Free Republic

This great campaign video comes from conservative Republican Kerry Roberts, a Certified Public Accountant, who is running to replace Bart Gordon in Tennessee's 6th congressional district. Visit www.kerryroberts.com to learn more.

NASHVILLE – Anger over the skyrocketing national debt, which topped a stunning $13 trillion today, is fueling record contributions to Jeff Hartline’s campaign against incumbent Congressman Jim Cooper in Tennessee’s Fifth District, the campaign said today.

Congressional candidate asserts that its time to stop sending politicians to Washington to fix problems created by politicians, and time to start sending business people who have faced tough challenges and solved them.

Congressional hearings investigating companies that announced expected losses due to the passage of health care reform are an unacceptable abuse of power, Fifth District congressional candidate Jeff Hartline said today.

Jeff Hartline, a former medical practice management consultant from Mt. Juliet, has announced as a Republican candidate for the 5th Congressional District, currently held by Rep. Jim Cooper. Hartline said he is a constitutional conservative who has found voters responding positively to his common sense message of federal spending control, entrepreneurial job creation and enhanced national security. “People we meet all across the 5th District have awakened to the reality that our current congressman has been woefully ineffective at stopping the runaway train of big government,” said Hartline. “Since Jim Cooper first went to Congress, our national debt has grown...

There has been a lot of conversation recently about sustainability. This has become a buzzword for “hip and cool” and sensitivity to the environment and care for resources for future generations. Certainly, creating sustainable resources such as water, air, energy and farmland is commendable. One would have to be wasteful to consider other options. But what about government fiscal sustainability? ... [T]he current Washington crowd has demonstrated a lack of will and ability to create a sustainable Republic. They act like toddlers, unable to accept limits, always wanting more. The Republic — our Republic — is sustainable only at the...

The Tennessee GOP is offering a GREAT new bumper sticker to express opposition to the out-of-control spending and bailout frenzy coming from the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress. It reads, "HONK If you're paying my mortgage," and it is selling extremely fast across the country. Special offer for FREEPers: Make a donation of $25 and we'll send you ten - that's $5 cheaper than the online price. Make your donation via the secure form at http://www.tngop.org/contribute/ and then forward your email receipt to billhobbs-at-tngop.org with "FREEP HONK SPECIAL" in the subject line and we'll get them sent out to...

Gov. Phil Bredesen said he doesn't believe the information was part of a bigger political plot. "I think it's just somebody who has some time on their hands, which is a problem in its self, who is doing this kind of thing to show that he had access or to answer a question about somebody," said Bredesen. However, Republican Party Chair Robin Smith is skeptical of the governor's response. "The facts that are involved could impact very drastically the outcome of this November's election, so we're not talking about an internal affairs matter of impropriety. We're talking about strong allegations...

"Your Wallet: The Only Place Democrats Want to Drill"The Tennessee Republican Party has released a new bumper sticker designed to help motorists express their disapproval of the Democrat Party’s refusal to approve increased drilling for oil in our own country in order to combat high gas prices and our dangerous dependence on imported oil. The TRP releases the bumper sticker, and reiterates its endorsement of the grassroots Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less campaign, at the same time that Democrat leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are blocking all attempts by Republican lawmakers...

Does the state of Tennessee unwittingly help fund terrorist-supporting nations through the investments made by its public-employee retirement system's pension plan? The answer is, we don' t know - but it's a good bet the answer is yes.We don't know for certain, however, because officials with the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System refused to provide researchers with a Washington D.C. think tank, the Center for Security Policy, with any information about how it has invested Tennessee taxpayers' funds.A little background: The Center for Security Policy recently completed an extensive study, Terrorism Investments of the 50 States, which is the first national...

Wired.com reports that computer hackers are aiming to disrupt Republican websites during the Republican National Convention. Hardened electronic activists are planning to jam up the servers of GeorgeWBush.com, GOP.com and related websites, once the Republican National Convention gets underway Aug. 29. "We want to bombard (the Republican sites) with so much traffic that nobody can get in," said CrimethInc, a member of the so-called Black Hat Hackers Bloc. It's one of several groups planning to distribute software tools to reload Republican sites over and over again. These FloodNet programs are similar to hackers' distributed denial-of-service attacks, which overwhelm a server...

President Bush unveiled a new initiative to support minority entrepreneurship at his address to the National Urban League. Sadly, it appears that this announcement got lost in the politics of the day by a media uninterested in any of the real substantial public policy differences in this race. Imagine that. The media ignored a major substantive initiative introduced by the Bush administration. What makes this particularly troublesome is that this is a program that tackles the problems of minority economic development with a self-sustaining approach, bringing together existing non-profits with the private sector. It creates a network to provide education,...

ICANNFocus.org has a disturbing report on the latest steps the United Nations is taking in the area of Internet governance. The UN's World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) recently completed a meeting (PrepCom-1) in Hammamet, Tunisia in preparation for the second phase of the WSIS process. Following the meeting, the Secretariat of WSIS' Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) issued a statement discussing the organization's plans and goals.ICANNFocus.org says that means the UN-appointed group "will have, in essence, free reign to involve themselves in and make recommendations regarding virtually every aspect of the internet, including content."

Today's Knoxville News Sentinel has an editorial about Tennessee's state budget and surging sales tax revenue which makes two errors. First, it implies that one big reason for the surge in revenue is the sales tax rate increase passed two years ago. Second, the KNS asserts that tax revenues this fiscal year "are expected to be about $225 million over the budget estimated for the fiscal year just ended." Earth to the KNS editorial board: With 11 months of revenue already collected, the state's total tax revenue collections are already $380.9 million over the budgeted estimate for the 2003-04 fiscal...

Knowledge@Wharton, from the business school at the University of Pennsylvania, has just released a survey of some UPenn business professors about the differences in John Kerry's and President Bush's policies and proposals on taxes, healthcare, Social Security and the overall economy. The comments of finance professor Jeremy Siegel are quite interesting... According to Siegel, however, Kerry's focus on middle-class economic woes is tough to reconcile with economic reality. ... In general, Siegel believes the country's economic situation bodes well for Bush's reelection.

Extremism, real or perceived, by one political party tends to help the other political party in America. ... Mark my words. Fahrenheit 9/11 will end up helping Bush politically and hurting John Kerry. Extremists tend to rain friendly fire on their own.

The implications of this study cannot be overstated. We face the possibility of a shift of policy at the national level that could result in higher marginal progressive tax rates. Sen. Kerry has made it clear he plans to raise the tax rates of what he calls "the rich". Many of them are entrepreneurs who pay personal taxes on their businesses due to their S-corp, LLC, or partnership status. ... Entrepreneurs are not just leading this recovery, they are transforming this economy. The changes being planned by the democrats could act like a cold, wet blanket on our economic future.

The media recently hyped a report from the staff of the 9/11 Commission that said there were no links between Iraq and the 9/11 attack, and the media wrongly claimed the Commission staff had said there were no links between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda, period. Perhaps they should have more carefully read Staff Statement #15, Overview of the Enemy, especially this brief section from page 3: "With al Qaeda as its foundation, Bin Ladin sought to build a broader Islamic army that also included terrorist groups from Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Oman, Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco,...

The hypocrisy coming from Tennesseans for Fair Taxation (TFT) is amusing. TFT opposes a measure currently working its way through Congress that would allow residents of non-income tax states to deduct the sales taxes they pay on federal tax returns. This is a curious about-face by TFT, because if you visit their Web site and read "Six Reasons to Support the Tax Relief & Reform Act," you will find reason No. 3: "It will save $580 million now being sent to Washington. By changing from a sales-tax based system to an income-tax based system, Tennessee can take advantage of federal...

Did a professor at a high-brow Catholic university in Memphis plagiarize from an anti-semitic website in writing an article for the local county Democratic Party newsletter? Mike Hollihan has the extensively researched details on the article, which predicts a military draft if President Bush is re-elected, and his encounters with the alleged plagiarizer. After first de-constructing the professor's article and showing how it was "a carefully constructed lie," Hollihan later finds the article aappears to have been plagiarized from an email widely circulated on Internet from an anti-semitic website. Plagiarizing lies from an anti-semitic website - the Left's zeal to...