Free Republic

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Former Pittsburgh Steelers star Lynn Swann has formed a campaign committee to raise money for a potential run for governor in 2006. Swann named his committee Team 88, the number he wore as a wide receiver for the Steelers from 1974 to 1982, when the team won four Super Bowls. "I will spend time introducing myself to communities across the commonwealth," the NFL Hall of Famer said in a statement Wednesday. "We will also explore the potential political and financial support for my candidacy." Swann, who turns 53 next month, faces at least two prospective opponents in...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and top leaders of the Legislature – including Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman, R-Irvine – are making a pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., today to persuade Congress and the Bush administration to send more federal tax dollars to California. The issue:For every dollar that California residents and businesses send to the federal government in the form of taxes, the state gets back just 79 cents in the form of direct federal spending, such as operating military bases or money sent for state-run programs such as Medi-Cal. With a $50 billion gap between what we send to Washington and...

White House sides with bill to bar illegal immigrants from using driver's licenses to board planes or enter federal facilities. WASHINGTON – The Bush administration today gave a boost to a Republican-backed measure being debated on the House floor this week that would bar illegal immigrants from using driver's licenses to board airplanes or enter federal facilities. All five GOP House members from Orange County have co-sponsored the measure. "The administration strongly supports House passage of HR418, to strengthen the ability of the United States to protect against terrorist entry into and activities within the United States," said a policy...

NEW YORK, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Boeing Co. has hired a former deputy U.S. attorney general and ex-Virginia attorney general to help deal with two separate investigations of possible wrongdoing in its dealings with the Pentagon. The commercial jet maker faces separate probes of whether it improperly acquired a rival's proprietary documents and whether it gained an unfair advantage thanks to a former top Air Force official who has admitted to steering billions of dollars in contracts to Boeing before it hired her. Chicago-based Boeing has denied wrongdoing in both cases. A Boeing spokesman said the No. 2 U.S. defense...

Orange County’s unemployment picture improved dramatically in November, with the local jobless rate falling to its lowest level in three-and-a-half years as builders, hotels and restaurants, and accountants, lawyers and other professional service providers added to their payrolls. As a result, the county’s unemployment rate fell to 2.9 percent last month, the state Employment Development Department said today, its lowest level since May 2001 and down from 3.6 percent a year ago. The number of officially unemployed people in the county also fell to a three-and-a-half-year low of 46,900. California’s labor market improved last month as well, the EDD said....

WASHINGTON - Liberal powerhouse MoveOn has a message for the "professional election losers" who run the Democratic Party: "We bought it, we own it, we're going to take it back." A scathing e-mail from the head of MoveOn's political action committee to the group's supporters on Thursday targets outgoing Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe as a tool of corporate donors who alienated both traditional and progressive Democrats. "For years, the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base," said the e-mail from MoveOn PAC's Eli Pariser....

The claim that Orange County is the country's most GOP county lost a bit of luster a few years ago when slipping Republican registration here meant it didn't even have the highest percentage of GOP voters in the state, let alone nationwide. But the claim is back, and not because it has regained its ranking in terms of percentage of registration. Rather, the county brought home November's largest margin of victory for George W. Bush. Of the nation's 3,066 counties, Orange County had the incumbent beating John Kerry by 222,593 votes. Second was Maricopa County, Ariz., with a 174,606-vote margin....

Late ballots appear to make measure requiring health insurance coverage a winner. But a clerical error may be responsible, officials say. SACRAMENTO — The fate of a statewide proposition mandating health insurance coverage — assumed to have been defeated in the Nov. 2 election — was thrown into confusion Tuesday night after the secretary of state's office reported that late-counted ballots had given Proposition 72 a narrow margin of victory. But state elections officials, who had posted the results on the secretary of state's website after the close of business Tuesday, removed them a few hours later, fearing that a...

NEW YORK - United Nations employees were reportedly preparing last night to issue a historic vote of no confidence in scandal-plagued chief Kofi Annan. The UN staff union, in what officials said was the first vote of its kind in the UN's history, was set to approve a resolution withdrawing its support for the embattled Secretary-General and UN management. Mr Annan has been in the line of fire over a high-profile series of scandals including a UN aid program that investigators said allowed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to embezzle billions of dollars. But staffers said the trigger for the no-confidence...

Ann Belles long knew she wanted to adopt orphaned boys. Today, she's got 29, all with some sort of disability. HUNTINGTON BEACH – The young boys loomed larger than life on the movie screen, twirling empty soup bowls and dancing and singing in their tattered clothes. A young girl watched intently in the darkened theater, taking in the bittersweet lyrics. A friend tried to whisper in her ear, but the 5-year-old quickly shushed her. "I'm watching a movie. Don't talk," Ann Belles snapped back, quite out of character. The singing orphans had sown the first seeds of a lifelong passion....

WASHINGTON - Teresa Heinz Kerry says she doesn't regret any of the remarks she's made during the campaign season, although she concedes that some of her comments didn't always come out exactly the way she intended. "I have not said very much at all except people repeat it but what I have said, I meant to say," Heinz Kerry said Tuesday during an appearance on the daytime talk show "The View." The outspoken wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry who told a reporter this summer to "shove it" after saying he quoted her out of context, said she sometimes...

(long article - interesting excerpts below) *snip* In what is believed to be the first mission of its kind, Global Exchange- an international human-rights organization in San Francisco that sponsors independent election monitoring overseas - has invited 20 of these "skilled election observers" to America to investigate "red-flag issues" in our electoral processes. To underscore just how deeply confidence has been shaken since the debacle of 2000, the Bush administration has invited a team of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to keep an eye on the Nov. 2 election as well. *snip* And, of course,...

FL: Bush 50 - Kerry 46 OH: Bush 48 - Kerry 46 PA: Bush 49 - Kerry 44

Day of Week Polling Bias Survey data from 115,500 Telephone Interviews with Likely VotersFebruary - September, 2004 Election 2004 IssuesWho Do You Trust? Release Day Bush Kerry Sunday 45.9% 45.8% Monday 45.6% 46.0% Tuesday 45.7% 46.0% Wednesday 45.6% 46.1% Thursday 45.8% 45.9% Friday 46.1% 45.6% Saturday 46.1% 45.7% RasmussenReports.com     September 16, 2004--Many commentators have speculated that certain days of the week provide better polling results for Republicans while other days are better for Democrats. Until now, there has never been enough data to provide a credible analysis of this theory.Rasmussen Reports has asked voters every night this...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Security forces discovered three beheaded bodies Wednesday on a road north of Baghdad, and a car bomb exploded in a town south of the capital, killing two people amid a surge of violence that has left more than 200 dead in the past four days. The three bodies were found without documents near Dijiel, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman of the Interior Ministry. They were all male and had tattoos, he said. A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bodies appeared to be Iraqi nationals and that their...

Following his appearance on the Hugh Hewitt program ths evening, Congressman Cox sent a letter to Congressman Fred Upton, Chair of the Subcommittee of Telecommunications and the Internet, of which Cox is a member. The letter reads in part: "Dear Chairman Upton: This is a request that you commence a Subcommittee investigation into the continued use by CBS News of apparently forged documents concerning the service record of President George W. Bush intended to unfairly damage his reputation and influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. In February 2001, the Energy & Commerce Committee held hearings calling the television...

The August unemployment rate slips from 3.8 percent in July and 3.8 percent a year earlier. Orange County’s unemployment picture brightened last month, state figures released today show. The county’s jobless rate fell to 3.2 percent in August, the state Employment Development Department said, down from 3.8 percent in July and 3.8 percent in August 2003. <...snip...> The state’s unemployment rate also improved. EDD said California’s jobless rate fell to 5.8 percent in August, down from 6.2 percent in July and 6.8 percent last year.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of new people signing up for jobless benefits plunged last week, partly reflecting a tapering off of filings related to Hurricane Charley. For the week ending Sept. 4, new applications for unemployment insurance dropped by a seasonally adjusted 44,000 from the previous week to 319,000, the lowest level since July 3, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The decline of 44,000 was the largest decrease since the week ending Dec. 8, 2001. (...snip...) The latest snapshot of the layoffs climate was better than analysts were expecting. They were forecasting a smaller drop of around 17,000 for...

The SwiftVets have released another chapter of their book "Unfit for Command". You can request that it be emailed to you at the link above.

Anti-terrorist team investigates holdup at Radio Shack in Laguna Niguel. LAGUNA NIGUEL – A terrorism task force is investigating an armed robbery Wednesday at a Radio Shack in which the thief aroused more suspicion than a typical bandit, authorities said. At 9 a.m., a man described as having a Middle Eastern accent called the Radio Shack store at 27230 Alicia Parkway and asked for directions from Garden Grove. He was told of Radio Shacks closer to Garden Grove, sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said. About noon, a man also described as having a Middle Eastern accent arrived at the store wearing...