Free Republic

Rita Hauser is a lifelong Republican. But early last week the founder of Republicans for Obama urged about 100 Jewish women meeting at a home in Boca Raton to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate. "My party has lost its way," Hauser said at the home of Obama supporter Lisa Rosenfeld. Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, whom she knows, has embraced the extreme element of the Republican Party, Hauser said. McCain is not calm and collected, Hauser said. "More important to me, John is erratic. The John of today is not the John of 2000," she said.

Barack Obama's campaign is rolling out a number of centrist Republicans who are endorsing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee over Republican rival John McCain - in a show of his ability to win cross-over votes. A conference call Tuesday featured former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, former White House intelligence adviser Rita Hauser and former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who represented his state as a Republican, but switched to become a Democrat so he could vote for Obama in the primary. Leach predicted that a lot of Republicans and independents are going to be attracted by Obama's campaign. The Obama...

Secrets, Donors and the Edward Said Chair Columbia University’s newly established Edward Said Chair in Middle East Studies is noteworthy for several reasons. The position is named for the recently deceased professor best known for his defense of Palestinian “resistence.” And Rashid Khalidi, an overt supporter of Palestinian violence and – according to a just-published biography of Yasir Arafat from Oxford University Press – a former PLO press spokesman[i], has joined Columbia to fill the post. But there is something even more objectionable about this chair: It is anonymously endowed and Columbia University – perhaps against the law – refuses...