Free Republic

Fox confirms Vice President Joe Biden will have dinner Sunday night with a group of GOP Senators who could be swayed on Syria. The topic of conversation is expected to be what the President needs to say in his Tuesday address.

Syria's butcher Bashir Assad could end up toppling British Prime Minister David Cameron and not the other way around, while also giving Russia a big boost back on to the Great Power stage and green lighting Tehran's most ambitious and sparky plans in its mountain tunnel complexes. Along the way he has exposed President Obama as feckless and fearful. The president and his team are scrambling to remind lawmakers of what the Commander-in-Chief ought to have long ago argued to the country: When the good guys blink, the bad guys notice. Lots and lots of blinking. Most of the people...

Democratic State Senator Dan Sutton of Flandreau, South Dakota accused of fondling a male page. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/24/AR2007012401966.html Carl Stanley McGee, 38, prominent gay activist, assistant secretary for policy and planning and top aid to democrat governor Deval Patrick of Massachuttsettes, accused of sexually assaulting a 15 year old boy in a steam room at a Florida resort. http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1072114 Bernard Vincent Ward, former chief legislative aide to Senator Barbara Boxer, self proclaimed "Lion of the Left" on bay area radio, admitted transgressions too numerous to mention. http://prosites-prs.homestead.com/ward_new.pdf Davidson County Democratic Party Chairman Rodney Mullins resigned Thursday morning amid child pornography allegations, according...

Our first Paparazzi Video! Jimmy from http://thelibertydefenseproject.org/ asked Congresswoman Kristi Noem if she will support the Stockman Discharge petition. - Check out the video for her answer...

With each passing day, it seems the United States of America, “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” is becoming more and more like the Communist Russia I learned about in elementary school where people weren’t allowed to grow their own food unless the State “allowed” it. In this latest crackdown on citizens simply trying to provide for themselves using the most basic of skills – gardening – the USDA’s Rural Development Agency is forbidding Rosie, an industrious 4-year old girl in South Dakota from using a small, unused area outside her subsidized housing unit to grow green...

Former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown told the Herald he is exploring a possible 2016 presidential bid today as he hit a well-worn stomping ground for Oval Office hopefuls – the Iowa State Fair. “I want to get an indication of whether there’s even an interest, in Massachusetts and throughout the country, if there’s room for a bi-partisan problem solver,” said Brown, who has been meeting with top republicans nationally and last week hosted a Fenway event for Republican National Committee members. Brown indicated he isn't close to deciding whether he will run. “It’s 2013 I think it’s premature, but I...

Many Republicans who are eyeing a run for president in 2016 are backing an all-or-nothing plan to defund ObamaCare. More than half a dozen possible GOP White House candidates support that strategy while a handful are calling for a more nuanced approach to defunding or repealing the healthcare law. Another five are dodging questions and a couple others are not signaling one way or another. [A detailed breakdown is outlined in the chart below.] In short, some are willing to go to the brink and beyond of a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. But it’s far from unanimous. Still, the...

One can’t get much more grass roots than this: Sarah Palin is the keynote speaker Thursday at an agricultural “field day” near Baltic, S.D. — population 1,090 — situated on the scenic banks of the Big Sioux River in the eastern corner of the state. The former vice presidential candidate/potential U.S. Senate hopeful is going no-frills, however, journeying to the heartland accompanied by her youngest daughter. “It’s an honor to get to travel with my entourage, er, that would be Piper, to be with those who are feeding the nation,” Mrs. Palin said in a Facebook post about the one-day...

Officials In Yankton Put Out Unusual Fire YANKTON, SD - Firefighters in Yankton were called to extinguish an unusual blaze that involved an apparent small animal and a smoke bomb. A resident who noticed a large hole had been dug in his yard overnight dropped a smoke bomb down the hole Sunday afternoon to scare off the varmint. The result was flames shooting from the ground. Officials believe the animal might have chewed or clawed its way through a gas line, and the smoke bomb ignited the fumes. Firefighters monitored the scene for nearly an hour until a gas company...

Explanation: What's that in the sky? It is a rarely seen form of lightning confirmed only about 25 years ago: a red sprite. Recent research has shown that following a powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike, red sprites may start as 100-meter balls of ionized air that shoot down from about 80-km high at 10 percent the speed of light and are quickly followed by a group of upward streaking ionized balls. The above image, taken a few days ago above central South Dakota, USA, captured a bright red sprite, and is a candidate for the first color image ever recorded...

Energy companies are lining up for their shot to drill in the Dakotas and Montana after a new government report revealed that a massive geological formation stretching across the states contains twice the oil and three times the amount of natural gas than was originally believed. While the new estimate is drawing smaller companies to the game, the larger players like Schlumberger, Halliburton and Continental Resources are pushing forward with ambitious multi-year plans to stake their claim in the industry. Continental recently announced a five-year plan to triple its production by 2017. The company’s growth is based on success in...

Democratic leaders are wooing staunchly pro-gun candidates to run in pivotal Senate races at the same time they are discussing a strategy for bringing gun control legislation back up for debate. The two-pronged effort has prompted Republicans to accuse the Senate Democratic leadership of hypocrisy, but Democrats say it is simply smart politics. The question is whether two of the Democrats’ most promising potential candidates in Montana and South Dakota will pay a price for the leadership’s political maneuverings in Washington. Or will recruiting candidates who do not support President Obama’s gun control agenda have any effect on Democratic fundraising...

2014 retirements: Dems heading for the hills By: Alexander Burns April 23, 2013 04:49 PM EDT Doesn’t anyone want to run for Senate in 2014? Midway through candidate recruitment season, the bad news for Democrats is this: They are watching a generation of talent leave the Senate and head for retirement. The less-bad news: So far, few marquee-name Republicans are interested in these seats either. When Montana Sen. Max Baucus called it quits on Tuesday, he became the latest in a long series of senior legislators to announce that they’ve had quite enough of life on the Hill. National Democrats...

The National Weather Service has posted a winter storm warning for far eastern South Dakota, and winter weather advisories in other parts of that region and also southeastern North Dakota. ... Snowstorms have been crossing the Dakotas for the past week, dumping record amounts of snow

During a hearing into the constitutionality of voter identification laws enacted across the country, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) tore into claims by the Department of Justice that those laws were racially discriminatory. In the space of five minutes, Gowdy knocked down the claims, one by one, that a voter ID law passed in South Carolina in 2011 discriminated against African-Americans or was dissimilar to laws the Justice Department had cleared in a variety of other states. Gowdy began by noting that, when the Palmetto State’s voter identification law was passed, a third of the state’s congressional delegation were African-American; former...

Obama quietly signs bill shielding airlines from carbon fees in EuropeBy Keith Laing - 11/27/12 02:02 PM ET President Obama has signed into law a bill that requires U.S. airlines be excluded from European carbon emissions fees. Environmentalists had framed the bill as the first test of the president's commitment to fighting climate change in his second term and urged him to veto it. Obama quietly signed it Tuesday over their objections. "The Obama administration is firmly committed to reducing harmful carbon pollution from civil aviation both domestically and internationally, but, as we have said on many occasions, the application...

Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD), a Vietnam veteran who served in Congress for more than two decades, said Tuesday on Current TV that the movement for marriage equality is much like the movement for racial equality, and confidently declared that the Republican Party is now in the process of making the right to marry “the new conservative position.” “The main thing that caused me to change my mind was my work with veterans groups,” he told “Viewpoint” host John Fugelsang, explaining that he’s worked with a gay couple who want to marry and have a family. “It’s something like in...

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, does not plan to run for re-election when his current term ends in 2014, sources close to the matter and key Capitol Hill staffers said on Monday. Johnson, 66, joined the Senate in 1997 and has been widely expected to retire at the end of his term. He plans to make the announcement on Tuesday, the sources said. Johnson's staff said that he will hold a press conference at the University of South Dakota on Tuesday. His retirement would leave a vacant seat in a conservative-leaning state that could be...

US House Energy and Commerce Committee members released a discussion draft of legislation designed to jump-start approval of the proposed Keystone XL crude oil pipeline project. The draft bill by Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) would eliminate the need for a presidential permit and find that the Aug. 26, 2011, final environmental impact statement issued by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton satisfied all National Environmental Policy Act requirements. Reps. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) and John Barrow (D-Ga.) cosponsored the proposal, which also would limit legal challenges to the project so it would not be delayed further. Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred...

To think that Boris and Natasha lived right here in South Dakota, and we didn't even know it! Recently, Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Steingraber-Trebilcock-Myers - a couple who once lived in Aberdeen - were arrested for spying. The news rocked the nation. Well, actually, the nation immediately forgot the story. Still, South Dakota hasn't forgotten. It's not every day suspected spies are found traipsing through your own neighborhood. The espionage likely started after they left Aberdeen, but you still wonder if that abandoned shopping cart you saw in aisle 8 of Kessler's might have contained a coded message. The...