Free Republic

Over a decade ago, the New York Post's Ryan Sager published a blockbuster story, showing that "campaign finance reform has been an immense scam perpetrated...by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a "mass movement." Based on the astonishing testimony of Sean Treglia, who ran the campaign finance reform effort for Pew Trusts, Sager reported that...(continued at link)

What an election: The one-time mayor of Ellis Island, grandson of Italian immigrants, has to make nice with the modern-day Know Nothings if he wants a shot at his party's nomination for the presidency. Mayor Giuliani gets immigrants. He's lived their dreams. He's governed their city. He's won their hearts and their minds and their votes. But now he must walk a razor's edge between advocating sensible immigration reforms on one side and demonizing immigrants as criminals and invaders on the other. Having transgressed from conservative orthodoxy irreparably on one issue, abortion, Mr. Giuliani has been pursuing a strategy of...

Mitt Romney is rightly being hit for his flip-flop on immigration. However, Fred Thompson's "tough" stance isn't exactly enough to make him the restrictionists' hero, either. As recently as 2006, Mr. Thompson clearly stated that some sort of legalization — or "amnesty" — would be necessary. He seems to be for a virtual border fence (like President Bush) instead of a brick-and-mortar one. And he doesn't want tough sanctions for employers. This all puts Mr. Thompson roughly in line with Rudy Giuliani. On a path to citizenship: "[B]ecause we allowed ourselves to wait until we woke up one day and...

When the lightning crackled in New Hampshire and knocked out the microphones, Mayor Giuliani, once a parochial-school kid, cracked that God must be angry with him. But the real invisible presence shaking up the Republican primary debate on CNN last night was not the Almighty. It was Fred Thompson. One might call him the 6'5" elephant in the room — but he wasn't in the room at all. He was in Fox News's Washington, D.C., studio, waiting to go on "Hannity & Colmes" for a softball interview that would serve as his own personal post-game show, free of such petty...

A couple of big things expired Tuesday night: the usefulness of the trite Red/Blue dichotomy in American politics, and the George W. Bush/Karl Rove dream of the Republican Party holding a "permanent majority." But one big new thing was born: the interior West (the eight states off the West Coast: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) as America's new political swing region. Conservatives may not realize it yet, but all this will benefit the Republican Party in years to come. Since 2000, President Bush and political guru Rove have pushed a mutant ideology that's come to...

The news media's treatment of foundation involvement in public policy may have changed forever on March 17. That was the day the New York Post published "Buying 'Reform': Media Missed Millionaires' Scam," an account by one of its columnists, Ryan Sager, of the massive spending by several mainstream foundations to secure passage of the 2002 overhaul of campaign-finance laws and to keep the issue alive. Mr. Sager told his readers he had discovered "an immense scam perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a 'mass movement.'" Foundations like Ford, Open Society, Carnegie, Joyce,...

Listen While You Freep! All programs are replayed for 23 hours and again on weekends so tune in when it’s convenient for YOU! Call In Number - 866-884-TALK (8255) Heating the EDGE of a New Media! 1pm EST - : Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation, Paul M. Weyrich, will have Representative Walter B. Jones, R-N.C. as his featured guest on THE RIGHT HOUR. The discussion will focus on H.R. 235, the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act of 2005. To appreciate why this bill is both important and necessary, it is vital to understand certain events...

CAMPAIGN-FINANCE reform has been an immense scam perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a "mass movement." But don't take my word for it. One of the chief scammers, Sean Treglia, a former program officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, confesses it all in an astonishing videotape I obtained earlier this week. This is an amazing story. I combined part of Ryan Sager's editorial and the transcript of the tape. The tape — of a conference held at USC's Annenberg School for Communication in March of 2004 — shows Treglia expounding to a...