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WASHINGTON — Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich will face off next week with Sen. John Kerry in a debate over climate change. The debate is scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.

The country long ago moved beyond John Kerry's Presidential ambitions, but the Senator, as he seems never to tire of reminding us, has not. Now Mr. Kerry's throbbing grievances jeopardize President Bush's nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Belgium. Last week Sam Fox, a 77-year-old St. Louis businessman, sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a confirmation hearing widely expected to be uncontroversial. But in the 2004 campaign, Mr. Fox gave $50,000 to the Kerry opposition group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. After some desultory questioning about "the image of America in Europe," Mr. Kerry solicited Mr. Fox's opinions as...

Well, it just tears you up, yes it does, to read about the loneliness of Sen. John Kerry. The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, reports The New York Times, is rather forlorn these days. It seems he was never really a team player in the Senate, a bit cold and aloof y'know, and when he made a speech in the Senate announcing he wasn't going to run for president next time out, only two senators were in attendance -- his Massachusetts colleague Ted Kennedy and Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Pundits are feasting on Kerry's failures as if he were...

Kerry, whose botched joke about U.S. troops in Iraq dealt a blow to his presidential ambitions, will travel to Iraq to meet with soldiers, political leaders and military officials. "I've talked to plenty of guys who've come back from Iraq, who are there now, who understand exactly what happened," Kerry said of his joke in a telephone interview Tuesday with The Associated Press. "They laugh at it." The Iraq stop will be part of a nine-day Mideast trip that includes stops in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

[snip] Behind the scenes, Kerry apparently has been having doubts, calling current and former Democratic confidantes to inquire just how much his gaffe hurt his presidential chances, according to several Democrats who spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversations were private. Kerry, who turns 63 later this month, had been planning to announce a comeback campaign in December or January. He had thrown himself into helping his party reclaim Congress in the midterm election, campaigning for roughly 80 House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates. [snip] Nonetheless, Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, hope to boost their public reemergence with...

WASHINGTON: Enough with The Joke, John Kerry says. The Massachusetts senator and former Democratic presidential nominee said Wednesday night that it is time to move on from his botched attempt at humor before the Nov. 7 congressional elections. Kerry had said people might get "stuck in Iraq" if they do not study hard and do their homework. He said he was trying to poke fun at President George W. Bush, but Bush and others accused him of criticizing the troops. "This is getting silly," Kerry said on CNN's "Larry King Live." "The country needs to think about a policy that...

The campaign season is over, but we cannot let pass Massachusetts Senator and still bitter presidential wanna-be John Kerry’s insult of our troops when he declared on a campus stop that students need to do well, or else “you get stuck in Iraq.” His completely in-character gaffe brought deserved condemnation, including some from leading Democrats.Kerry disappeared from the campaign trail, so as not to be a “distraction” to Democratic campaigns. But before he left he issued a non-apology apology in which he failed to actually apologize for the insult. He said: “I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to...

John “Live Shot” Kerry remained in the shadows between two pillars, as his party abandoned him in the building where he had made his bones as a Winter Soldier, humiliating the men in uniform his party would again heedlessly abandon in a foreign field without his help, save as a cipher. And as Dingy Harry, Dick Turban and Chuck, and that other woman he couldn’t quite place, marched to their destiny, John Kerry scuttled away in the cool darkness of the corridors which once welcomed him with hellos, hand shakes, and how do you do’s. Later, in the privacy of...

Barbra Streisand made a political pit stop at the palatial pad of Sen. John Kerry the other night, shortly after the Demmie diva mocked President Bush from the stage at the TD Banknorth Garden. According to our Streisand spies, the Funny Girl and her hubby, James Brolin, pulled up to 19 Louisburg Square after midnight in a rather un-divalike minivan for a late-night supper and political gabfest with her fave Boston liberal and his daughter, Alexandra. Earlier in the evening, after belting out “Happy Days Are Here Again” during the soapbox portion of the show, Streisand told the throng “I...

Kerry: Bush assurance on Iraq a blunder By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago Democratic Sen. John Kerry said Tuesday that President Bush committed "a gigantic blunder" by giving top Iraqi officials assurances that U.S. forces would remain indefinitely in the war-torn country. Kerry argued that his 2004 rival should have pressured Iraqi leaders to set aside their differences and focus on making progress in assuming responsibility for security, a move that could lead to a reduction in U.S. troop levels. "The absence of pressure I find is an enormous blunder that gives the Iraqi politicians a free...

Democrats assail Bush's N. Korea policy By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago Democrats seized on North Korea's brazen act to criticize President Bush's record in confronting the communist regime, contending the administration's focus on Iraq ignored legitimate threats. Democratic Sen. John Kerry, the president's rival in 2004 and a potential 2008 candidate, assailed Bush's policy as a "shocking failure," and said, "While we've been bogged down in Iraq where there were no weapons of mass destruction, a madman has apparently tested the ultimate weapon of mass destruction." One month before midterm elections, North Korea's reported nuclear test...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group was Sen. John Kerry's albatross in 2004. Now, the Democrat is warning his party about suffering the same fate in a fundraising letter. In 2004, the Swift Boat group, backed by Texas businessman Bob Perry, made unsubstantiated allegations about Kerry's Vietnam War heroism. The presidential nominee's slow and uncertain response is blamed for helping doom his White House bid.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry on Monday urged people of faith to work cooperatively on problems such as poverty, global warming and reducing the number of abortions - "godly tasks" that transcend the nation's culture wars. In a speech laced with anecdotes of his own journey of faith, Kerry, a Roman Catholic, told students in a speech at Pepperdine University that "we can take up God's work as our own. "Shame on us if we use our faith to divide and alienate people from one another, or if we draft God into partisan service," Kerry said. "As God gives us the...

Dear Friend, I remember when I was back home from Vietnam and veterans were speaking out against the Vietnam war policy, someone yelled at the vets: "You should support the troops." One of those veterans said simply: "Lady, we are the troops." With a war in Iraq gone horribly wrong and a Republican attack machine determined to smear those who speak out, there's nothing more important this fall than electing veterans to Congress who can speak out about Iraq with a special moral authority. And man, do we need them. Recently, John "Randy" Kuhl, a Republican incumbent House member from...

Politics: In a fundraising e-mail, Sen. John Kerry charges that Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell tried to "suppress the Democratic vote." But it wasn't Blackwell who paid off registrars with cocaine. Kerry sent the e-mail to 100,000 Democratic donors Tuesday asking them to support U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland (news, bio, voting record) for governor of Ohio in his race against Secretary of State Blackwell. In it, echoing earlier charges that Blackwell stole the 2004 election for Bush in Ohio, Kerry charged Blackwell "used the power of his state office to try to intimidate Ohioans and suppress the Democratic vote."...

WASHINGTON -- The terrorist attack foiled by British authorities prompted a battle of words yesterday between a pair of presidential contenders from Massachusetts, with Governor Mitt Romney lashing out at Senator John F. Kerry for suggesting that the war in Iraq has harmed the nation's security. Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, seized on news of the disrupted plot as a ``stark reminder" that Osama bin Laden remains at large and said it shows that Al Qaeda has ``grown in strength" since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ``Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda have succeeded in isolating the United...

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., got a little hot under the collar about Rush Limbaugh's analysis today suggesting Republicans are better friends for Israel than Democrats. "Rush Limbaugh s ignorance and willingness to divide Americans knows no bounds," Kerry said in a formal statement on his website just hours after the show ended. "His latest statement about Israel is beyond offensive to all of us who have fought to protect Israel in the face of enemies committed to its destruction." What did Limbaugh say that got Kerry so bent out of shape? Limbaugh said the most frequent guest in the Clinton...

  Law targets those with unearned military medals By Jason Cato TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, July 2, 2006 Marine majors have accomplished plenty in the Corps' 230-year history, but tales from "The Terminator" just didn't add up. He'd been a SEAL, a sniper and a pilot. His stories were larger than life, and no one at the Soldiers & Sailors National Military Museum and Memorial in Oakland believed him. But it was the Navy Cross pinned to his dress blues that proved too much to stomach. "He had more battle activity than eight guys together," Ron Gancas, museum president, said about John...

During her husband's presidency, Hillary Clinton liked to complain about persecution at the hands of the "vast right-wing conspiracy." She took for granted, of course, ideological support from the dominant liberal mass media. Ever short on reasoned rebuttal, liberaldom has now come up a new buzzword to rationalize legitimate criticism. It's "swiftboating." A recent letter to the editor from a livid Boulderite (where else?) complained that, "University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill is clearly the latest focus of a 'swift boat'-style campaign. Each of us should be asking ourselves, 'Who's next?' " She then went on to lambaste the Rocky...