Free Republic

In the spirit of the season, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton passed out candy canes to reporters here on Saturday. Then she took numerous questions. All this just one day after Clinton sat down for a rare off-the-record session with her traveling press corps in Manchester on Friday night. Playing a little Mrs. Santa Claus with the media? Perhaps. But Clinton is also in close competitions both here and in Iowa, and her advisers believe she can gain an edge if she keeps showing more of her personal side. Although she is the first to admit she is uncomfortable opening up...

Weekend Talk Show *Preview* for 6/24 and 6/25/06 (not the live thread)The main message is the Sunday Shows.  Message 1 will be the Saturday Shows and message 2 will be the show guest links post.  Then I'll post the ping list.Sunday Shows for 6-25-06 ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) Meme: What is wrong with these Democrats?  We hand them the election on a silver platter and they just screw it up!Bush has had two good weeks - it's time to bring out the big guns and knock that fool down a peg Topics: Iraq Withdrawal?: In a pair of exclusive...

The architect, it seems, is back. Hunkered down for almost all of October while a grand jury considered his fate, Karl Rove has rebounded as a visible presence at the White House over the last two weeks, according to administration officials and Republican colleagues. He is running meetings and pursuing candidates for the 2006 elections - and, associates say, devising long-term political plans that suggest he does not believe he will face future legal trouble despite the C.I.A. leak investigation in which he has been involved. On Thursday night, Mr. Rove made his first major public appearance in several weeks,...

September 20, 2005 Ex-White House Aide Charged in Corruption Case By PHILIP SHENON and ANNE E. KORNBLUT WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 - A senior White House budget official who resigned abruptly last week was arrested Monday on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing a federal inquiry involving Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist who has been under scrutiny by the Justice Department for more than a year. The arrest of the official, David H. Safavian, head of procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget, was the first to result from the wide-ranging corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff, once among...

WASHINGTON, March 28 - The final report of a presidential commission studying American intelligence failures regarding illicit weapons includes a searing critique of how the C.I.A. and other agencies never properly assessed Saddam Hussein's political maneuverings or the possibility that he no longer had weapon stockpiles, according to officials who have seen the report's executive summary. The report also proposes broad changes in the sharing of information among intelligence agencies that go well beyond the legislation passed by Congress late last year that set up a director of national intelligence to coordinate action among all 15 agencies. Those recommendations are...