Free Republic

Several Democratic insiders are now saying Sen. Joe Lieberman, D- Conn., will be kicked out of the party's caucus and lose his Senate chairmanship next year if he addresses the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., as planned. Lieberman, the four-term senator from Connecticut who was elected as an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 because of his support for the Iraq war, is supporting Republican nominee John McCain for president. According to The New York Times, Lieberman's Democratic colleagues are upset over his openly campaigning and traveling with the senator from Arizona during...

Illinois Senate Bill 1093 Introduced February 22, 2001 Amended in Judiciary Committee March 27, 2001 Passed by the state Senate on March 30, 2001 - - - - - 92_SB1093eng SB1093 Engrossed LRB9207891WHtm 1 AN ACT concerning abortion. 2 Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, 3 represented in the General Assembly: 4 Section 5. The Illinois Abortion Law of 1975 is amended 5 by changing Section 6 as follows: 6 (720 ILCS 510/6) (from Ch. 38, par. 81-26) 7 Sec. 6. (1) (a) Any physician who intentionally performs 8 an abortion when, in his medical...

PARK CITY, Utah - President George W. Bush visited Park City to help shake the pockets of donors at a Deer Valley function to bolster Republican campaigns. The Park Record has no report of how well the money-rustling went, but it does report that Bush was greeted, after a fashion, with crude signs and hand gestures. These hand gestures apparently weren’t friendly hand waves. Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds described them as “classless and embarrassing.” To ensure the president’s safety, 47 law officers were called out to help monitor the motorcade route. The cost to local taxpayers for overtime pay...

Legendary pastor mentors thousands, including U.S. Senator Barack Obama Written by Sara Karp Mar-Apr 2005 Jerimiah Wright fames progressive issues through lens of faith Religion News Service From: United Church of Christ, United Church News, March-April, 2005 CHICAGO - U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's pastor sounds frustrated. Although his sermons are passionate, even fiery at times, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a man with soft gray eyes and skin the color of latte, is normally even tempered. But when talking about how religious conservatives have pushed issues such as gay rights and stem cell research into the forefront, his voice becomes taut...

BARACK OBAMAJULY 2, 2007Laconia, New Hampshire  (Discussing Defense Issues) Listen to Audio (.mp3)  |  View Video at YouTube We've got real security challenges in this country.  There's no doubt that Al-Quaeda is still seeking to do us harm.  And, and our allies harm. There is no doubt that countries like North Korea and Iran pose a potential threat to us. But, let's be clear, the threat that we face now is no where as dire as it was during the Cold War. We shouldn't be governed by fear.  We should be smart and tough and strategic in dealing with these...

McCain to lean heavily on powerhouse fundraising of Republican National Committee... Developing...

As most of you will know, the U.S. Supreme Court held oral argument in District of Columbia v. Heller, the D.C. gun ban case. An extremely important Second Amendment case; in fact, the first of its kind in generations (about 70 years). The transcript of the argument is available here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1987832/posts But what is truly interesting, is to see the listing of amicus: that is, third parties who have submitted "friend of the court" briefs, advocating one side or the other of the issue. Following is the list. It is arranged first according to those who support the ban -...

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - x DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, : ET AL., : Petitioners : v. : No. 07-290 DICK ANTHONY HELLER. : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - x Washington, D.C. Tuesday, March 18, 2008 The above-entitled matter came on for oral argument before the Supreme Court of the United States at 10:06 a.m. APPEARANCES: WALTER DELLINGER, ESQ., Washington, D.C.; on behalf of the Petitioners. GEN. PAUL D....

Now, we all know what a Constitutional scholar, Sen. Joe Biden is. Well, he did go to law school, didn't he?  Sure did, graduated Syracuse University College of law in 1968, and was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.  But his career in politics started about fifteen minutes later (actually, he was elected to the County Council in Wilmington in 1970, and has been in the U.S. Senate since January, 1973).  His experience as a lawyer is fairly minimul. And through he has been in the Senate for the past thirty-four or so years, one can hardly expect him to...

With a new class of "victimhood" being created from the so-called "collapse" of the sub-prime mortgage market . . . can that perennial vulture of the misery and suffering of the American "minority", Jesse Jackson, be far behind? Of course not. Jesse Jackson has entered the fray of the morasse of sub-prime mortgage borrowers, to pick over their bones for whatever scraps he can salvage for himself. Contrary to the claims of his publicists, Mr. Jackson's life's work is not the vindication of the civil rights of the poor, the downtrodden, or the minority. His life's work is the gathering...

CONWAY — Hillary Clinton isn’t the only one who thinks Bill Clinton has a “bigger-than-life” presence. So does Conway artist Finton Shaw: He’s creating a 91⁄2 to 10-foot sculpture of the former president. According to Shaw, “Everybody that sees it says, ‘You’re doing the Man?’ “I say, ‘Well, who’s the Man?’ “They say, ‘Well, Bill Clinton.’” Shaw started on the sculpture, made from nonshrink grout, about two weeks ago and already has completed the head. It’s unmistakably Clinton.

Edwards raps excess greed DES MOINES - Democrat John Edwards yesterday released a plan he said would demand corporate responsibility, including limits on executive compensation packages and requirements that big businesses operate more openly. The presidential candidate said his plan would also restore retirement security for the middle class through tax overhauls and savings help, allowing more people to put aside money and purchase stock from companies. He said those companies would perform better for regular workers under his proposed corporate changes. Edwards said that a culture of greed has taken over and that while profits are skyrocketing on Wall...

Students who have parental permission to be treated at King Middle School's health center would be able to get birth control prescriptions under a proposal that the Portland School Committee will consider Wednesday. The proposal would build on the King Student Health Center's practice of providing condoms as part of its reproductive health program since it opened in 2000, said Lisa Belanger, a nurse practitioner who oversees the city's student health centers. If the committee approves the King proposal, it would be the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available to some students in...

The presidential candidates are offering prescriptions for everything from Iraq to healthcare, but listen closely. Their fixes are situational and incremental. Meanwhile, the underlying structural problems in American politics and government are systemic and prevent us from solving our most intractable challenges. If we really want to make progress and achieve greater fairness as a society, it is time for elemental change. And we should start by looking at the Constitution, with the goal of holding a new Constitutional Convention. . . . A few examples: * Restoring the war powers balance. The framers split authority concerning matters of war-making...

The Republicans fighting to be their party's presidential nominee have revealed their fund-raising prowess for the third quarter of the year. And although the top tier of candidates show they're putting up a good fight with each other, they all pale compared with the Democrats. First, the numbers. In the three months ending with September, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, brought in $10.5 million for the primary and another $500,000 for a general election campaign. Former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts took in $10 million from contributors and loaned himself another $8.5 million. And Fred Thompson, the lawyer-turned-actor-turned-politician,...

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations. But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency. The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects...

KABKABIYA, Sudan (AP) - Former President Carter got in a shouting match Wednesday with Sudanese security services who blocked him from a town in Darfur where he was trying to meet with refugees from the ongoing conflict. The 83-year-old Carter walked into this highly volatile pro-Sudanese government town to meet refugees too frightened to attend a scheduled meeting at a nearby compound. He was able to make it to a school where he met with one tribal representative and was preparing to go further into the town when Sudanese security officers stopped him. "You can't go. It's not on the...

From yesterday's post (now locked for some reason), we find this from the BBC: - - - - - - - - - - BBC Tells Kids U.S. Brought 9/11 on Itself By John Stephenson | September 11, 2007 - 15:50 ET The BBC decided to set up a website explaining 911 to kids. They have several sections set up to help the kids out on understanding the war on terror the BBC way. In one section they ask, Why Did They Do It? Guess who gets the blame? The way America has got involved in conflicts in regions like...

Again it comes, for the sixth time now — 2,191 days after that awful morning — falling for the first time on a Tuesday, the same day of the week. Again there will be the public tributes, the tightly scripted memorial events, the reflex news coverage, the souvenir peddlers. Is all of it necessary, at the same decibel level — still?