Free Republic

CTH held off reporting on this explosive story until we could see if a tell-tale consequence surfaced; perhaps it has. On Friday the National Security Council senior director for European and Russian affairs, Andrew Peek, was escorted from the White House grounds and is currently under a security investigation. There are few details about why Peek was physically removed and is under a very serious investigation; however, some of Andrew Peek’s professional background details tell a story. The connection to Gen. John Allen is a MASSIVE warning flare. Andrew Peek, the senior director for European and Russian affairs at the...

Peek went on to major in international politics at Princeton, study Persian, and pursue a master's in international relations at Harvard before heading to D.C. as a foreign policy researcher for the conservative Heritage Foundation. He then became a foreign policy adviser to Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican. When Smith lost his next election, Peek went on to work for another Republican senator, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, on Syria and Lebanon policy, helping to draft a bill expanding sanctions on Hezbollah. In 2008, he enlisted as a reserve officer in the Army and spent a year in Afghanistan at...

A prominent supporter of President Barack Obama and co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign was arrested last week on charges of sodomy and sexual abuse related to what authorities said was an encounter with a juvenile male. Terrence Bean, 66, a major Democratic donor and a celebrated gay-rights activist, was indicted on two felony charges of sodomy and a misdemeanor count of sexual abuse by a grand jury and arrested in Oregon Wednesday, according to a statement from the Portland Police Bureau. Bean was released later that day on bail, pending a court hearing. Kiah Lawson, a 25-year-old identified by...

Democrats' hypocrisy on Bolton exposed Joel Mowbray May 5, 2005 Call it the tale of two confirmation hearings. Two of the four men most recently nominated to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations found their candidacies challenged, though they could not have faced more different receptions.  Both men were supremely qualified, but the similarities end there. The divergent paths for each reveal Democrats' rabid partisanship and belies their claims that they oppose John Bolton on the grounds that character matters. Six years ago, Foreign Service veteran Richard Holbrooke was awaiting Senate confirmation.  As former a ambassador to Germany,...

A sizable chunk of the vote in the Oregon Senate race between Republican incumbent Gordon Smith and Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley has not yet been counted, but The Oregonian is calling the race for Merkley. Though Merkley only holds a lead of 2,000 votes, most of the uncounted votes are from heavily-Democratic counties. If this projection holds up, that would give the Democrats 57 seats to the Republicans' 40. In the three other races still up in the air, GOP incumbents are poised to hold on to their seats by razor-thin margins, and thus help sustain the Republicans' ability to...

WASHINGTON — With the majority of votes from Democratic strongholds in Multnomah and Lane counties yet to be counted, incumbent U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith held a less than 1 percentage point lead over Democrat Jeff Merkley, as of 3 a.m. today. Both candidates said the contest was too close to call and urged their supporters to check back later this morning. Smith led Merkley 47.25 percent to 46.92 percent, according to vote totals from the state elections division. About 43 percent of votes statewide had been reported late Tuesday evening, but just 27 percent of votes in Multnomah County and...

Democrat Jeff Merkley has ousted Republican Gordon Smith from his U.S. Senate seat, The Oregonian projects. Merkley, a five-term state lawmaker and former Habitat for Humanity director, took advantage of a surge of Democratic support to win a close, bitterly fought battle with Smith, who has served 12 years in Washington. Despite the closeness of the count, expert number crunchers said they expect Merkley to win. Portland pollster Tim Hibbitts, appearing as an analyst on Fox News(12), outright called the race for Merkley, based primarily on how many votes remain uncounted in Democrat-rich Multnomah County. He stuck by that call...

There are 140,000 votes left to count in Multnomah county which will go almost two to one for his opponent. There are nowhere near enough other outstanding votes for Smith. Thus, he'll lose by roughly 30,000 votes and yet another RINO is toast.

While control of Congress certainly will not shift back to the Republicans, the sixty vote threshold in the Senate for breaking the perpetual Republican filibuster is within reach for the Democrats, although it is still a long reach. One contest the Democrats probably have to win if they are to reach filibuster-proof status is the race between two-term incumbent Republican Gordon Smith and his Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley in Oregon, a state where Barack Obama holds a consistent and wide lead over John McCain in the polls. The popularity of Obama in Oregon has not been lost on Smith. "Smith...

A new SurveyUSA poll suggests Oregon's Senate race may be shifting in the direction of Democrat Jeff Merkley. The poll, broadcast on KATU's noon news, showed Merkley with 46 percent to 41 percent for Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore. Constitution Party candidate David Brownlow had 7 percent and the remaining 6 percent were undecided. The margin of error is 4.1 percentage points, plus or minus.

Oregon Senator Gordon Smith is in dangerous territory again, virtually tied with Jeff Merkley, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state. The incumbent Republican holds a statistically insignificant 46% to 45% lead over Merkley. The race is now the closest it’s been since regular tracking began in February. Just one month ago, Smith had an eight-point lead but still received under 50% support from voters. Any incumbent senator who polls under 50% is considered vulnerable. In July, Merkley was ahead 43% to 41%.

Not all of them are legal. WESTON—Up on a hill overlooking this Eastern Oregon town of 701 people, Smith Frozen Foods turns raw produce from the surrounding fields into ready-to-eat products. Smith’s goods appear in grocery stores under other brand names. But in tiny Weston, a water tank emblazoned with the capital letters S-M-I-T-H sits like a sentry greeting travelers on nearby Highway 11. Gordon Smith, a United States senator from Oregon and the only Republican senator representing a West Coast state, has owned the plant his grandfather founded in 1919 for nearly 30 years. “Son,” father Milan Smith once...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Will he or won't he? Vice President Dick Cheney is one of the nation's most prominent Republicans, but there are doubts about whether he will attend the GOP convention. ... Separately, at least five Republican senators have decided to skip the GOP convention. Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine all face tough re-election campaigns. Two others, Wayne Allard of Colorado and Larry Craig of Idaho, are retiring.

Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Merkley is excited by a new poll that for the first time shows him ahead of Republican Sen. Gordon Smith - even if the two-point lead is well within the survey's margin of error. Jeff Merkley "The fact that we're in the lead is tremendous," said Merkley spokesman Matt Canter, saying he thinks that's probably the first time Smith has found himself in such a position in his nearly 12 years in the Senate. However, Smith's own pollster, Bob Moore, said he didn't trust the methodology of the poll by Rasmussen Reports. It uses an automated...

Barack Obama's name is likely to help several Democratic candidates down ballot, but what about a Republican? Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, one of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans, is stressing his history of working with the presumptive Democratic nominee in a new campaign ad hitting airwaves Tuesday....

These are bleak times for Oregon Republicans. The party that once dominated state politics has fallen into disarray -- its state organization deeply in debt, its membership fractured, its influence at an all-time low. On the eve of the Dorchester Conference, the yearly gathering of Republicans that opens tonight in Seaside, the party that eked out just a single statewide victory since 2000 finds itself in an anxious period of retrenching and soul-searching. "It's a wake-up call," says former state labor commissioner Jack Roberts. "We've been spending so much of our time arguing about who is more Republican, and the...

It is often said that the best way to find out how a candidate would act in office if elected, is to see who he/she surrounds himself with. Money is another factor, what people and industries are backing the candidate. These answers should be an indicator of what to expect. Who is behind the man should gauge what kind of man he is. The great Richard Viguerie tells the story of how he and other conservatives had a “seat at the table” of the presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan for. His thinking was if Conservatives aren’t at...

A spokesman for Concerned Women for America warns that yet another piece of legislation being promoted in the Democrat-led Congress would force taxpayers to subsidize immoral and dangerous behavior. Senators Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) and Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) have introduced a bill that will extend domestic partner benefits to homosexual federal employees. The measure would allow an employee and his or her same-sex partner to be eligible for federal health benefits, the Family and Medical Leave program, long-term care, insurance, and retirement benefits. Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), who is an open homosexual, and Tom Lantos (D-California) have introduced the bill in...

<p>WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday approved a long-debated measure that would expand the federal hate-crime law to cover violence against gays and, in an unusual gambit to make it difficult for President Bush to carry out his veto threat, attached it to a defense bill.</p>

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of senators today introduced an amendment that would require the president to begin reducing the number of American troops in Iraq within four months and to transition the mission of our remaining military forces there to force protection, training of Iraqi Security Forces, and counterterrorism missions. It would further provide that our troops be out of Iraq by April 30, 2008, except for those needed for the specified limited missions. The senators introducing the amendment include Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Jack Reed (D-RI), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), John Kerry (D-MA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME),...