Free Republic

Beth Wilkinson (NBC, David Gregory's wife) is a partner at Latham & Watkins in Washington. A top counter-terrorism official in the Justice Department during the Clinton administration.

ACT and the Media Fund were born over dinner conversation at a restaurant on Dupont Circle ... What emerged was a plan to tap large donors using so-called 527 committees that, unlike candidates or political parties, are allowed to collect unlimited contributions. ACT and the Media Fund raised enough money to alarm Republicans, who initially tried to fight the use of 527 groups through legal challenges. When the Federal Election Commission declined to pass tough regulations, Republicans turned to groups of their own. The largest, Progress for America, raised almost $45 million in a matter of weeks to support Mr....

We want to hear from you. We value the input of all our activists. Filling out the following form ensures that your feedback will be seen by the right people. Due to the amount of comments we receive, we can’t guarantee that every comment will get a reply, but rest assured that it will be read. To contact us by mail or phone: ACT National Headquarters 888 16th Street NW Suite 400 Washington, DC 20006 (202) 974-8300

A year ago, the liberal group America Coming Together was on the cutting edge of national politics, spending tens of millions of dollars on a massive voter-mobilization project in every presidential battleground state. The dream was that ACT -- heavily funded by billionaire George Soros -- would play a decisive role in getting Democratic nominee John F. Kerry elected president and then remain in business as a permanent force in liberal politics. Steve Rosenthal, who launched America Coming Together to mobilize voters for Democrat John F. Kerry, said maintaining momentum after the election proved to be harder than expected. Billionaire...

A few days after the 2004 election, America Coming Together, the giant pro-Democratic voter turnout group that had raised about $200 million from George Soros, Peter Lewis, and a variety of Hollywood moguls, released a list of its accomplishments. Obviously, ACT, as big as it was, had not put John Kerry over the top, but the group had "held conversations at 4.6 million doorsteps about the truth about the Iraq war, about the state of our healthcare system, about the economy." It had registered half-a-million new voters. In the last days of the campaign it had made 23 million phone...

Byron York was in Washington covering an anti-war rally for the conservative National Review, and the protesters were members of International ANSWER, a far-left fringe group whose acronym stands for "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism." "There were actually communists there," York recalls. "It was kind of amazing. They were calling each other `comrade.' In 2003, it was almost like `Jurassic Park,' seeing real, living, breathing communists walking around." And it occurred to the Vestavia Hills native that International ANSWER wasn't the only organization opposed to the war in Iraq in general and George W. Bush in particular....

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com The 'vast' left wingBy Lyn NofzigerPublished May 31, 2005 THE VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY     By Byron York     Crown, $26.95, 288 pages          When President George W. Bush broke a campaign promise in his first term and signed into law the ill begotten McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill he little guessed that he was opening a can of political worms that down the line would seriously threaten his bid for reelection.     McCain-Feingold, named after Republican senator John McCain of Arizona and Russell Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, like all earlier campaign legislation, was supposed for all time to put...

Six weeks before the 2004 election, The New York Times ran a puff-piece profile of George Soros that, even by Times standards, was jaw-dropping. For the privilege of sharing Dover sole at the great man’s Southampton estate, Katharine Seeyle brought the following news to her readers: George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has given $18 million to Democratic advocacy groups to defeat President Bush, is preparing to spend millions more because he fears that Senator John Kerry might lose... “America has gone off the rails,” he lamented in the interview over a lunch of Dover sole at his home in...

During the 2004 presidential election, veteran Washington reporter Byron York realized the Democrats had formed a vast conspiracy of party operatives, "nonpartisan" 527 fund-raising groups, liberal media stars such as Al Franken, and billionaire donors like George Soros to defeat George W. Bush. It was no secret. In fact, Democrats were proud of it. And as York says in "The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy," the well-organized political movement that the Democrats created to outfox tough new campaign finance laws and bring them back to national power is going to give Republicans fits in future elections.I talked to the National Review's White...

EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece is excerpted from NR White House Correspondent Byron York's new book, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy. York's new book details how MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, 527 groups, Al Franken, and other Democratic activists built the biggest, richest, and best organized political movement in generations. Among other things, the book discusses MoveOn's origins and how, in the summer of 2004, the group used its Internet organizing power in an attempt to create the impression in the media that there was a wave of anti-Bush anger sweeping the country. On the morning of September 11, 2001, a...

Billionaire globalist George Soros is helping to lead the opposition to John Bolton becoming the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says watchdog group Accuracy in Media. Bolton, who has served as undersecretary of state, today is facing questioning from senators before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of his confirmation process. Bolton's candidacy "is the biggest battle over a nomination that we have seen in years," said Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid. "But the Big Media have refused to identify the role of George Soros in orchestrating the opposition to Bolton." AIM says the pro-world government...

........ Campaign for America's Future _____________________________________________________ -- CAF Funded By Liberal Allies, Including George Soros: The Top Two Individual Contributors To Campaign For America's Future Were . . . George Soros ($300,000) And . . . Stephen Bing ($100,651). Political Money Line Website, http://www.tray.com, Accessed 1/8/05) o Soros Contributed The Most Money ($27,030,105) Of Any Donor To 527s In The 2004 Cycle, And Has Been Called The "Daddy Warbucks" Of . . . Drug Legalization. (Political Money Line Website, http://www.tray.com -- Accessed 12/8/04; Joseph A. Califano Jr., Op-Ed, "Devious Efforts To Legalize Drugs," The Washington Post, 12/4/96) o Bing Described...

EDITOR'S NOTE: NR White House Correspondent Byron York's new book, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, details how MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, 527 groups, Al Franken, and other Democratic activists built the biggest, richest, and best organized political movement in generations. The book reports that in 2003, as Democratic operatives were planning the campaign against President Bush, they obtained a copy of a top-secret Republican strategy plan authored by top White House political adviser Karl Rove. The following excerpt details how those operatives, as part of the effort to woo Soros and other multi-million dollar contributors, showed Soros the secret...

In Denial: The Left Reacts to DiscoverTheNetwork By David HorowitzFrontPageMagazine.com | February 22, 2005It is now nearly a week since we launched our new website, DiscoverThe Network: A Guide to the Political Left. This is the first web attempt to define the left and to map its networks of funders, organizations and individuals along with their agendas (both overt and covert). We are gratified by the initial comments we have received in some quarters for this effort in the taxonomy of political movements. We wish to stress that it is still a work in progress, and that we expect...

The degenerate and mendacious former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis recently addressed an audience of journalists and accused President Bush of a long list of crimes. For this he received a rousing round of applause. (Symposium addresses legacy of Watergate, University of Texas at Austin, 4 February 2005). Okay, let’s take a look at the Democratic Party, seeing that Lewis’s adoring media disciples certainly won’t Drug running is a dirty business: One that no decent person would have a bar of. And yet there are those in the Democratic Party whose loathing for America, lust for power and contempt...

I was very disappointed that John Hinderaker [Hindrocket] chose to take full credit for exposing the CBS memogate scandal rather than at least tipping his hat to those here on FreeRepublic who actually discovered and proved the fraud. Other than that little omission, he did well. He emphasised that the report failed to discuss the coordination between CBS and the Kerry campaign. He emphasized [in legalese, he's a lawyer] that CBS engaged in what he called "affirmative misrepresentation" - what us mere civilians would call outright lies, which puts the lie to their "we were rushed" defense. He mentioned the...

Colonel David H. Hackworth was interviewed by Rather as an expert to evaluate the documents that Mapes obtained from Lieutenant Colonel Burkett.... Even though Colonel Hackworth was never in the TexANG, did not know Lieutenant Colonel Killian or any of the other releveant individuals, had no personal knowledge of President Bush's service in the TexANG and had no personal knowledge regarding the Killian documents, he reached some high critical conclusions.... First, Colonel Hackworth concluded that the documents were 'genuine.' ... Second, Colonel Hackworth concluded that, by not taking his physical, then-Lieutenant Bush was 'insubordinate' and would have been treated more...

Illegal Coordination Between Democrat Shadow Groups - the Kerry Campaign and the Florida Democrat PartyWashington, DC—RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie made the following statement today regarding a Democrat Party manual showing illegal coordination between the Kerry Campaign, the Florida Democrat Party and Democrat 527 shadow groups. Click here to read the manual. “Most people would be shocked to learn that the Florida Democrat Party has spent almost no dollars on federal election activity in the important battleground state of Florida. “The Florida Democrat Party isn’t spending federal dollars on election activity in Florida because they’ve outsourced their entire get out...

WASHINGTON -- RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie made the following statement today regarding a Democrat Party manual showing illegal coordination between the Kerry Campaign, the Florida Democrat Party and Democrat 527 shadow groups. Click here to read the manual. "Most people would be shocked to learn that the Florida Democrat Party has spent almost no dollars on federal election activity in the important battleground state of Florida.

The Soros connection "Remember that infamous Oct. 8 memo from ABC News political director Mark Halperin, which instructed ABC correspondents to slant their reportage in John Kerry's favor? " conservative author Richard Poe said on his blog (www.RichardPoe.com). "Well, it turns out that Halperin's father is none other than Morton H. Halperin, head of George Soros' Open Society Policy Center. Lowell Ponte reveals Mark Halperin's Soros connection in [yesterday's] FrontPageMagazine.com, in a stunning expose titled, 'The ABC's of Media Bias.' " Ohio ruling In a victory for the Democrats, a federal judge ruled yesterday that Ohio voters who show up...