Free Republic

Election 2004 political Web sites October 10, 2004 PARTISAN George W. Bush www.georgewbush.com John Kerry www.johnkerry.com Ralph Nader www.votenader.org Republican National Committee www.rnc.org Democratic National Committee www.democrats.org NONPARTISAN The Annenberg Political Fact Check factcheck.org Polling Report www.pollingreport.com Project Vote Smart www.vote-smart.org CONSERVATIVE realclearpolitics.com freerepublic.com redstate.org LIBERAL talkingpointsmemo.com dailykos.com moveon.org

Engineer sees opportunity for civilian spaceflight By Bruce V. Bigelow UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER June 14, 2004 Courtesy: Scaled Composites On one of its test flights, the Burt Rutan-designed SpaceShipOne glided down for a landing at Mojave Airport. The stars were out and a chill wind blew as the ecstatic crowd surged across police lines in a field near Paris 77 years ago. Shouting "Cette fois, ca va!" – "This time, it's done!" – they hoisted Charles Lindbergh to their shoulders as he emerged from his single-engine airplane after a nonstop, 33½-hour flight from New York. He had proved it was...

JOSEPH PERKINS THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE Immigration reform A reward for flouting the law January 9, 2004 'Granting amnesty encourages the violation of our laws, and perpetuates illegal immigration." So said President Bush this week, as he set forth his plan for a new "temporary" worker program. The program would not bestow amnesty upon the 8 million or so mostly Mexican illegals living in the United States. It would not confer citizenship upon them. But it would give undocumented aliens legal status, entitling them to remain in this country. So, to most illegals, "temporary" worker status would be almost as...

Dear Friend of the Recall: I wanted you to be the first to hear that our success at Recall Gray Davis has persuaded me to take the battle forward and attempt to 'Recall Barbara Boxer,' California's extremist US Senator. Because there isn't a federal recall law, I will run to unseat Ms. Boxer as a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in California. Just like with the recall campaign, I can't do this without you. The volunteers, who came together through the Internet, talk radio and volunteer activities, made history and were the key to our success. They will be the...

Exposing global warming alarmists Joseph Perkins THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNEAugust 1, 2003 Jim Inhofe is my new hero. The Oklahoma lawmaker dared this week to deliver a speech on the Senate floor in which he declared that all the scary reports about catastrophic global warming are nothing less than a hoax. "Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science," said Inhofe, who chairs the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee. "Global warming alarmists see a future plagued by catastrophic flooding, war, terrorism, economic dislocations, droughts, crop failures, mosquito-borne diseases – all caused by man-made...

Recall takes the tone of populist revolt Daniel Weintraub THE SACRAMENTO BEE July 30, 2003 The people have called an election, and the political elites of both major parties hate it. So does big business and, for the most part, the media. But it's amazing the level of ownership real people feel over the recall. It is something they have done in defiance of California's ruling establishment. As I walked through the Recall Gray Davis rally at the Capitol Saturday, the mood was giddy. Republicans were out in force, of course, but they weren't alone. The Libertarians were there, the...

JOSEPH PERKINS A change of heart on school vouchers Joseph Perkins THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE July 25, 2003 Only one fourth-grade student in 10 attending public schools in our nation's capital is proficient in reading, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress. Only one fourth-grader in 16 is proficient in math. And it's not that the District of Columbia is shortchanging its public school system. The capital city lays out nearly $11,000 per student annually, the third-highest level of per-pupil spending in the entire country. That's why it is heartening to see that Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has...

Recall would place Davis in defensive role Governor's strategy in elections has been to discredit opponents By John Marelius STAFF WRITER July 20, 2003 ANALYSIS Over three decades in the political trenches, Gov. Gray Davis has developed a highly effective, if not particularly inspiring, formula for winning elections. To roughly paraphrase: No matter how bad voters think you are, make sure they think your opponent is worse. It worked in 1998 as Davis portrayed Republican Dan Lungren as a right-wing extremist. In worked in 2002 as Davis parried attempts to make the election a referendum on his unpopular leadership by...

JOSEPH PERKINS SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE Left-leaning professors overpopulate campuses Joseph Perkins THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE July 18, 2003 Michael Ballou couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. All he did was assign his political science students at Santa Rosa Junior College to write an e-mail and at the bottom include the words: "kill the president, kill the president." One of the professor's students sent his e-mail to the office of Napa Valley congressman Mike Thompson, which passed it on to the U.S. Capitol Police, which passed it on to the Secret Service. The Secret Service paid Ballou a recent...

From Oceanside to the Oval Office Man creates political party, eyes bid for White House By Michael Burge STAFF WRITER July 12, 2003 OCEANSIDE – Matthew Pinnavaia doesn't vote, drives a '77 Thunderbird, takes care of his ailing mother and, at 45, has decided to run for president of the United States. Only in America. That's pretty much what Pinnavaia said when asked what he thought his odds were of moving into the White House. "This is the United States of America," he said. "You can start from zero and reach the presidency." Pinnavaia knows he will tilt at many...

Time for Legislature to get to work By Dave Cox Mark Wyland July 11, 2003 Jay LaSuer and George Plescia Cox, the Assembly Republican leader, represents the 5th Assembly District in the Sacramento area. Wyland represents the 74th Assembly District, which covers North Coastal San Diego County. LaSuer represents the 77th Assembly District, which covers eastern San Diego County. Plescia represents the 75th Assembly District, which covers inland North County. The Davis Democrats who control Sacramento have once again failed to find a compromise that would allow a budget to be passed by its constitutional deadline. Furthermore, they refused to...

Sports pages or police blotters?Joseph Perkins THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE July 11, 2003 Mark Twain once suggested that "there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress." Were he alive today, he just might have mentioned professional athletes. For hardly a day passes, it seems, without some news report detailing the involvement of some jock or another in a drug bust, a gun-related incident, a sexual crime or some other felony. Indeed, just this past week the National Basketball Association scored a three-pointer on the police blotter. Damon Stoudamire, the Portland Trailblazers guard, was arrested on drug charges after passing...

A good reminder of why we are here and what we are doing! Very moving. Sadly, many Americans have........ http://64.177.83.63/liberty/email.htm

San Diego GOP leaders support recall By Mary Carlson Martin W. Garrick Sam Hardage and Rick Otis July 8, 2003 As Republican leaders and business owners in San Diego, we support the recall of Gov. Gray Davis, a politician who has crushed California's once thriving business community. Oppressed by literally hundreds of "job killer" bills signed by the governor, employers are fleeing this state with jobs under one arm and our tax base under the other. Our citizens deserve an opportunity to determine whether or not they want to replace a governor who is clearly neither capable nor willing to...

DANIEL WEINTRAUB THE SACRAMENTO BEE Recall: a revolt against ruling elites? July 8, 2003 The other day I was interviewed on the radio along with Ted Costa, the man who started the campaign to recall Gov. Gray Davis. Costa, who is chief executive of the anti-tax group Peoples Advocate, was asked what he has against the governor. "We're upset with government in general," Costa replied. "Sure, we picked him out. He's the CEO of this operation. But government in California has become utterly corrupt. Every bill that seems to go through the Legislature, it's because money was given to the...

Union-Tribune Editorial Capital melodrama A recall filled with false fronts and effrontery July 5, 2003 Karl Marx, who famously wrote that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce, could have just as easily been describing California's descent into the budgetary and political twilight zone. Not content with amassing a deficit that dwarfs the entire budgets of 48 other states, California is flirting with recalling its governor, who was re-elected some eight months ago but is now wildly unpopular. The recall controversy was roiled earlier this week when Secretary of State Kevin Shelley told election supervisors in all...

Recall drive nears petition target Nation, potential candidates take note By John Marelius STAFF WRITER July 5, 2003 The drive to recall Gov. Gray Davis is hurtling toward the ballot, creating the nation's wildest political spectacle since the 2000 presidential election standoff in Florida. The recall is not only hot political news, it is hot entertainment news, headlined by the prospect of "Terminator 4: The Politician." Propelled by public fury over the state's budget crisis – and promoted heavily through conservative talk radio and the Internet – the dump-Davis movement has become a populist prairie fire unseen since the Proposition...

<p>During a vice presidential visit to San Diego in 1970, the late Spiro Agnew famously remarked, "In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism."</p> <p>Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who served alongside Agnew in the Nixon administration, might be inclined to agree with his one-time colleague. Especially after his Pentagon press briefing this week.</p> <p>"Can you remind us again why this is not a quagmire?" asked one wag. "And can you tell us why you're so reluctant to say that what's going on in Iraq now is a guerrilla war?"</p>

For Thomas, favoring race provides no favor at allJoseph Perkins THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE June 27, 2003 'Clarence Thomas is my color, but he's not my kind." So said Al Sharpton, the black preacher, the presidential hopeful. His sneering remark elicited one of the loudest applause lines, reportedly, during a recent Democratic candidates forum sponsored by Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition. The predominantly black, overwhelmingly liberal, decidedly Democratic audience apparently shared Sharpton's insinuation that Thomas is a traitor to the race, not the least because the Supreme Court justice opposes racial preferences. Indeed, Thomas this week joined the high court's 6-to-3...

Senator McClintock's Statement on the Tripling of the Car Tax Senator Tom McClintock today issued the following statement: “At 10:01 this morning, I was informed by State Finance Director Steve Peace that the administration has ordered a tripling of the California Vehicle License Fee, commonly referred to as the car tax. “This is an illegal act by the Governor and the Controller, and I am confident that it will be successfully overturned by the courts. Unfortunately, as the administration is well aware, the state constitution forbids an action to enjoin the collection of a tax, which means that it could...