Free Republic

(CNN) - In his 23 years with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Dan O'Kelly was one of the agency's top gun experts. He served for five years as the lead firearms technology instructor at the ATF National Academy, where he co-wrote the curriculum for incoming agents. These days, however, O'Kelly is using his formidable firearms expertise and institutional knowledge of the ATF to take aim at his former employer. He's at the center of a brewing legal dispute that federal prosecutors say has the potential to upend the 1968 Gun Control Act and "seriously undermine the ATF's...

HOPKINSVILLE - State Rep. James Carr of Hopkinsville, elected last year as a Democrat, announced Monday he was switching to the Republican Party. "I am and have always been a Christian conservative," said Carr. "Today I see too many Democratic leaders not willing to make a stand." Carr was accompanied by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield as he made the announcement. "The leadership of the Kentucky Democratic Party is out of step with many rank-and-file Kentucky Democrat voters who hold issues such as gun control, abortion and the military close to their hearts," Carr said. With...

FRANKFORT - Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield announced yesterday that they had persuaded a freshman Democratic state representative from Western Kentucky to switch parties. The registration change of Rep. James Carr, of Hopkinsville, ended a weekend of speculation about the subject of the McConnell-Whitfield press conferences in Hopkinsville and Frankfort that were announced without details late Friday. Whitfield tacitly acknowledged that the secretive nature was designed to spur interest. At the news conference in the Frankfort GOP headquarters, McConnell also maintained his silence about recent controversies surrounding the Kentucky Republican Party's leadership and Gov. Ernie...

The Supremes, after all, waded into the 2000 election only with great reluctance, and only in the face of gross judicial overreach: ..."the problem in 2000 was not that the U.S. Supreme Court acted politically but that the Florida Supreme Court did so — not once but twice." Today, five of the seven Florida Supreme Court judges from 2000 remain on the bench. In Ohio.... Then there's the fiasco-waiting-to-happen in Colorado — a ballot initiative that would turn the state from a winner-take-all to a proportional split of electoral college votes. If that had been in effect in 2000, Al...