Free Republic

Democrats in West Virginia are gravely concerned about the health of their senior U.S. senator, 91-year-old Robert Byrd, who has been hospitalized since May with a series of infections. "We are just praying for him to get back to the Senate real soon," said Nick Casey, West Virginia Democratic Party chairman. Byrd's absence has caused distress among supporters and speculation about who would fill his seat if he is unable to return to work. As the Senate president pro tempore, Byrd is third in the presidential succession line, behind Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He is...

Organizing for America (OFA), the political arm of President Barack Obama, is putting a summer ground game together across the country to get people all excited about the Obama administration's health care reform efforts. OFA said today in an e-mail to over 13 million Obama voters that they are kicking off a push for support for Obama care by launching a "Summer Organizer program." From the OFA e-mail: "Just as President Obama answered the call of service to organize communities on the south side of Chicago, Americans from across the country will be joining Organizing for America's efforts for health...

Missile defense has been a political issue since President Reagan introduced his plan to win the arms race by rebuilding our arsenal while using technology to prevent a successful Russian nuclear attack against us. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., dismissed Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as "Star Wars." Yet Reagan appealed to Americans' common sense in a 1983 speech: "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge ... that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil?" SDI is now the Ballistic Missile Defense program. Its mission is to defend our forces and...

Mt. Washington's Grandview Avenue "campaign" office of "Sanders for Senate" was so lifelike to those passing by that many stopped in to find out about the new candidate for the U.S. Senate. "Every single one of them asked if 'Sanders' would be running against (Pennsylvania Democrat U.S. Sen.) Arlen Specter, and, if so, where could they sign-up to volunteer," said media expert John Brabender on the set of "Moving Numbers," a Webcast about to go national for a new political entertainment group.

Pittsburgh native and former Ohio congressman John Kasich will be announcing his bid to take on Democratic Governor Ted Strickland for the Buckeye state's executive office in 2010. Look for the announcement to appear around the same time on his Web site Kasich hails from the McKees Rocks suburb of Pittsburgh that also gave Pennsylvania the late Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll and cable news junkies frequent appearances of Oxi-Clean spokesperson, Billy Mays (Hi, Billy Mays here!). A former nine-term congressman, presidential candidate and host of his own Fox News Show appropriately called "Heartland with John Kasich," Kasich, 57, filed...

Two weeks ago, ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper wrote in his "Political Punch" blog that the Obama White House has begun covering its own stories, "complete with cuts, interviews and chyrons identifying who's speaking." Although Tapper called the "coverage" (Obama at the White House basketball court shooting hoops with the NCAA champs Lady Huskies) and White House logo "cute," he pointed out that ObamaTV - OTV for short - comes at the expense of pool reporters: "Your Pool was not allowed to go over and shoot POTUS (President of the United States) with the team shooting hoops. We...

Word out of Washington is that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the political wise-guys from the Obama administration plan on "visiting with" Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Joe Sestak. Their objective? A clear message: Get off of the stage and out of a possible primary race against "incumbent" Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter. "I have received a call from DSCC chair Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey," admitted Sestak in an interview. "But we keep missing each other." Probably a good thing for both men at this moment: Sestak has no inclination to be pushed out of a race and Menendez's marching...

Will the last activist who hopes the antiwar cause will re-emerge as a central tenet of the Democratic Party please turn out the lights on the way out the door? Little evidence exists that any antiwar movement is alive, well and influencing policy in this country. Certainly no voice for it is coming from Barack Obama's White House. In fact, Obama has been pretty consistent in

WASHINGTON -- Michael Steele wanted to rebuild the Republican Party after two crushing national election defeats because he has "a passion for a party I believe in." "When the opportunity presented itself," Steele said in his office, just blocks from the Capitol, "I saw it as a chance to help take the elephant by the tail and turn it around in a new direction." That direction is not turning away from principles and values that have defined the party since 1854 but "in a direction that those principles and values can be relevant in the 21st century." At first, Steele,...

Arlen Specter switched parties for one and only one reason: to save his career. No principle was involved; there was no "the party left me" moment. It was pure, unadulterated political greed; he wanted his seat. Out of honor, Specter should have resigned, had Gov. Ed Rendell reappoint him, and then run in a special election in the fall as a Democrat. Instead, he abandoned his principles and went from a fiscal conservative and social moderate to a social liberal who voted for President Obama's trillion-dollar stimulus package. What he has left behind with his switch to the other team...

When Arlen Specter became the 21st senator to switch parties while in office, he did so with considerably more flash than one predecessor. "I basically tried to move about without notice," said former Sen. Harry F. Byrd Jr. of Virginia. Byrd, 94, switched from Democratic registration to independent in 1970. "Colleagues were cordial, but I did my best to avoid everyone." Specter, 79, had little chance of repeating that feat Tuesday. His announcement kicked off a national frenzy of news stories and speculation about what it might mean for Pennsylvania politics, President Obama's agenda, the balance of power in the...

Despite the drubbing taken by American newspapers in recent months, the Tribune-Review has posted significant gains in circulation since 2007. Average circulation for the Sunday Tribune-Review rose by 2,681 newspapers, or 1.4 percent, to 193,563 in 2008, according to unaudited figures recently filed with Audit Bureau of Circulations. Since then, the Sunday Tribune-Review's average circulation for the six months ended March 31 increased by 1,084 to 193,507, or nearly 1 percent higher than a year ago. And average daily circulation for the six months ended March 31 jumped by 13,400 to 164,311, or almost 8.9 percent higher than the year...

Everybody complains about taxes and government spending, but nobody does anything about them. Perhaps that's because whenever they do something, they're often labeled as racists, right-wing extremists or worse. That's what happened when various news organizations covered the April 15 "tea parties" across the country; the media clearly did not know what to make of such a robust turnout for the loosely organized events, and wound up dismissing or belittling them. The tea party movement may or may not go forward -- but anytime the media or politicians dismiss a grassroots effort, they do so at great peril. People attending...

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (R) finds himself down 21 points to former Rep. Pat Toomey in a potential 2010 Republican primary, according to a new Rasmussen poll. Specter now has a 42%/55% favorability rating, while Toomey enjoys a 66%/19% rating. Toomey lost to Specter by a slim margin in the 2004 Senate primary, but in an on-camera interview with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Salena Zito, Toomey said things are different this time. "It's a very different race," Toomey said. "I think the press has figured out that this time the outcome is going to be different." "Let me assure you, I...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — With The Alamo as a backdrop, thousands of Texans here joined demonstrators across the nation Wednesday to protest federal spending, corporate bailouts and taxes. "The Alamo is the perfect symbolic place to hold this rally," said Carl Benton, a Michigan native who moved to Texas a decade ago. "This is where people who had held deep convictions made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom." Benton, 43, a construction worker, said Americans are making sacrifices by cutting personal spending, but he does not see similar sacrifices from Washington.

Asked why his new show on Fox News Channel is so popular, Glenn Beck is uncharacteristically muted: "I am just a guy." Beck is a guy, but "just" is not the word that most people would use to describe him. Just ask any fan or foe. The radio talk-show host, former host of a CNN Headline News program, and now Fox host owes his success largely to an every-man appeal, spoken without a filter. In other words, he forgets to use his "inside" voice.

Retired Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell, winner of the Navy Cross for heroism in Afghanistan, says he doesn't sleep well at night. So when the trained Navy Seal heard a gunshot go off near his ranch in Walker county Texas at 1:30 in the morning, he immediately sprang into action. After first checking in on his mother, Luttrell made his way out to the tree line of his property. There he saw the headlights of a car with a handful of young men loudly joking, standing outside of it. "I could see my dog lying in the ditch," Luttrell said

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher — better known as Joe the Plumber — headlined a raucous rally against pro-union legislation Monday night where critics and supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act jeered one another. Two Green Tree police officers broke up several arguments to prevent fights in the midst of a crowd of about 150 packed inside a Radisson ballroom. The crowd was divided

Today, a rural Congressional district in New York State will become the first true political test of President Barack Obama's policies as the polls open for the country's first special election since he took office. Georgia did hold a run-off vote for the senate race between Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Democratic challenger Jim Martin after Obama was elected but before he was sworn in. Interestingly, the outcome was abysmal for the Democratic candidate who went down in double digits. Obama did not physically campaign for Martin in Georgia in the lead-up to the run-off.

Arlen Specter's decision to not support card-check was the shot heard round the labor world on Tuesday. Card-check was the union movement's Holy Grail coming off their investment of people and money in the 2008 election — a mechanism that makes it easier to join a union through cards and arbitration, card-check was the selling point for many union households that were skeptical of candidate Barack Obama. The reaction from pundits on Specter's surprise announcement was a mixed-bag of whether or not his decision will save his chances of winning his primary contest next spring. The day after the announcement...