Free Republic

When I was little, I had a recurrent dream that there was a terrible earthquake. My father, his body a horse with wings, swooped down from the sky, kneeled so I could jump on his back and flew away just as the earth cracked open beneath me. It was my most comforting dream. I want to live in that world again. I want to live in John McCain's world. My father was a military man. My parents were friends of McCain's parents and lived in the same apartment building. My father's closest friend was Barry Goldwater, McCain's mentor. Those were...

Workers from a second activist organization have been implicated in falsifying Milwaukee voter registration forms, bringing to 15 the number of voter registration workers who could face scrutiny for trying to sign up dead, imprisoned or fictitious voters, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organizations that paid the workers. For two of the workers, managers at the Community Voters Project caught much of the fraud, fired the workers and reported the problems before the registration cards were turned in, said Sue Edman, the election commission’s executive director, and Ayodele Carroo, the organization’s national director. That involved 15 or...

Iran's president on Tuesday blamed the U.S. and other "big powers" for global ills such as nuclear proliferation and AIDS, and accused them of exploiting the U.N. for their own gain and the developing world's loss. But, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, time was on the poor countries' side.

Debra Bartoshevich received e-mail notification Monday evening about a conference call to decide her fate as a delegate. Rachel Strauch-Nelson, communications director for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said the group also tried to reach Bartoshevich by phone Monday afternoon. The conference call will take place Friday and Bartoshevich will have an opportunity to explain why she should remain a delegate despite her reported endorsement for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. ORIGINAL STORY: Members of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party will vote Friday on the delegate status of Debra Bartoshevich, a Democratic National Convention delegate from Waterford who has publicly supported Republican...

Motorists in southeastern Wisconsin pay an average of 14 cents more a gallon for gasoline billed as cleaner for the environment, but the government and air quality experts now question how much the gas actually cuts pollution.

THE interim between the primaries and the parties’ nominating conventions is, according to ancient writ, a fertile period for presidential campaigns to talk about how they plan to expand the political map in the fall. This year is no different. Barack Obama’s strategists are suggesting that the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party can parlay increased turnout among black voters into a string of victories in the South. Given that roughly half of all African-Americans live in the 11 former Confederate states, the idea seems intuitive enough. It’s also wrong. Prying Southern electoral votes away from the...

With much fanfare and choreography, but little substance, the administration has accepted a North Korean "declaration" about its nuclear program that is narrowly limited, incomplete and almost certainly dishonest in material respects. In exchange, President Bush personally declared that North Korea is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism or an enemy of the United States. In a final flourish, North Korea has undertaken a reverse Potemkin Village act, destroying the antiquated cooling tower of the antiquated Yongbyon reactor. In the waning days of American presidencies, this theater is the stuff of legacy.

You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and...

The recent spike in oil prices and unemployment is dramatically changing this presidential campaign -- virtually overnight. The near $20 jump in oil to $140 a barrel, the unexpected half-point increase in the jobless rate to 5.5 percent (the biggest monthly increase in twenty years), and the resulting 400-point plunge in stocks has created a new campaign issue right before our eyes. Public worry number one is now oil, jobs, and the economy, with the inflationary woes of the U.S. dollar right underneath. The candidate who can connect with these issues will win in November. But so far neither Obama...

In another disturbing sign that Sen. John McCain has little interest in reaching out to his conservative base, including evangelical Christian voters, his campaign has declined an offer to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham. For almost six decades, Graham has been America’s most influential preacher and evangelist, a man sought out by every president since Harry Truman. Today, the 89-year-old Graham is in declining health and stays near his home in Montreat, N.C. His last public appearance, in May 2007, marked the dedication of his library. Three former American presidents -- Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and Bill...

SPIEGEL: Senator Hagel, your friend and Republican presidential candidate John McCain says that the United States Army has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq. Is he right? Hagel: We have responsibilities, no doubt about it. We invaded Iraq, we are occupying Iraq and we have made Iraq dependent on us. By our actions we have done terrible damage to our own country and undermined our interests in the world. SPIEGEL: What are the consequences? Hagel: Our first moral obligation is to our own people whom we keep sending back to Iraq again and again. Four-thousand US soldiers have given...

In a major blow to national Republicans, a Mississippi congressional seat that once voted for President Bush by a twenty-five point margin elected a Democrat on Tuesday. Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers beat out Republican candidate Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, by a 54%-46% margin, a spread that several Republican strategists on Capitol Hill characterized as a startling wake-up call for a party in dire straits. Voters cast ballots for the fourth time in three months for the seat, vacated when Republican Roger Wicker was appointed to fill the remainder of Senator Trent Lott's term. After winning the...

Whatever happened to the Great Depression? Not the real one from 70 years ago, the lost decade of unimagined misery and Steinbeckian angst, the worst period in the history of modern capitalism. I mean the replay we were promised this year. The one we were told was the inevitable counterpart to the greatest financial crisis since a couple of medieval Italians first sat down on a Florentine bench and invented the word “bank”. I don’t know about you but I feel a bit cheated. There we all were, led to believe by so many commentators that the sub-prime crisis was...

Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain accused North Carolina's Republican Party of being "out of touch with reality" over its refusal to pull an advertisement criticizing Democrat Barack Obama. In an NBC interview aired on Friday, the Arizona senator said he has done all he can to persuade the state party to cancel the television ad that criticizes Obama as "too extreme" because of controversial remarks made by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "They're not listening to me because they're out of touch with reality and the Republican Party. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt...

This morning the North Carolina Republican Party introduced a TV ad against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., using images and sound from his controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Okay, technically the ad is against Democratic gubernatorial candidates, but only nominally. It's clear purpose it to tag Obama as "extreme.") "For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew listening to his pastor," the narrator says. Cue Rev. Wright and his "God d--- America" sermon. The ad then mentions Democratic candidates Bev Perdue and Richard Moore, who have endorsed Obama. "They should know better," the narrator says. "He's just too extreme...

During an interview on WABC radio Sunday, top Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef said the terrorist group supports Obama’s foreign policy vision. “We don’t mind–actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance,” Yousef said in response to a question about the group’s willingness to meet with either of the Democratic presidential candidates.

I’m an Obama girl and my man throttled Hillary Clinton, again, Tuesday night. Suddenly, the impossible is real. Suddenly, I’m nervous. Very nervous, actually. I’m nervous because an otherwise normal grownup told me yesterday she’s watched the will.i.am (Black Eyed Peas) “Yes We Can” Obama video about 100 times and gets “weepy” every time. I’m nervous because a longtime political type, normally quite cynical, now waxes rhapsodic about Obama’s “cool.” “He’s elegant, controlled, the best-dressed candidate ever,” he says. Never a red tie, yellow or bright blue. No, Obama does a subdued lean charcoal gray suit with a gray or...

Now the party has an apparent candidate who is a friend of Sen. Russ Feingold – on campaign finance reform – Paul said. And now the party has an apparent candidate who is a friend of Ted Kennedy – on immigration – Paul said.

Serious question. John McCain has a conservative rating of something like 88%. He is a "maverick" who genuinely seems more comfortable working with Democrats. John McCain has dissed conservatives on numerous occasions and authored such abhorent legistaion such as McCain/Feingold. He is for open borders (depending on the day you ask him). Now, Sam Brownback, Tom Coburn, Phil Gramm, Jack Kemp, Ted Olson, Richard Land, and perhaps Nancy Reagan have either formally endorsed or have voiced support for John McCain? Why are these people endorsing McCain?? Seriously, I cannot grasp this. Why do I have this big disconnect? I do...

<p>Police continued searching for a man suspected of shooting his two teenage daughters, including one who called 911 about an hour before officers found them dead in his taxi, police said.</p>