Free Republic

O’FALLON — John McCain presented his new vice-presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to thousands of cheering Missouri supporters at a sun-drenched Sunday afternoon rally at the home of St. Charles County’s minor league baseball team. “I have found the right partner,” the Arizona senator said at T.R. Hughes Ballpark. “She’s exactly who I need. She’s exactly what the country needs to fight the same old Washington politics. Many in the crowd, which the campaign estimated at 23,000, seemed to agree, breaking out at one point in a chant of “Sar-uh, Sar-uh.”

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two contract employees for the State Department have been fired and a third disciplined for inappropriately looking at the passport file of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's passport file, a spokesman said Thursday. Spokesman Sean McCormack said the department itself detected the instances of "imprudent curiosity," which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. He would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined. "We believe this was out of imprudent curiosity, so we are taking steps to reassure ourselves that that is, in fact, the case," McCormack said. Bill Burton, a...

Antitrust: European regulators have slapped Microsoft with the biggest fine in history. If any group other than a government entity forced the company to hand over money, its members would be guilty of robbery. After previously fining Microsoft the equivalent of $1.2 billion, the European Commission last week dinged the software giant for an additional $1.4 billion. Snip... Proving that compliance isn't the regulatocracy's real goal, the commission levied the fine just days after Microsoft reportedly surrendered to the shakedown and promised it would do more cooperating and less competing with rivals. Regulators and busybodies on both sides of the...

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Mike Huckabee sucked up to John McCain while bashing Mitt Romney. Asked to comment on the dispute between McCain and Romney as to whether Romney had called for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, Huckabee sided squarely with McCain: “Dishonest? I’ve never seen John McCain say something that is just blatantly untrue,” Huckabee said. Huckabee later praised McCain, saying “we have a civil approach to presidential process. Neither of us has sought the office by cracking the kneecaps of the other.” But then he figuratively cracked the kneecaps of Romney by questioning the former...

As this cycle began, Democrats looked united and prepared to take advantage of deep divisions in the Republicans’ ranks. But the increasingly bitter and personal attacks exchanged by Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) suddenly raise the possibility that the eventual Democratic nominee will have to heal wounds that are as deep as those in the GOP. Could Democrats, who are unified in their dissatisfaction with George W. Bush and have been pleased with their presidential field, really become so divided that they give a surprising opening to the eventual Republican nominee? Yes. ...

..."Whatever the true story, though, we continue to believe the Bush and Coalition allies had no choice but to invade, given the assessment that Saddam was a real threat. And make no mistake: He was. Anyway, he got what he deserved. But America needs to heed the underlying message: Dictators won't respond to threats they don't take seriously. Had the US record reflected greater toughness, the war itself might have been averted."

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney often casts himself as an agent of change who would fix a "broken Washington" but he spares an obvious target -- President George W. Bush. "I salute the fact the president has kept us safe these past six years," he told a rally on Saturday in Florida, whose primary on Tuesday is the next test in the most wide open race for the Republican presidential nomination in 50 years. A day earlier, speaking to reporters, he was even kinder to the unpopular president, saying that while he differed with Bush at times he still deeply...

We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president. The leading candidates have no plan for getting American troops out of Iraq. They are too wedded to discredited economic theories and unwilling even now to break with the legacy of President Bush. We disagree with them strongly on what makes a good Supreme Court justice. Still, there is a choice to be made, and it is an easy one. Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe. With...

ABC News' Christine Byun Reports: The day after former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's Michigan victory, Republican candidate Fred Thompson called promises made to Michigan voters regarding their economic plight "misleading." "Everybody was flocking up there to Michigan and promising, in effect … the federal government was going to come in there and bail the entire state out. Now, they said it with a straight face and apparently it worked for some of them. That's no way to get elected president on things you could not - and should not – deliver," Thompson told a crowd in Laurens, South Carolina Wednesday.