Free Republic

Full title: Disgraced ex-politician John Edwards back practicing law and now vying to lead 'goldmine' case against Volkswagen over emissions cheatingFormer vice presidential candidate John Edwards is competing to lead private litigation against Volkswagen over its emissions cheating scandal. The former U.S. Senator, a Democrat, was a trial lawyer in North Carolina before his political career was felled by a sex scandal after it emerged he had an affair with actress Rielle Hunter - who then gave birth to their daughter. Last Friday, he sent a letter to U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco asking to be...

As soon as John Kerry announced his choice of John Edwards as his running mate last week, the contrast was unavoidable. This autumn, Edwards, a telegenic, bubbly lawyer who looks 40, will go up against Big Daddy Cheney, the bald, dour, snarling vice-president whose most recent public pronouncement was to tell a leading Democratic senator to “go f*** yourself”. Edwards is a Southerner from a modest background, but he is also a member of the new class — a multi-millionaire trial lawyer with a fiercely independent career woman for a wife. Cheney is from Wyoming, one of the most beautiful...

Former presidential contender John Edwards has reactivated his license to practice law and is setting out on the speaking circuit. The two-time presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator is scheduled to appear June 6 at a private retreat in Orlando, Fla., for lawyer clients of the marketing firm PMP. A records check with the N.C. State Bar shows Edwards has also reactivated his license to practice law, which had been inactive for more than a decade.....

By any objective measure, Senator Kerry is one of the Big Three's most hostile opponents in Washington, D.C. In 2002, he introduced legislation that would have increased corporate average fuel-economy standards (CAFE) from 24 to 36 miles-per-gallon. The Energy Information Administration estimated that Kerry's proposal would have eliminated 450,000 jobs in the United States and resulted in lost economic input of $170 billion. Kerry's CAFE increase would have hit Michigan's economy especially hard because GM, Ford, and Chrysler are more dependent on the profits from low-mileage SUVS, pickups, and minivans (light trucks) than their foreign competitors. This reliance on...

Whistleblower explodes 9-11 Commission Report By Ritt Goldstein The US Federal Bureau of Investigation's own September 11 whistleblower has done it again, this time taking aim at the 9-11 Commission itself. Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator who has in effect been silenced by the bureau and the US Justice Department, said in an open letter to commission chairman Thomas Kean that the FBI had suffered from a litany of errors and cover-ups of those errors, which had been reported to the 9-11 Commission by Edmonds and others, yet the commission report "contains zero information regarding these systemic problems that led...

"The embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world," declared Ted Kennedy, in a moment of Revolutionary War nostalgia. Or he would have done, if he'd managed to stick to his text. But, in a strikingly erratic performance even by his standards, what actually emerged from the senator's lips was: They "fired the shirt round the world.'' That sums up better than anything what the Democratic Party's been trying to do this last week for its presidential candidate: fire the stuffed shirt round the world, put a rocket up a guy who seems weighed down by his...

"There is nothing more pessimistic than saying America can't do better. We can do better and we will. We're the optimists. For us, this is a country of the future. We're the can do people... I am proud that at my side will be a running mate whose life is the story of the American dream and who's worked every day to make that dream real for all Americans... And what can I say about Teresa? She has the strongest moral compass of anyone I know. She's down to earth, nurturing, courageous, wise and smart. She speaks her mind...