Free Republic

With less than four weeks until Election Day, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s independent expenditure arm is shifting resources to increase its investment in six states, including South Dakota and Georgia. The NRSC has moved $1 million to South Dakota, plus another $1.45 million to Georgia. In South Dakota, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee made a $1 million television ad buy this week, on the heels of tightening poll numbers that showed its candidate, Rick Weiland, gaining ground. In Georgia, a new poll suggests a runoff is likely. The NRSC also is upping its investment in four other states: Alaska,...

Witnesses tell The Boston Globe police fired tear gas at hundreds of Keene State College students and others who had been throwing bottles, skateboards and rocks into the crowd. One witness blames heavy alcohol use at earlier parties. WMUR-TV in Manchester showed footage of a crowd toppling over a car, people running from tear gas clouds and street signs being torn down. Police dressed in riot gear ordered crowds to disperse. The parties were part of the Keene Pumpkin Festival, where the community tries to set a world record of the largest number of lighted jack-o-lanterns.

Scott Brown is staging a late-game comeback in New Hampshire and the analysts at the Cook Political Report have taken notice. Even though Scott Brown has been trailing for months in the polls, a couple of new surveys show he’s nipping at Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D-NH) heels. Perhaps in part because he's become more visible in recent weeks, or perhaps because national security issues are starting to take center stage, the analysts believe Brown is now a formidable candidate. From their write-up:

As if Democrats needed anything else to worry about, there is the New Hampshire situation. Former naked Senate person Scott Brown enjoyed being a senator. What’s not to like? You get to work in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body and deliberate until the cows come home. Then he lost a reelection bid to Elizabeth Warren in 2012 and couldn’t be a senator anymore. So he moved to New Hampshire and said, sure, this is good enough, I’ll be a senator from here. New Hampshire is a blue state — redder than some other New England states, sure — and his...

Sen. Rand Paul took a playful jab at Michelle Obama and her healthy eating initiatives that condemn all types of junk food, tweeting to her handle to let her know the location of his first New Hampshire stop — Dunkin’ Donuts. He wrote, to his nearly half a million followers: “Just arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire. First stop: @DunkinDonuts cc: @MichelleObama,” The Hill reported. He didn’t specify his menu choices — but the jab was obviously at Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move!” anti-obesity campaign. The first lady has fielded considerable fire from schools, parents and hungry students who say her cafeteria...

Health care workers at Inova Loudoun in Lansdowne are currently testing a patient who is presenting symptoms of the Ebola virus, according to Tony Raker, spokesperson for Inova Healthcare Systems. Raker said Inova is in contact with the county health department and the Centers for Disease Control at this time. He could not provide further details on the patient. A release from the county says Loudoun County Fire and Rescue took an inmate with a low-grade fever from the Adult Detention Center to Inova Lansdowne Hospital. The patient had traveled from Ebola-affected areas of West Africa within the past 21...

A bipartisan group of senators from across the political spectrum—from Elizabeth Warren and Patrick J. Leahy to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio—wants President Barack Obama to speak out and act to support Hong Kong’s democracy movement.They don’t specify exactly what they want Obama to do—they say “demonstrable, meaningful steps”—but note that a 1992 law “authorizes you to suspend trade and economic provisions should Beijing not provide sufficient autonomy for Hong Kong.”Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is president pro tempore and Judiciary chairman, leads the letter with Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rubio.“The people of Hong Kong have sent a strong...

The battle for the House has turned into trench warfare, with Republicans trying to scrape out enough wins to give them a historic majority and Democrats doing everything they can to minimize GOP gains. If the election were held today, strategists from both sides say, Republicans would expand their current majority by between six and eight seats ... Republicans head into the final weeks of the campaign almost exclusively on offense. Of the 31 or so races seriously in contention, 22 — over 70 percent — are in districts held by Democrats. Twenty of the 31 districts were won by...

A couple of weeks ago in our article “How Republicans Can Capture The Youth Vote In 30 Seconds” we told you about Marilinda Garcia, a conservative Republican member of the New Hampshire legislature who won her congressional primary and is now campaigning as a conservative for New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District. Inexplicably, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s latest filing of independent expenditures showed ZERO dollars spent on Garcia, but hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on less promising, and considerably less conservative, candidates. Garcia is, on paper at least, the Republican establishment’s ideal candidate for Congress. Young, attractive, with a...

Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) told Fox News Sunday that she worried President Barack Obama was only confronting ISIS to help Democrats in the upcoming midterms, and that he would ease up on the Sunni militants after the election. “I think we have a problem where the president’s foreign policy is being trapped by his campaign rhetoric,” Ayotte said. “I’m very fearful as we look at the current military strategy that it is surrounding the November elections, and he won’t have the resolve to follow through with what needs to be done in a sustained effort to destroy ISIS.”

With one month until Election Day, Republicans' chances for retaking the Senate and picking up seats in the House are improving. The GOP has been buoyed by positive public polling, while red-state Democrats are still struggling to find distance from President Obama. There are bright spots and even some unexpected new targets on the map for both parties, but the overall national environment seems to have ticked a bit toward Republicans. The GOP needs to win a net of six seats to retake control of the Senate, and Republicans seem better-positioned to do so now than they did through much...

If the New Hampshire race is like others in some respects, it is unique in at least one. Brown, 55, moved to the state to run. The race is his third for the Senate in five years. Shaheen, 67, is a known political commodity in New Hampshire. She was elected, to this Senate seat, in 2008 when Obama won the state. "She's won in a wave and lost in a wave," says former Rep. Frank Guinta, a Republican. "I think she's as susceptible as anyone is." That view — that even a well-established politician can lose if enough voters sour...

LEBANON, N.H. —Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center said it has discovered a case of the skin condition scabies in a patient in its hematology/oncology unit, and is offering free screening clinics and treatment to staff, patients and visitors who may have had contact with that person.

An A-10 Thunderbolt II banks after a strafing run on Aug. 21, 2014, during the Red Flag-Alaska 14-3 exercise at the Yukon Training Area, Alaska. Months after staving off a trip to the boneyard, the embattled A-10 Thunderbolt II is headed to the Middle East where it could be used to fight Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria. An Indiana Air National Guard unit that flies the Cold War-era gunships, known as Warthogs, is planning to deploy about 300 airmen and an unknown number of its aircraft to the U.S. Central Command region early next month, says a Sept. 17...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday ripped U.S. Senate Democrats for blocking his bill that would revoke the U.S. citizenship of those who join the ISIS terrorist organization, noting that they are abandoning something Hillary Clinton supported when she was Secretary of State. The Democrats blocked Cruz’s bill on Thursday, a bill that would revoke citizenship from Americans who join ISIS. Cruz’s bill is very similar to one that then Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)—who is now running in New Hampshire against Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)—and then Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) offered a couple of years ago.“As then-Secretary of State Hillary...

The New Hampshire Republican Party amended its platform this weekend with stricter abortion provisions, including support for "personhood," which defines life as beginning at conception.Personhood has become a hot-button issue in Senate races across the country this year, such as Colorado, where Democrats have successfully attacked Rep. Cory Gardner for having supported such a measure in the past.Now, the issue could spread to New Hampshire, following the state party's decision at its convention.The platform now states: "Support the pre-born child's fundamental right to life and personhood under the Fourteenth Amendment, and implement all Constitutional and legal protections."It added: "Support a...

Voters have soured on President Obama. National and statewide trends favor Republicans. And here in his new home state, Scott Brown’s truck is gaining speed. Analysts and recent polls have found Brown closing in on US Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic incumbent he is vying to unseat, in a race that has become increasingly nasty and expensive. Once largely dismissed by critics as an unlikely second act in a state he moved to only last year, Brown’s Senate bid is increasingly seen as a plausible path back to the US Capitol. Observers see a race that may be largely determined...

Iowa Democrat continues to support plan despite years of congressional opposition.Rep. Bruce Braley (D., Iowa) continued to vote in favor of transferring terrorist prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a U.S. facility even after the plan collapsed due to congressional opposition, according to government records. Republicans have blasted Braley this week for supporting an initial proposal in 2009 to move the detainees to an Illinois correctional center near the Iowa border. The criticism comes as polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans view the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), the al Qaeda offshoot that...

Jim Geragthy, acclaimed author and National Review’s chief campaign analyst, has been grousing about the lack of quality polling in key Senate races this year. His frustration is well-founded. So yesterday must have felt like Christmas in September for Jim and political junkies everywhere, as two pollsters released a deluge of surveys covering the most contested races in the country. In light of the results, I’d expect that national Republicans are kicking off the week with an extra spring in their step, as well. We were leaked an advance copy of last week’s much-anticipated Politico/GWU Battleground poll, which was packed...