Free Republic

**SNIP** Yee, D-San Francisco, and Jackson, his former consultant and a former San Francisco school board president, are among 29 defendants charged with racketeering and other crimes after an undercover FBI investigation. Prosecutors have accused Yee, now suspended from his Senate seat, of soliciting tens of thousands of dollars from agents posing as campaign contributors in exchange for political favors. In a filing Aug. 14, Jackson's lawyer asserted that an FBI agent had been removed from the investigation and reprimanded because of financial misconduct. The agent, identified in court records only as UCE 4773, posed as a Georgia businessman and...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Suspended California state Sen. Leland Yee could face a jury as early as June for charges of political corruption and conspiracy to import guns. At a scheduling conference on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Yee will be tried along with his political consultant Keith Jackson, who also faces drug and murder-for-hire charges. Breyer said those charges will be tried separately, but lawyers for the defendants, including Yee's lawyer James Lassart, were not satisfied. "The firearms charges are going to be extremely prejudicial. The government has acquired 50 to 70 different firearms that, undoubtedly to...

President Obama’s grassroots army, Organizing for America, played a significant supporting role in efforts to amp turnout for Kathy Hochul in yesterday’s big special election win, according to Democratic sources. OFA’s New York chapter – joining other national groups like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – manned phone banks and dropped campaign lit, and some even went door-to-door in the heavily Republican upstate district. OFA has helped other candidates and causes (including a controversial effort to ferry protesters to the Wisconsin State House this year), but this was no charity mission. Tuesday’s win is critical for Obama’s 2012 narrative: That...

He isn’t coming in cold, with an enormous backlog of unrealistic ambitions to ram through. Instead, the Tories have a solid idea of what they want to accomplish over the next four years. Having already elected him twice previously, Canadians won’t be looking for sudden miracles. Far from it: such is the level of exhaustion with politics that most Canadians will be delighted if the government just stays out of their face for the majority of the mandate. Harper, in effect, has four years to shepherd through legislation that should come as little surprise to anyone, and he has the...

Last week far left pro-union groups in Wisconsin released a dishonest ad accusing Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser of priest sexual abuse twenty years ago. Prosser, who is running against a far left environmentalist, refused to prosecute a priest who had been accused of sexually assaulting children. The story in the ad was completely inaccurate and even the victims spoke out against the ad. It didn’t matter. Far left groups announced they would continue to run the ad. They have a race to win. Democrats need Kloppenburg to win the election next week so that they can overturn Governor...