Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who left the Republican Party a year ago in hopes of salvaging a 30-year career, was rejected on Tuesday by Democratic primary voters, with Representative Joe Sestak winning the party’s nomination on an anti-incumbent wave that is defining the midterm elections. In Kentucky, Rand Paul, the most visible symbol of the Tea Party movement, easily won the Republican Senate primary and delivered a significant blow to the Republican establishment. His 24-point victory over Trey Grayson, who was supported by the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, underscored the...

PHILADELPHIA — Early on, Senator Arlen Specter’s supporters knew that the 80-year-old Republican-turned-Democrat was in trouble. “Turnout was terrible,” Gov. Edward G. Rendell said less than two hours before the polls closed here. And just about two hours after they had closed, he blamed the rain and the low turnout in Philadelphia for ending Mr. Specter’s 30 years in the Senate.

With four attempted and one successful terrorist attack under his belt, Mr. Obama continues to disregard the one common thread that runs through them all – radical Islamic terrorism. All have a distinctive Middle Eastern dress and/or appearance, a profile. But this is just one of many oversights in this administration. When it comes to border security in the Southwestern part of the United States, the administration refuses to accept that 95 percent of all illegals aliens breaking the law and taxing the system have something in common. They are mainly Hispanics who look like Hispanics, a profile.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Sunday that the Pakistani Taliban directed the Times Square car-bomb plot and is actively recruiting more agents to carry out attacks on U.S. soil. "We know that they helped facilitate it; we know that they probably helped finance it, and that [the suspect] was working at their direction," Mr. Holder said in an appearance on ABC News' "This Week."

Responding to Republican charges that Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad's plot failed only because of luck, Rep. Ike Skelton, Missouri Democrat, said, "What's wrong with being lucky?" Nothing at all - until the luck runs out.

Attorney General Holder now says the administration believes the Taliban in Pakistan were behind the failed bombing attempt in Times Square. He also admits by his actions that treating terrorist suspects as criminals is not a good idea

Senior Obama administration officials on Sunday blamed the Pakistani Taliban for the attempted car bombing in Times Square, saying in the most definitive terms to date that the militant group was responsible for planning and financing the botched attack. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said investigators had "developed evidence that shows the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack," a sharp escalation from the initial assessment that Faisal Shahzad had acted alone and without sophisticated training. Holder's remarks, coupled with similar statements by other senior U.S. officials over the weekend, highlighted the emerging role of an al-Qaeda-affiliated group that appears...

KARACHI, PAKISTAN -- Terrorism suspect Faisal Shahzad's alleged path to Times Square reflects what experts say is a militant support network that spans Pakistan and is eager to shepherd aspiring terrorists from around the globe. In this teeming southern metropolis, authorities are focusing on a domestic militant outfit that might have escorted Shahzad to distant northern peaks where U.S. investigators allege he received training with the al-Qaeda-affiliated Pakistani Taliban. In Pakistan's heartland, extremist organizations freely build compounds and campaign with politicians, while their foot soldiers fight alongside the Taliban in the borderlands, intelligence officials say.

For years it has been a weapon of choice in hot spots across the globe, from Iraq to Sri Lanka to Colombia: Cars or trucks loaded with explosives, detonated in busy markets, public squares and government buildings. Ramin Talaie for The New York Times One of the clocks used in the failed bombing of an S.U.V. Related Police Seek Man Taped Near Bomb Scene (May 3, 2010) Security Network Planned for Midtown (May 3, 2010) Bomb Squad Has Hard-Won Expertise (May 3, 2010) Vendors Who Alerted Police Called Heroes (May 3, 2010) Bomb Squad Has Hard-Won Expertise (May 3, 2010)...

The car bomb discovered in Times Square would probably have killed or maimed many people, police officials and federal investigators said Sunday as they began assembling evidence collected from the homemade device, video surveillance footage and the vehicle itself to determine who attempted the attack on a warm spring evening in the heart of New York City.

There'll be quite a scene in Washington May 19 if Mexican President Felipe Calderon keeps his date to address a joint session of Congress. He'll also be honored at a White House state dinner. The cool, calculating and composed U.S. president is going to have his hands full that day trying to navigate diplomacy and the almost guaranteed uproar about immigration that will test decorum on every level.

In the spirit of former Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris and Sarah Palin, a conservative woman from Arizona stepped forward exhibiting the type of guts it takes to uphold "truth, justice and the American way."

Hispanics fear that racial profiling will be the result of Arizona Governor Jen Brewer's immigration reform bill, which makes it against the law to be in Arizona illegally. The bill also requires that state police question immigration status and ask reasonably suspicious people to provide identification. Mexicans and Central Americans make up 14% of Arizona's population of seven million. The bill's goal is to identify those having no business being in Arizona. It also attempts to protect residents of the state from burgeoning gun violence as well as the increasing drug cartel and gang activity spilling over from Mexico onto...

Usually it takes a national government to spend itself into a debt measured in the trillions. Yet it comes as little surprise that the same profligacy that pervades the corridors of federal power infects this country's 87,000 state, county and municipal governments and school districts. By 2013, the amount of retirement money promised to employees of these public entities will exceed cash on hand by more than a trillion dollars.

The rising wave of popular activism in the United States is ritually derided by liberal commentators, politicians and academics as fringe-movement politics. But recent polling reveals that skepticism about government is broad and deep. Discontent with Washington has become the mainstream position; those who defend big government are the real extremists.

How did a recently bankrupt company that is still hemorrhaging money pay back a multi-billion dollar loan five years early? Halleluiahs are ringing throughout the media over General Motor's bailout repayment. "GM pays back government loans from US, Canada" announces the Associated Press headline.

Among the thousands of "tea party" protesters that gathered Thursday at Freedom Plaza, a stone's throw from the White House, were dozens of signs directed at President Obama, some demanding "Listen To Me!" others asking "Why Can't You Hear Us?" But the president never heard a peep from the mob of boisterous Americans, most of whom deplore the spending binge he and the Democratic Congress have been on of late. He headed to Florida to praise $6 billion in spending for NASA, just about the time the first speaker was taking the stage in the square, which Mr. Obama can...

The "tea party" is not composed of impatient rabble or sly political operatives. it's friends and neighbors who may just have a little help from the proverbial big man upstairs, says Richard Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com. "The tea parties are an unfettered new force of the middle class tapping into the anger and disappointment felt not only toward...

President Obama's latest strategic innovation in the war on terrorism is to ignore jihad and maybe it will go away. The Obama administration is removing terms such as "jihad" and "Islamic extremism" from the U.S. National Security Strategy in an attempt to convince Muslim countries that America doesn't view them solely through the lens of counterterrorism.

President Obama released a new policy on the use of nuclear weapons the other day. From some of the reactions, I expected that on every government building, the Stars and Stripes would be replaced with a white flag of surrender. Rudy Giuliani lamented that Obama bases his security policy on the charming belief that "we can all hold hands, sing songs, and have peace symbols." Former United Nations ambassador John Bolton said the plan puts America "on the road to nuclear impotence."