Free Republic

AIKEN, S.C. - Bill Clinton was already working the crowd with a vociferous appeal to vote for his wife when the dozens of people jostling to get inside the auditorium provoked a campaign worker to cry out, "Adults should not be acting this way!" Coincidentally, Clinton's sharp- elbowed advocacy leading up to Saturday's South Carolina primary is prompting some pundits and fellow Democrats to voice a similar sentiment: Should a former president be acting this way? Several prominent Democrats say no. In recent days, they have publicly warned that he is hurting his party and his own status as elder...

Senator Edward M. Kennedy said yesterday he would back fellow Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, even if Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton pursues a White House bid.-snip-While Kennedy has frequently entertained the New York senator and her husband, Bill Clinton, he said his loyalty is to Kerry. Early polling indicates that Senator Clinton and Kerry are among the favorites for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but they have not declared whether they will run.Kennedy called Kerry, the 2004 nominee, an ''able, gifted, and talented political leader."He criticized President Bush's leadership and said of the...

PROVIDENCE -- Nearly a year after losing the presidency to George W. Bush, Senator John F. Kerry yesterday condemned the Bush administration in sweeping terms, blaming the president personally for the failure to prepare for the catastrophe in Louisiana, dismissing Bush's recovery plan as a ''right-wing ideological experiment," and calling for a strong new commitment to combat poverty around the country.

In time of war, recruiters turn to young racing fans By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | August 28, 2005 BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Swiveling an imitation machine gun mounted on a mock Army jeep, young men and women fire round after round of laser ''bullets" at masked insurgents while ''patrolling" the dusty streets and sand-colored buildings of a war-pocked city that looks very much like Baghdad. ...snip... For Seger, the experience only heightened his interest in the Army. ''I've been thinking about joining ever since I was a little kid," he said. Seger's reaction is music to the ears of the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top White House advisor Karl Rove was one of the secret sources that spoke to reporters about a covert CIA operative whose identity was leaked to the media, Newsweek magazine reported in its latest edition. The magazine said Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove talked to Time magazine about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame. Luskin said Rove recently gave Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper permission to testify about the conversation to a grand jury investigating the leak in 2003, according to Newsweek. A U.S. federal judge ordered Cooper, along with...

DESPITE THE continuing gripes of his critics, records released this week show that Senator John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam. The documents should put to rest claims that Kerry misrepresented his military record in the presidential race. But Kerry's failure to respond to the smear campaign launched against him last summer lent credibility to its real objective: to impugn his equally honorable opposition to the war. John O'Neill, a Houston lawyer and Kerry's adversary on the war since 1971, acknowledged as much in a telephone interview Wednesday. ''We produced seven commercials," he said of his anti-Kerry group, now called Swift...

Writer Fabricated Boston Globe Story on Seal Hunt Fri Apr 15, 6:54 PM ET By Greg Frost BOSTON (Reuters) - A Boston Globe freelance writer fabricated large chunks of a story published this week, the newspaper said on Friday in the latest incident to embarrass the U.S. media. The Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Co., said it stopped using writer Barbara Stewart because of a story that ran on Wednesday about a seal hunt off Newfoundland -- a hunt, it turns out, that had not taken place. The Halifax, Nova Scotia-datelined article described in graphic detail...

The Boston Globe told readers in an editor's note published Friday that portions of a story it ran on a seal hunt off Newfoundland and Labrador were fabricated by a freelance reporter who was not at the scene.