Free Republic

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she would not support a short-term increase in American troop presence in Iraq unless it was part of a more comprehensive plan to stabilize the country. Clinton also offered the broadest indication yet that she was close to a decision on whether to enter the 2008 Democratic presidential field. "I want to make sure the decision is right for me, my family, my party and my country," Clinton said during an interview on NBC's "The Today Show." She appeared on the show to promote the rerelease of her best-selling book on child rearing, "It...

Democrats assail Bush's N. Korea policy By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago Democrats seized on North Korea's brazen act to criticize President Bush's record in confronting the communist regime, contending the administration's focus on Iraq ignored legitimate threats. Democratic Sen. John Kerry, the president's rival in 2004 and a potential 2008 candidate, assailed Bush's policy as a "shocking failure," and said, "While we've been bogged down in Iraq where there were no weapons of mass destruction, a madman has apparently tested the ultimate weapon of mass destruction." One month before midterm elections, North Korea's reported nuclear test...

Democratic Sen. John Kerry on Monday urged people of faith to work cooperatively on problems such as poverty, global warming and reducing the number of abortions - "godly tasks" that transcend the nation's culture wars. In a speech laced with anecdotes of his own journey of faith, Kerry, a Roman Catholic, told students in a speech at Pepperdine University that "we can take up God's work as our own. "Shame on us if we use our faith to divide and alienate people from one another, or if we draft God into partisan service," Kerry said. "As God gives us the...

Govenor Dean on General Hayden's Nomination Governor Dean sent the following message to Democrats across the country today. No on Hayden. Add your voice now! As the director of the National Security Agency, Michael Hayden oversaw the creation of the massive domestic spying program revealed last week. Now George Bush wants him to run the CIA. After yesterday's hearings, it's obvious that Hayden's involvement in the NSA's domestic spying program disqualifies him from heading the CIA. His answers to questions from Congress and from the press have been evasive at best and downright false at worst. The Bush administration's chronic...

In the last year, ever since Tom DeLay became embroiled in the Jack Abramoff scandal, the Washington Post alone has published 168 articles mentioning Abramoff and DeLay. The Post's dogged Abramoff investigator, Susan Schmidt, has written 39 articles on Jack Abramoff in the last two years. Almost half of those made page A1 of the Post, and most were over 1,000 words in length. The Post has written enough about this scandal to fill a book -- literally -- and they probably will. Since Rep. John Murtha made his splash in November with his call for an American troop withdrawal...

SUGAR LAND, Texas - Supporters of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay protested at an event Thursday held by the Democratic candidate for the congressman's seat, and the event quickly dissolved into a shouting and shoving match. Police were called, but made no arrests. "I got pushed. I got hit. I got a sign wadded up in my face and my hat pulled down over my eyes," said Marsha Rovai, 69, a supporter of Nick Lampson. "They just did it to be nasty." DeLay campaign manager Chris Homan said he organized the protest but DeLay, a Republican, didn't know about it. "Mr....

Since I saluted her last summer when she took a stand in Crawford, Texas, it seems only fair that I make another public gesture now that Cindy Sheehan has removed one of her "Camp Casey" hiking shoes and stuck her foot firmly in her mouth. That gesture is to raise a hand and cover up my wincing eyes. It's not the first time this celebrated and denigrated mother of a fallen soldier has spouted off a bit incautiously. But I cut her a break before. After all, her beloved son Casey died in Iraq while mine is alive and kicking....

Years after they first fingered Iraq war foes as "French," US President George W. Bush's Republicans are now dismissing the "Davos Democrats" -- turning the Swiss resort town into an unlikely insult. One of the first targets was Senator John Kerry, Bush's rival for the White House in 2004, who was in Davos Thursday when he urged the Senate to use a delaying tactic called a filibuster against Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito. "It was a pretty historic day. This was the first time ever that a Senator has called for a filibuster from the slopes of Davos, Switzerland," White...

Shooting yourself in the foot By David Limbaugh Unlike our president, who spent Martin Luther King Day paying respectful tribute to MLK and Abraham Lincoln, Democratic Party notables, Hillary Clinton and Albert Gore, used the holiday as another opportunity to character-assassinate President George W. Bush. Just when we were beginning to think Hillary Clinton had found her voice - albeit a decidedly phony one - as a mature, seasoned politician poised for a presidential run, she reverts to those cacophonic utterances that find little resonance beyond her embittered but indispensable base. If one could momentarily suspend his powers of discernment,...

Jefferson Parish President, Aaron Broussard, meet Tim Russert, Meet the Press and the American public once again. On Sunday's popular news-information program, Broussard engaged in hand to hand combat with the King of Surprise and Interrogation, Tim Russert. To be nice, it was brutal and bloody. Somebody should have told Broussard that his stock around the state and even in his own parish has made a nosedive since Hurricane Katrina and Meet The Press. To think that he would once again allow himself to be abused, make wild allegations, become emotional fodder, be the joke of the town is strong...

A letter to the editor - August 3, 2005 Dear Editor: Nearly two years ago George Bush Jr.'s top adviser, Karl "The Hatchet" Rove, outed a CIA operative by blabbing to newsman Robert Novak. It was a vintage Rove maneuver: slander, discredit, smear and out, if necessary, anyone who dared to challenge Bush about his real motives during his march to war. And Valerie Plame's husband had done just that by telling a differing version of the Bush truth. Bush immediately told the nation that "anyone having anything to do with the outing of Plame will not be a part...

President Bush's top adviser, Karl Rove, is implicated in a real security breach and should be forced from his job K arl Rove may sleep a little better now that President Bush says that lawbreaking in the Valerie Plame leak -- not just the leak itself -- will be the standard for firing anyone in the White House who disclosed Plame's role as a CIA agent. We're not sure anyone else should. Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, leaked the Plame-CIA information, says Time magazine's Matthew Cooper. But, as pretty much everyone now...

Do I feel safer because we've spent $300,000 ousting a tinpot dictator from a country that didn't threaten American freedom? No --- but I feel a h-ll of a lot less safe in my home because the Supreme Court says it's ok for government to seize it and give it to some politically connected friends of politicians. Has Bush said ANYTHING about the Supreme Court's outrageous eminent domain decision last week? I want to hear about THAT, not another speech about the mess in Iraq.

Howard Dean, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called on the head of New York's Republican Party to apologize or resign Wednesday over remarks linking the Democrats to a civil rights lawyer convicted of aiding terrorists.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Sen. John Kerry, whose baffling explanation of votes on Iraq war funding hurt his 2004 White House bid, said on Tuesday he would back President Bush's new $81.9 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan. "I think we're in a very different situation," Kerry told reporters. "I'm going to vote for this ... I think this money is important to our being successful and to the completion of the process." The Massachusetts senator, who failed in his bid to unseat Bush last November in an election focused on national security, defended his decision to not back the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who lost decisively to President Bush in an election focused on national security, said Tuesday the country would be "far better off" with his proposals for Iraq and the military. "I think my security proposals for the country were smack on, dead on," Kerry said. "I think that had they started to do the things I proposed on Iraq when I proposed them, we would be far better off today. And they are in fact now trying to do some of the things that I proposed. The Massachusetts senator, meeting with...

SEATTLE, Dec. 22 - After a bitter and protracted recount fight in the Washington governor's race, elections officials announced Wednesday that the Democratic candidate, Christine O. Gregoire, was leading her Republican opponent by 10 votes - a minuscule margin but a stunning reversal of the Nov. 2 election results. The preliminary results elated Democratic Party officials and came only hours after the party scored another victory, when the State Supreme Court agreed with the Democrats' contention that more than 700 newly discovered and erroneously disqualified ballots in heavily Democratic King County should now be considered. Since those ballots came from...

John Kerry said Sunday that he's "outraged" that anyone would think the re-emergence of Osama bin Laden on a terror video released Friday may hurt his chances in next Tuesday's election. "I'm outraged that he has appeared," Kerry told ABC News anchor Peter Jennings. "I'm outraged that he inserts himself in any kind of way into the electoral process of America." Asked about comments from both his campaign and team Bush suggesting that the bin Laden tape gives the president a big boost in the closing days of the campaign, Kerry told Jennings, "I think it's unfortunate that anybody puts...