Free Republic

WFTV learned on Monday that former U.S. Congressman Alan Grayson is running for office again. On Monday, Grayson said he doesn't plan to do anything different. He said he's running again because of all the people who have reached out and asked him to. Grayson already raised nearly $100,000 in donations before filing his paperwork on Monday. "We need somebody who's gonna stick up for what's right. Somebody with guts," Grayson said. During Grayson's last campaign an ad referred to his opponent, Daniel Webster, as Taliban Dan. Grayson lost his District 8 Congressional seat to Webster after a highly controversial...

He doesn’t have super powers, but he dresses like a superhero. Seattle residents are becoming familiar with an anonymous crime fighter known only as “Phoenix Jones.” Like a comic book star, he has a skin-tight suit and caries weapons such as a taser and pepper spray. And he recently rescued a man going through a car jacking: KIRO reports: KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Monique Ming Laven met him. “My name is Phoenix Jones,” said the man. The man is the hero Dan’s been trying to tell his friends about.“ People are saying, ‘No way, dude, you were probably drunk,’”...

Updated at 12:23 p.m. Restaurant owner Tamyra d'Ippolito (D) has enough signatures to make the ballot in the race to replace Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), she told Hotline OnCall in a brief interview, but an official in a key district says she has failed to reach the threshold. An official in Marion Co. (IN) tells Hotline OnCall d'Ippolito turned in just 3 signatures in the 7th CD, the district with the highest percentage of Dem voters. The noon deadline has passed, meaning d'Ippolito failed to meet the requirements to get on the ballot. She would have been required to submit...

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, 6-foot-4 in a pink shirt and black cowboy boots, sighs as he reaches for his suit jacket. "You have to look out for the trackers," he says. ¶ Armed with video cameras, trackers follow politically vulnerable lawmakers, hurling provocative questions and hoping for a juicy reaction. "Rep. Alan Grayson assaults a cameraman," beckons one clip on the Internet. Grayson decides to take the underground route to the Capitol, where 10 votes await on a Thursday afternoon, avoiding having to cross Independence Avenue and a potential run-in with a tracker. Such is the hardball, YouTube...

DC forum member El Goodo has done some excellent detective work on Obama’s so-called economic czars, wading through dirty pools that other so-called muckrakers refuse to tread. The first person he’s looked into is “green jobs” czar Van Jones. In typical Wikipedia fashion, the checkered past and political extremism of a politically liberal public figure is almost completely discarded and that which is left is played down. As noted by El Goodo, Jones is a former communist who was radicalized by the 1992 Los Angeles riots and has continued to associate himself with groups on the far left, including the...

(This is part 2 of an article.) Recently neo-fascists opposed to Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s nominee to the United States Supreme Court, have argued that she doesn’t respect the “sanctity” of the law and chooses instead to be guided by her personal beliefs. But if there is such a thing as “sanctity” of the law, why are so many Supreme Court cases decided by five-four votes split along ideological lines? Where is this concern when self-loathing Clarence Thomas uses his experiences at Yale University, not the law, to dismantle affirmative action programs, or when Antonin Scalia unethically hears cases where...

Breaking AP Wires: Michael Jackson suffers major heart attack in Los Angeles...listed in critical condition...

We have recently heard many shocking stories of brutal killings and ruthless violence related to drug cartels warring with Mexican and US officials. It is approaching the fever pitch of a full blown crisis. Unfortunately, the administration is not likely to waste this opportunity to further expand government. Hopefully, we can take a deep breath and look at history for the optimal way to deal with this dangerous situation, which is not unprecedented. Alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s brought similar violence, gangs, lawlessness, corruption and brutality. The reason for the violence was not that making and selling alcohol was inherently...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kADXWXgxKJk New projections from Ron Paul as his prominence in the mainstream media continues to increase.

Workers World newspaper in the past has supported the candidates of Workers World Party running for national office in the U.S. presidential elections and who have put forward a revolutionary socialist program. This time we are taking the unusual step of endorsing the candidacy of Cynthia McKinney because these are unique times and this is a unique candidate.

DELRAY BEACH, Fla.—High on prescription drugs and four days without sleep, Michael Berke raced his Harley to the megachurch where he'd found a home. He barged into the church office, cursing loudly and wearing a mesh shirt printed with profanity. In his hands he held a picture of a woman with long, red hair and pouty lips. "This is who I used to be," he said. "And this" — he gestured to his breastless chest, bald head and red goatee — "is who I've become." He was born a man. After a lifetime as a social misfit, he had transformed...

NEW YORK - Former President Carter, who already has a book coming out this fall about his post-White House years, is working on a memoir about his mother, Lillian, to be published next spring by Simon & Schuster. "Jimmy Carter has inspired millions. Its a great opportunity to meet the woman who inspired him," David Rosenthal, executive vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster, said Thursday in a statement. The Lillian Carter book, currently untitled, is a "loving, admiring, wry homage" to the activist and former Peace Corps volunteer widely known as the down-to-earth "Miss Lillian." According to Simon...

Al Gore is both leading the fight against climate change and coming back from political oblivion ONCE he was the nearly man of American politics, but this weekend Al Gore, Bill Clinton’s former sidekick, made it clear he was back, no longer just a politician but a phenomenon: the first global green celebrity. As the Live Earth concerts rolled out around the globe, each blessed with Gore’s presence, either live or on giant screens, it became clear that the failed presidential candidate has metamorphosed into a prophet. In an interview with The Sunday Times before yesterday’s Live Earth concert at...

PHOENIX — Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington trotted out an aide dressed as an alien 10 years ago to spoof the frenzy surrounding mysterious lights in the Phoenix sky. Now he says he saw the lights himself, and believed from the start that they were extraterrestrial. Now a pastry chef and business consultant, Symington said he did not acknowledge his own encounter at first because he did not want people to panic. The former governor, who faced fraud charges at the time, also said he did not need the additional problems such an admission would have created.

MIAMI Republican Representative Tom Tancredo, of Colorado, will not make a speech and appearance before the Miami Rotary Club in Miami Thursday after threats were reported. However, it’s still not known whether the congressman, who called Miami a “Third World country” has cancelled his trip to Miami altogether. The manager of the restaurant where Tancredo was to speak, The Rusty Pelican on Key Biscayne, said Wednesday that the owners didn’t want him to appear on Thursday in order to keep up the integrity and reputation of the business. The manager also said staff members objected to working the party where...

An ethnic studies professor from the University of Colorado, Ward Churchill, received a standing ovation last night from a crowd of more than 200 New School students after blaming the 2001 World Trade Center attacks on America's support of Israel and its sanctions against Iraq in 1996. In a two-hour speech at the New School titled "Sterilizing History: The Fabrication of Innocent Americans," delivered without notes, Mr. Churchill traced what he called a pattern of mass murder as American foreign policy from the time of the country's inception to the events of September 11, 2001, which he said the country...

Billions of people could be wiped out over the next century because of climate change, a leading expert said. Professor James Lovelock, who pioneered the idea of the Earth as a living organism, said as the planet heats up humans will find it increasingly hard to survive. He warned that as conditions worsen, the global population which is currently around 6.5 billion, may sink as low as 500 million. Prof Lovelock also claims that any attempts to tackle climate change will not be able to solve the problem, merely buy us time. Given the dire situation we face, he urged...

Searching for 'our alien origins' By Andrew Thompson BBC Horizon Dr Wickramasinghe thinks life could have originated in space In July 2001, a mysterious red rain started falling over a large area of southern India. Locals believed that it foretold the end of the world, though the official explanation was that it was desert dust that had blown over from Arabia. But one scientist in the area, Dr Godfrey Louis, was convinced there was something much more unusual going on. Not only did Dr Louis discover that there were tiny biological cells present, but because they did not appear to...

Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record: “If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but...

The standing ovation has finally died down, and Steven E. Jones, a soft-spoken physics professor, finds himself pinned against the stage by some of the enthusiastic fans who packed a University of Denver auditorium over the weekend to see him. A man with a "Got truth?" T-shirt offers Jones a careful explanation for why the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center were operated by remote control. Another quizzes him about the size of the footprint of the Pentagon crash - too small, he says, for the Boeing 757 that "officially" smashed into it on Sept. 11, 2001. "Can...