Free Republic

Republicans and President George W. Bush took a licking in the November 7 midterm election. The Democrats are now in charge of both houses--for the first time in 12 years. In the aftermath of the election, I listened to black talk shows, read emails I received from black organizations, and read newspaper columns written by black commentators. One point was very clear. They cared little for what blacks were going to get out of this Republican defeat. The mission for this election seemed to have been, "just keep the Republicans out of office." ----snip---- While other racial and ethnic groups...

Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, Democrat from California, has big, expensive plans for commemorating her ascension to the head of the “People’s House” in early January. Indeed, the bug-eyed lady from San Francisco has slated a four-day gala of pomp and circumstance that will make the installation of Pope Benedict XVI by the Vatican seem absolutely skimpy by comparison. To begin with, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and Labor Council delegation of 50 people will be jetting back East to participate in the first coronation of a queen in American history—excepting only the first swearing-in ceremony for Barney Frank several years...

Young Voter Strategies - http://www.youngvoterstrategies.org/ New Lake-Goeas Poll Analysis Shows Iraq, Pocketbook Issues & Candidate Contact Spurred Large 2006 Youth Vote FKey Democratic support from young African-Americans, Hispanics, women; Strong Republican support from married and religious youthFor Immediate Release: December 14, 2006Contacts: Kathleen Barr, Young Voter Strategies, Phone: 202-994-9528, katbarr@gwu.eduAmber Moore, CIRCLE, Phone: 703-276-2772 x17, amber@tricomassociates.com Washington, D.C. –The war in Iraq, education, the economy, and health care were the primary issues driving young voters in 2006, as well as an overall desire for a change in the governing country’s direction, according to a new analysis of Young Voter Strategies’...

Participation climbs for second straight major election; 18-29s vote for Democrats by 22-point margin Washington DC - Nov. 08, 2006 Young voters turned out to vote in higher numbers and favored Democrats by a wide margin, according to exit polls, providing a major boost to Democratic candidates in yesterday’s House and Senate elections. The 2006 turnout increase follows on the unprecedented 2004 youth turnout and provides further evidence that the new generation coming of age today is more engaged than young voters in recent decades. Exit polls on CNN’s website confirm that young voters increased their share of the electorate...

Democratic campaign operatives pushed newspapers to write about then-Rep. Mark Foley's e-mails to teenage pages in the hope that a scandal would emerge before the midterm elections, according to a House ethics report. The findings were bolstered when an aide to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Illinois Democrat, said the congressman also knew about the e-mails, which were dubbed "inappropriate" by the ethics panel. Mr. Emanuel, who was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) when Mr. Foley's sex scandal broke in late September, had denied knowledge of the Florida Republican's e-mails. The House ethics panel, which is formally called the...

 Imagine for a moment that a sex scandal involving pages had forced a Democrat Congressman holding a safe seat to resign in disgrace weeks before crucial midterm elections, while also reflecting badly on other members of his Party in tight races across the country. A month after the votes had been tallied, and the Democrats had surrendered control of both chambers of Congress in a stunning defeat, a House ethics panel released a report on the subject containing the following information: The leaks to the press concerning this matter had come from the communications director for the House Republican Caucus ...

Our view: In Arizona and nationwide, voters rejected rigid ideologues in favor of those who promised moderation, dialogue. The picture that emerged from last month's elections, at both the state and the federal level, showed a majority of voters weary of hard-line, intransigent ideologues on the far right. We know that, because voters turned both houses of Congress over to the Democrats and for the first time in many years gave Democrats 27 of the 60 seats seats in the Arizona House of Representatives. They also re-elected Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, giving her a 27 percentage point victory over her...

Happy Thanksgiving. It’s a glorious morning here in the heart of Jesusland, and our home is the center of an extended family gathering. The love of family and friends, things which give our lives pleasure and meaning, are found in great abundance today. We have much to be grateful for, indeed. And even though Michael Moore is of the opinion that our country is now in the hands of the Left, we take great comfort in knowing that the fate of our nation is in the hands of a much higher Power. Last week, Mr. Moore extended an olive branch...

A runoff between Republican U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla and his Democratic challenger will be held Dec. 12, Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday. Bonilla finished with 49 percent of the vote in the Nov. 7 special election. He will face former U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, who got about 20 percent of the vote. Early voting will begin Dec. 4. Eight candidates participated in the special election that was called after the U.S. Supreme Court found a portion of the congressional district boundaries unconstitutional.

Election Day 2006 was a bad day for the Republican Party. But it could have been much, much worse. My estimate of the House vote (calculated by summing up all current totals reported by the media and projecting the vote totals of the Democrats and Republicans who were uncontested) indicates that the two-party vote was approximately 54% D to 46% R. This would mark a 5.4% decrease in the GOP's share of the two-party vote from 2004. The final two-party vote result was almost a perfect inverse of the 1994 result. This estimate is very similar to the one that...

Jennings wastes no time in contesting her defeat in District 13 election DUANE MARSTELLER Herald Staff Writer MANATEE - Barely two hours after the state certified the 13th Congressional District election results this morning, losing candidate Christine Jennings challenged them in court. Jennings' lawyers contested the results in Leon County Circuit Court, contending a software glitch in Sarasota County's touch-screen voting machines caused them to miss thousands of votes cast in the race. "This is a miscarriage of the democratic process," Jennings' lead attorney, Kendall Coffey, said at a news conference in Tallahassee. The challenge was filed at about 11...

 In 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned for president by promising tax cuts for the middle class. Fourteen years later, his Party ran on a similar “tell the people exactly what they want to hear” motif, this time the mantra being a speedy withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Though separated by almost a decade and a half, these campaign strategies were quite similar to a now illegal marketing scheme called a bait and switch – whereby a company advertises a product for sale at a cheap price to lure in customers. Unfortunately, the organization’s retail outlets don’t actually have the item...

It looks like full steam ahead for a significant boost to the federal minimum wage when Democrats assume control of Congress in January. Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts said Thursday that increasing the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 would be his top priority as chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. On the House side, incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., already has listed an increase in the minimum wage as one of the issues that would be taken up during the first 100 hours of the next Congress. "Americans are working harder than ever,...

In Birmingham they love the governor. And in Mobile and Huntsville, too. As Republicans coast to coast were burying their many political dead, a Republican governor once given up for dead was enjoying a landslide victory. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley was re-elected last week, beating long-popular Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley with more than 58% of the vote, including an impressive 20% of the black vote. His victory was not simply the result of Alabama being a Republican state: Democrats won the two next most prominent statewide races, those for lieutenant governor and Supreme Court chief justice. In Alabama as elsewhere,...

Republicans grumble that President George W. Bush was about six weeks too late in sacking Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of Defense from the standpoint of affecting the election. Since the word from the White House is that Rumsfeld was going to go no matter what the outcome of the election, why was he not dropped earlier? Robert Gates seems a peculiar choice for the Pentagon. At CIA, he always was antagonistic to the intelligence operations at the Pentagon. As a CIA careerist on the analytical rather than the operational side, he was not close to military operations. The White House...

George W. Bush, who led the Republicans and conservatives to three straight electoral victories, who won the White House against an incumbent Democratic administration, who rallied this nation after 9/11, and removed two oppressive regimes in Aghanistan and Iraq, is suddenly responsible for all that ails the nation. This is no surprise to those of you who have been listening to the Democrats for six years, but now we have the Republicans and conservatives joining the chorus, the same folks who once celebrated the President as the next Churchill. I have something to say to Joe Scarborough, Rush Limbaugh, Newt...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope that the carnage experienced last night leaves a very bitter taste in your mouths and that you awaken this morning wiser than when you went to bed. The American people have spoken and they have chosen a new direction not because the Democrats offer anything better but because you failed to offer leadership. People crave leadership and if they do not get it they will latch on to the first person or group they think offers it. Germans craved leadership so badly they elected Hitler to lead them because there was no one who stood...

ACU Releases 2005 Congressional Ratings ALEXANDRIA, VA— The American Conservative Union, the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots conservative lobbying organization, today released its 2005 “Rating of Congress,” the definitive conservative assessment of the federal legislative branch. ACU has rated every member of the House and Senate since 1971, making the latest guide its 35th edition. The purpose of the “Rating” is to inform the public, in as unbiased a method as possible, exactly where individual senators and congressmen stand on the ideological spectrum. “In the House, 38 Republicans scored a perfect 100% conservative rating in 2005, including newly elected House...

"Ballot-bag problems may slow counting of 8th District votes" ?King County Elections staff said about 100 bags -- containing up to 20,000 absentee ballots that had been dropped off at polling sites on Election Day -- remain uncounted because of an array of problems caused by the bags' being overstuffed. ?Jim Buck, King County's interim elections director, acknowledged that the problems -- including broken zippers and unclosed bag seals -- could potentially have allowed ballots to be cast after voting ended. Not clear yet whether any of the ballots are actually ineligible, and it's unlikely there could be nearly...

We aren't supposed to make any generalities based on race, color or creed, just to begin with. Invidious comparisons can be made, and indeed are every day made, by individuals. Still, institutions go to extraordinary lengths to avoid remarking differences. Indeed, many super-cautious universities even forbid applicants to submit photographs, on the basis of which an official at the Department of Admissions might say -- or whisper, or just think quietly -- that this applicant is black/Indian/Chinese ... So what I want to know is: How is it that on page P-7 of The New York Times for Nov. 9,...