Free Republic

Barack Obama’s transition website was illegally authorized to register as an official U.S. government domain and Judicial Watch has exclusively obtained documents to prove it, including evidence that the authorization was initially denied. When Team Obama announced its infamous change.gov website, Judicial Watch quickly filed a public records request with the agency (General Services Administration—GSA) that authorized it because the campaign clearly didn’t meet the strict eligibility requirements for official government websites.  The GSA, which manages and supports the basic functioning of federal agencies, specifically limits coveted “.gov” websites to U.S. government organizations at the federal, Native Sovereign Nation, state and...

It's one of those things that sneaks up on you in politics, a sense of things happening not quite as you expected. It started in April when our Times colleague Louise Roug called with a quote from Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In a surprise move, the state attorney general has asked the California Supreme Court to invalidate the gay marriage ban passed by voters last month.

The prosecution of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is a match made in heaven. Have you ever seen two people more in love with the spotlight? In all my years of practicing law, I have never seen a U.S. attorney take to the podium to announce an arrest, then answer any and all questions while at the same time condemning the accused as if he'd already been convicted. But I'm telling you now, for all the accusations about Blagojevich trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, the feds had better come up with...

Blagojevich refuses to budge NBC Nightly News VIDEO: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/28200681#28200681&gt1=43001

America wanted change and we sure got it. We elected a politician who looked and sounded fresh and new and different (and don't forget "clean" as Senator Biden once remarked), and promised that magic word "change." Aren't we lucky? It appears that the change we got is that we've moved Chicago machine-style politics into the White House. We found out on Tuesday what that business model consists of- the good Governor of Illinois was arrested for allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama's United States Senate seat. Yes, I said sell Obama's seat to the highest bidder. It's nice to know...

Chicago -- The firestorm surrounding Governor Blagojevich is putting some heat on Barack Obama’s transition team. Fox Chicago News has learned about possible conversations between a top Obama aide and the governor regarding the open senate seat. Craig Wall has the exclusive.

DETROIT – How bad are things around the Motor City? So bad that even Jon Jon's Cabaret is offering half-off deals. The topless club in the suburb of Warren – where General Motors and Chrysler employ upwards of 20,000 people – cut the cost of a table dance in half, from $20 to $10, in mid-November. The dancer gets all the money plus any tips, while food and drinks generate the club's income, general manager Kelly Sander said Tuesday. Jon Jon's has lowered prices on drinks, but business is still down 50 percent from a year ago, Sander said. She...

<p>A source said today that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning. The U.S. attorney's office would not confirm the information, and a spokesman for the governor did not immediately return a phone call for comment.</p>

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia. "These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military...

The Hustler founder has made an X-rated movie using an adult-film actress who resembles the governor of Alaska. Flynt's team had posted an anonymous advert on the website Craigslist just days after Mrs Palin took the Republican convention by storm last month. The ad read: "Looking for a Sarah Palin look-alike for an adult film to be shot in the next 10 days." The actress would be paid $3,000 (£1,700) for the part. Flynt's spokesman confirmed to the New York Daily News that the film had been shot, but he would not yet reveal the title. Bloggers have already suggested...

Malignant, malevolent, mendacious - this creep is a cancer on British life Last updated at 2:03 AM on 04th October 2008 * Comments (0) * Add to My Stories On the day Peter Mandelson was forced to resign in disgrace for the second time, I can remember writing that he wouldn’t be out of work long. He’d get his reward either in Brussels or the House of Lords. Even I didn’t imagine that one day he’d achieve both. Nor that it would be Gordon Brown who brought him back from Brussels and swathed him in ermine. Yes, that Gordon Brown....

ABC Radio news just announced Sen. John Edwards will admit to the affair with Rielle Hunter in an interview with the network, but insists the child is not his. We return you to your regularly-scheduled FReeping.

SIX days ahead of the North Carolina primary comes a story of real sleaze—not Jeremiah Wright-style buffoonery, but Nixon-style illegality designed to dupe and disenfranchise voters—that should surprise precisely nobody who has been following and covering this campaign. A group called Women's Voices Women's Vote (WVWV), which claims to have been "created to activate unmarried Americans in their government and in our democracy" has been placing robocalls to voters across North Carolina that seem designed to fool them into thinking they have not yet registered to vote. Many of the voters who received those calls are black. Voters in 11...

The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state's new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs. In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago. In the course of several interviews in the past few days, Paterson said he maintained a relationship for two or three years with "a woman other than my wife," beginning in 1999. mo here

The federal criminal investigation that has led to Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York illustrates the great dangers all Americans face from vague and open-ended sex and money-transaction statutes. Federal law, if read broadly, criminalizes virtually all sexual encounters for which something of value has been given. Federal money-laundering statutes criminalize many entirely legitimate and conventional banking transactions. Congress enacted these laws to give federal prosecutors wide discretion in deciding which "bad guys" to go after. Generally, wise and intelligent prosecutors use their discretion properly -- to target organized crime, terrorism, financial predation, exploitation of children and the...

Tehran's police chief, Reza Zarei, has been arrested after he was found nude in a local brothel with six naked prostitutes, according to report on the Iranian Farda News. Farda News is a website said to be close to the mayor of Tehran and former chief of the police forces, Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf. Following the raid, Zarei stepped down from his post as police chief. The news of his arrest however was not reported by any official Iranian news agency. According to a popular Iranian website Gooya, the order to raid the brothel was given directly by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi...

ALBANY — On Dec. 3, Richard P. Richman, a real estate developer from Connecticut, wrote a check to Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s campaign account. The check was for $10,000, less than one-fifth of the maximum donation allowed under New York State law. But it was all he could give to the governor, who had imposed strict limits on what he would accept from donors as part of his highly publicized pledge to end the excesses of special-interest money in Albany. So Mr. Richman took out his checkbook again. This time he gave $15,000, but sent it to the state Democratic Party,...

Hillary Clinton’s recent primary losses to Barack Obama may say as much about Democrats’ desires to be done with the Clintons as they do about the cult of personality that is Obama. Some say Hillary is now paying for the sins of her husband. I agree that may be true to some degree, but in many cases she was an accomplice to those sins and has only herself to blame. I have wondered for some time whether or not Americans would want another soap opera presidency and I think we are seeing the answer in the most recent primary vote...

Last year, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton took the unusual step of renting out some of her lists. The transaction once again highlights the Clintons' connections to a businessman who now faces questions from the Securities and Exchange Commission.