Free Republic

For more than 30 years, pieces of Garfield telephones kept washing ashore on the beaches of northwestern France, and no one quite knew why. Where was the lasagna-loving cartoon cat coming from? The mystery would puzzle the locals for years. His plastic body parts, first appearing in a crevice of the Brittany coast in the mid-1980s, kept returning no matter how many times beach cleaners recovered them. Sometimes they would find only his lazy bulging eyes, or just his smug face, or his entire fat-cat body, always splayed out in the sand in a very Garfield fashion. From the stray...

INDIANAPOLIS – Cartoonist Jim Davis apologized Thursday for a Garfield strip that some veterans may have found offensive. The strip ran on Veterans Day in newspapers across the country. It shows a spider daring the pudgy orange cat to squash it. The spider tells Garfield that if he is killed, "they will hold an annual day of remembrance in my honor." The final panel shows a spider-teacher asking its students if they know why spiders celebrate "National Stupid Day."

Iran's Oil Mafia April 16, 2007 Frontpagemagazine.com Hassan Daioleslam Robert William (Bob) Ney is a current federal prisoner and a former Ohio Congressman from 1995 until November 3, 2006. Ney pled guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the Jack Abramoff lobbying and bribery scandal. Ney reportedly received bribes from Abramoff, other lobbyists, and two foreign businessmen - a felon and an arms dealer - in exchange for using his position to advance their interests. Conspicuously missing from this dossier of disservice to the country was Ney’s assistance in the creation of a Washington-based lobbying...

TAMPA - A new poll in the Florida governor race shows discouraging news for Democratic candidate Jim Davis, the congressman from Tampa: a 15-point gap between himself and Republican Charlie Crist, the state's attorney general, and a relatively little-known name among Florida voters. The poll shows Crist and his running mate, Jeff Kottkamp, leading Davis and running mate Daryl Jones by 51 percent to 36 percent, with 11 percent undecided and other candidates totaling 2 percent. That means Davis has a lot of ground to make up on Crist and comparatively little time before the Nov. 7 election and with...

Jim Davis' general election campaign for governor turned sour the moment he started celebrating winning the Democratic nomination. "How sweet it is!" he declared Tuesday night, digging at the sugar industry's investment of several million dollars on behalf of Rod Smith. Nothing wrong with poking a deep-pocket special interest. But Davis never mentioned Smith in his victory speech, never reached out to Smith's supporters, much less to Republicans. Meanwhile, Republican Charlie Crist was celebrating his more decisive primary victory by reaching out to Tom Gallagher's supporters, Democrats and anybody else within earshot. For Davis, the day after was even worse....

MIAMI -- The race for governor comes down to a Democrat who has railed against the Tallahassee establishment and Gov. Jeb Bush's policies versus a Republican who supports Bush in many ways, but isn't afraid to buck his party to side with the popular sentiment among voters. Attorney General Charlie Crist began his general election campaign with the overwhelming backing of Republican voters while U.S. Rep. Jim Davis failed to win over half the Democrats casting ballots in what was essentially a two-person race. "It's going to be a competitive, interesting race, but clearly Crist starts off with a major...

Attorney General Charlie Crist's formidable lead over Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher in the Republican primary for governor appears secure, according to a poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, but with less than a week to go before Tuesday's election, the race between the leading Democrats is still up for grabs. Crist is ahead of Gallagher 57 to 32 percent, according to the Connecticut-based public opinion research group. But the poll says the contest between U.S. Rep. Jim Davis and state Sen. Rod Smith is much tighter, with Davis leading 43-32 percent, while a substantial 24 percent of Democrats surveyed...

TALLAHASSEE - Republican Charlie Crist and Democrat Jim Davis hold double-digit leads over their rivals in party primaries for governor, but the Democratic race remains wide open with nearly two-thirds of voters undecided, a new poll shows. The statewide telephone survey was conducted July 24-25 by the Republican polling firm McLaughlin & Associates for a unit of Associated Industries of Florida, a statewide lobbying group representing 11,000 businesses. The poll of 600 people covered policy questions such as property insurance, immigration and offshore oil drilling and included smaller samples of Republicans and Democrats who said they were likely to vote...

TAMPA - Attorney General Charlie Crist may be running away with the Republican nomination in the governor's race, a new poll for The Tampa Tribune and WFLA, News Channel 8, shows. Crist leads Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher 55 percent to 24 percent among likely Republican voters surveyed last week by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research. The race for the Democratic nomination remains wide open, however,with a majority of the Democrats surveyed undecided on whether to support U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, of Tampa, or state Sen. Rod Smith, of Alachua. Of those who chose a candidate, Davis led 29 percent to...

Republican Attorney General Charlie Crist has opened a double digit lead in the race to succeed Governor Jeb Bush, leading Democratic Congressman Jim Davis 49% to 35% in our latest survey. In May, Crist led Davis 44% to 39%. Both men are front-runners in their primary contests, which will be decided on September 5. Crist recently picked up an endorsement from Republican Senator Mel Martinez, the first Cuban-American elected to the U.S. Senate. The Crist campaign hopes will help him pick up primary votes among Hispanics. Republican Tom Gallagher also leads Davis, although by the narrower margin of 43% to...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis compared the way Republicans run Florida to the way Fidel Castro runs Cuba as the state party rallied supporters Tuesday for the upcoming election. State workers are afraid of retribution if they say what they really think about how the state is run, said Davis, a congressman from Tampa. "I had a state worker put his arm around my shoulder, he looked around the room to make sure nobody was looking at him, and said 'Jim, I'm for you.' What kind of country is that? I've had the same conversations with other...

TAMPA, Fla. Same-sex couples should be able to adopt children, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis told a largely gay group Saturday. But the Tampa congressman later told reporters that he does not support gay marriage in Florida. Davis spoke at a conference of the Florida Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender Democratic Caucus. "I believe, as my grandfather did, that we are all equal in the eyes of God," he said. "What matters is on the inside." Davis also told the conference that he would work to reduce school class sizes and fight oil drilling off Florida beaches. Citing the Terri Schiavo case, he said...