Free Republic

Here's a great way to reduce overhead and be effective at running a national organization dedicated to infringing on the gun rights of everyday people all at the same time... Have cities hire your people for you so that tax payers cover 1/4 of your people’s salary and benefits, pay for most of their operational costs, and finance all of their other resources! It also embeds your people as leaders in city government so that you don’t have to lobby there! Sounds like another conspiracy theory from the tinfoil hat brigade... Right? Back in March, while researching the repeal of...

The new round of national and state surveys this week generally showing President Obama clinging to a tenuous advantage over Republican Mitt Romney reinforce the conclusion that socially liberal, upscale white women may stand as the president's indispensable line of defense in his struggle for reelection. Both the national ABC/Washington Post survey released earlier this week, and the NBC/Marist Polls released Thursday in the battleground states of Ohio, Virginia and Florida show Obama retaining preponderant support among minority voters who were critical to his 2008 victory. Conversely, in almost all of the surveys, Obama faces a consistent pattern of erosion...

President Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, according to new polls of the key 2012 swing states, although Obama's advantage has narrowed in recent months. Obama has inched ahead of Romney 48 percent to 44 percent in both Florida and Virginia, according to three new NBC News/Marist polls. In Ohio, the president has a 6-point advantage over Romney, leading his Republican rival 48 percent to 42 percent among registered voters in the state. (The polls have a plus or minus 3 percent margin of error.)

As far as Ohio is concerned, Matt Borges is a lobbyist for Equality Ohio, founded in 2005 by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists after Ohio voters’ passage of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He’s also the new executive director of the Ohio Republican Party. Borges, recently named to his role by Ohio GOP Chairman Robert T. Bennett, said he will take a leave of absence from the Columbus lobbying firm Roetzel & Andress through the end of the year and will resign as a lobbyist registered with the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee.

Rob Portman has been preparing for this for years. Although the Ohio senator offers the standard line that he doesn't expect to be picked as Mitt Romney's running mate, the trajectory of his career and his political conduct in Washington have made nearly everyone in politics almost certain that he’ll be plucked for this year's Republican presidential ticket. Bob Paduchik, a veteran consultant who ran George W. Bush’s re-election effort in Ohio as well as Portman’s Senate campaign in 2010, bottom-lined it: “Rob Portman is uniquely qualified to do the job on Day One. I can’t think of another candidate...

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Dave Betras is known in "The Valley" for his colorful language and his political antics and drama. Last Wednesday, however, when Vice President Joe Biden visited a local industrial park, Betras was all about numbers. "Oh, 'The Valley' is going to turn out big for Barack Obama this year, big!" he said, spreading his arms wide for emphasis. The chairman of Mahoning County's Democrats pointed to local manufacturer M7 Technologies' shipping warehouse filled with people waiting to hear Biden speak. "Turnout like today, a full room," said Betras, 52. If his job is to turn out Obama...

House Speaker John Boehner has become the latest politician to attack Facebook billionaire Eduardo Saverin for ditching his U.S. citizenship to avoid paying tax. Speaking on ABC's This Week, Mr Boehner labelled the move 'absolutely outrageous' and said he would support legislation to stop wealthy expats relocating to dodge tax. Mr Saverin, who pocketed more than $2billion when the social-networking site listed on the stock exchange on Friday, could avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. taxes after he relocated to Singapore.

Casinos are not like Starbucks stores: You really can’t have one on every corner. That’s the word from David Cordish, whose company is opening a huge new casino next month in Maryland. Yet Cordish warns that the expansion of casino gambling can’t go on unchecked forever. A big problem is the attitude of politicians nationwide who view casinos as free money. “I don’t know how we can control the politicians; they certainly don’t understand the word ‘oversaturation,’” Cordish said Thursday. “They think you can have casinos like Starbucks.”If that attitude continues, Cordish said, “it’s going to implode on them.” That...

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Dave Betras is known in “The Valley” for his colorful language and his political antics and drama. Last Wednesday, however, when Vice President Joe Biden visited a local industrial park, Betras was all about numbers. “Oh, the valley is going to turn out big for Barack Obama this year, big!” he said, spreading his arms wide for emphasis. The chairman of Mahoning County’s Democrats pointed to the shipping warehouse of M7 Technologies, a local manufacturer, filled with people waiting to hear Biden speak. “Turn-out like today, a full room,” Betras, 52, said. If his job is to...

The metro Cleveland area as well as the state of Ohio will be the linchpin in the 2012 presidential election and Obama Care may well be the key to the dismantling of President Obama’s re-election hopes. This week, Catholic University in the city of Steubenville helped to put one more nail in the Obama election machine when it rejected implementation of Obamacare. Michael Hernon, who is VP of Advancement at the University, suggested that President Obama’s health care program amounted to a “moral and economic injustice, when he appeared on Fox News' Fox and Friends show this week. There is...

Dennis Kucinich, longtime Democratic Congressman from Ohio, has finally put an end to speculation about his intention in regards to a Washington State Congressional seat. As strange as this situation is, after eight terms consistently being reelected, Ohio had enough negative population growth to end up losing two Congressional seats. Kucinich ended up in a district that was merged with a neighboring district, and was forced into a showdown with Marcy Kaptur, the Dem currently seated in that other district. Despite repeated visits to Washington State, even before his primary loss, and a fair deal of support from some local...

Another person has been injured after a crash involving Vice President Joe Biden’s motorcade. According to local news reports in Ohio, on Thursday morning a motorist struck a state trooper who was riding a motorcycle to clear roads for Biden’s motorcade. (RELATED: More on Joe Biden) Officials told TribLive.com that the trooper was taken to a local hospital, though the injuries aren’t thought to be life threatening. WTRF reported that the crash caused Biden to be 45 minutes late for a speech in Martins Ferry. This isn’t the first time someone has been injured in a crash involving the vehicles...

Coal miners upset with the Obama administration’s policies on energy protested Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign rally here. More than 100 coal miners and tea party activists stood on a hill overlooking Biden’s speech holding signs like "Biden said 'no more coal in America'" and “Stop the war on coal, fire Obama.” Mitchell Metzler a miner and Iraq war veteran, said he came to the protest after finishing his midnight shift at the mine. “I spent a year in Iraq serving my country, and now they want to take away my job,” he said. Kevin Hughes, the superintendent at the...

The sourcing on this one is awfully thin, which raises two possibilities. One: The details are exaggerated or outright made up to try to start a firestorm among ObamaCare-hating conservatives. Two: The details are spot-on and are being deliberately leaked to see how ObamaCare-hating conservatives react. Can some parts of this thing be preserved or must the stench of The One's greatest victory be completely expunged before Congress takes another run at health care? If the law is upheld, Republicans will take to the floor to tear out its most controversial pieces, such as the individual mandate and requirements that...

After a year of testing the political waters in Washington state, Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich has decided against seeking office there and says he will serve the public from outside Congress when his congressional term expires next year. "My commitments to peace, to workers' rights and to social and economic justice are constant and are not dependent upon holding an office," Kucinich said in a Wednesday afternoon email to supporters. "They are dependent upon my continuing to stand up, to speak out, to organize, to motivate and to inspire our nation as to its deeper potential. This I promise...

Representative Margaret Conditt (Butler County District 55) held a fundraiser at the Middletown Sportsmens Club on Saturday, May 12, 2012. The plan was to invite a handful of supporters, spend a few hours shooting at targets, and raise a little money for her reelection campaign. But what actually happened took everyone by surprise. Rather than hosting a typical fundraiser which would ordinarily draw a few dozen people, Rep. Conditt ended up hosting a major event that drew over 200 attendees and raised tens of thousands of dollars. What happened? Rep. Conditt got an "accidental" assist from a group of anti-gun...

Kayla Allen, the 10-year-old who was the lone survivor of the April 12 shooting at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Brooklyn, died Tuesday afternoon at her home in Strongsville. Jane Van Bergen, spokeswoman for Hospice of the Western Reserve, said Kayla died in the arms of an aunt at 3:40 p.m. surrounded by her family and friends. In a statement released Tuesday, the family said, "(We are) appreciative and grateful for the support and prayers of so many during this journey. Kayla has died peacefully at home. She has been surrounded by family and friends for the past few days,...

CANTON, Ohio -- Rudy is the quintessential average white guy, right down to his last name. "It literally is Guy," he said, laughing at the irony. Born in New Eagle and raised in Charleroi in Pennsylvania's Monongahela Valley, Guy comes from a long line of Democrats. "My grandfather worked at Corning Glass, my father worked in the mines, the steel mill and finally at Corning," he recalled. "The family always had union ties, and that usually meant a tie to the Democratic Party." That's no longer true for him, however: "As my life started to improve financially, I realized that...

Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel has cut Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown's lead to just six points in the latest Quinnipiac University poll, released Thursday morning. Brown leads Mandel 46 percent to 40 percent. The last time Quinnipiac released a poll on the race, on March 29, Brown led Mandel 46 percent to 36 percent. And a February Quinnipiac poll showed Brown up by 13 points, 48 percent to 35 percent. Brown leads Mandel narrowly among independent voters, 42 percent to 38 percent. In the previous Quinnipiac poll, Brown held a heftier lead of 46 percent to 28 percent among independents.

The man accused of setting up a fake Navy Veterans charity and siphoning away tens of millions of dollars pleaded not guilty in an Ohio courtroom Tuesday, but still has refused to identify himself. "If he wants to go by the name 'Mr. X,' we'll prosecute him as 'Mr. X,' " said prosecutor Brad L. Tammaro, chief legal counsel for the Ohio Attorney General. The judge addressed the defendant as Bobby Thompson, an identity that he allegedly stole from a Washington state man. "Thompson" appeared in the courtroom in an orange jump suit, shackles, handcuffs, and a pair of black...

Incumbents are more entrenched than ever. More Americans approve of polygamy than of Congress. A February CBS News/New York Times poll found just 10 percent of respondents approved of Congress’s job performance. A recent poll from the same source found 11 percent of respondents thought polygamy “morally acceptable.” Other polls have found that the “U.S. going communist” has 11 percent support—meaning that concept has more fans than Congress has... --snip-- A week after its Ohio victory, CFPA fell short in its efforts to knock off House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus, the subject of a federal probe into alleged...

The anti-gun lobby, the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence and Democratic state officials are aiming their pointy little fingers at state Republican Rep. Margaret Conditt of Liberty Township because she plans to have an election fundraiser at Middletown Sportsmen’s Club on May 12. The club is a -- danger alert -- firing range, and apparently a big no-no if concerned citizens care about gun violence and young people. Firing ranges, being operated by the experts, taking the best possible precautions, are practical, effective and legal; so what is the problem with having a politician conduct a fundraiser at a local...

Raleigh, N.C. – When PPP last polled Ohio a little over four months ago, Mitt Romney trailed President Obama by seven points. He has not made up any ground since, and the apparent establishment choice for his running mate, the state’s freshman Sen. Rob Portman, would not help him to catch up much.

CANTON, OHIO — An illegal immigrant who was under the influence when he struck a Massillon City School District bus carrying eight high school students in February is expected to be deported from the U.S. after he serves a nine-month jail sentence. Stark County Common Pleas Judge Charles Brown also placed Victor Velasquez, 22, who was living at 935 Green Ave. SW, in Massillon, on five years probation, revoked his driver’s license for five years and ordered him to serve 100 hours of community service. However, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement likely will take Velasquez into custody upon his...

Five suspected in Ohio bombing attempt plead not guiltyBy Kim Palmer | Reuters – 1 hr 18 mins ago CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Five men charged with trying to blow up a four-lane highway south of Cleveland pleaded not guilty on Monday in a federal court crowded with their supporters. The five, Douglas Wright, Brandon Baxter, Anthony Hayne, Connor Stevens and Joshua Stafford, were arrested last Tuesday after allegedly paying an undercover FBI agent $900 for what they believed to be bombs, but were actually fakes. The men, ranging in age from 20 to 37, had attempted to use the fake...

DAYTON, Ohio — An adoptive father who's been accused of raping three boys in his care was indicted along with another man Friday on rape charges. The 39-year-old adoptive father from Troy was indicted by a Montgomery County grand jury on three counts of rape of a child under 13 and four counts of complicity to commit rape of a child under 13. Patrick Rieder, 31, of Dayton, was indicted on four counts of rape of a child under 13. The adoptive father is accused of bringing the boy to Rieder's home, where both men engaged in sexual conduct with...

One of the five self-described anarchists arrested last week for attempting to blow up a local bridge signed the lease for a West Side warehouse where about a dozen members of the Occupy Cleveland group live. In a one-hour recording of a Friday evening general assembly meeting of the group posted on its website, occupy leaders expressed concern about Anthony Hayne's name being on the lease, which strengthens his link to the group.... "If this gets into the media, it would be a disaster."

Adding Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to the top of the Romney ticket won't be enough to seal the key battleground state of Ohio for the GOP, says a former Democratic governor of the Buckeye state. Portman's credentials in his home state "would not guarantee" Ohio goes Republican this November, former Gov.Ted Strickland said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. Strickland said Portman "doesn't have the standing" in the state needed to make a difference in the general election. That said, "no candidate . . . can take Ohio for granted," Strickland added. Portman, along with Sen. Marco Rubio...

May 6, 2012 Photo of the Day: Obama Waves to Empty Stands at Official Campaign Kick Off Rally Jim Hoft Bummer. It was supposed to be such a big event. Barack Obama waves to empty stands at his official 2012 campaign kick off rally in Ohio. U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama wave to supporters at a campaign rally at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio May 5, 2012. President Obama officially kicked off his reelection campaign on Saturday with visits to Ohio and Virginia. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque) Here’s the campaign’s list of excuses for the low...

Obama pleads at rally: ‘I’m asking you to keep believing in me’By Olivier Knox | The Ticket – 4 hrs ago Fighting to recapture the magic of his history-making 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama on Saturday laid out his fullest-yet case for reelection, pleading with struggling Americans to "keep believing in me" and hitting out at presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. "If people ask you what this campaign is about, you tell them 'it's still about hope.' You tell them 'it's still about change,'" he told a cheering mass of supporters at Ohio State University in Columbus, six months and...

Barack Obama launched his campaign in unspectacular fashion today at Ohio State University, the largest college in the crucial swing state. A photo posted to twitter by Mitt Romney's campaign spokesman Ryan Williams reveals that the event was poorly attended. The above image, according to Williams, was taken during the President's first official campaign speech.

During the speech, Obama ripped into the presumptive GOP nominee and discussed nation building at home, but the most newsworthy item of the day was not the talking points Obama delivered: it was the crowd... or lack thereof. According to ABC News, the Obama campaign had expected an "overflow" of people. Instead, the arena looked half-empty. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Obama organizers even had people move from the seats to the floor of the gym in order to project a larger crowd on television.

Several Democrats have joined with a gun control group to publicly attack State Representative Margy Conditt (Liberty Township, District 55) because of a fundraising event she has scheduled for May 12 at the Middletown Sportsmens Club where participants will have the opportunity to shoot GUNS. The group linked her fundraiser to a recent Ohio shooting where three students died and called her fundraiser "absurd" and "highly inappropriate." In response to these attacks, Buckeye Firearms Association today announced the fundraiser to their hundreds of thousands of supporters in Ohio and are pledging to match any donations made to this event, up...

This is a turning point for this campaign. Starting today with these rallies, we're entering a new stage -- and we don't intend to slow down until the last voter weighs in on November 6th. (Note by Kristinn: The beginning of the 39-minute video of today's campaign rally featutes a weird and decidedly unpresidential backstage self-introduction by "Barack" as he calls himself. As he is introduced from onstage, backstage Obama speaks (reads a teleprompter) to a camera exhorting his supporters to work for his reelection. The pep talk is timed to end as the onstage introduction finishes. Obama ends by...

U.S. President Barack Obama used his first rallies of the 2012 campaign on Saturday to attack Republican Mitt Romney for learning the "wrong lessons" as a business executive, and promised to move the economy forward if he wins a second term. Obama formally launched his Chicago-based re-election effort last year, but the Democratic president's own campaigning has been confined to fundraisers while the Republican Party whittled down possible nominees to run against him. That changed this weekend. Addressing spirited crowds in Ohio and Virginia - two states that could be critical to keeping the White House - Obama tried to...

RICHMOND, VA — President Obama officially kicked off his reelection campaign today with a pair of rallies in two key battleground states–Ohio and Virginia. The theme for both events is “Ready To Go.” President Obama started off the afternoon at Ohio State University where he said his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, would allow conservatives with “bad ideas” like tax cuts for the rich and cuts for social programs to control the economy. “Ohio, I tell you what, we cannot give him that chance… This is not just another election, this is a make or break moment for the middle class,”...

Feingold rips Pelosi for willingness to consider entitlement cutsBy Russell Berman - 05/03/12 04:24 PM ET A liberal stalwart is making a surprise attack on Nancy Pelosi, accusing the House minority leader of signaling “a disturbing potential willingness” to slash entitlement programs that Democrats consider sacred. Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) on Thursday sent out an email through his Progressives United advocacy group criticizing Pelosi for saying she would support the Simpson-Bowles deficit plan, which called for using cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to close the nation’s budget gap. “Recently, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has signaled a...

Last month President Barack Obama signed an executive order that could lead to more federal rules on gas drilling. Obama said it is important to take advantage of natural gas resources, but he added air and water quality must be safeguarded. Of course. But what Obama did last week was to establish a "working group" to coordinate federal oversight of the natural gas industry. It will be headed by Heather Zichal, who is deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change. Zichal is no friend of fossil fuels. She once worked with the Sierra Club and was an...

In campaign mode for months, President Barack Obama is making his quest for a second term official with rallies in Ohio and Virginia while casting Republican rival Mitt Romney as a flip-flopping protector of the rich.

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett points out a new Quinnipac poll of swing-state voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The poll is consistent with previous polling data on Obamacare, indicating that striking down all or part of Obamacare would not do great damage to the Supreme Court’s public image and perceived credibility.According to the poll, 53 percent of Florida voters, 52 percent of Ohio voters, and 46 percent of Pennsylvania voters think Congress should try to repeal the health-care law. This is notable for how far voters are willing to go in their opposition to Obamacare, when offered that...

WASHINGTON -- It’s been more than 50 years since a candidate has won the White House without carrying at least two of the three swing states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, and a new poll shows Mitt Romney neck and neck with President Obama in two of them. Romney, who trailed Obama 49% to 42% in Florida and 47% to 41% in Ohio in late March, is now statistically tied with the president, 44% to 43% in Florida and 42% to 44% in Ohio, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll of voters in the three states. Obama, however, has...

The paid informant who helped orchestrate the FBI sting that resulted in the arrest of five anarchists for allegedly plotting to blow up an Ohio bridge is a convicted felon who was arrested on bad check and theft charges in the midst of his cooperation with federal investigators, The Smoking Gun has learned.Shaquille Azir, 39, was named in a pair of felony indictments filed in January in Cuyahoga County, according to court records. Azir, who TSG has identified as the informant in the federal bombing case, is accused in the indictments of passing bad checks on July 25, 2011 and...

GOP money floods battlegrounds, threatens Dems' hold on SenateBy Alexander Bolton - 05/01/12 05:00 AM ET Third-party groups allied with the Republican Party have vastly outspent Democratic incumbents and their backers in Senate battlegrounds. The disparity in advertising firepower threatens Democratic control of the Senate and could have an impact on the presidential race as well. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a first-term Democrat from Ohio, has been the primary target of outside groups, which have outspent his allies by a ratio of 10-1 this election cycle. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Crossroads GPS and 60Plus Association have funded the bulk of...

Occupy Cleveland has decided it's time to broaden its base. Members of the movement will set up an information table in front of Marc’s Plaza on Detroit Avenue this Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. “I just want to be very clear: we are not occupying Lakewood,” said Anthony Hayne, who is organizing the information session. Hayne, a Lakewood resident since 2001, said there will be about six or seven members of Occupy Cleveland, which stems from the Occupy Wall Street movement, at the table Saturday. “We’re not doing this to try to force people to join our movement,”...

Mayor Bill VanSuch has asked the Campbell Police Department to investigate how a handgun discharged in the police chief’s office. The incident happened April 17 as Chief Gus Sarigianopoulos was checking the gun to see if it was loaded. Van Such said he intended to ask a detective-sergeant to investigate, and he is asking the chief to cooperate. In a letter to VanSuch dated Thursday, Sarigianopoulos said he was attempting to clear the gun, which was pointed down toward the floor, when it discharged. The police department had recently acquired the Vietnam-era handgun from state-government surplus. The gun, one of...

Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) is out with the second ad of his Senate campaign against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and like his first ad, released last week, his new ad puts his military service front and center. Mandel, a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq before becoming a state lawmaker and then being elected to his first term as state treasurer, promotes a tough-guy image in the ad, where his former troop mates declare their support for his campaign and their confidence that his military training has readied him for Washington. “Josh Mandel is a Marine, and...

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Anthony Hayne appeared to live for the Occupy Movement. "Remember, we are the 99 percent," Hayne said in a recorded greeting on his home answering machine, referring to the push by a loosely organized groups in Cleveland and other cities against the financial elite. The FBI arrested Hayne and four other men Monday evening, saying they had planted what were believed to be explosive devices under the Ohio 82 bridge over Cuyahoga Valley National Park as part of a May Day protest today. The five men were “self-proclaimed anarchists,” who intended to detonate two improvised explosive devices (IEDs)...

April 8, 2012, marked the anniversary of a law that affects the lives of more than 270,000 Buckeyes. Ohio’s concealed-handgun license law turned 8 years old on that Sunday afternoon. Notably absent from the festivities were blood in the streets, Wild West reenactments and an epidemic of accidental gun injuries. To understand the significance of this event and why today it seems completely unremarkable, simply Google “Ohio concealed carry 2003” and prepare to be astonished. • “The widespread carrying of concealed handguns, however, will result in far more cases of senseless killings that occur simply because a loaded gun was...

CLEVELAND, Ohio – FBI officials today said that while the members of a group arrested in an attempt to blow up a bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park were also involved in the Occupy Cleveland movement, that organization is not under federal investigation. "Let me be clear, the FBI and Department of Justice are not conducting an investigation of any specific group," said Steven M. Dettelbach, U.S Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. "We do not investigate movements or groups, we investigate individuals." The Occupy movement is never identified by name in the affidavit filed by federal officials...

CLEVELAND - Occupy Cleveland canceled a scheduled rally Tuesday after a group of men connected to the organization were arrested by the FBI. In a news release, Occupy Cleveland said the five men arrested in a terror plot to blow up the Route 82 bridge in Brecksville were "in no way representing or acting on behalf of Occupy Cleveland" and Occupy is rooted in non-violent principles.