Free Republic

Club for Growth President Pat Toomey was recently quoted, "Earmark reform will shine a glaring light on the profligate pork barrel projects and the politicians who sponsor them," It didn't occur to him that earmark reform also exposes the recipients of multi-million dollar pork projects--including the largest contributors to The Club for Growth. Arkansas millionaire Jackson "Steve" Stephens, Jr., ... has been hounding Mike Huckabee for expanding government for the likes of providing health insurance for children of the working poor, building highways and keeping the sales tax on groceries to improved inadequate schools. Small government, that’s the mantra of...

There they go again. The “Stop Huckabee” campaign sponsored by the Club for Growth, has launched yet another “fact-check” on Mike Huckabee’s record, similar in both style and rhetoric to most any Pat Toomey-led campaign. Like any good sleight of hand artist, Toomey’s attacks are designed to distract the audience just long enough for the illusion to be successful. So it is with this one as well. The current Club for Growth strategy even has some Arkansas flavoring in the mix. Salon reports on “a spin-off group called Club for Growth.net, which files regular disclosures through the Internal Revenue Service....

DID SADDAM HUSSEIN and Osama bin Laden have access to a U.S. computer tracking program that enabled them to monitor our intelligence-gathering efforts and financial transactions? If so, who is responsible for allowing the program to fall into their hands? And who else among America's enemies might have access to the tracking system? It's an explosive spy software scandal that no one in official Washington wants to investigate. This complex, tangled story began two decades ago, when a tiny private company called Inslaw Inc. developed a software package to help U.S. attorneys' offices in large urban districts keep tabs on...

WASHINGTON - When two Russian immigrants and their American financial backer needed marketing help for their innovative electric motor, they turned to a merchant banker at one of the nation's largest investment houses - retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark. The meeting at the Washington office of Stephens Inc. in late 2001 proved fortuitous for both Clark, the former supreme commander of NATO, and the principals in WaveCrest Laboratories, at the time a small research and development company in Dulles, Va. "They hit it off pretty much right away," said WaveCrest spokesman Tom McMahon. Clark signed on as a consultant...

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the Little Rock native and former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, has resigned as managing director of merchant banking for the Stephens Group Inc. of Little Rock effective Friday, a company spokesman confirmed. "He told several of us that his first assignment would be to Kuwait City for CNN," Stephens spokesman Frank Thomas said. "It was a very amicable parting, very comfortable." Clark couldn't be reached for comment Friday morning. He joined Stephens in July 2000, the same month he retired from the Army. He serves on the boards of directors of Acxiom...

Wesley Clark, the former Army General who announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on Sept. 17, has not given up his board memberships, according to published accounts. Since retiring from the military in 2000, Clark has held a variety of industrial positions, including jobs with a Washington, DC-based technology firm, an investment company, and director or advisor positions with six other organizations. In most cases he was brought on board to assist with military or government contracts. One such company is Acxiom Corp., the Little Rock, AR-based data firm. Clark joined Acxiom in December 2001, and played a...