Free Republic

...Clinton brought on board Kevin Rodriguez, a superdelegate from the Virgin Islands who started out backing Clinton, switched to Barack Obama, and has since returned to the Clinton fold.

On a Saturday afternoon--it was Jan. 7, 2006-- I got an alert from the office of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) that he would be doing a conference call with reporters from Baghdad. A little later, the call came through. Obama told us about how the plane maneuvered to land in Baghdad without becoming a target. Obama was on a swing through Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait and Israel and the West Bank, his first trip to the region. The travel was part official, part not. The Iraq stop was congressional business. Obama was visiting Israel with the Jewish Federation of Chicago. Even...

For weeks now, we've heard a steady drumbeat--from Big Media, from Barack Obama and other Democrats, and now from HBO's "Recount"--that the Supreme Court handed George Bush Florida and the 2000 election, even though subsequent reviews show the recounts Al Gore requested would have increased Bush's margin of victory. Tom Shales, in Sunday's WaPo , has finally put into words the reason behind that: "If the mess in Florida had been resolved with as much skill and savvy as went into the making of the movie, the world might be a different place today -- presumably a better one...." In...

For weeks now, we've heard a steady drumbeat--from Big Media, from Barack Obama and other Democrats, and now from HBO's "Recount"--that the Supreme Court handed George Bush Florida and the 2000 election, even though subsequent reviews show the recounts Al Gore requested would have increased Bush's margin of victory. Tom Shales, in today's WaPo, has finally put into words the reason behind that: "If the mess in Florida had been resolved with as much skill and savvy as went into the making of the movie, the world might be a different place today -- presumably a better one...." In the...

When actor Michael Douglas sauntered around Capitol Hill Tuesday lobbying for nuclear disarmament, no member of Congress was happier to see him perhaps than Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), a big fan who actually had license to say, "Long time, no see, Michael."... Her favorite Douglas flick is "The American President," the one in which Douglas plays the dashing widower commander in chief who falls in love with a lobbyist, played by Annette Bening. Tauscher, according to her spokesman, loves the scene at the end of the movie when Douglas, a.k.a. Mr. President, hands Bening a bouquet of flowers. A surprised...

Who doesn't love Ol' Blue Eyes? A veterans group irate about Frank Sinatra being honored on the House floor instead of GI Joe and Jane, that's who. Vets for Freedom, a group that espouses nonpartisanship, is bent out of shape over the legislation Congress is choosing to tackle this week in the waning hours before lawmakers take off for the Memorial Day holiday recess.

(L)ocal Indiana media "relentlessly hammered" Clinton's gas tax proposal -- using local economists to dismiss the merits of the plan. O'Bannon faced nowhere near the level of scrutiny and negative coverage back in 2000 (in his gubernatorial race against a Republican.)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton loaned her campaign $6.4 million in the past few weeks...Howard Wolfson, a Clinton campaign spokesman...was also asked if the loans were drawing on her personal income, or on the joint income of both the senator and former President Bill Clinton. "There is no distinction between her share of their joint assets and her money," Wolfson said in response. "Legally she is entitled to use up to 50 percent of their jointly held assets, if she chooses. She's actually made about $11 million from her book and her Senate salary."

"...Clinton in the last day has begun talking about raising the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination -- in essence, moving the goal line in the nominating process. Under current Democratic rules, a candidate needs 2,024 delegates to win the nomination, and Obama will probably emerge from Tuesday's voting about 200 delegates from that goal. But Clinton has started to argue that 2,209 delegates are needed to win. Her claim is that the party should seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan...."

Putting in 14, 15, sometimes 16 hour days as they compete for the Democratic nomination, Mrs. Clinton and Senator Barack Obama are usually in the air two or three times – or more – from morning to night. One day last week Mrs. Clinton hop-scotched across Indiana, from north to south and back north again, as she campaigned before Tuesday’s primary, with a few dozen reporters, photographers and campaign aides hustling from plane to bus to plane to keep up with her schedule.

FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE. Under Clinton, the New York Times called pervasive domestic intelligence, "a necessity." The controversy following revelations that U.S. intelligence agencies have monitored suspected terrorist related communications since 9/11 reflects a severe case of selective amnesia by the New York Times and other media opponents of President Bush. They certainly didn’t show the same outrage when a much more invasive and indiscriminate domestic surveillance program came to light during the Clinton administration in the 1990's. At that time, the Times called the surveillance “a necessity.” “If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to...

To the estimated 10,000 residents still holed up....

MSNBC military analyst Dan Goure: "It takes time to move thousands of tons of supplies and tens of thousands of people. It is remarkable that we have done so well in such a short period of time...let me tell you where the responsibility for the failure rests. Unfortunately, I hate to say this; it rests first with the government of the City of New Orleans and secondly with the government of the State of Louisiana that failed in their emergency plans... if you want to criticize what's going on the Guard and responses may be 24 hours behind optimum schedule,...

If anything, the situation grows more desperate in New Orleans, as these very up-close and personal, and terrifying, pleas for help at a Times-Picayune readers' forum reveal this morning. (more)

With the President back at his Crawford ranch, the anti-war protest right outside his ranch is getting a lot more media attention. ABC7 looks at who is financing the operation and who's providing on-the-ground support.

Gorelick lied about her role in building the wall to stay on the 9/11 Commission.

This interview first aired in November, but it's worth a second look in light of the Able Danger controversy.

The link connecting the Clinton Administration wall separating intelligence gathering from enforcement to the failure to follow up on information that could have prevented 9/11 runs through a little know federal office called The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.

"You know, stealing one election and barely winning another doesn‘t justify all these kids getting killed and one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in American history." -Bob Shrum on 8/16/05

Denials by the 9/11 Commission that it was given the name of the lead hijacker by a military intelligence program have led some to suggest that critics of the commission have over-reacted and that the commission might even be owed an apology. Hardly.