Free Republic

While Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) hangs in there, locked in a tough race with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the Republican undercard is facing obliteration in the 2008 general elections for the Senate. Polling suggests that a massacre may be in the offing — and one that’s possibly even greater than the worst of previous GOP years: 1958, 1964, 1974, 1986 and 2006. Scott Rasmussen, whose site, www.rasmussenreports.com, follows these races closely, is producing truly hair-raising polling data. Of the open Republican Senate seats in contention, Democratic victory seems very likely in Virginia (Democratic former Gov. Mark Warner now has 55...

Republican John McCain asked disgruntled conservatives to support his presidential bid on Thursday, shortly after Mitt Romney ended his struggling campaign and made McCain the all-but-certain nominee. McCain assured a conference of conservative activists he was one of them, citing his commitment to win in Iraq, halt Iran's nuclear ambitions and rein in the federal government while drawing sharp contrasts with potential Democratic opponents Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. McCain's speech, which drew boos on the topic of illegal immigration, followed by a few hours Romney's surprise announcement at the conference that he was ending his run to allow Republicans...

Monday, December 11, 2006 Incoming House intelligence chief botches easy intel quiz WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped to head the Intelligence Committee when the Democrats take over in January, failed a quiz of basic questions about al Qaeda and Hezbollah, two of the key terrorist organizations the intelligence community has focused on since the September 11, 2001 attacks. When asked by CQ National Security Editor Jeff Stein whether al Qaeda is one or the other of the two major branches of Islam -- Sunni or Shiite -- Reyes answered...

Tests Show U.S. Failure to Block Contamination From Gene-Altered Varieties Much of the U.S. supply of ordinary crop seeds has become contaminated with strands of engineered DNA, suggesting that current methods for segregating gene-altered seed plants from traditional varieties are failing, according to a pilot study released yesterday. More than two-thirds of 36 conventional corn, soy and canola seed batches contained traces of DNA from genetically engineered crop varieties in lab tests commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based advocacy group. The actual amount of foreign DNA present in U.S. seeds appears to be small, and most engineered...