Free Republic

Democrats will take control of the Virginia Senate now that a recount in Hampton Roads has found Lynwood Lewis the winner of a special election. Lewis, who until now has served in the House of Delegates, beat Republican Wayne Coleman by 11 votes out of 23,000 votes cast. The State Board of Elections says the final totals are 10,203 votes for Lewis to 10,192 votes for Coleman in the district that covers Accomack, Mathews and Northampton counties and the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Coleman has called Lewis to concede the race. Lewis had been initially declared the winner...

Professor Admits Hiding Obama College Video By Todd Starnes Harvard University Law School professor Charles Ogletree admitted that he hid controversial video footage featuring a college-age President Obama speaking at a campus rally in support of a radical professor. "I hid this during the 2008 campaign," Ogletree said in the video. "I don't care if they find it now." The entire video was aired exclusively on Hannity by Breitbart.com editor-in-chief Joel Pollak and contributor Ben Shapiro. The unedited video shows Obama speaking at a 1991 rally for Professor Derrick Bell. Bell has been described as the Jeremiah Wright of academia....

I'll be honest. I had started to wonder whether this Slaughter Rule business was a bait-and-switch. I couldn't imagine that, with the pounding Democratic leadership have taken over the deem-and-pass strategy, there was any profit left in pushing it. After all, the point was to provide Democrats with political cover, via procedural obscurity, for a vote in favor of the Senate bill. But the procedure is no longer obscure and the cover is now a fig leaf. That's why I find it genuinely amazing that the House just defeated a Republican measure to block the Slaughter Rule by a vote...

Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., under investigation for alleged sexual harassment of a male staffer, accused House Democratic leaders of lying about the charges against him and using them to run him out of Congress because he voted against health care reform when it last came before the House. Roll Call reports this morning that on the local radio show he hosts in his district, Massa said he had not been informed of the sexual harassment allegations before they became public. He claimed that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., spoke falsely when he said he had brought the matter to him...

White House officials tell ABC News that in his remarks tomorrow President Obama will indicate a willingness to work with Republicans on some issue to get a health care reform bill passed but will say that if it is necessary, Democrats will use the controversial reconciliation rules requiring only 51 Senate votes to pass the "fix" to the Senate bill. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been awaiting the president’s remarks direction on how health care reform will proceed. In his remarks, scheduled to be at the White House, the president will paint a picture of what he will say will...

Whether or not a reconciliation bill on health care meets the intent of the legislative procedure is certainly a matter for legitimate debate. But Reid said reconciliation has been used 21 times since 1981, and that most of the time, it's been Republicans who have initiated it. We find that there have been 22 reconciliation votes, 14 of them by a Republican-controlled Congress, and that it makes more sense -- in light of the debate over making an end-run around the 60-vote threshold -- to focus on the reconciliation bills that passed without a supermajority. But even then, Republicans have...

They know exactly what they are doing...and they know it is WRONG! The Republicans pulled the same stuff when they were in power and they were voted out in 2006. This should be a lesson to all in both parties. The American people are not stupid. They are paying attention. This is what the tea party is all about. We the people, run this country. You are not leaders. You are representatives. You are public SERVANTS...there to serve and represent US. Us seems a fitting word for U.S. (United States). The last remark in this video says it all. We...

Seeks to clear way for independent in US Senate bid... Vermont's Democratic Party is maneuvering to keep the Democratic candidates for the state's open US Senate seat off the November ballot, as party leaders seek to clear the way for independent Representative Bernard Sanders in his bid for the Senate. State Democratic leaders are spearheading efforts to gather signatures to put Sanders on the ballot as a Democrat, even though Sanders has repeatedly said he would turn down the party's nomination if he wins the primary. At least three other candidates have announced their intention to run for the Democratic...

According to some Democratic lawmakers, you aren't capable of voting this year without a United Nations monitor making sure you get it right. Nine prominent Democrats, elected members of the House of Representatives, have sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, begging him to send UN monitors to oversee the 2004 election. Florida representative Eddie Bernice Johnson led the latest effort to subvert the sovereignty of the United States and place us under the control of the increasingly-corrupt United Nations. Let me get this straight. A group of Democrats want to bring some people from countries like North Korea,...

[snip]Our concern is with another aspect of Moore's movie: It's basically a two-hour attack ad on President Bush. "I hope this country will be back in our hands in a very short period of time," Moore says. That is, he hopes that his movie will make John Kerry president. Moore certainly has the right to pursue such a goal as he pleases. America prizes freedom of speech, Exhibit A being all the tendentiously conspiratorial — and just plain stupid — movies that Michael Moore has churned out over the years. But should this unapologetically partisan piece of "art" count as...

LONDON, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Janet Sproul, originally from Seattle but now in London, voted for President George W. Bush in 2000. But that was then. Monday night, amid hundreds of cheering expatriate U.S. Democrats at an overcrowded room in the Bloomsbury Holiday Inn, she cast her vote for Democratic frontrunner Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. "I thought Bush was the right choice four years ago, but I've gotten to loathe the guy," said Sproul. "I really don't like his stand on the Middle East and especially going to war with Iraq. Kerry looks like the guy to beat him."...