Free Republic

Unless you've been stuck in the Gobi Desert, you've read the headlines about the scandal at ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Earlier this month, ACORN staffers in four states were caught giving not-so-sage advice to two journalists, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, on how to defraud the government, cheat on taxes and wangle a mortgage for a home-based brothel. ACORN was once the darling of Democrats for its support of every item on the left-wing wish list. Suddenly, its employees can hardly find a Democrat who will answer their phone calls. When the...

Stimulus: The group that pushed banks into the risky loans that brought the economy down is now eligible for a huge chunk of stimulus cash. The stimulus plan does create jobs — for community activists.As in any agreement, contract or piece of legislation, the devil is in the details. So it is with the stimulus package percolating in Congress. Analysts are beginning to figure out that only a small percentage of the money will actually trickle down into the economy in the first two years, not enough to do much stimulating. Yet in this package is a $4 billion pot...

Color of Change has an axe to grind with Glenn Beck -- and it's personal. The extremist racial grievance group isn't happy that Beck did several news packages on Van Jones, President Obama's controversial green jobs czar who describes himself as a communist. [...] Jones is a founding board member of Color of Change, but [the group] doesn't want you to know that. Maybe having an avowed America-hating radical on the group's board is bad public relations. The group deleted references to Jones on its "about" page. [...] The old page still exists in the Google cache. [...] The 501(c)(4)...

Politics: The former Stuart Smalley becomes the 60th Democrat in the U.S. Senate, thanks to the community organizers at Acorn and the little-known Secretary of State Project. Is the system being rigged? Incumbent Republican Norm Coleman conceded defeat in the mother of all recounts in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race after the state's Supreme Court unanimously rejected his lawsuit. Arguably, his seat may have been lost the day in 2006 when Democrat Mark Ritchie defeated two-term incumbent Republican Mary Kiffmeyer to become Minnesota secretary of state. It was Ritchie who orchestrated the recount that gave Democratic challenger Franken a lead some...

Politics: The former Stuart Smalley becomes the 60th Democrat in the U.S. Senate, thanks to the community organizers at Acorn and the little-known Secretary of State Project. Is the system being rigged?Politics: The former Stuart Smalley becomes the 60th Democrat in the U.S. Senate, thanks to the community organizers at Acorn and the little-known Secretary of State Project. Is the system being rigged? Incumbent Republican Norm Coleman conceded defeat in the mother of all recounts in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race after the state's Supreme Court unanimously rejected his lawsuit. Arguably, his seat may have been lost the day in 2006...

FOX "The O'Reilly Factor"Video: "Minnesota Madness" Segment Aired Friday, January 9, 2008       Bill and two Republican guests(1) discuss Hollywood’s and George Soros massive donations to elected “Porn-o-Rama” Franken. This includes, a rare and calculated move(2), by George Soros who personally held a large post-election Franken fundraiser at his residence in New York City to support Al in the ballot recount/contest(3). I wrote about and published the list of Hollywood/high profile Franken donors three days before this news piece, not that this was new Soros Shadow Party news for anyone that has closely followed/been involved in this Coleman-Franken fiasco....

- - Former GOP MN secretary of state says absentee ballots should not have been included in recount Former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer is now criticizing the handling of the U.S. Senate election recount in the race between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman that ended with Franken on top. Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, now a freshman state representative from District 16B, did not speak publicly about the recount while it was ongoing, but is willing to talk about it now that the results are certified and the dispute has moved into the courts. Kiffmeyer, who from 1999 to...

George Soros is the biggest sugar daddy of the Democratic Party, and naturally wants to ensure that the Democrats have a monopoly of power in America. Recently, I wrote an article for American Thinker on the role that George Soros has played in helping the Democrat Al Franken in his race against the Republican incumbent Norm Coleman for a Senate seat in Minnesota. However, there may be one other reason that Soros was determined that Norm Coleman in particular lose his seat. This was personal. Norm Coleman was the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and as...

Send in the Clown It sounds like the plot of a 1990s straight-to-video Hollywood flick, but barring any dramatic developments – such as a successful court challenge by Republican opponent Norm Coleman – former “Saturday Night Live” cast member and comedian Al Franken will become the next U.S. Senator from Minnesota, likely on the strength of fraudulent votes. Franken’s fitness for office has been a matter of debate ever since he announced his candidacy in February 2007. Having made a career of “debunking” provocative statements made by famous conservatives in books like Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot, The...

The highly publicized vote recount in the Minnesota Senate race between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman is shining a light on Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, the state’s chief election officer. Ritchie is chairman of the Minnesota Canvassing Board, which on Monday certified that Franken received 225 more votes than Coleman did. Ritchie gave partial credit for his 2006 election to a liberal 527 group, the Secretary of State Project, which says its goal is to “ensure fair, clean elections” by replacing conservative secretaries of state with liberal Democrats. “I want to thank the Secretary of State...

The Minnesota senate race is generating a level of heat rare in a Minnesota November. With a filibuster-proof Senate hanging in the balance, it is worthwhile looking to the fine hand of George Soros, operating through a network of fat cat leftwing money bags who have collectively funded a myriad of nonprofit political spawn. At least two entities funded by Soros and his plutocrat wannabe pals hav prepared the soil for the contentious and suspicious process of tabulating and recounting the vote totals of incumbent Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken. We have written several times the rising influence...

In the Coleman-Franken Senate recount battle developing in Minnesota, almost all media accounts fail to mention that Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who largely controls the process, is not only a liberal Democrat, but also an ally of ACORN and liberal philanthropist George Soros. Even fewer media outlets report the fact that both Ritchie and fellow Democrat Al Franken were endorsed by ACORN. Ritchie, like so many liberals, is dismissive of electoral fraud allegations in general. He failed to investigate claims by a conservative group about voter roll irregularities. (See "SOS in Minnesota," American Spectator, Nov. 7, 2008) The...

“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” - Joseph Stalin * * * * *I have an article in the American Spectator today called "SOS in Minnesota." It's about the ties that Minnesota's Democratic Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, has to ACORN, and whether his background as a community organizer and as an ally of ACORN might affect his handling of the upcoming Senate race recount (Republican Norm Coleman versus Democrat Al Franken). A Democratic non-federal 527 fundraising group, the Secretary of State Project, that raises money to help elect Democrats...

NEW YORK (AP) - Madonna isn't the person she once was - and that's the way she wants it. These days, the former Material Girl spends more time with her two children than she does performing. She collects art instead of boyfriends, and she's traded in her leather and lace undergarments for more demure outfits. In the August issue of Vogue magazine, Madonna is featured in a lengthy interview and a photo spread at the English country estate she shares with her children, 8-year-old Lourdes (Lola) and 4-year-old Rocco, and her director-husband, Guy Ritchie ("Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels")....

<p>FOX'S new reality series, "The Simple Life," premiered Tuesday. The show follows the misadventures of socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie as they "rough it" for a month on an Arkansas farm - plucking chickens, killing bugs and (gasp!) sharing a single bathroom with their hosts, the Leding Family. The show is intended to highlight, in a less than subtle way, the rural decency of the Ledings by contrasting them with the absurdly pampered big city blonds.</p>

Editor Taints Recently Published Hearings How Senate Historian Botched Data on McCarthy By M. Stanton Evans The more we learn about the executive hearings on subversion held 50 years ago by Sen. Joe McCarthy (R.-Wis.), unveiled this month for public viewing, the more bizarre the tale becomes. Though mostly covering the same terrain as did public probes run by McCarthy in ’53 and ’54, these 4,000-plus pages of closed-door sessions contain a lot of added information and should be a great resource for scholars. Assuming, that is, that anyone actually bothers to read them—rather than relying on the gloss supplied...