Free Republic

Exclusive: Jane M. Orient, M.D., says political demagoguery is replacing science “From what I understand from doctors, that’s (conception as a result of rape) really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.” – Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo. All decent people, including U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin, agree that forcible rape is a heinous crime. Almost all would...

August 24, 2012 Rep. Todd Akin will hold news conference Friday afternoon ST. LOUIS, MO (KCTV) - U.S. Rep. Todd Akin will hold a news conference at 4:15 p.m. Friday. The event will be in St. Louis County. KCTV5.com will livestream the news conference and KCTV5 News at 4 p.m. will carry it...

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/23/huckabee-second-look-at-todd-akin/

Akin was not even the clear choice of conservatives. In the primary, John Brunner was endorsed by both Missouri Right to Life and the National Right to Life. Sarah Steelman was endorsed by Sarah Palin. Akin was endorsed by the Democratic Party. The Democrats carefully nurtured Akin with millions of dollars in campaign money because he was the candidate they most wanted to run against. (Akin thinks all those Democrats voting for him in the primary merely shows that he's got tremendous crossover appeal!) There's no rehabilitating this guy. It's a waste of money. His comments are going to cost...

Tampa, Florida (CNN) -- Facing pressure from Republican heavyweights in Washington to abandon his Missouri Senate bid, Rep. Todd Akin is huddling with top conservative activists in Tampa to assess whether to move forward with his embattled candidacy. Akin spent Wednesday night and Thursday in a series of private meetings at the two-day summit of the Council For National Policy (CNP), a secretive group of conservative leaders who are meeting in Florida before next week's RNC. -snip- Multiple sources at the CNP conference told CNN that Akin is being encouraged by leading figures in the conservative movement to remain in...

Todd Akin hasn't had many high-profile supporters with him in the trenches this week, but Mike Huckabee became an important and emphatic exception Thursday afternoon, sending a message to his own supporters accusing Republican elites of trying to drum a good man out of a winnable Senate race. Here's what Huckabee said in an email to his list this afternoon: Party’s leaders have for reasons that aren't rational, left [Akin] behind on the political battlefield, wounded and bleeding, a casualty of his self-inflicted, but not intentional wound.

State Senator and U.S. Senate candidate Michael Baumgartner issued an apology Tuesday, then retracted it after apparently sending a profane email to a reporter for the political blog Publicola. "Let me just say, Josh had it coming in this email, and I don't apologize," Baumgartner told KIRO 7's Graham Johnson on Tuesday afternoon. "Look, it's a naughty word. It doesn't amount to a whole lot." The email, which Publicola writer Josh Feit published on his blog, featured a photo of Baumgartner holding a gun and included the text, “Josh, this is Pat Feeks, a Navy SEAL killed last week in...

Another Missouri Republican consultant suggests that Representative Jo Ann Emerson, the Republican who has represented Missouri’s eighth district since 1996, could be a top contender to replace Todd Akin if he quits. Her name has been making the rounds among party insiders, thanks in part to the fact that she’s currently the longest-serving House member in Missouri. Missouri GOP executive director Lloyd Smith used to be her chief-of-staff. UPDATE: A colleague points out that Emerson is a member of the moderate-leaning Republican Main Street partnership, and generally less rightward than the three — Akin, Sarah Steelman, and John Brunner —...

An NRSC source just confirmed to me what various outlets have been reporting: if Todd Akin remains the senate candidate, NRSC will invest no financial resources into the Missouri senate race. Previously, NRSC had planned to spend $5 million. And Crossroads has already taken some TV ads off the air, reports Politico. If Akin does remain in the race, he’s going to be relying, it appears, virtually exclusively on whatever his campaign raises, without any financial help from outside groups.

If one of Mitt Romney's goals in choosing a running mate was to mine the same mother lode of conservative excitement that John McCain tapped by picking Sarah Palin four years ago, there's one additional dilemma for Romney to address: Palin is still around. A day after Romney unveiled House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential pick, Palin suggested in a statement posted by her Fox News colleague Greta Van Susteren that she would not speak at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa.(snip) For this reason, it was notable when she initially offered only a lukewarm reaction...

Palin will not speak at Republican conventionWASHINGTON | Sun Aug 12, 2012 7:36pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will not speak at the Republican nominating convention in Tampa later this month, she said in statement on Sunday. "This year is a good opportunity for other voices to speak at the convention and I'm excited to hear them," Palin, who was Senator John McCain's running mate in the 2008 election, said in a statement on Gretawire, the blog of Fox News's Greta Van Susteren.

<p>In a move that serves as a capstone to Rep. Ron Paul’s colorful career, the House on Wednesday approved a bill that would let Congress’s chief investigators conduct a full audit of the Federal Reserve’s shrouded decision-making process.</p> <p>The overwhelming 327-98 vote sends the bill to the Senate where Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, has previously expressed support for an audit — though it’s unclear he’ll carve out time for the legislation this year.</p>

Several senior House Democrats warned that passing a bill from Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) requiring a full audit of the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy decisions will allow Congress greater leverage to put political pressure on these decisions, which they said would cause serious problems in the U.S. and global financial markets. The Federal Reserve Transparency Act, H.R. 459, was expected to come up for a vote Wednesday, and seemed poised for passage given its 270 co-sponsors, including nearly four dozen Democrats. Nonetheless, many Democrats used the Tuesday floor debate to warn about the chances that Congress might use the...

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) has endorsed Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) in her Senate bid, a surprising move since the seat could be in play for Republicans this fall. Young praises Hirono for working across the aisle in the lighthearted Web ad, in which he repeatedly jokes about criticizing House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) before hugging Hirono at the end. "While Mazie and I don't see eye to eye on everything, we've done something too many people in Washington refuse to cross the aisle and do: We've worked together," Young said in the ad, and praises Hirono for working with...

Republican governors, eager for new revenue to ease budget strains, are dropping their longtime opposition to imposing sales taxes on online purchases, a significant political shift that could soon bring an end to tax-free sales on the Internet. The newfound support among Republicans is a dramatic change from just a few months ago. [N.J. Gov. Chris]Christie called taxation of online sales "an important issue to all the nation's governors" and endorsed federal legislation giving all states taxing authority.

Bentley said that Romney’s refusal to release more returns has created a “distraction” that Democrats were successfully exploiting. “I just believe in total transparency,” Bentley told ABC News at the National Governors Association conference. “In fact, I was asked today that question — do you think that Governor Romney should release his tax returns? And I said I do. I said, I release my tax returns. I may be the only public official in Alabama that does, but I release mine every year and I just believe that people should release their tax returns. And if you get them out...

Why is a group of Republicans, led by Senator Marco Rubio, hell-bent on fumbling the football at the goalpost while Democrats are losing on the issue of illegal immigration? Yet, it is also possible that Senator Rubio will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and introduce some version of the Dream Act.

JERUSALEM – In the latest “Arab Spring” uprising, the U.S. is backing protesters, many of whom, informed Middle Eastern security officials tell WND, are now pressing to openly announce an affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Syrian opposition has been plagued by infighting, with competing divisions sparring with each other even since the movement began in September of last year....

“Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we’d want to get involved.” – Bill Gates _____________________________ Dear Eduardo Saverin (if I may call you that), You were, as I’m sure you’re aware, born in Brazil to a wealthy family, and were moved to Miami when you were a child. To America, the land of opportunity. And boy, did you ever have a lot of opportunities. Your parents sent you to Harvard, where according to Wikipedia you “took advantage of Brazil’s lax insider trading...

Republicans aren’t shy about lobbing the “class warfare” charge at Democrats. But now Newt Gingrich is aiming those words at Mitt Romney over Romney’s idea to scrap or limit the mortgage-interest deduction for second homes. Romney, the Republicans’ all-but-certain presidential nominee, told donors in Florida last weekend that he’d take away the deduction for high-income earners. His campaign later said it was just an idea, not a hard-and-fast policy. But Gingrich took it as gospel. “Governor Romney’s proposal to limit certain tax deductions based on income, including the deduction for mortgage interest on second homes, is a surrender to the...