Free Republic

RADCLIFF — Congressional candidate Mike Weaver’s gas discount Wednesday was close to being a stunt heard ’round the world. An Associated Press article about his $1.20-a-gallon gas sale at Marathon Food Mart appeared on newspaper and television Web sites from the Los Angles Times to England’s Guardian Unlimited and ABC News. It also was the topic of blogs across the country. “It’s a lot more coverage than I thought I would ever get,” said Weaver, a Democrat running against Republican incumbent Ron Lewis for Kentucky’s 2nd District seat. “I think it gave me a lot more name recognition.” Political analyst...

Amid the current panic about gas prices many people are embracing ethanol. But that's not such a good idea During the comment period for the RFG (reformulated gas) program, supporters of ethanol had argued that the volatile organic compound (VOC) emission standards in the program -- 42 U. S. C. 7545 (k) (3) (B) (i) -- would preclude the use of ethanol in RFG because adding ethanol to gasoline increases its volatility and raises VOC emissions, especially in the summertime. Background The American Petroleum Institute v. the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [Docket #94-1502 (Heard by the U. S. Court of...

Party money bought backing in the past St. Clair County Democratic leadership has distributed election packets to countywide precinct committeemen, which include an affidavit stating that money from the party will not be used to buy votes. The unusual action follows the vote buying convictions in June of five East St. Louis politicians. They had helped distribute more than $70,000 received by city Democratic precinct committeemen two days before the 2004 election from the county Democratic organization. While St. Clair County Democratic Central Committee Chairman Robert Sprague could not be reached for comment, a fax received Monday from his Belleville...

A $400 million campaign by the Bush administration to enroll low-income seniors in prescription drug coverage that would cost them just a few dollars per prescription has signed up 1.4 million people, a fraction of the 8 million eligible for the new coverage. At this rate, by some calculations, the government is on track to spend about $250 for each person it enrolls, and even then it would have only 2 million poor senior citizens taking advantage of what is perhaps the most generous government benefit available today. "It's a very, very good benefit," said Deane Beebe, whose organization, the...

Just wondering if the MSM did its job: Has anyone heard a follow-up report on the woman affiliated with the NAACP who was trading crack cocaine for completed voter registration forms during the 2004 presidential elections? Was she charged with a crime?

December 30, 2005 Stowers admits guilt Clerk says he engaged in vote buying By Tom Searls Staff writer Admitting he paid for votes and even decided whose roads would get gravel for votes, Lincoln County Circuit Clerk Greg Stowers entered a guilty plea to a federal vote-buying charge Thursday. Stowers, 48, admitted to distributing $7,000 to be used to influence voters during the May 2004 primary election. If he receives any prison term, it will likely be a short one. In return, he agreed to cooperate with federal investigators in their continuing election fraud investigation and agreed to testify before...

Charleston, W.Va. -- Thomas Esposito's campaign for the Legislature seemed to be following the usual pattern. The longtime Democratic mayor issued press releases, raised money and bought newspaper ads. Signs bearing his name popped up in yards around rural Logan County. But less than a month before the May 2004 primary election, Esposito dropped out, saying he had to withdraw because of his ailing mother-in-law. The real reason surfaced only later: The FBI had planted Esposito among the field of candidates to help find evidence of vote-buying in southern West Virginia. Federal prosecutors say the gambit worked. They allege Esposito...

A subsidiary of the Venezuelan national oil company will ship 12 million gallons of discounted home-heating oil to local charities and 45,000 low-income families in Massachusetts next month under a deal arranged by US Representative William D. Delahunt, a local nonprofit energy corporation, and Venezuela's president, White House critic Hugo Chávez. The approximately $9 million deal will bring nine million gallons of oil to families and three million gallons to institutions that serve the poor, such as homeless shelters, said officials from Citizens Energy Corp., which is signing the contract. Families would pay about $276 for a 200-gallon shipment, a...

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...