Free Republic

With hysterical glee, Democrats believe they smell blood around the Bush Administration and Republicans in general. Admittedly, at first glance, the situation does appear bleak for the Republicans: dwindling support for the Iraq war, Tom Delay's indictment and arrest, Bill Frist's insider trading investigation, the Harriet Miers rupture, and polls that show a generic vote would favor Democrats over Republicans in 2006 by 11%. Oh, to be a Democrat, bolstered by such news after years of humiliating defeat at the polls! Unfortunately for Democrats, none of this seems to be rubbing off in their favor. According to a recent national...

The Democratic Leadership council is launching the ''American Dream Initiative''. The Chairman is none other than Hillary Clinton. The American Dream Initiative is a year-long project of the DLC that will engage political, business, labor, civic and intellectual leaders in a ''national conversation'' to help shape a positive agenda for our country and the Democratic party. The Initiative will focus on challenges facing America including: keeping our country safe, building an opportunity society, standing up for families and making sure our political and electoral systems work for all Americans. (from the DLC Website)It looks like the Democrats have decided...

"Election determines fate of nation" "In that this will be my last column before the presidential election, there will be no sarcasm, no attempts at witty repartee. The topic is too serious, and the stakes are too high. This November we will vote in the only election during our lifetime that will truly matter. Because America is at a once-in-a-generation crossroads, more than an election hangs in the balance. Down one path lies retreat, abdication and a reign of ambivalence. Down the other lies a nation that is aware of its past and accepts the daunting obligation its future demands....

"Q. Senator Kerry, we have been fortunate that there have been no further terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11. Why do you think this is? And if elected, what will you do to assure our safety? Mr. Kerry Thank you very much, Ann. I've asked in my security briefings why that is" "But according to the Republican National Committee, Kerry missed most of the public hearings when he sat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence between 1993 and 2000...Kerry missed 38 of 49 public hearings during the eight years he served on the intelligence panel."

The Democrats are already using the Deulfer Report to attack the Bush administration on WMD/Iraq. In 2001, America was attacked with a WMD, anthrax. After several years, law enforcement has not found the source or point of production of the anthrax, even though it was probably domestic in origin. Yet the Bush adminstration is catigated for not finding Sadaam's WMD's, despite all the resources and time he had to dispose of them.

Here are the specific frames from the debate video shoqing most clearly what Kerry had in his hand as he took it out of his pocket and placed it on the podium. I have taken two of the frames, lightened them, zoomed in, and sharpened the pics. No other enhancements have been made: Cropped, lightened original of Kerry pulling item from pocket. Enlarged and sharpened. Cropped, lightened original, of Kerry putting article down. Enlarged and sharpened.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) -- Think of a game. Any game. Now try to put a bet on it. There's a fair chance that in Las Vegas someone will give you odds and take your money. On everything, that is, except the U.S. presidential election. It is against the law in Las Vegas (and thereby everywhere else) to bet on the outcome of the race for the White House. Why? No-one seems entirely certain, but it probably has something to do with it being unseemly to bet on something as important as the White House. Some members of Congress believe...

Has Cuba's septuagenarian dictator finally gone senile? Fidel Castro is doing everything possible to secure the re-election of his archenemy, President Bush. The crucial Cuban-American voting bloc in crucial Florida has lost some of its enthusiasm for Bush, but Castro seems determined to repair the damage by directing one rant after another at the president. Today the dictator accused Bush yet again of planning to invade his tropical gulag. 'Crazy' "Do not try crazy adventures such as surgical strikes or wars of attrition using sophisticated techniques because you could lose control of the situation," Castro said this morning in a...

At Catholics Against Kerry, we encourage Catholics to consider several questions when they vote: 1) Are Senator Kerry’s political positions, campaign themes, and voting records Catholic positions, themes, and records? 2) Should Catholic charities and hospitals be forced to provide contraceptives and abortions? California and New York both require Catholic Charities to provide contraceptive insurance coverage. Now the people behind these bills want to force Catholic hospitals to provide abortions. Kerry states that he “supports requiring insurance plans to cover contraception” and he cosponsored a bill requiring all Catholic employers to provide all forms of birth control, including the abortifacient...

Democrats are anxious. They're worried that the Kerry campaign lacks a unifying theme. On TV he comes across like a cold, wintry day in Dubuque. He has barely presented himself to general election voters. They should relax. John Kerry is doing exactly what he should be doing right now. He is in a post-primary molting season. He's emerging from the shadow of Howard Dean and becoming more like the policy twin of Joe Lieberman: a pro-trade, fiscally conservative centrist Democrat who is willing to pour more troops into Iraq to win the war. If Kerry had charged ahead with a...

I do not know precisely why President Bush's popularity continues high despite a month of the most relentless pounding from partisans, the press, the 9/11 commission and history itself (Fallujah, etc.) No one else knows either. Professionals will read the polls through the prism of their own expertise. Media people will say it's the cumulative effect of Mr. Bush's stirring ads. Those who agree with the president's stand on Iraq will say it's Iraq. Others may argue it's because he put tax cuts at the heart of his economic policy and the economy has begun to rebound. There is probably...

Adapting his electoral pendulum to the US, psephologist Malcolm Mackerras predicts the Democratic challenger will win the White House GEORGE Walker Bush is the 43rd president of the US. He was sworn in on Saturday, January 20, 2001. The big question now is: who will be the 44th president and when will he be sworn in? My prediction is that John Forbes Kerry will be the 44th president and he will be sworn in on Thursday, January 20, 2005. In December 2000, Bush won the presidential election by receiving 271 votes to 267 recorded for then vice-president Al Gore. It...

WASHINGTON The persistence of a quotation he insists is an "urban legend" is evidently infuriating Howard Dean. At lunch last week in the Washington bureau of The Times, the reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg identified herself and started to ask a question. Dr. Dean immediately interrupted: "I want to quickly jump on you for a sec here," he said sharply, and referred to an article she had written based on an interview with Senator John McCain in which yesteryear's maverick took issue with a reported remark of Dr. Dean's. "I never said that. I never said that," the man from Vermont...

(CNSNews.com) - Ignored by the Democratic political establishment, perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, Jr. has raised nearly $5 million for a 2004 White House bid, more money than four major candidates whom the Democratic National Committee acknowledges and invites to its events. The DNC isn't the only organization excluding Larouche. The party's allies, like the AFL-CIO, make no mention of LaRouche on their websites or at their candidate forums. The Republican Party ignores LaRouche as well, even when disparaging the field of Democratic candidates seeking to replace George W. Bush at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Then there are the pollsters -...

<p>September 8, 2003 -- Democratic presidential contender Joe Lieberman last night took sharp issue with front-runner Howard Dean's statement that America shouldn't "take sides" in the Middle East. "If it was thought out, it's a mistake. If it wasn't, it's very important for Howard Dean, as a candidate for president, to think before he takes positions," Lieberman told The Post.</p>

<p>The rhetoric of Democratic presidential hopefuls has sunk to a "new low" of "political hate speech" that will be rejected by voters, the chairman of the Republican Party said yesterday.</p> <p>"I think history will show that this field has taken presidential discourse to a new low," Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."</p>

Beyond making some amiably assorted stabs at speaking Spanish, the Democratic presidential candidates were united in their first major debate on at least one thing, resolutely targeting President Bush for his foundering postwar policy in Iraq. The clownish intramural sideshows that usually haunt the Democratic Party on the early primary circuit were missing in Albuquerque. But those Americans bothering to tune in on Thursday night were also offered an early look at how the Democrats disagree. While they competed to come up with the most dismissive description of Mr. Bush's foreign policy (Richard Gephardt may have won with "miserable failure"),...

Flood the Zone Fridays, brought to you by Karl Rove Posted by Ezra Klein George W. Bush has a new website up, and upon seeing it, you have to admit -- this is a campaign that "gets" the web. Their website consolidates many of the tools that the Democratic challengers and their supporters have been experimenting with, and they are well implemented. Particularly impressive is their Action Center, which has one the the coolest, most useful tools I've ever seen: If you scroll about halfway down the page, you'll see a field where you can input your zip code...

Taken from here Looks like Vermonters are so upset at they are writing letters to Iowa Papers to inform them about the Real Howard Dean in the Daily Iowan(Must Register). Letters to the Editor The true face of Howard Dean I would like the people of Iowa to see the true face of Howard Dean before his campaign workers put so much lipstick on the pig that he becomes unrecognizable. The people of Iowa should know that, thanks to Dean and his cronies in the Vermont Legislature, family farms in Vermont are going out of business at a rate never...

SHE is not standing for president, but Senator Hillary Clinton’s reluctance to be drawn into the 2004 race for the White House has not stopped her becoming a prime target in President George W Bush’s rapidly accelerating campaign for re-election. Republican strategists last week launched a new fundraising appeal that singled out Clinton’s “ambition and prolific fundraising” as the main danger to the party’s majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. In an apparent attempt to exploit conservative disgust with the success of Clinton’s newly published autobiography, Living History, Republicans are warning that neither Bush’s re-election nor...