Free Republic

Here’s a curious development for you: Brian Rogers, spokesperson for John McCain’s presidential campaign last year, is now working for Al Gore. Rogers sent an email dispatch on Friday announcing his new job as research director for Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. In the email, Rogers said he will be “working on the Repower America campaign to pass comprehensive energy and climate change legislation.” On the campaign trail last year, Rogers’ shining moments included attacking Barack Obama for opposing increased domestic oil and gas production, arguing that Obama lived in “a frickin’ mansion” that was “bought in a shady deal...

Where ACORN goes fraud follows. The non-profit activist group formally known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is the subject of vote fraud investigations in at least 12 different states. Charges were filed in Nevada on Monday. And today six ACORN workers in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania were charged with falsifying voter registration forms. The local DA implied that there may be some higher ups getting charged also.

[T]he House Judiciary Committee chairman's May 4 statement exonerating ACORN couldn't have come out at a worse time. "Based on my review of the information regarding the complaints against ACORN, I have concluded that a hearing on this matter appears unwarranted at this time," Conyers said in a statement aired that night on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight." Just hours earlier his fellow Democrats in Nevada, Secretary of State Ross Miller and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto dropped a bombshell. ACORN and two former senior ACORN employees in the state, they announced, had been charged with a total of 39 felony...

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller announced Monday that voter registration fraud charges have been filed against an organization that works with low-income people and two of its employees in its Las Vegas office. The complaint includes 26 counts of voter fraud and 13 counts for compensating those registering voters, both felonies. The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, Inc., also known as ACORN, operated a Las Vegas office that helped register low-income voters last year. Throughout 2008, ACORN employed canvassers to register people to vote in Nevada, the complaint said. ACORN paid the...

After 100 days, television comics are still trying to get a grip on Barack Obama. It's not that Obama's opening days have been free of the criticism or embarrassment that feed David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien, "Saturday Night Live" and the rest of TV's powerful comedy machine. When many of his appointees seemed to consider it optional to pay their taxes, Leno cracked that the IRS was going to start paying Obama a finder's fee. When bailout money went to some of the executives who had dug the hole, Letterman joked that "the Big Three CEOs have...

NEWARK, Del. – The men who ran the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain appeared together on stage for the first time Thursday at the University of Delaware to complete a pair of tasks: To articulate their (remarkably similar) views of the election, and to hash out the details of continuing coursework so that they can, at last, graduate. McCain chief strategist Steve Schmidt and Obama campaign manager David Plouffe seemed to agree on a central point: McCain was always the longest of long-shot candidates. (You would not have known this from hearing either of them talk during...

Over five months after the election, a three-judge panel has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race. The judges issued their final ruling late Monday, stating "Franken received the highest number of lawfully cast ballots in the Nov. 4, 2008 general election." They also have determined that Franken is entitled to receive the certificate of election. Last week, Republican Norm Coleman suffered a blow after a few hundred previously rejected absentee ballots were opened and counted at the tail end of Coleman's lawsuit contesting his loss in a statewide recount. They broke almost 2-to-1 for...

President Obama talking tough to a group of voters in Miami before the election, yet President Obama must have forgotten this speech. Is there any evidence of a tough policy towards Cuba? Any?

Meghan McCain: We Need More Gay Republicans! By David Knowles Apr 13th 2009 10:00AM Here's a question: Can Meghan McCain, the blog-a-lot daughter of Senator John McCain, help bring the Republican Party into the twenty-first century? Well, with her column at The Daily Beast, and during her many television interviews, she sure is giving it a go. Today's screed, for instance, attempts to light a fire under the Republican posterior on the matter of including gay rights in the party platform: If the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to...

A dissident faction of gay conservatives is launching a rival group to the traditional voice of gay Republicans: the Log Cabin Republicans. GOPROUD, the new 527 group, will launch next week, according to a media advisory. The contact given for the group is Christopher Barron, a former Log Cabin political director who broke with the group. "Essentially, there's no voice for gay Republicans or gay conservatives in particular in D.C. right now. Log Cabin has been completely and totally absent here in D.C. for months and months," Barron said. "It has simply moved way too far to the left and...

From John Ziegler, creator of the documentary Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted. On April 15th, the once upon a time prestigious (and apparently now openly a political leftist propaganda tool, akin to the Nobel Prize given to Paul Krugmann -not elevating leftist quacks, but rather tarnishing once noble institutions) USC Annenberg School for Communication will be presenting CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric with the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Journalism. Now, for there to even be such a thing as an prize for Excellence in Television Journalism, in an age where a...

So what would you call it if someone picked some elderly man's name out of a phone book, then sent a mailing in his name out to people to convince them that a political cause is worth supporting? Would you call it identity theft? To a degree. A newer term might be astroturf. But what ever you call it, at the very least it is a lie. Well, leave it to Democrats to perpetrate this theft/lie to gin up support for a political cause. This is what happened in Massachusetts as uncovered by newspaperman Matthew Nadler of the Halifax-Plympton Reporter...

<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A Wisconsin man has acknowledged that he illegally cast an absentee ballot for Barack Obama in his wife's name to fulfill her dying wish. Stephen Wroblewski (roe-BLESS-key) of Milwaukee said Wednesday he plans to plead guilty to voter fraud to end the embarrassing episode.</p>

Planned Parenthood receives Title X funds from the Federal Government. Planned Parenthood also receives money from other Federal/State and Local Governments. It is reported that Obama's Headquarters in South Bend, Indiana was the Planned Parenthood Clinic. According to the report, the clinic boasted Obama signs as well as a PHONE BANK for making calls for Obama. Yet our Department of Justice went after Senator Ted Stevens during the election. Why is this not considered a serious violation of law and why is there no criminal prosecutions? South Bend, Indiana, is also the home to Notre Dame University... Finally, I would...

Recent earthquake activity in Alaska provided “CBS Early Show” co-hosts with a ready-made metaphor for a segment on the personal lives of some of the those surrounding Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. But their quake turned out to be barely a ripple. Hosts Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez couldn’t contain their smirks as they introduced the piece. “There's been an earthquake rumbling outside Anchorage, but there is some other rumblings, as well, near Wasilla,” Smith snickered. “Oh, indeed,” Rodriguez chimed in with her eyebrows raised. “Sarah Palin says that she is focused on one thing, governing Alaska. But it has been...

It all started with a question: "How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?" Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and a conservative Harvard law student debated over how Frank should have handled his role as the House Chairman of the Financial Services Committee. Frank was at Harvard University for a speech at the Kennedy School of Government. Frank said the student wasn't backing up his claims, invoking some laughter from the crowd, and the student told Frank he wasn't answering his question. This student was absolutely incredible! "You're a public representative, I'm a student... it does allow...

WASHINGTON – A judge has dismissed charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens because of prosecutorial misconduct and has ordered a criminal contempt investigation of the prosecutors. "In nearly 25 years on the bench, I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case," U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said in the opening moments of a hearing.

CUMMING, Ga. (AP) - A woman who claimed her house was set on fire because she supported President Barack Obama and her boyfriend have been charged with first-degree arson. Forsyth County Chief Investigator Steve Anderson said Friday that 47-year-old Pamela Graf and her boyfriend, 46-year-old Steve Strobel, are being held in different jails. Graf is in Forsyth County and Strobel in Barrow County, where he was charged with obstruction of justice in the case earlier this week. Graf's home burned on Jan. 18 while she was in Washington, D.C., to attend the inauguration. Officials found spray-painted graffiti that included a...

She knew? You betcha, says the baby daddy of Sarah Palin's grandson. The Alaska governor most likely was aware before her daughter, Bristol, became pregnant that the teenager and her hockey hunk boyfriend were having sex, Levi Johnston said in a bombshell new interview. "I'm pretty sure she probably knew. Moms are pretty smart," said Johnston, 18, the father of the governor's first grandchild, in an interview that will air Monday on "The Tyra Banks Show." Johnston said he and Bristol Palin practiced safe sex "most of the time."

Census Bureau: We’ll Work with ‘Community Organizations’ to Count All Illegal Aliens in 2010 Thursday, April 02, 2009 By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter (CNSNews.com) - The acting director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Thomas Mesenbourg, told CNSNews.com that the bureau intends to work with community organizations to make sure every illegal alien in the United States is counted in the 2010 Census. The Census is used to apportion the seats in the U.S. House of Representative. There are 435 House seats that are divided among the states in proportion to their population, which is determined by the decennial census. States...

The legal fight between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is headed to the desk of Gov. Tim Pawlenty — a no-win predicament for a Minnesota Republican with his eye on a White House run in 2012. Franken won big Tuesday when a three-judge panel allowed the review of no more than 400 absentee ballots in a race he currently leads by 225 votes. Coleman’s camp says an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court is coming; once that’s done, the dispute lands in Pawlenty’s lap. If Franken’s ahead at that point, Pawlenty will have a choice: sign the election certificate that...

- - Absentee ballots to be counted will be far fewer than Coleman sought in effort to close the U.S. Senate gap. Abstract: Norm Coleman's lawyers all but conceded defeat Tuesday and promised to appeal after a panel of three judges ordered no more than 400 new absentee ballots opened and counted, far fewer than the Republican had sought to overcome the lead held by DFLer Al Franken. The ballots include many that Franken had identified as wrongly rejected as well as ballots that Coleman wanted opened in his quest to overcome the 225-vote lead that Franken gained after a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has decided to drop all charges against former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens amid charges of prosecutorial misconduct, NPR reported on Wednesday, citing Justice officials.

First Recount Ruling Benefits Franken By Shira Toeplitz Roll Call Staff March 31, 2009, 5:36 p.m. . In another boost to Democrat Al Franken’s case in the ongoing Minnesota Senate recount trial, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday that only 400 previously rejected absentee ballots will be delivered to the secretary of state to be reviewed. With a margin of 225 votes separating Franken from Republican Norm Coleman, it’s unlikely that the additional ballots could swing the election in Coleman’s favor. An initial count of the ballots that were ordered to be reviewed showed that 167 of them were from the...

All the Leftist news that they don’t seem fit to print: ‘New York Times’ Spiked Obama Donor Story A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.” Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the ommittee what she had been told by...

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer

Wright's role among topics of 'Phenomenon' It was at the end of May last year, about one week before Barack Obama had sealed the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, that Daphene McFerren sent a letter to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. McFerren, the director of the University of Memphis' Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, was already planning a conference for April of 2009 that would examine the impact of Obama's historic candidacy. She explained her ambitions to Wright and invited him to come and speak. Less than a week later, Wright accepted, agreeing to the speaking fee of $4,000 that McFerren...

What if an American President campaigned as a pragmatic centrist, promised tax cuts to 95% of the American people and pledged himself to a new era of government honesty, openness and bipartisanship, but never had any of those intentions? The result might be a cabinet full of tax cheats, political cronies and lobbyists, and a president peddling an overstuffed budget of liberal dream-schemes at a time when the American economy can least afford an extra nickel for folderol or fiddling. Meanwhile Rome is burning. President Obama rolls the dice and grabs a can of kerosene. This president's budget, plus the...

Recently, there have been some pollsters or pitchmen trading on the Sarah Palin name – taking a pulse on the Governor's favorability. None of these polls are authorized by SarahPAC or the Governor. Again, SarahPAC is not doing any telephone solicitation at this time.

video 8:37 ... for future reference.

March 16, 2009, 4:00 a.m. A Leadership of Cowards?Why is Eric Holder embarrassed about enforcing civil rights in Noxubee County? By Hans A. von Spakovsky Attorney General Eric Holder calls the U.S. “a nation of cowards� because we “do not talk enough about race.� I find this ironic, since the Justice Department seems embarrassed about a recent judgment in its favor by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. U.S. v. Ike Brown is a major Voting Rights Act case involving intentional race-based discrimination by local officials in Noxubee County, Miss. When the Fifth Circuit issued its...

Back in 2007, the New York Times famously proclaimed that the evangelical movement in America was cracking up. Since then, the media has relished exposing what they see as fault lines in evangelicalism over such issues as abortion, marriage, and the environment. The pundits seized upon President Obama’s decisive electoral victory last fall to opine that evangelicals were no longer the political force they once were. And just last week, a well-known evangelical blogger predicted the “collapse” of evangelicalism in America within the next decade, even though he also predicted that out of the ruins of evangelicalism, “new forms of...

Taxpayer-funded PBS journalist Bonnie Erbe has some advice for Democrats: politicize the 2010 Census, then use the biased numbers to jam pack Congress full of left wing wackos. “Depoliticize the Census?” PSB “journalist” she wrote in her blog at US News & World Report. “Surely they jest!” “The Census is part of the spoils of victory.....

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Three more federal charges have been filed against a University of Tennessee student charged with hacking into the personal e-mail account of Alaska Gov. and former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Tonya Harding's back and this time she's swinging at President Barack Obama. In an interview on HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," the infamous Oregonian lashes out at Obama for talking about doing a "Tonya Harding" and "knee-capping" on the campaign trail in his fight against then U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton. "He has this country to think about .¤.¤. and he has to bring me up?" she says bitterly. "Guess what? I get jobs because he used my name on national television." So, strap on your knee pads and have a listen. But be aware there are some Tonyaesque expletives:...

Will ending the culture wars be as difficult as repairing a broken economy? If President Obama's primary task is to restore economic growth, he has also been waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation's divisions around religious and moral questions. That venture, which has its roots in a 2006 speech that paid tribute to the political role of religious Americans, bore fruit in last year's election. Obama increased the Democratic share of the vote among Roman Catholics and younger evangelical Christians. Since assuming the presidency, he has pressed this effort through persistent calls to personal and family responsibility,...

IN LETTER, ORACLE ADMITS TO ERRORS IN WORST-EVER '08 Warren Buffett admitted to doing some "dumb things" in 2008 - the worst year for Berkshire Hathaway in the 44 years he has run it. A brutal stock market decline amid a teeth-gnashing recession pushed Omaha-based Berkshire to a 96% drop in profits, its fifth straight quarterly earnings decline. Buffett, known as the Oracle of Omaha for his decades-long record of picking value investments, said buying ConocoPhillips shares when gas and oil prices were at their peak was perhaps the dumbest move in 2008. Berkshire bought 84.9 million shares at $82...

Senator: Demise of newspapers helps GOP @ 3:12 pm by Hill Staff Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said on Friday that the demise of daily newspapers is helping the Republican Party. Coburn, responding to a question from an attendee about media bias at the Conservative Political Action Conference, said, “The daily newspaper will die.” Coburn added that advances in technology, such as the Internet, Twitter, text messaging, and YouTube, are helping Republicans get their message out because policymakers don’t need to rely on daily newspapers as much as they used to. The conservative senator, who agreed with the assertion that the...

A couple of years ago, when speaking to a local group, I mentioned that The Chronicle was losing money. A couple in the back of the room rudely applauded. How thrilled those two must have felt when - if - they learned of Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega's announcement Tuesday that the Hearst Corp. will implement "significant" workforce cuts. If the cuts don't pay off, then the Hearst Corp. will "offer the newspaper for sale or close it altogether." Bloggers and e-mailers are crowing. If The Chronicle is shuttered, they'll be dancing a jig. Many conservatives feel a warm glow at...

Filmmaker John Ziegler has released a new documentary about the media’s coverage of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin before the election — and he asserts that Palin was held to a “completely different standard” than the other candidates. Ziegler, whose film is “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted,” appeared on the “Today” show on Monday morning. In a sometimes heated exchange with host Matt Lauer, he said: “I was outraged during the primaries. I think the Hillary Clinton supporters have an awful lot to be outraged about. A lot in this film is about the primaries...

Palin: Media sought to seek, destroy By: Andy Barr February 23, 2009 11:12 AM EST Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) believes that the media deliberately tried to bring her down during her vice presidential run. As part of an interview with conservative filmmaker John Ziegler for his new film out this week, Palin said she believes the media made a decision that “we’re going to seek and we’re going to destroy this candidacy of Sarah Palin’s because of what it is that she represents.” “Obviously something big took place in the media,” she added. It is “very frightening, I think, what...

Dealing a blow but not a knockout to Republican Norm Coleman's hopes, the judges in the U.S. Senate election trial on Friday tossed out most of the 19 categories of rejected absentee ballots they were considering for a second look, making it clear that they won't open and count any ballots that don't comply with state law. On its face, the ruling looked to be a victory for DFLer Al Franken, whose lawyers had urged the judges to turn down 17 of the 19 categories and said Friday that they had very nearly done it. "We are obviously very pleased...

The Obama administration is close to creating an office of urban policy to allocate funds to urban areas for a range of initiatives, including job training and the creation of new jobs, BlackAmericaWeb.com has learned.

For all the media's irresponsible coverage of the 2008 elections, they were the most blatantly dishonest and biased in their allowing Democrats to use the airwaves to present a blatantly false narrative that Republicans were to blame for the tanking economy due to their "failure to regulate." We could go back to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who demonized "the Bush administration's failed economic policies -- policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality with no regulation, no supervision and no discipline in the system." The airwaves have been filled with Democrats and liberals presenting their talking points of Republican...

Rush Limbaugh Talk-radio giant Rush Limbaugh is blasting the so-called economic stimulus plan of President Obama and the Democrat-led Congress, calling it an assault on capitalism intentionally designed to harm the private sector and lead to bigger government. "This is a full-fledged attack on capitalism, and the leftists Democrats have been seeking this for the longest time," Limbaugh said on his program this afternoon. "That's why they can't stop themselves. It is Christmas morning every day for these people. There's nobody that can stop them." A question e-mailed to the host asked if the Democrats really understood that they're "destroying...

Next Catastrophe Think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a politicized financial disaster? Just wait until pension funds implode. Funds worth trillions of dollars start to plummet in value. Political pressure to be “socially responsible” distorts the market decisions of government-related enterprises, leading to risky investments. Investors who once considered their retirements safely protectedwake up to a sinking feeling of uncertainty and gloom. Sound like the great mortgage-fueled financial crisis of 2008? Sure. But it also describes a calamity likely to hit as soon as 2009. State, local, and private pension plans covering millions of government employees and union workers...

I can't believe that Barney Frank and I actually agree on something, although for probably very different reasons. The dangerously malfeasant congressman who helped to exacerbate the banking crisis with his ineptitude as Chairman of the House banking oversight committee wants to drag the heads of banks who took bailout money in front of Congress and give them the third degree...

President-elect Barack Obama brought in nearly $750 million for his presidential campaign, a record amount that exceeds what all of the candidates combined collected in private donations in the previous race for the White House, according to a report filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission. Underscoring the success of his fund-raising, Obama reported that he had nearly $30 million in the bank as of Nov. 24, despite spending furiously at the end of his campaign.

In her new book, Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America — ironically, currently #2 on The New York Times Best Sellers List — Ann Coulter excoriates America’s newspaper of wretched. Here are a few of her disclosures: * “On October 15, 2008, the Obama campaign’s internal pre-debate talking points were inadvertently released to the media.” On the same day, The New York Times ran a story in its politics blog, “The Caucus,” that bore striking similarities to the Obama memo. For instance, both predicted that McCain would bring up Obama’s ties to ex-terrorist William Ayers. The Times essentially...

The sudden crash in oil prices might be the smoking gun that shows speculation, rather than supply and demand, drove the huge run-up in oil futures last year. Daniel Fine of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology’s Center for Energy Policy told participants at a forum in Albuquerque Jan. 16 that massive, speculative trading by investment banks like Lehman Brothers, hedge funds and others is what drove oil above $140 per barrel.