Free Republic

<p>It was Dec. 10, the day before John F. Kerry's 60th birthday, and one of the darkest of his presidential campaign.</p> <p>The polls indicated the onetime front-runner trailed by 25 percentage points in New Hampshire. There was disagreement among Kerry campaign staffers on strategy: Should they tacitly play down his presidential dream and try to salvage Kerry's home-state reputation by campaigning more heavily in neighboring New Hampshire, or bet big and devote more resources to Iowa?</p>

the quote from Hotline is in the "Full Story" below. Why Senate Dems :: "At the beginning of the current Congress a year ago, there was a lot of skepticism that we could take back the Senate in 2004. We heard it not just from our friends in Labor, political pundits and donors, but also among ourselves." A Democratic majority in '04 seemed "out of reach. Bush was strong, our presidential prospects were uncertain and our Senate candidates unknown." Bush and Karl Rove envisioned their "Dream Team" of Senate recruits, including: Jennifer Dunn in WA; Mike Huckabee in AR; Ed...

War, by its very nature, does not make much sense. In recent days, though, the war in Iraq — and how it began — is sounding more and more like something out of "Alice in Wonderland." You think of the White Rabbit that started Alice down the slippery slope into Wonderland. And the Mad Hatter's tea party. And the Red Queen screaming "Off with their heads!" And then you think of David Kay, the former chief arms inspector, telling a Senate committee last week that "we were all wrong" and that somebody should look into how our pre-war intelligence came...

The chief inspector who led the U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is offering a terrifying view of the last days of Saddam Hussein that confirms the wisdom of deposing a dictator who had descended into madness. David Kay leaves a post that gave him an up-close and personal look into Saddam's mind and arsenals, saying he believes Iraq did not have nuclear, chemical or biological weapons before America's invasion - but not for a lack of trying. Indeed, Kay says, Saddam was perfecting a weaponized version of the deadly poison ricin and trying to restart a...

McAuliffe Says Democrats Are In The Best Shape They've Ever Been Tue Jan 20 2004 10:39:37 ET DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe asked on CNN if the direction of the Democratic Party will determine the direction of the party. McAuliffe said: "Clearly, whoever the nominee of the Democratic Party will -- and I am -- no one in America wants a nominee more than I do. We're in the best shape we've ever been in. Millions in the bank, new headquarters, new voter files. I need a nominee, no question about it. But that nominee will then have one message. He...

Mexican-American separatists don't believe U.S. has Saddam A Mexican-American separatist website, La Voz de Aztlan, is claiming the U.S. capture of Saddam Hussein is a hoax. The pro-Arab and viciously anti-Israeli organization also sees a spontaneous uprising of popular support for Hussein throughout Iraq – a phenomenon unnoticed by news organizations throughout the world, including those in Arab countries. According to the site, "extreme doubts have arisen throughout Islam that the released pictures by U.S. occupation forces of the 'captured Saddam' are of the Iraqi leader. Thousands of Iraqis, who knew Saddam, are claiming that it is one of Saddam's...

Saddam the great dictator of fairy tales (Filed: 17/12/2003) Iraq's tyrant spent weeks before the war writing a novel about underground resistance, reports Jack Fairweather Saddam Hussein spent the final weeks before the war writing a novel predicting that he would lead an underground resistance movement to victory over the Americans, rather than planning the defence of his regime. Saddam's propaganda image As the war began and Saddam went into hiding 40,000 copies of Be Gone Demons! were rolling off the presses. Most were destroyed by bombing and looting but the Telegraph has obtained one of the few remaining copies...

Diane Rehm: "Why do you think he [Bush] is suppressing that [Sept. 11] report?"Howard Dean: "I don't know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I've heard so far -- which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved -- is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now who knows what the real situation is?"-- "The Diane Rehm Show," NPR, Dec. 1It has been 25 years since I discovered a psychiatric syndrome (for the record: "Secondary Mania," Archives of General Psychiatry, November 1978), and in the interim I haven't been...

The more Howard Dean seems to be the democrats nominee for President the worse is the delusional state of democrats gets. The democrats do not want Howard Dean to be the nominee because deep in themselves they know he cannot beat President Bus in 2004. He is very liberal and far to the left on the vast majority of important issues. Therefore to save the face, the democrat pundits have begun a new delusional spin about Dean issue. In the last few days some really desperate democrats are going on TV and radio telling us that the other democrat candidates...

WASHINGTON—It must be the voice. It is the basso pretendo profundo voice of the dean of boys in a strict private school. At the tables of power, he speaks so sparsely and softly in that low, hypnotic monotone — with that lower jaw tilting to the side in a self-assured, "I only talk out of one side of my mouth," kind of way — that others at the table have no choice but to listen up. He is the one who must be obeyed. Dick Cheney's dry Wyoming voice has the same effect on some male Republicans, starting at the...

     The “Liberal Cocoon" factor. New York Times readers must have been surprised to learn that the Republican gubernatorial candidates had won in Kentucky and Mississippi since, as the MRC’s TimesWatch documented, over the summer they ran stories which clearly suggested the Democrats would win those contests.      An excerpt from a November 5 article by Clay Waters posted on the MRC’s TimesWatch.org site: Slate journalist Mickey Kaus has developed an explanation for why Democrats tend to disappoint on Election Day -- "liberal cocooning." Kaus explains: "The point is that reporters and editors at papers like the Times (either one!)...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a leaked memorandum, forecast that America faced ''a long, hard slog'' in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the same can be said about Rumsfeld's own political fortunes. Knowledgeable Republicans and defense analysts described mounting frustration with Rumsfeld in the White House and among Republicans in Congress amid ongoing difficulties in Iraq that could jeopardize U.S. President George W. Bush's re-election bid in 2004. ''Rumsfeld has become in many ways a problem for the Republican Party. And you can make the case that he's become a net liability given how the Iraq issue...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sexual identity is wired into the genes, which discounts the concept that homosexuality and transgender sexuality are a choice, California researchers reported on Monday. "Our findings may help answer an important question -- why do we feel male or female?" Dr. Eric Vilain, a genetics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, said in a statement. "Sexual identity is rooted in every person's biology before birth and springs from a variation in our individual genome." His team has identified 54 genes in mice that may explain why male and female brains look...

<p>Gay Republicans are hoping that the political earthquake that gay-friendly Arnold Schwarzenegger set off in California will also shake up the Republican Party nationally.</p> <p>But the Republican actor's amazing triumph ought to trigger shockwaves within the Democratic Party as well: He has shown that Democrats can't afford to be complacent about courting gay and gay-friendly voters.</p>

Senate Democrats, complaining that Republicans are trying to squeeze them out of final negotiations on energy, Medicare and other bills, are threatening hardball tactics aimed at forcing the majority party to expand Democrats' role in House-Senate conferences. The threats underscore the Republicans' tight control of Congress's power levers despite their narrow majorities in both houses, as well as the Democrats' mounting frustration with what they characterize as a dangerous drift toward a one-party government. The quarrel also reflects the increasing partisanship of both houses and the strains it puts on the Senate, which relies far more than the House on...

Sexual identity is wired into the genes, which discounts the concept that homosexuality and transgender sexuality are a choice, California researchers reported on Monday. "Our findings may help answer an important question -- why do we feel male or female?" Dr. Eric Vilain, a genetics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, said in a statement. "Sexual identity is rooted in every person's biology before birth and springs from a variation in our individual genome." His team has identified 54 genes in mice that may explain why male and female brains look and function differently. Since...

God urging me on, says 'gay' bishop - (Filed: 20/10/2003) The Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop-elect said yesterday that he is agonising over the turmoil his election is causing but believes God wants him to go forward. "This is one of the hardest things I'll ever do," said the Rev Gene Robinson at Grace Church, Manchester, New Hampshire. "I do have this sense I'm supposed to go forward, and I do feel that's coming from God and not my own ego." Rev Gene Robinson Rev Robinson was elected by clergy and parishioners in New Hampshire in June and confirmed...

What happens to President Bush's pseudo-machismo now that a real general has entered the race? For months now, the prospect of running against Gen. Wesley Clark has been gnawing at GOP strategists, haunting their otherwise pleasant reveries about a bulldozer re-election campaign. They know it took a marketing genius like Karl Rove to sell President Bush as a commanding military leader. Without Rove's Madison Avenue strategy (and the cooperation of a fawning press), Bush, who neglected his duty when he was in the National Guard, would be less Top Gun and more Stop! Run! Already, Bush's borrowed flight suit has...

Normally a president gets a boost in the polls when he addresses the nation from the White House. But President Bush's numbers dipped after he went on television to announce he was asking Congress for an additional $87 billion for reconstruction in Iraq. That's on top of $79 billion already appropriated this year to cover the cost of the war. NO WONDER the voters are gagging. They don't blame Bush for terrorism or the weak economy, but they sense that he's adrift, that he has no exit plan for Iraq or solution for our economic woes other than letting the...

This coming Sunday, Israel's Who's Who will be joined by the rich and famous from around the world at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv to celebrate Shimon Peres's 80th birthday. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to attend the festival, as is former US president Bill Clinton. Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela are also set to be there. More than providing the public with yet another display of Peres's narcissism, the gala event will show the yawning gap between the world we occupy and the world occupied by Peres and his friends and supporters. In the world we live...