toxic metal thallium in a botched assassination attempt. Gordievsky, a KGB double agent who spied on Russia for British intelligence during the 1980s, claims he was targeted by a Russian assassin who visited him at his safe house in Surrey. The 69-year-old was unconscious for 34 hours after falling ill last year and...

You've undoubtedly already heard the results of the Ames, Iowa, Republican straw poll.......(snip)... I'll start off with some comments on the finish of each of the candidates.Mitt Romney. Romney had to finish first and did. Rudy Giuliani and John McCain took themselves out of the straw poll in June, and Fred Thompson, who has yet to officially announce, did nothing. (A few guys from Texas and Tennessee drove up and bought a table next to some other guys who bought a table for Alan Keyes, who has already demonstrated that he can lose by a landslide margin to Barack Obama.)...

Lessons learned from Ames posted by: Kyle | posted at: 6:44 PM | permalink here Generally I found myself unimpressed by the CNN/Youtube debate questions. They were generally silly and unserious to me. However, I thought there was one question that was worthy to ask the candidates: More than anything I like the realism of the question: Why does it matter what your views on the issues are if when in power you won’t get anything done? I like to say it more like this: How effective will you be in office? It’s something that each voter should ask...

I hate to be nasty, but anybody who takes the Ames Straw Poll results seriously is an idiot. A bunch of people spent ludicrous amounts of money to bus-and-truck 14,000 people to a big picnic, and the guy who spent the most bought the win with a mammoth 4516 votes. Goshers! 4,516 votes! Another guy who spent a lot less than the first guy got some people to eat his fried Oreos to vote for him too — 2,587, of them, to be precise. And he's claiming a big triumph and momentum blah blah blah. This is ridiculous. The two...

Sunday, Aug 12, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Kevin Madden (857) 288-6390Fox News' Carl Cameron: "There's no doubt [Romney] leads the polls and he's won the Straw Poll, a stiff measure of organizational prowess in a state where getting people to come out in the Caucus is the name of the game. Getting them to the straw poll is what Mitt Romney did better than any other candidate on this day." (Fox News' "Live Event," 8/11/07) Former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman: "Ken Mehlman, the former RNC chairman who ran George W. Bush's Iowa effort in 1999 and who is neutral...

MILWAUKEE (AP) - A staffer with Tommy Thompson's presidential campaign says the former Wisconsin governor will make an announcement about his future within the next 48 hours. In the weeks prior to today's Republican straw poll in Iowa, Thompson repeatedly said he'd need to finish in the top two to keep his campaign going. Instead he finished 6th, making it likely that he'll drop his White House bid. He finished with about 1,000 votes, or seven percent of the total. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won with almost 4,500 votes, or about 32%. Thompson campaign spokesman Brian Dumas (DOO'-mas) says...

Republican presidential candidates transformed the campus of Iowa State University into a conservative carnival Saturday, competing for votes by offering free soda and barbecue and a promise of shade for the thousands who braved the 100-degree heat to attend this year's straw poll. The activists came by the busload, more than 30,000 in all, for the first voting of the 2008 presidential campaign. But for many, casting ballots was an afterthought as they made their way past huge stages with live bands, inflatable bouncy rooms for the kids and fair-style booths touting one conservative cause after another. The Iowa Right...

Romney's 31.5% victory is almost exactly what then-Gov. Bush picked up at Ames in 1999, but Romney's margin over his nearest competitor was higher than what Bush won with. Romney bested Mike Huckabee by 13% while Bush defeated Steve Forbes by 10%. Huckabee's second place finish is a surprise and could offer the Arkansan a nice boost. Sam Brownback clearly spent more money on his effort -- he rented buses while Huckabee couldn't afford any -- but came up about 400 votes shy of Huckabee. After putting in the effort he did today and in the weeks leading up to...

Just announced: Romney wins with a third of the vote. Huckabee comes in second.

AMES, Iowa (AP) - A campaign spokesman says the wife of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul was hospitalized today (Saturday) with an irregular heartbeat. Carol Paul became ill on Saturday morning and was taken to an area hospital, says Jesse Benton, a Paul spokesman. A Republican congressman from Texas, Paul was delayed in arriving at the high profile Republican straw poll in Ames today (Saturday) in order to stay with his wife. Benton told The Associated Press that Mrs. Paul was recovering at hospital in Des Moines from a heart condition that causes her heart rate to get very low....

AMES -- Admittedly, this reporter was skeptical when numbers like 40,000 were thrown around when people were estimating the number of attendees at the Straw Poll. Now, we see where that number comes from. At 11:30, the crowd has arrived. Hundreds are chowing down on Hickory Farms barbecue under the Mitt Romney tent, while a smaller but still impressive number eats Famous Dave's next door at Sam Brownback's headquarters. At this moment, it appears that Romney's crowd is the largest. The former Massachusetts governor speaks to the assembled multitude first, around 12:45 CT, so his voters may be motivated to...

Thousands of Republicans – from Iowa and beyond – are strolling the grounds just outside of Iowa State’s basketball arena in Ames this morning as GOP candidates woo them with food, drink, music and games for the kids. Iowa GOP chair Ray Hoffman expects there to be more people here today than were here eight years ago when just over 20,000 voted in the Iowa GOP’s Straw Poll, a first test of organizational strength among the campaigns. “The wind is blowing just a little bit. People are out. Everybody's got a smile on their face,” Hoffman said of the crowd....

At a southeast Ames coffee shop Friday morning, U.S. Congressman Duncan Hunter mingled with guests, telling stories of life on the campaign trail and why he is the best candidate to be president of the United States in 2008. The gathering space was filled with a few undecided voters and a mob of Hunter supporters. It was the sort of scene that replicated itself at restaurants, cafés and candidate headquarters in Mid-Iowa throughout the day Friday as Republican senators, congressmen and former governors sought to generate excitement and the last few votes that could lead them to a better...

Dear FRiends, I'm leaving in about an hour to leave for Ames, Iowa "first in the nation" Presidential Straw Poll. I'm attending a delegation with Fair Tax that left from Dayton, Ohio about noon today, and is schuduled to arrive in Illinois shortly to pick some of us up. Being from Illinois, I had to patiecently wait through the 2000 primaries (my first as a FReeper), only to find out the original field of nine candidates had been cut down to three by the time my state voted. My preferred candidate at the time (Forbes) had dropped out long...

Yesterday’s Republican debate in Iowa is likely to prove more significant than the Iowa caucuses that follow in January. For starters, it demonstrated both the wisdom and the folly in having so many candidates on stage. Iowa frontrunners Romney (26%) and Giuliani (14%) got the chance to showcase their ideas, poise and style. Some second-tier candidates such as Huckabee (8%) and Hunter (1%) showed why they are still in the race while others, such as Constitution gadfly Ron Paul (2%), proved redundantly why they should not be. And in moments that should be remembered later in the campaign, at least...

We took six undecided voters all from different cities – two Democrats, two Republicans and two Independents and gave them the power of the pen to grade the candidates running for President. In all, eleven candidates sent their responses to us on time. We asked them one question. It’s a question that has been on the minds of many Americans: “What do you think will happen when U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq, and what is your strategy to deal with what happens afterward?” Our six-person panel then graded each candidate’s response. Take a look below to see who made...

Hey, this is Ultra Sonic 007, supporter of Hunter. There's been a couple of changes to the website. First, http://www.gohunter08.com/ New intro page. Up top leads to the main site, while the bottom link leads to something called "My eLeader", with the caption "Get involved in the campaign with a personalized grassroots suite." Now to the main site. http://www.gohunter08.com/index.asp There's an entirely new section; a large button that states "Visit the Iowa Virtual Headquarters: Buy a ticket to the Straw Poll." Very interesting! http://www.gohunter08.com/virtualhq/index.asp Comes with a new commercial for Iowa. (Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfcY8q6SgW0) There's also a countdown clock till...

Governor Romney was interviewed by Pajamas Media. Click here to go watch it.Also, Duncan Hunter will be on Iowa news talk radio tomorrow: The Right Balance Wednesday, July 25, 2007 10:00 AM to 10:20 AM EasternThe Right Balance: The show is heard via www.accentradio.com andwww.therightbalance.org from 10am until noon eastern AND 10pm until midnight eastern…2-4pm central at www.iowanewstalk.com I’ll post more as I find them.

Duncan Hunter decided, months after other campaigns started making pushes in Iowa, that he should do the same. From a press release we received today: Get Ready Iowans…Here Comes Duncan(Des Moines, Iowa)…Duncan Hunter’s Presidential campaign has officially begun in Iowa with the announcement of a statewide director during his campaign swing through in Iowa this weekend (July 21-23) with a myriad of personal appearances at the state’s various county fairs. He will also be hosting a personal “Donuts with Duncan� early morning gathering in Sioux City, and then will be attending the services at two of the city’s churches.Patrick R....

The publication of Hubris is filled with irony for David Corn, Washington editor of the left-wing Nation magazine. He was present at the creation of the Valerie Plame "scandal," which the enemies of George W. Bush hoped could bring down a president. Nobody was more responsible for bloating this episode. Yet Corn is coauthor of a book that has had the effect of killing the story. Thanks to Corn's intrepid coauthor, Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, Hubris definitively revealed then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as my source that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie, worked for the CIA and suggested her...

The long-expected announcement on April 21 that retired Air Force Brigadier General Simon “Pete” Worden would be replacing the popular and respected Scott Hubbard as director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is good news for the space agency and for its exploration initiative. Worden is an innovator and a risk-taker whose record shows that he can accomplish difficult goals without depending on massive funding. In 1991, when the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) decided to go ahead with developing a flight demonstration vehicle for a single stage to orbit (SSTO)...

EDWARDS AFB - The old saying "birds of a feather flock together" can now be applied to a couple of small uninhabited aerial vehicles, or UAVs, flown at Edwards Air Force Base using principles derived from studies of fish and bird motions. Engineers and technicians from NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, and Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards recently conducted flight tests over a "virtual" forest fire to evaluate new flight-control software that will allow UAVs the ability to autonomously react to obstacles as they fly pre-programmed missions. The tests were conducted via a remote, to investigate cooperative flight...

I'll get the C-SPAN link in a moment.

I have always been a huge fan of the novels of John LeCarre especially the George Smiley ones. I've also been in awe of Sir Alec Guinness's performance in the BBC productions of the various novels. The performances were so good that LeCarre himself was quoted as saying that he could no longer write about George Smiley because after the productions were released "Smiley no longer belongs to me, he belongs to Alec". And yes, I'm aware of the leftists slant of both LeCarre (who seemed to go off the deep end during the 2003 war) and also of the...

Recently a number of former CIA officers received an invitation from the Spy Museum in Washington to attend a luncheon for former KGB Col. Victor Cherkashin. The event, as the invitation said, would afford "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dine and dish with an extraordinary spymaster." In the heyday of the Cold War, such an offer, delivered with slightly more discretion, might have been the prelude to a KGB recruitment operation. Now it's merely the notice for a book party celebrating yet another memoir by a former KGB officer recounting how the KGB duped the CIA. In this case, there is...

"Wipe out Islam for world peace. The Koran demands your murder. Islam is terrorism.Such were the words of an anonymous act of vandalism in Campustown. The graffiti left members of the local Muslim community aghast."I was just completely shocked," said Basil Mahayni, senior in political science. "We rarely ever see anything like that."Members of the Muslim Student Association reported the vandalism after discovering it Aug. 20 on a picnic table at the corner of Chamberlain Street and Welch Avenue.Saleh Tamim, general secretary of the Muslim Student Association, was among the group that reported the incident. Tamim said he found the...

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who chairs the Senate Commerce, Transportation and Science Committee, will convene hearings Sept. 3 on the NASA space shuttle program and a controversial lease deal between the U.S. Air Force and Boeing. McCain said earlier this week his panel will look at a recently released federal report on the Columbia space shuttle crash and problems with the agency. The Republican said NASA's budget, priorities and major programs need to be looked at and pork barrel congressional appropriations to the space agency need to be curtailed. For example, McCain wants to look at whether NASA needs to...

As supporters of Jonathan Pollard prepare for a prayer rally on his behalf at the Western Wall on June 4, it appears that one of the most important questions surrounding his case has been answered. Former federal prosecutor John Loftus, in an article in the June issue of Moment Magazine, writes the following: "There is a good reason why neither Congress nor the American Jewish leadership supports the release of Jonathan Pollard from prison: They all were told a lie - a humongous Washington whopper of a lie. The lie was [that] Pollard had supposedly given Israel a list of...

<p>The world's largest and second-largest wind tunnels -- built and operated by NASA/Ames Research Center in Mountain View -- were closed Friday and could be mothballed forever, officials at the space agency told the Mercury News.</p> <p>Victims of budget cuts, fewer defense contracts and the rise of computer simulations, the two enormous wind tunnels served for nearly 60 years as the testing grounds for dozens of aircraft -- from fighter planes of the Korean War to helicopters to the space shuttle.</p>

Question: WAS ANGLETON RIGHT? What does it say about the state of US intelligence in the late nineteen-eighties and early ninety-nineties that two top counterintellgence officials-- Aldrich Ames in the CIA's anti-Soviet counterintelligence and Robert Phillip Hanssen in the FBI Soviet counterintelligence-- were moles for the Russian Intelligence Service? Under such circumstances, who controlled the recruitments the CIA and FBI were making during this period? ANSWER: James Jesus Angleton, the chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff from in 1953 to 1974, principal concern was not with "moles" per se, but with the inherent vulnerability of intelligence services to systematic deception....