Free Republic

Washington (CNN) – Still swaggering after its recent electoral successes, the Tea Party movement appears to be growing more emboldened as it tries to blaze a path to power. One new bold move: An activist group is publicly parading a list of lawmakers the group is determined to oust from office. On Thursday, the Tea Party Express added two more names to its "2012 Tea Party Target List" - Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. (snip) "Olympia Snowe dishonors the notion that the Republican Party is supposed to be the fiscally conservative, constitutionalist...

Republicans last week painted the country's northeastern corner red last week, grabbing control of the state House, Senate and governor's mansion in Maine for the first time in more than four decades in a stunning electoral sweep. But the GOP wins might be worrisome news for the state's GOP senior senator, opening up the possibility of a 2012 primary challenge to moderate three-term Sen. Olympia J. Snowe now that state voters have shown that a fiscal conservative can win in a statewide contest. "There is going to be a primary, and she is going to have at least one 'tea...

The Maine Republican senator says like the telephone, the Internet is a basic service that everyone should have access to. Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe says she favors expanding the reach of a "fee" that's been charged for years on telephone customers. Snowe and other members of Congress support adding the fee to cable and wireless phone bills to raise money to assure broadband Internet access in rural areas. "I've been a big advocate of making sure that rural communities have access to broadband," she says. "Because it's similar to telephone service, and what the Telecommunications Act was all about...

WASHINGTON—The Senate approved a wide-ranging overhaul of the nation's financial regulations Thursday, handing President Barack Obama his second major domestic-policy victory of the year. The legislation passed, 60-39, largely along party lines. Republicans Sens. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, joined Democrats in supporting the bill. Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wisc.) was the only Democrat to vote against the measure.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe says she will vote for a Democratic health care bill, breaking with her party on President Barack Obama's top legislative priority. The Maine senator kept virtually all of Washington guessing how she would vote until she announced it late in the Senate Finance Committee debate Tuesday. Until then, she told reporters, she had not even let Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in on her secret. She told her colleagues: "When history calls, history calls," even though she had some criticism of the bill.

The Senate Finance Committee's bipartisan negotiating team is expected to continue talks Friday on a health care reform plan that the vice president predicted would eventually pass the Congress. "As bleak as it looks, you know, always darkest before the dawn," Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Thursday, after a speech at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank. "The prospects of success are high. I think they are very high." The Finance Committee's "gang of six" -- three Republicans and three Democrats -- plans to hold its second teleconference call since the August break. The group was given...