Free Republic

A SAD DAY IN AMERICAToday is the first day that Medicare recipients can enroll in the latest wealth transfer from the young to the old: Medicare prescription drug coverage. This is the largest expansion of government in decades...and it was all at the behest of a Republican president. Over the coming decades, the Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost trillions of dollars...the Gimme Generation will clean up and our children will be paying for it the rest of their lives. And what was the point? George W. Bush, the biggest spender in the history of the republic, pushed the prescription...

LIBERTY, Ky. (AP) - A Casey County man has been convicted of using cash and whiskey to buy votes in a school board election. Jurors deliberated 30 minutes Wednesday before finding Joe Ellis guilty on four felony charges of buying votes. They recommended Ellis serve only the minimum prison sentence of one year. He had faced up to 20 years in prison. Ellis gave pints of Ancient Age whiskey and $5 bills to Stella Johnson's son and daughter and a friend during a meeting the day before the November 2004 election, according to testimony during the trial. Police said Ellis...

Virginia Politicians and Highway Porkby Jacob G. Hornberger, August 17, 2005 For a good example of the moral perversity of the budget-busting, pork-barrel highway bill, consider what recently happened in Bristol, Virginia. While on his annual statewide “listening tour” across the state, Republican Sen. George Allen proudly told Bristol voters that their local officials were going to receive even more money from Congress than they had requested for the renovation of the local train station. Rep. Rick Boucher, a Democrat, had requested only $400,000 for the project. Not to be outdone, Sen. John Warner, a Republican, had requested $1 million...

Federal Prosecutor in West Virginia Leaves Office The Associated Press Published: Aug 1, 2005 CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - The chief federal prosecutor for southern West Virginia abruptly left office Monday, and a Justice Department official would not comment on the departure. A call to U.S. Attorney Kasey Warner's home was not immediately returned. Warner, 53, was appointed four years ago by President Bush. His office prosecuted several vote-buying cases this past year in some Democratic counties, landing guilty pleas from a sheriff and a police chief, among others. Defense attorneys have complained that investigators looking to catch people buying and...

Prime Minister Bribes Quebec to Pass Budget and Same-Sex Marriage' Bill - Only One Chance Left To Stop C-38 OTTAWA, June 23, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Shameless bribery, using taxpayers' money or abuse of position, as revealed by the Gomery enquiry and the Grewal and Stronach affairs, continues to be the modus operandi for the Liberal Party's efforts to maintain power in Canada. Facing a possible defeat of its budget and thus a forced election (along with the elimination of the gay 'marriage' bill), the Liberals have just arranged for a hefty sum of $1.3 billion of unassigned funds in the...

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) Monday named New York Sens. Hillary Clinton (D) and Charles Schumer (D) the Co-Porkers of the Month for February for pledging to fight the President's reforms of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. Sens. Clinton and Schumer lashed out at the President, with Sen. Clinton describing the federal grants as "a lifeline" for New Yorkers. President Bush's fiscal 2006 budget includes 154 program cuts or terminations, saving a total of $20 billion. The CDBG program, which is providing $4.7 billion to cities and towns nationally in fiscal 2005, is on that list. The budget...

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Lebanon's finance minister on Sunday downplayed the Iraqi Defense Ministry's transfer of $500 million to a Beirut financial institution, saying he would expect such a transfer to be legal if it was made by the Iraqi government. In southern Iraq, the politician demanding a probe into Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan's decision to make the cash transfer said he would not flee his country. Ahmad Chalabi said he was staying despite Shaalan's threat to arrest him and turn him over to Interpol based on an old Jordanian bank fraud conviction.Finance Minister Elias Saba told the private...

The Louisiana Secretary of State's office is investigating a newly-elected New Iberia city councilman's allegations that his opponent bought votes with money and alcohol. Raymond "Shoe Do" Lewis claims people working for Georgianna Brown's campaign paid people $2 to $5 or gave them extra dry gin in exchange for their vote during the most recent absentee voting period in October. "I have recorded statements of people who were given money," he said. "The money was given to people with some sample ballots." Lewis denied The Daily Iberian access to the tape, saying he wanted to save it for the investigation....

The Tripp County auditor and her deputy have charged a Republican poll watcher with being disruptive at a satellite voting station on Rosebud Indian Reservation, a charge the man denies. In addition, Auditor Kathleen Flakus said in a signed statement sent to reporters Monday that she heard Republican poll watcher Paul Brenner of Burke, Va., tell voters coming to the station last week that they could be paid $10 to vote. Brenner presents a different version of the incident in his own affidavit, also sent Monday to the Journal. He claims to have found evidence of vote buying on the...

DID THE MAYOR OF PHILLY MEAN TO ADMIT THIS? [KJL] From Hardball: MATTHEWS: let's talk resources. how much money are you getting to run this city operation, this get out the vote campaign? a couple million bucks? how much money is being spread around by the campaign to win philadelphia? i heard you're aiming at higher an 350, but to get that, that's a lot of street money, to use a term we're all familiar with, isn't it? STREET: that's an awful lot of money. we will distribute -- we have distributed to our party workers probably between -- between...

SIOUX FALLS - A tribal judge has no authority to keep Republicans from watching Tuesday's voting on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, U.S. Attorney James McMahon said Saturday. McMahon said that anyone who tries to carry out the order would be subject to violating federal law. "It would be my interpretation of that order that it does not comply with the law, and I have let it be known to law enforcement that they should not be enforcing any order on the reservation which purports to keep the Republican Party away from the polls," he said. Also Saturday, a Republican poll...

PHILADELPHIA - Pssst! Want your vote to count? In Ohio? Or Florida? You can now arrange to trade votes with a voter in another state, under a plan created by activists who don't want Ralph Nader to siphon off votes from John Kerry in vital swing states. On Monday, a group called VotePair.org will start hooking up Kerry voters in "safe" Democratic or Republican states with third-party voters in hotly contested states. The goal: to get would-be third-party voters to vote for Kerry in swing states, in exchange for Kerry voters' voting for Nader or Green Party candidate David Cobb...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. A second Lincoln County resident has been indicted in the widening federal probe of election fraud in southern West Virginia. The grand jury alleges 35-year-old Jackie Adkins of Harts bribed four unidentified voters to influence the ballots they cast in May's primary election. The Division of Highways employee is the fifth person to be charged overall in a probe that has ensnared Logan County's sheriff, the city of Logan's police chief and a prominent Logan lawyer. A Lincoln County resident was indicted earlier in the probe. She was charged with falsely denying under oath that she and her...

Greetings all: I found it interesting that the democrats in Rochester are encouraging drinking over civic responsibility. If you sign up to vote you get free beers. I will not buy beer from High Falls Brewery I understand that their bottom line is not good but that is just ridiculous. If someone registers does that mean they will vote? They must have it within themselves to want to vote a beer will not instill civic responsibilities. Positive good debate will. http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/0618SM4KQJ4_news.shtml Johnny

SAN BERNARDINO - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry pledged Thursday to channel $30 billion over 10 years to improve teacher pay as well as raise teaching standards, including bonuses of up to $5,000 for those who teach math and science or work in high-need schools. The program would tap a $200 billion education trust fund established with money from the repeal of President Bush’s tax breaks for those earning more than $200,000 a year, the Kerry campaign said. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4916452/

Inside his little Western wear store tucked in a corner on East Riverside Drive, Francisco Javier Aceves can't help but feel a kinship with the angular young men who come in to buy jeans, cowboy boots, phone cards and cell phones. As sure as a regular payday, they come in also to wire money to their families back home in Mexico, in places such as Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas and Oaxaca. "Sometimes they come three or four in a car," Aceves said about his customers. "Sometimes they just start lining up to wire money." The young men live and work in...

Judge conducts business from jail AWAITS SENTENCING ON VOTE-BUYING CONVICTION By John Cheves HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER HINDMAN - After a decade in Appalachian politics, Knott County Judge-Executive Donnie Newsome might be more popular behind bars than he ever was at the ballot box. Newsome, 52, is being held in the Fayette County jail, awaiting a sentence of up to 15 years in federal prison for buying votes in his 1998 election. A jury convicted him last month. But Newsome continues to serve as county judge, meeting people and signing county papers during visiting hours. He still collects his $63,753 salary....

Barbara Simpson Tweedle Dem ... and Tweedle Dumber The rest of the country – maybe the world – can call it a circus, but for Californians, it's as serious as death. Whatever it's called, it is the recall of a governor who thought he was "Teflon." Wrong. Slippery, maybe. Thin-skinned, yes. Mercenary, yes. Focused and power-hungry, without doubt. All of those describe Gray Davis. But "Teflon"? Sorry, no. The reality of the recall and its momentum are the proof. Californians on both sides of the aisle are sick of the state's dismal financial situation. Under Democrat control, it has only...

Viva! Viva California!" With those words last week, Gov. Gray Davis launched operation "Please Don't Fire Me." His speech opening his anti-recall campaign was short, and its complete text has been available at a number of sites on the Internet, so you may have read it. However, it begs for translation and interpretation, which we happily provide below, in italics: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Viva! Viva California!" That ought to nail the Hispanic vote. "I came here tonight to take responsibility ..." ... and pass it on to the Republican Party. "My friends, last Friday, 50 million Americans lost power for 29 hours....

<p>BATON ROUGE - Former Legislative Auditor Dan Kyle, a Republican candidate for Louisiana governor, alleges that a political leader he declined to identify asked for $25,000 to "take care of the votes in this area."</p> <p>Kyle, kicking off a statewide tour Monday in Baton Rouge, said the money could be legally paid because it was for "voter canvassing" permitted under Louisiana campaign law. But once paid, Kyle said the money could be spent to buy votes.</p>