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It took Democrats in the House of Representatives 40 years to become out-of-touch enough to get thrown out of office in 1994. It took 12 years for the Republicans who replaced them to abandon their principles and be repudiated in 2006. Now it appears that the current Democratic majority has lost voter confidence in only four years. How did this happen? And what does the increasing speed of voter backlash mean for Republicans who will likely take control next Tuesday?For answers, I decided to chat up Rep. Brian Baird, a six-term Democrat from Washington state. Even though he's never won...

See the latest Taiwanese 3D political video here: YouTube: Angle/Reid race send-up I don't know what's the story behind these Taiwanese-made videos about American politics, but it's uncanny how they seem to hit the mark.

Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.) came to Congress in the spring of 1969 after winning a special election to succeed Republican Melvin Laird, who had left the House to become President Richard Nixon’s defense secretary. At the end of this year, Obey will retire, and as a bookend of sorts for this magazine devoted to new faces, POLITICO asked Obey to talk about what changes he’s seen in Washington’s culture.Below are excerpts from the interview recorded after Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, had flown back from memorial services in West Virginia for his late colleague on the Senate Appropriations...

<p>WASHINGTON - Homicides in Washington hit a 43-year low in 2009.</p> <p>Police say the nation's capital recorded 143 slayings in 2009, the fewest since 1966. Police had hoped to achieve the lowest total since 1964, when there were 132, but there were three slayings on New Year's Eve.</p>

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor says she has a "Puerto Rican soul," and that says a lot about her. By her own reckoning, Sotomayor offers more than just a different complexion as the first Hispanic nominee to the high court. Rather, she's long stressed her distinctive ethnic identity, how it's been shaped and — at times — what it might mean for her jurisprudence. "My Puerto Rican soul was nourished each weekend that I visited and played in abuelita's house," Sotomayor told a New Haven, Conn., audience in October 1998, referring to her grandmother. Like other Supreme Court...

A lawyer who reportedly was laid off earlier this week at Kilpatrick Stockton apparently committed suicide this morning at the firm's Washington, D.C., office. Mark Levy, a 59-year-old Yale Law School graduate who headed the firm's Supreme Court and appellate advocacy practice group, died this morning at the firm's office, according to an e-mailed statement from the firm's co-managing partner and a report in Legal Times. Levy also worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as a senior political appointee during the Clinton administration. The firm doesn't address Levy's cause of death, but Legal Times indicates that he committed suicide,...

There doesn't seem to be a lot of sympathy out there for Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Larry Langford, who was arrested this week and charged on Monday with 101 counts of bribery and corruption, including charges of accepting expensive jewelry in return for public favors. Langford seems to be taking heat from all sides, including two of our own syndicated bloggers at The Daily Voice. Writing what he calls "another black official 'done went and done' me wrong post," attorney and columnist Wain Bennett accuses Langford of betraying the public trust. "Here is the thing Larry: All those folks who felt...

Whoever out there on the BangList group is adding the keyword 'banglist' to all these non-RKBA related threads, knock it off. So far, we've got banglist pings going out on all sorts of irrelevant threads such as any mention of Congressman Henry Waxman taking over a chairmanship from Rep. Dingell and those where Obama's CHANGE.ORG website defines anyone making over $100k as 'the rich'. These are not RKBA issues no matter how you try to justify some tenuous link. Whoever is doing it, stop putting 'banglist' into every little thread that captures your attention for whatever reason. This ping list...

Hi FR friends, I need a relatively knowledgeable individual to identify a swing/big band track for me. This track was used as a segue between programs by Armed Forces Radio Network (AFRN) during the Korean War. It appears at the end of this Armed Forces Radio Network broadcast of the Jack Benny Show. If you're familiar with playing .MP3 music files, you can download the file at the link below and fast forward to the 24:10 minute mark where the music begins. If someone can name the artist and track title of this song, I'd appreciate it very much. I...

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Jerry Reed, a singer who appeared in the "Smokey and the Bandit" movies, has died of complications from emphysema at age 71, his longtime booking agent said Tuesday. Reed Grammy-winning singer and songwriter Jerry Reed was known for his roles in Burt Reynolds films. Carrie Moore-Reed, who is no relation to the star, said Reed died early Monday morning. Reed was a gifted guitarist who later became a songwriter, singer and actor. As a singer in the 1970s and early 1980s, he had a string of hits that included "Amos Moses," "When You're Hot, You're Hot,"...

[...] But we're burying the real news here. It seems that Heller may not have brought his gun with him to register, but he was armed with a load of candidate petitions, Duggan said. Seems that Heller is planning to run for the House seat currently held by Eleanor Holmes Norton. Heller is seeking signatures to be on the ballot as a libertarian candidate. A man identifiying himself as J. Bradley Jansen, who said he was Heller's campaign manager, said Heller must get 3,000 signatures and has until the end of August to collect them.

Apparently, some District residents aren't waiting on the District Council and the Fenty administration to work out the specifics of how to modify the gun ban to comply to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week. Gun shops in Maryland and Virginia suburbs told The Washington Post's Allison Klein that they've gotten a number of inquiries from D.C. residents trying to buy hardware. See the article here: The Washington Post: Gun Shops Await New D.C. Rules.

Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) has decided to introduce legislation tomorrow that will address the Supreme Court ruling on the city's gun ban. The bill would repeal the prohibition on handguns. He made the announcement at the council's news briefing held in preparation for tomorrow's meeting. It would still require that a firearm be disassembled, unloaded and trigger-locked in the home but would tweak the current law to allow an exception for self-defense. A draft of the bill will not be available until this afternoon, he said. Mendelson said he would still wait until the fall to introduce more...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71. Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, died at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters. Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a...

3 dead in Nevada bar shooting The Associated Press Mon, May 26, 2008 (12:17 a.m.) Three men were fatally shot and two other people were injured early Sunday at a bar in the northern Nevada town of Winnemucca, police said, and the shootings may have stemmed from a longstanding feud between several local families. Winnemucca Police Chief Bob Davidson said a man entered Players Bar and Grill and fatally shot two members of a rival family before he was shot and killed by a patron. All three were pronounced dead at the scene. The deceased shooter was identified as Ernesto...

<p>TARPON SPRINGS - Police were called to the home of DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey's mother on Thursday to investigate her apparent suicide.</p> <p>Police have confirmed that the dead person is Palfrey who was 52.</p> <p>Palfrey was dubbed "The DC Madam" by the national media after her arrest for allegedly running an upscale call girl ring in the nation's capitol.</p>

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. federal appeals court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by New York City against gun makers and suppliers the city targeted in a bid to stop the flow of illegal weapons. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the city's claims against the manufacturers and wholesale sellers of firearms, saying a federal law granted them immunity. The decision overturns a lower court ruling.

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. -- A black man who grabbed a gun instead of calling police when his son awakened him with a claim that carloads of abusive white teenagers were headed to their home was sentenced to prison Wednesday for killing one of the boys. The sentence -- two to four years -- John White received incensed the family and supporters of Daniel Cicciaro, the 17-year-old who was killed in August 2006. White, a 54-year-old construction laborer from Miller Place, could have received up to 15 years. He was convicted in December after an emotional three-week trial in which defense attorneys...

I think that after ten registered years here, I'm entitled to a self-congratulatory vanity post. Best wishes to all FR friends here and gone who've made my time on this site an experience that I'm glad I didn't miss. All the laugh riots, the excitement, the horror, the misery, and the anxiety ... I can't express enough how fortunate I am that I saw the 21st Century American spectacle unfold right here on Free Republic. Enormous thanks to Jim Robinson, without whom this vanity post wouldn't be possible.

The 9-year-old boy went outside without his godmother's permission. His punishment was to sit in a bathtub as the woman filled it with five pots of boiling water. When he emerged from the scalding water, the lower half of his body was covered in severe burns. The woman waited four days to take him to a hospital. The facts read into the court record during Shamia Lawson's plea agreement in November were horrific, making her punishment yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court all the more shocking to city prosecutors and the boy's relatives: six months behind bars. Lawson, 25, had been...