Free Republic

...“Though I never anticipated this moment, I am resolved to do everything I can to move Minnesota forward,” Smith said. “I will be a fierce advocate in the U.S. Senate for equity and fairness.”

With disgraced pro-abortion Senator Al Franken stepping down from his Senate seat after being exposed of multiple counts of sexual harassment, Minnesota is getting a new Senator. Unfortunately the state as merely replacing one abortion activists with another. Today, pro-abortion Gov, Mark Dayton replaced Franken with a former executive of the Planned Parenthood abortion company, Tina Smith. Leo LaLonde, President of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, was disappointed but not surprised by the news. “Gov. Mark Dayton’s appointment of Tina Smith to represent Minnesota in the U.S. Senate is overwhelmingly disappointing to the state’s pro-life majority. An abortion industry insider,...

America is having a reckoning and it’s long overdue. I’m talking about the movement to hold sexual harassers accountable for their actions. This important movement is now shaking the halls of power in Congress and state capitols and I am determined to help lead it. I remember my first year in the Tennessee House of Representatives. It was 1998, and having spent my career as a nurse and an educator, I had a lot to learn about the legislative process. I immediately figured out that the state House had a “good ol' boy” culture - and learned about the inappropriate...

Dec 13 (Reuters) - Minnesota's Democratic Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith was appointed as U.S. senator on Wednesday to replace Al Franken, who resigned after being accused of sexual harassment, the state's governor said at a news conference. Governor Mark Dayton said that Smith will serve a one-year term in the Senate, concluding in January 2019. Smith, 59, will run in a special election for the seat next year. Smith became lieutenant governor in January 2015. The Star Tribune said she previously worked as Dayton's chief of staff and held positions at General Mills and Planned Parenthood. Last week Franken, 66,...

There is a strong argument to be made that Sen. Al Franken's central reason for resigning is he knew he would be reduced to being shunned by his peers and the press if he were to continue representing Minnesota in the congressional upper chamber. In short, he would have become a joke, an afterthought, a pariah, a no one. For the egocentric Minnesotan who was courted by everyone in the Democratic Party to headline their fundraisers -- both for their re-elections as well as their state party's coffers -- and fawned over for his Hollywood pedigree and admired by progressives...

Democratic Minnesota Sen. Al Franken has yet to announce when he’s actually going to leave office. Franken announced last Thursday that he would be resigning “in the coming weeks” after eight different women accused him of groping or forcibly kissing them. “The timing of Franken’s resignation remains unclear, as is his motive in delaying it,” New York Magazine’s Ed Kilgore noted at the time. Franken has yet to offer any more specificity about when he’s going to follow through in resigning. Franken’s office did not return multiple requests for comment on the subject.

Newspapermen were rarely whiners. Whining became fashionable only after “journalists” overran newsrooms. The best newspapermen, so the folk wisdom went, were Southerners, Jews and the Irish. Southerners loved the words and the occasions to tell stories, the Jews for the opportunity to do public good, and the Irish for the bottle frequently slipped into the bottom desk drawer by boosters, lobbyists, public-relations flacks and others up to no particular good. Such an irreverent formulation was enough to offend everybody, but in the old days no one took offense because everybody knew that nobody would particularly care if anybody did. What...

There is a strong argument to be made that Al Franken’s central reason for resigning from his Senate seat is that he knew he would be reduced to being shunned by his peers and the press if he had remained to represent Minnesota in the congressional upper chamber. In short, he would have become a joke, an afterthought, a pariah, a no one. For a man who was courted by everyone in the Democratic Party to headline their fundraisers — both for their re-elections as well as their state party’s coffers — fawned over for his Hollywood pedigree, and admired...

On Friday’s Morning Joe, the MSNBC show’s hosts and guests spent most of their broadcast mourning the announced resignation of Minnesota Senator Al Franken from Congress in the wake of over half a dozen allegations of sexual assault against him. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, MSNBC’s liberal morning pundits went to extraordinary lengths to cast doubt on the women who have accused Franken of sexual misconduct, violating the network’s own oft-repeated standards for Republican and conservative politicians.New York Times writer Bari Weiss was even brought on to complain about how “some innocent people are going to go down” as...

<p>Contrary to popular perception, Al Franken did not resign yesterday.</p> <p>"[T]oday I am announcing that in the coming weeks I will be resigning as member of the United States Senate. I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of...sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party."</p>

More women are speaking out against boorishness and much worse that they claim to have experienced from prominent politically active men, encouraged by the courage of others, and by the contrition expected of their accused tormentors. A decision appears to have been made at the top levels of the Democratic Party that the sacrifice of the careers of their own pawns on the political chessboard is worthwhile in the quest to unseat a sitting POTUS. So, the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, John Conyers, only partially functional owing to advanced age, is stepping down from his safe seat...

In the comedy movie “Anchorman,” comedian Will Farrell advises his TV audience to “stay classy.” On Thursday, former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Al Franken didn’t follow that advice and resigned from the U.S. Senate in a particularly classless way. Even after eight women told reporters that the Minnesota Democrat had groped or forcibly kissed them, Franken denied he had done anything wrong. Franken said from the Senate floor that “some of the allegations are simply not true” and that he remembered other accusations differently. He then tried to wrap himself in a feminist flag by vowing he had always been...

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) leaving the U.S. Senate should “establish a national standard” on how the Senate deals with Alabama GOP Senate hopeful Roy Moore if he wins. Partial transcript as follows: DICKERSON: Joining us now is Senate Democratic Whip Richard Durbin. He is in Springfield, Illinois. Welcome, senator. I want to pick up on something that Senator Collins said about the choice that senators may face if Roy Moore is elected in Alabama. And the question is: What business does the Senate have in overturning the will of...

<p>Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday defended Democratic Sen. Al Franken, saying calls for his resignation amid sexual misconduct allegations were “purely and simply hysteria.”</p> <p>In remarks on Fox News Sunday, the Georgia Republican last week compared the Democratic Party response to the sexual harassment scandal as akin to a lynching.</p>

Well, the dam broke for Sen. Al Franken (D-MN). He’s going to leave. After eight women accused him of sexual misconduct, along with the resignation of Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) who also faced sexual harassment accusations, Democratic leadership decided it was time to clean house. It’s not a profile in courage. It’s not a come to Jesus moment. It’s all politics, which you already know. Franken is from a Democratic state with a Democratic governor. He was expendable and his exit allows Democrat to refocus their pressure on Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. It still doesn’t erase the fact...

Among all the women who have accused all the various men, Leeann Tweeden has pictorial evidence: the infamous photo of Al Franken with his hands over her breasts. So why would Mika Brzezinski single out Tweeden to cast doubt on her veracity? On today’s Morning Joe, Brzezinski said: “We’ve never really talked about the woman who first came out against Al Franken . . . Playboy model who goes on Hannity, who voted for Trump . . . I’m just wondering if all women need to be believed.” Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Al Franken was joking about raping a baby as he roasted a colleague from Hollywood. Everyone in the crowd laughs at his sick and unfunny jokes. Warning, very disgusting. https://youtu.be/fJOAGILeiAY

Sen. Al Franken has announced he will resign his seat in the coming weeks. But this isn't the first time Minnesotans have witnessed a shift in that particular seat.  Some political experts even call it cursed. "This is a troubled seat," said David Schultz, a political expert at Hamline University. Schultz said to better understand why, you have to go back more than 40 years.   "It all started in 1976 when then-Senator Walter Mondale resigns to become Vice President of the United States," he said. "It creates a vacancy. Gov. Wendy Anderson wants to become Senator, (so) he resigns as...

In the wake of a growing pile of sexual misconduct accusations, Sen. Al Franken, Comedian of Minnesota, was pressed by a majority of Senate Democrats to resign. When the number of accusers reached a critical mass, "They turned on one of their party's most popular figures with stunning swiftness," reported the Washington Post. That's a pretty dramatic decline from the heights just nine months ago, when the Post was preparing him for the White House. Its headline then was "Al Franken May Be the Perfect Senator for the Trump Era -- a Deadly Serious Funnyman." He was "having a breakout...

Minnesota Sen. Al Franken will resign from the United States Senate "in the coming weeks" he announced Thursday, a day after a number of his Democratic colleagues called for him to step down amid mounting allegations of sexual misconduct against women. "Today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate," Franken said on the Senate floor. "It's become clear that I can't both pursue the Ethics Committee process and at the same time remain an effective senator for [the people of Minnesota]."