Free Republic

I just received this email and thought it should be posted here. On Tuesday, the Senate health committee voted 12-11 in favor of a two-page amendment, courtesy of Tom Coburn which would require all Members of Congress and their staff members to enroll in any new government-run health plan. Congressman John Fleming ( Louisiana physician) has proposed an amendment that would require Congressmen and Senators to take the same health care plan that they would force on us... (Under proposed legislation they are exempt.) Congressman Fleming is encouraging people to go to his Website and sign his petition. The process...

* Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong. * Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance. * Life is simpler when you plow around the stump. * A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor. * Words that soak into your ears are whispered. ..not yelled. * Meanness don't jes' happen overnight. * Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads I really like this one. * Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you. * It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge. * You cannot...

It was quiet interesting to finally experience being one of the "polled" people. The guy was very nice but not very articulate. At one point he had to spell the word "proposition" because he didn't know how to pronounce it. Anyway, this is what they do. Each question obviously has a set of valid answers but, more often that not he wouldn't read the available answers. I stopped him at one point and asked him how he would determine what answer to choose if a participant gives him a general answer that's not one of the options. He can figure...

You look at guys like Glenn Reynolds on Instapundit or Stephen Green, aka VodkaPundit, and they're laid-back libertarian-ish guys who want to see terrorists blown into tiny chunks and to be left alone on social issues. A smart Democratic candidate could win a whole bunch of votes from these types of folks. Well, it's not just John Kerry that has lost Green, but the whole Democratic party. The straw that broke the camel's back? The "pre-emptive" complaints of voter intimidation. If Drudge has it right, then the Kerry-Edwards campaign is going to do its damnedest to turn our fine nation...

Date of Event or Article Individuals Links, Quotes and Comments 02/02/2004 DNC-McAuliffe Democratic Chief Says 'AWOL' Bush Will Be an Issue After a Nominee Emerges "I look forward to that debate, when John Kerry, a war hero with a chest full of medals, is standing next to George Bush, a man who was AWOL" in the National Guard, Mr. McAuliffe said on the ABC program "This Week.""Terry McAuliffe, said he expected Mr. Bush's record of military service in the 1970's to become an issue this fall, particularly if the Democrats nominate the front-runner, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts." 02/02/2004...

Date of Event or Article Individuals Links and Sources Quotes and Comments 09/20/2004 Joe Lockhart The Kerry Spot on National Review Online Kerry Aide Talked to Retired Guard Officer "So what's going on here? Okay, according to what's being pieced together, Burkett wanted to play Kerry campaign strategist, and to get the bigwigs at the Kerry campaign to use his memos that he, apparently, thought would be convincing. Mapes (presuming this female producer Lockhart is talking about is Mapes) wanted the memos. Burkett offers to trade the memos for an introduction to the Kerry campaign. Mapes calls the Kerry...

Date of Event or Article Individuals Links and Sources Quotes and Comments 09/20/2004 Joe Lockhart The Kerry Spot on National Review Online Kerry Aide Talked to Retired Guard Officer "So what's going on here? Okay, according to what's being pieced together, Burkett wanted to play Kerry campaign strategist, and to get the bigwigs at the Kerry campaign to use his memos that he, apparently, thought would be convincing. Mapes (presuming this female producer Lockhart is talking about is Mapes) wanted the memos. Burkett offers to trade the memos for an introduction to the Kerry campaign. Mapes calls the Kerry...

It was just too convenient to have all the long awaited "missing documents" and a player in Texas politics come together to "confirm" what the Democrats have been trying to "prove" for a long time. How did Barnes and the forged memos make it to the nicely packaged hit piece reported by Dan Rather on 60 Minutes II? The following is an attempt to layout the origin and subsequent events that bring us to the "revelations" reported by Dan Rather. Moore first challenged Bush about guard records in 1994JAMES C. MOORE - Author and Former CBS affiliate employee, James C....

It's hard to criticize John Kerry these days. Apparently, every criticism of him is unfair. At least, we're not supposed to criticize his time in Vietnam -- or even what he's said about Vietnam more recently -- because that would be a "smear" (even when the Kerry campaign admits, as it has regarding Kerry's Christmas-in-Cambodia claims, that he hasn't been telling the truth). That he served in Vietnam 35 years ago, we're told, tells us all we need to know about his character.

In yesterday’s New York Times , David Brooks takes another, somewhat jaundiced, look at Kerry’s speech. This passage, in particular, makes an important point: ”And it all brings back the memories of Kerry the senator. For though convention viewers may not be aware of it, Kerry has actually had a career since his four months in Vietnam - mostly in the Senate. It's not true that Kerry is a flaming lefty (he's a genuine budget hawk and he voted for welfare reform), but he was wrong about just about every major foreign policy judgment of the last two decades. He...

NOW IT COUNTS. To use a baseball metaphor, spring training is over. Think of politics as show business, and John Forbes Kerry is about to step onto the stage -- the real stage, no mere dress rehearsal in a half-empty theater -- for the first time. Speeches, primary season debates, countless handshakes, television ads and press releases -- all the weapons of a political campaign -- have not, to this point, made John Kerry a formidable presidential candidate. Voters have picked up bits and pieces, but many still have no clear sense of who Kerry is or what he's about....

Los Angeles, CA, Jul. 23 (UPI) -- Vice President Dick Cheney holds a 9 point edge over Sen. John Edwards in a poll that asked who is qualified to become president of the United States. Republican officials insist Cheney will remain on the party's ticket as vice president in November. Edwards is the choice -- likely to be approved at the Democratic National Convention next week -- of John Kerry to run for vice president on the Democratic side.

Medal/Wound Records Date Medal Signed By/Date Action Wound Treatment 12/2/1968 Purple Confimation: Donald A. Still, Chief Staff Officer / 2/28/1969 (stamped date) Certificate:Charles K. Duncan, Chief of Naval Personnel  / 8/10/1969 According to Kerry's own description in Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty, the Dec. 2, 1968, mission behind what he has claimed to be his first Purple Heart was "a half-assed action that hardly qualified as combat." slightly wounded on his arm,"Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. "He had a little scratch on his forearm, and he was holding a piece of shrapnel," Mr. Hibbard said. Shrapnel removed and...

Jan. 19 issue - When pressed on why he refuses to release a large chunk of his records as Vermont governor, Howard Dean has a standard response: he's being sued over the issue by a Washington watchdog group, so he's leaving the entire matter up to the Vermont courts, where a judge can decide which documents can be released. "Why can't a judge look at every single piece of paper and make that decision?" Dean asserted during a debate in Iowa. But Dean's explanation has drawn a demurral of sorts from a surprising source: his own lawyer in the case....

WASHINGTON -- Houston's Halliburton Co. says it saved American taxpayers about $164 million by finding a subcontractor in Turkey to help supply fuel to Iraq. Halliburton, marshaling its evidence to rebut complaints the company overbilled the government by as much as $61 million, will argue that its employees, not the Pentagon, first proposed finding a second contractor in Turkey to bolster the effort to truck gasoline from Kuwait into fuel-starved Iraq. The Pentagon's chief financial officer said today, however, that even if Halliburton unintentionally overcharged for work in Iraq it would still have to repay the U.S. government. Last week...

He's about to show Clark getting angry this morning with Asman.

When liberals circle the wagons to protect one of their treasured figureheads, they typically resort to shameless insincerity. You couldn't miss that photo of Hillary Clinton on the cover of Time magazine (June 16, 2003), but you might have missed the chutzpah contained in the caption that accompanied it: IN HER OWN WORDS: the former First Lady talks candidly about Bill, her public life and private pain. As we know, Hillary's memoir (penned by at least three hired writers) was not "in her own words" – though she did admit to reading the book before it went to print –...

National Post George W. Bush. ADVERTISEMENT To think that as recently as Tuesday last week, The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh -- probably the best connected, most respected military journalist in the United States -- was telling us that the war in Iraq was headed for a "stalemate." Even as U.S. troops encircled Baghdad over the weekend, commentators spoke of the city becoming a "Stalingrad" that would eat up coalition troops. But yesterday -- just three weeks after the war began -- the Iraqi capital was effectively liberated, with the greatest threat to U.S. troops coming from teetering Saddam Hussein statues....

They're calling it the Rally for America, but to our way of thinking it's a rally for Canadians. For Canadians who are fed up with seeing the flag of our closest ally and neighbour burned. For Canadians who are appalled at hearing the national anthem of the United States booed. For Canadians who are furious our prime minister hasn't spoken out against the smug anti-Americanism spewing from his front and back benches like a cancer. Tomorrow at noon at Nathan Phillips Square, Canadians who feel this way are going to get the chance to have their voices heard. Organizers of...