Free Republic

Michelle Nunn — the Democrat running in the very close U.S. Senate contest in Georgia — has a problem on her hands now that an exhaustive campaign plan drafted by aides has leaked in the media. The document, revealed online Monday by the National Review, describes the candidate’s liabilities likely to be exploited by opponents. It also specifically describes the necessity of raising money from Jews, Asians and gays while working to increase turnout of African-Americans and Latinos. Speaking of the Jewish community, the document notes: “There is tremendous financial opportunity.” “Michelle’s position on Israel will largely determine the level...

Eliana Johnson broke news today with the release of a confidential campaign plan from Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn. The campaign plan details the demographic models, special interest groups, donor targets, and the assumption in the campaign plan that Nunn will have a compliant media. This is what Johnson focused on in much of her post. For me, the real news comes in the second half of Johnson’s post. While the campaign strategy memo stressed the importance of the Jewish community for volunteers and fundraising, with a projected goal of $250,000 from Jewish donors, it also noted that any...

The US Chamber of Commerce has for years viewed the GOP as its personal political party. Sure they supported the now-extinct “Blue Dog Democrats” but when most of them disappeared in the maelstrom of 2010 they were left with GOP candidates and communists. Unfortunately for the Chamber, the GOP caucus has been getting progressively more conservative each year. And not merely conservative but populist. This has caused a tension between the Chamber’s members and conservatives. Many of the Chamber’s larger members and its leadership worship stability as though it were a deity, preferring even double digit deficits reaching as far...

I am writing to urge continued support for our Fort Huachuca base. Southern Arizona, with its particular climate and geography, is uniquely fit to house certain critical military operations. And the thousands of highly qualified, talented personnel, both civilian and military, who have made Cochise County their home, stand at the ready to drive our modern warfare capabilities. As a long-time leader in electronic warfare technology and the home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, and numerous other Commands, Fort Huachuca should continue to define the cutting edge of cyber-security warfare. There is no question that this segment...

According to Twitter and Google, an NBC journalist reported that he or she had personally witnessed an Israeli drone attack and fire on a hospital in Gaza. The eye witness report was at first included in this NBC News article, and read, "a NBC News journalist witnessed the attack on the hospital and said it had been fired by an Israeli drone." Since that report was published, though, the accusation has been scrubbed entirely from the article. The only evidence of the NBC journalist's "eyewitness" accusation is the apparent insertion of this sentence:

Barack Obama famously declared that as a former teacher of Constitutional law, he actually respects the Constitution, unlike his predecessor in the Oval Office. Subsequent events make it fair to wonder exactly how he shows this respect. Some on the Left barely conceal their disdain for the world-changing handiwork of dead white males. Reverence for the Constitution isn’t universal even among its chief custodians. Justice Ruth Ginsburg raised eyebrows when she advised Egyptian civic activists she wouldn’t look to the US Constitution as a model today. She pointed instead to the constitutions of South Africa, Canada, and the European Charter...

Despite an eleventh hour interjection from the U.S. Forest Service, the Ouray County Commissioners made history this week, unanimously voting to adopt a new county road map that brings it into the 21st century. The last time an official county road map was prepared in Ouray County was in 1961. Proposed revisions to this 1961 iteration of the map took place over the past five years, first through the work of the collaborative, multi-jurisdictional Public Access Group and later through two years of intensive work by Ouray County IT/GIS Manager Jeff Bockes, who integrated modern computerized mapping techniques (including GoogleEarth)...

Republican U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander's campaign spent $1.34 million in the first 18 days of July as the incumbent ramped up his GOP primary effort in advance of early voting in Tennessee, his disclosure shows. The two-term senator reported to the Senate Secretary's Office of Public Records that he still had $2.19 million in cash on hand as of July 18. Alexander received $129,138 in contributions. Meanwhile, Federal Election Commission filings show an independent political action committee run by the American College of Radiology Association has a major political mailer in the works in support of Alexander. The group on...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is reportedly throwing support behind Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), according to the group's national political director, Rob Engstrom. Engstrom told the audience at a Committee of 100 meeting that the group would support Landrieu in her fight to win re-election, according to The New York Times' Joe Nocera. Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman Blair Latoff Holmes told TPM in an email on Monday "no decisions have been made in the LA Senate race." Landrieu's major Republican challenger is Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA). A U.S. Chamber of Commerce scorecard said Landrieu votes for pro-business legislation more often...

Lamar Alexander, the two-term Republican senator from Tennessee, is in a strong position to win reelection this November. But only if he can get through his August 7 primary. Polling has been scarce in the race between Alexander and his GOP primary challenger, state representative Joe Carr, though the incumbent enjoys advantages in fundraising and name recognition (Alexander twice served as governor in the 1980s). An independent poll in January found Carr down by 40 points. But with Carr getting somewhat of a boost from endorsements by radio host Laura Ingraham and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, an independent outside...

Tennessee state Representative Joe Carr, the conservative candidate who is challenging Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in an August 7th primary, said the "grassroots has absolutely caught fire" as he closes in on Alexander in the final week of the campaign. Appearing on Breitbart News Sunday, an enthusiastic Carr, who has been endorsed by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and talk radio host Laura Ingraham, suggested the race was now much closer than it was two weeks ago, when a poll showed that Alexander only had a seven-point lead. He said he had a "plan for eleven months, and it came...

Republicans are running competitively for 10 Senate seats now held by Democrats, heightening chances for the party to capture a majority of the U.S. Senate in 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Republican Party is generally less popular than either President Barack Obama or the Democratic Party, according to the Journal. Those sentiments are evidently offset by a combination of appealing Republican candidates and deep public disapproval of the president. Democrats now hold 55 seats in the Senate. Republicans need a net gain of six for a majority. Republican senatorial candidates are doing well in seven states that went...

Days spent on the links, fundraisers with celebrities and house hunting have raised questions about whether President Barack Obama has "checked out" before his term is up.... Obama has already played 81 rounds of golf in the 628 days since his 2012 re-election—as many as he played in his entire first term, according to an analysis of his schedule.... By comparison, Obama's predecessor George W. Bush only played 24 rounds of golf in the first 34 months of his presidency....Bush stopped playing golf in 2003 because he didn't want to be seen as taking the war lightly. Obama has also...

Formation of district and imposition of assessments 'invalidated' by ruling . Boulder County commissioners didn't have the legal authority to establish a Local Improvement District created to charge rural residential subdivision property owners the bulk of the costs of rehabilitating those subdivisions' paved county roads, according to a Friday Boulder County District Court ruling. The Board of County Commissioners "exceeded its jurisdiction and abused its discretion in authorizing and forming the Subdivision Paving Local Improvement District and imposing assessments on properties within the District," Senior District Court Judge J. Robert Lowenbach wrote. ... The judge further ordered Boulder County to...

July 26, 2014 The Democrats' impeachment fundraising extravaganza Byron York In an almost farcical twist on the recent political debate, the Obama White House has joined the Democratic fundraising apparatus in what appears to be a campaign to encourage Republicans to impeach the president. In the past 48 hours, first lady Michelle Obama, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, White House spokesman Josh Earnest, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and others have raised the specter of an Obama impeachment. The first lady was first to broach the subject, in a Thursday evening fundraising speech in...

Sent by a German friend after the YouTube version from the US was pulled. If you haven’t heard this you should . It takes only 19 seconds. It’s unbelievable that Obama actually says this out loud! This Obama speech was given at the Bilderberg Group conference in Brussels, Belgium, on May 23, 2014. Obama’s comments are chilling - THIS IS THE NEW WORLD ORDER that has been percolating through a number of American presidencies and other world leaders, and now seems to be coming into fruition. PLEASE pass it on to everyone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?YfRtbIQ1kTw&feature=youtu.be "America will never be destroyed from the...

During this year’s second quarter, Democrat Kay Hagan raised more than twice the money for her re-election campaign for one of North Carolina’s two seats in the U.S. Senate than her Republican challenger Thom Tillis, the speaker of the N.C. House. Hagan’s campaign has reported that she raised $3.6 million from April to June, and she has $8.5 million cash on hand. Tillis’ campaign reported that he raised $1.6 million during the same period and has $1.5 million in the bank. The candidates were required to submit their campaign finance data to the Federal Election Commission by July 15, but...

What’s happening in Arizona right now is sufficient to make every conservative shudder. And I’m not talking about the border crisis. I am talking about the state’s largest regulated utility, Arizona Public Service (APS). APS is literally attempting to purchase its regulators in the state’s August 26th Republican primary (early ballots go out this week). If successful, the implications are national, especially for fledgling solar power, and crony capitalism will have a new model that will boomerang on the Republican Party. First, a little background. APS has concluded that too much energy choice via rooftop solar is bad for it....

What does the triumph of FMLN candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren, in the March 9 presidential elections in El Salvador represent for Latin America? I see his victory as very significant because it not only further strengthens the progressive current expanding through Latin America since the 1998 triumph of Chavez in Venezuela, but because he is the first president since Chile's Salvador Allende to reach the presidency by putting forward a project that he had no qualms in calling socialist. At the same time, he has explained socialism as a democratic, participatory project that is not decreed from above. This idea...

On a sweltering Saturday in July, approximately ten thousand protesters gathered on the steps of the Massachusetts state legislature and beyond in order to send a message to Gov. Deval Patrick and President Barack Obama: No more illegal immigrants. “The rally was an obvious sign that even here in ultra-liberal Massachusetts, there is a major political rebellion brewing against the corrupt, arrogant and dangerously disconnected political elites of our country,” said rally organizer Jeff Kuhner in an interview with Worldtribune.com. Mr. Kuhner is the host of WRKO’s morning radio talk show, The Kuhner Report. He is known as “Boston’s Bulldozer”...