Free Republic

Wendy Rosen, the Democratic challenger to Republican Rep. Andy Harris in the 1st Congressional District, withdrew from the race Monday amid allegations that she voted in elections in both Maryland and Florida in 2006 and 2008. It was unclear, however, whether she could remove her name from the ballot with the election less than two months away. Under state law, a candidate has until 70 days before an election to remove his or her name from the ballot. The deadline for the Nov. 6 election passed on Aug. 28. Snip Republicans, meanwhile, said the allegations prove that voter fraud is...

People in Illinois like to complain about big government. But maybe there's a bigger problem: little government. Lots and lots of them, from municipalities to townships to special districts to school districts. Every five years the Census does a census of governments, and Illinois ranks first, as it always does, with 6,968, over 2,000 more than the runner-up, Pennsylvania. And we don't just have more governments than anywhere else; we have more of just about every kind of government the Census surveys. 2007 was the last year that a detailed breakdown was available; here are how the top four states...

A Mexican who was deported decades ago for drug trafficking pleaded guilty this week to living illegally in Escondido under a false identity and fraudulently voting in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, federal authorities said Friday. Ricardo Lopez-Munguia, 45, pleaded guilty Thursday to attempted entry to the U.S. after deportation, making a false claim to U.S. citizenship, and voter fraud by an illegal alien, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office. Lopez-Munguia faces a maximum term of 28 years in federal prison, followed by deportation. He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 19 in San Diego. In 1986,...

A Maryland Democratic candidate quit her congressional race Monday after her own party told state officials that she had committed fraud by voting in both Maryland and Florida in recent elections. Wendy Rosen, a small-business owner running against freshman Rep. Andy Harris (R) in the Eastern Shore-based 1st Congressional District, released a statement saying that “with great regret, and much sorrow” she was resigning from the contest. “Personal issues have made this the hardest decision that I have had to make,” Rosen said Rosen’s announcement came the same day the state Democratic party released a letter to state Attorney General...

Sister Simone Campbell has become a minor celebrity over the last few months. Her 15 minutes began back in April when her social-justice lobbying outfit, NETWORK, earned a rare public rebuke from the Vatican for, ironically, its inadequate understanding of social justice. Capitalizing on the fawning media attention she received, Sister Simone and a few of her fellow progressive friends embarked on a highly publicized bus tour of the Midwest — Nuns on the Bus, they called it — during which they slammed Paul Ryan’s budget for being incompatible with Catholic social teaching. Sister Simone’s crusade against Paul Ryan has...

Pointing out the flaws in worthless polls would be a full-time job, if anyone were willing to undertake it. Today’s example comes from CNN and ORC. News organizations report on polls like this one as though they meant something; this one will be popular with media organizations because it shows President Obama with a six-point lead over Mitt Romney among likely voters. But a cursory review of the poll data shows that if it means anything at all, it is good news for Romney. To begin with, the CNN/ORC poll follows on the heels of another survey by the same...

Why Democrats hate the American middle class. It's God's fault. God and plastics. And don't forget the American flag. Which is another way of explaining just why it is today's Democrats -- the very embodiment of the American Left -- literally hate the American middle class. Hate that middle class with a visceral contempt. A contempt that has been repeatedly and vividly documented over the course of the last five decades in venues as varied as movies, music, politics and culture.

Via the Daily Caller, here’s her restatement of the question on everyone’s mind. You could make the same point this way: Just how high would unemployment have to be to make this an easy win for Romney and the GOP? Ten percent? Higher? Or, paradoxically, would higher unemployment rates somehow further absolve Bambi of culpability? A million variables inform a voter’s choice but there must be some hypothetical degree of economic lethargy that would make a qualified challenger — and Romney is qualified, whatever else you think of him — a prohibitive favorite. How much pain are voters willing to...

During their national convention, Democrats arrogantly flaunted U.S. immigration laws and blatantly ignored the majority of Americans' sentiments towards illegal immigration. The Democrats featured an illegal immigrant as a speaker on September 5: "...Activist Benita Veliz was given a prime-time speaking slot..." That's right, an illegal immigrant activist shilling for President Obama's DREAM Act (aka amnesty). But, "54% of likely [American] voters oppose the DREAM Act, compared to 38% who support its passage... U.S. registered voters support stricter enforcement of immigration law over 'integrating illegal immigrants into American society' 68% to 24%." Veliz spoke of the opportunities accorded her as...

“It’s between a woman and God!,” the woman, who was wearing an Obama “Forward” t-shirt, screamed in video footage that was captured by BizPac Review. ”If she wants to get rid of her baby — that’s her baby!”

A narrative has developed over the past several years that the Republican Party is anti-science. Recently, thanks to the ignorant remarks about rape made by Rep. Todd Akin, the Democrats have seized the opportunity to remind us that they are the true champions of science in America. But is it really true? No. As we thoroughly detail in our new book, "Science Left Behind," Democrats are willing to throw science under the bus for any number of pet ideological causes – including anything from genetic modification to vaccines. Consider California’s Proposition 37, which would require genetically modified food to carry...

Hollywood director finds it acceptable for people to commit incest. In an interview with The Wrap, director Nick Cassavetes believes no one should judge a brother and sister being with each other if they are in love. “I’m not saying this is an absolute but in a way, if you’re not having kids – who gives a damn? Love who you want. Isn’t that what we say? Gay marriage – love who you want?” Cassavetes told The Wrap. “If it’s your brother or sister it’s super-weird, but if you look at it, you’re not hurting anybody except every single person...

His (Obama's) stubborn insistence that government - and not small business - is the way to grow jobs and the economy has always been wrong. That he keeps insisting, with 88.9 million Americans out of work, has become morally unacceptable. The early news coverage Friday reported that the unemployment rate fell from 8.3 to 8.1 percent, with headlines suggesting it wasn't all that bad, maybe even a slight positive for the president. It wasn't all that bad. It was worse. The reason the unemployment fell to 8.1 percent was that 368,000 Americans had given up looking for work, bringing the...

Democrats came on strong in celebrating what they also now call “ObamaCare” during speeches at the beginning of their national convention in Charlotte, but enthusiasm waned as the week went on, with President Obama not even mentioning his signature legislative achievement during his acceptance speech on the final day. Apparently it is no longer such a “BFD” to Vice President Joe Biden either, since he also failed to mention the law. That is shocking, considering the incredible amount of political capital the White House expended to get the remarkably misnamed “Affordable Care Act” passed and considering the high price that...

Hewlett Packard now plans to layoff 29,000 employees, increasing the total number of job cuts by 2,000 over the next two years as it tries to kickstart growth. HP, which will cut jobs through a combination of involuntary cuts and early retirement offers, expects to take charges of about $3.3 billion through the end of HP's 2014 fiscal year for the workforce reductions, it said in a regulatory filing on Monday. HP will likely have cut 11,500 jobs by end of fiscal 2012, the company has said.

How much trouble is President Obama’s re-election campaign in? After watching and then re-reading the President’s convention speech, a writer for the (liberal) New Republic has uttered the most dreaded name in the Democratic lexicon: Carter. The speech did not exactly thrill TNR’s Timothy Noah: Watching President Obama give his nomination speech last night, it occurred to me for the first time that he might actually lose.Rereading the speech this morning, I find that (as Mark Twain once said about Wagner) it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. It lacked poetry, but it managed a reasonable balance between acknowledging that...

According to new analysis of unemployment data by the National Employment Law Project, while 60 percent of the jobs lost during the 2008-2009 financial crisis were in middle income occupations, the vast majority – 58 percent – of jobs created under President Obama are low-wage. Those jobs include “retail sales, food preparation, home health and customer service.” “The recovery continues to be skewed toward low-wage jobs, reinforcing the rise in inequality and America’s deficit of good jobs,” said the author of the study, Annette Bernhardt. “While there’s understandably a lot of focus on getting employment back to pre-recession levels, the...

Former Pennsylvania governor and current MSNBC contributor Ed Rendell was down at the DNC in Charlotte this week. As usual, Rendell used his time in front of the cameras to attack Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Yet Ed Rendell should shy away from discussing economic and budgetary issues, because when it comes to such matters, it’s clear from Rendell’s record as governor that he is throwing stones from a glass house. Rendell and company blame Obama’s horrible economic record on the fact that he was “left with a mess.” As it would happen, Ed Rendell left his state in a...

[Last week] in the 7:00 hour Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn will address the Democratic National Convention. Why he was chosen to speak I have no idea; he is probably the worst governor in America. Illinois' budget is an absolute mess, even after Quinn's $7 billion tax income tax hike. He has shown no appetite for difficult political decisions and has ceded much of his governing authority to the unions who financed his election. But his speech is useful in that it will tie Gov. Quinn to another prominent Illinois Democrat - President Barack Obama. And it will contrast their strikingly...

For the first time in nearly three decades, Chicago public school teachers went on strike this morning. At first glance, you might be tempted to think that what happens in Chicago has little to no effect on the politics of Washington and the presidential race. But, you’d be wrong. There are several reasons to believe that what happens in Chicago could have a real — and negative — impact on President Obama and the broader race for the White House this fall. We list the three biggest reasons below. * It’s Chicago: Yes, we know that President Obama has no...