Free Republic

t was 4 a.m. Brian Camenker , 53, a computer programmer, sat at his kitchen table in Newton, hunched over his Toshiba laptop. Strewn around him were papers detailing former governor Mitt Romney's alleged ties to gay youth conferences, gay judges, and abortion rights activists. The documents, mostly printouts of news stories, represented weeks of work by Camenker and a few volunteers who had searched the Internet for material to disprove Romney's assertions that he is a conservative. Now, the results glowed on the screen in front of him, compiled into a 10,000-word dossier, "The Mitt Romney Deception." ... In...

The 20-year building boom on Staten Island, long the city’s fastest-growing borough, is decelerating drastically, thanks largely to a reining-in of the island’s freewheeling zoning laws, officials say. According to city figures released yesterday, permits for new buildings plunged by 43 percent last year. So substantial was the decline that Staten Island almost single-handedly accounted for a 10 percent dip in building permits citywide last year, which was the first drop in the city in a decade. ... Staten Island, still by far the least-populous borough in the city, was the fastest-growing county in the state, according to the 2000...

Andrew Dinniman held a lead last night in his bid to become the first Democratic state senator from Chester County in memory. Dinniman and Republican Carol Aichele, both county commissioners, were seeking to finish the term of Robert J. Thompson, who died in January. Dinniman led by a 5-4 ratio in late returns. But Aichele was not conceding. "I feel good about this race," she said last night. "It was a great day at the polls." Dinniman, who toured the polling places yesterday with his dog, Henry, said last night that he was confident that enough Democrats and independents had...

he pitched battle to be the Republican challenger to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has turned nastier, with the campaign manager for Kathleen Troia McFarland, who is struggling to get on the primary ballot, accusing her opponent, John Spencer, of bigamy. In an NY1 News interview on Tuesday, Edward J. Rollins, a top aide to Ms. McFarland, spoke of Mr. Spencer's personal history and his record as the mayor of Yonkers, dredging up marital infidelity and accusing him of nepotism. Mr. Spencer has never denied that while he was mayor, he had a long affair with his chief of staff while...

OLYMPIA – Republican state Rep. Rodney Tom switched parties Tuesday and will challenge state Senate Republican Floor Leader Luke Esser this fall. An irritated state Republican Chairwoman Diane Tebelius demanded that Tom resign his House seat, but Tom said he intended to serve the balance of his term as a Democrat. Democrats, including Gov. Chris Gregoire, welcomed the convert. Gregoire called him to chat. The Democratic Party said Tom's switch reflects a growing disenchantment of suburban moderates with hardline Republicans.

In-town living. Live-work-play. Mixed income. The buzzwords of soft-core urbanism are everywhere these days in this eternally optimistic city, used in real estate advertisements and mayoral boasts to lure money from the suburbs and to keep young people from leaving. Loft apartments roll onto the market every week, the public housing authority is a nationally recognized pioneer in redevelopment and the newest shopping plaza has one Target and three Starbucks outlets. But although gentrification has expanded the city's tax base and weeded out blight, it has had an unintended effect on Atlanta, long a lure to African-Americans and a symbol...

The influx of foreigners to New York and its suburbs and the continuing exodus of non-Hispanic whites to other parts of the country have transformed the face of metropolitan New York so profoundly that whites will constitute a minority of the region's population within a few years, demographers say. The shift would make New York the first large metropolitan area outside the South and West in which whites do not make up a majority, according to an analysis of 2004 Census estimates by the Brookings Institution that was released yesterday. The analysis also reveals a historic reversal: For the first...

Ohio Sen. Charlie Wilson (D-St. Clairsville) will be a write-in candidate for Democratic nomination for the 6th Congressional seat and is getting a big endorsement from the man he is hoping to replace, U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland. Following Wilson's announcement that he will continue his campaign for the office as a Democrat, it was announced that Strickland is backing the Wilson write-in campaign.

With higher birth rates among Hispanic and Asian New Yorkers, immigrants continuing to gravitate to New York City and a housing boom transforming all five boroughs, the city is struggling to cope with a phenomenon that few other cities in the Northeast or Midwest now face: a growing population. It is expected to pass nine million by 2020. New York might need an extra million or so slices of cake for its 400th birthday party in 2025. Estimated today at a record 8.2 million, the population is expected to reach nearly 9.4 million in 2025. But that projected growth poses...

Nothing is standing in the way of "Brokeback Mountain." Expanding to 214 new playdates and more than 60 new markets, including numerous small cities in mountain, Midwestern, and southern states, Focus' cowboy love story averaged a still-strong $11,905 per theater. Playing at 483 locations, weekend gross was $5.8 million, bringing the pic's cume to $22.5 million. "Brokeback" came out ahead of several new pics on twice or four times as many playdates, including "Casanova," "Bloodrayne" and "Grandma's Boy." Among the new markets where the critically acclaimed pic opened strong were Tulsa, El Paso, Des Moines and Lubbock, Tex. Pic, which...

The number of millionaires living in the Boston area, already one of the wealthiest regions in the United States, will surge 50 percent over the next five years, according to data from two wealth management companies that have studied the issue. For a city that as recently as 30 years ago struggled with a decaying urban core, the expected influx is one more sign of its dramatic turnaround. By 2009, the number of millionaire households in the region is expected to increase to 88,000, up from 58,000 in 2004. The projected growth rate parallels the national average. But because Boston...

Doughnut franchises in Saugus, Medford close Krispy Kreme doughnut shops closed yesterday in Saugus and Medford. Officials at the Jan Cos., a Cranston, R.I., company that is the Krispy Kreme franchiser for New England, did not return phone calls seeking comment. ... The Medford location was the franchiser's first Massachusetts store.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional failures to approve emergency funding for roads, schools and housing construction have stalled Mississippi efforts to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, the state's Republican governor testified Wednesday. Without such help, Mississippi businesses are unable to decide where to relocate and rebuild -- potentially costing the state jobs and chilling its economy, said Gov. Haley Barbour. His comments were among the sharpest criticism by a top Republican from the hardest-hit states of Congress and Bush administration relief efforts. ''We are at a point where our recovery and renewal efforts are stalled because of inaction in Washington, D.C., and...

GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Nov. 22 - The Nassau County executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, has ordered substantial cuts in pay for the top seven officials in the county's police union, who receive from $149,000 to $171,000 a year, all paid by county taxpayers. Mr. Suozzi has zeroed in on compensation awarded to the union officials by an arbitrator about a year ago for overtime, promotion pay and moonlighting income that officials say they lose because of union duties.

An American high school teacher who screened the Oscar-winning film Elizabeth for his students lost his job following complaints from parents. Ed Youngblood, 62, had taught at South Gwinnett High School in Atlanta, Georgia, for 37 years before screening the film to his advanced British literature class earlier this month. He says that he was given the choice of quitting or being fired after being informed that an official investigation was under way.

DENVER--Governor Bill Owens, a Republican, has been crisscrossing the country for years promoting the virtues of this state's strict constitutional limits on government spending. He has repeatedly urged other states to adopt restrictions of their own, based on Colorado's Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment, known as TABOR. But this summer, Owens says, he will traverse his own mountainous state pushing the opposite message. Midway through his second term, Owens is working to persuade Coloradans to suspend the limits he championed and let the state government spend $3 billion more in tax money than TABOR would allow. Owens thus becomes another...

A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush's plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The move came as Senate Republicans vowed on Monday to reintroduce the proposed amendment, which failed in the Senate last year by a substantial margin. Party leaders, who left it off their list of priorities for the legislative year, said they had no immediate plans to bring it to the floor because they still lacked the votes for passage. But the coalition that wrote the letter, known as the...

Convinced that they need Democratic support to overhaul Social Security, leading House Republicans have begun urging the White House to consider tax increases as part of any deal. "We want Democrats on board," Representative Jim McCrery, the Louisiana Republican who is chairman of the House subcommittee on Social Security, said in an interview on Wednesday. "I'm willing to listen to their ideas, whether it's raising the payroll tax or raising other taxes or changing benefits. I want to hear their thoughts."

Paula Miller scored a major victory for the Democratic Party and the moderate wing of the Republican Party Tuesday, besting conservative Michael Ball in a tight special election for the 87th district in the House of Delegates. According to unofficial results, Miller, a former WTKR-TV reporter, defeated Ball, a Regent University official, by 92 votes out of 7623 cast in the 87th, which includes Ocean View, Bayview and neighborhoods adjacent to East Little Creek Road. Miller ran as a Democrat but received $50,000 in campaign contributions from a new political action committee formed to support Republicans who have split with...

Take it from a not-so-old former congressman who knows: Proud young Americans, you are in for a con job from Washington that you can't even imagine. Your government has already borrowed almost $8 trillion that it can't pay back. Guess who will have to write the check? That's right. You. Expect massive tax hikes in your future, and wicked cuts in national defense, education, environmental enforcement, police protection and medical care for the poor and elderly.