Free Republic

BELLEVUE, Wash. - Republican Dino Rossi and the state GOP announced Friday they will contest the gubernatorial election that gave his Democratic foe, Christine Gregoire, a 129-vote victory. Republicans have been building a case over the past few weeks, gathering evidence of voting irregularities, including illegal provisional ballots and a handful of votes cast by dead people. They are pushing for a revote, an unprecedented step in a statewide election. "There are so many improperly cast and counted ballots that this election is invalid," Rossi said. "You cannot tell who won. The only way for us to get out of...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - The horde of partisan lawyers dispatched to Florida in anticipation of widespread Election Day voter-eligibility challenges wound up with precious little to do: Only a relative handful of challenges were posed statewide, according to a newspaper report. Only 63 challenges were made among about 7.6 million votes cast Nov. 2, The St. Petersburg Times reported in Friday editions, citing data from elections supervisors' offices obtained through public records requests. Those challenges focused on people who were not registered, voting in the wrong precinct or convicted felons. It could not be determined how many challenged ballots were...

SACRAMENTO - A conservative legal group has threatened to sue the federal government over its plans to protect four dozen endangered species in California ranging from peninsular bighorn sheep to the tiny robust spineflower. The Pacific Legal Foundation notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service on Monday that it would file suit in 60 days, claiming the agencies failed to meet requirements of the Endangered Species Act when they set out to protect 16 animal and 32 plant species. Advance notice is required before filing endangered species lawsuits. Based on a favorable ruling in U.S....

There's been so much anticipation of the 2004 presidential election being contested in court, but the results seem to be shaping up to be virtually unchallengable.

Bush Wins Election--If Kerry Doesn't Cheat Written by Isaiah Sterrett Thursday, October 28, 2004 Next Tuesday, when millions of Americans make a choice that will forever affect America and the world, George W. Bush will be reelected--assuming that Sen. Kerry and his thugs don’t attempt to rip off the people by cheating. This is not the worry of an alarmist partisan looking for excuses; this is the worry of someone who was alive four years ago. The Supreme Court can be a pretty loopy bunch, especially since Clinton added Ginsburg. But in 2000, the justices broke precedent and did their...

ALL IN THE NAME OF ENFRANCHISEMENT By now most Americans have heard that John Kerry plans to undertake a "preemptive" legal strike against Republicans during this election cycle. His justification for flooding every key battleground state in the union with thousands of lawyers, is to say that Democrats need to stop the Bush political machine before it can disenfranchise people, like it did in Florida four years ago. http://tampatrib.com/nationworldnews/MGBN1ZHOOZD.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0884144.html Kerry is DEEPLY concerned that many liberals, and black liberals in particular, may not have their votes counted due to the shenanigans of all those despicable conservatives out there, who...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Israel is holding 25 U.N. employees in the Palestinian West Bank or Gaza but has not charged any with a crime or even told the United Nations (news - web sites) of their detention, U.N. officials said on Wednesday. The officials spoke a day after an Israeli officer in Jerusalem said Israel had arrested 13 employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and planned to indict them for "suspected links to terrorism." Israel linked the U.N. employees to "terrorism" shortly after backing away from an accusation that Palestinian militants transported a rocket to be...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - In a sharply worded challenge to President Bush (news - web sites), Democratic Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) said Wednesday "extremism has gained momentum" as a result of administration missteps in Iraq (news - web sites), but said the war on terror is a winnable one with the right policies. "When it comes to Iraq, it's not that I would have done one thing differently, I would have done almost everything differently" than the president, the presidential candidate said in a speech to the national convention of the American Legion. Kerry spoke dismissively of a...

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush (news - web sites) opposes Democratic rival John Kerry (news - web sites)'s timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq (news - web sites) and Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) suggested Wednesday that even more troops may be needed. Kerry said this week that he hoped to begin reducing U.S. troop strength in Iraq within six months of taking office, if elected, but that it would depend on broader international assistance, better stability in Iraq and other factors. Bush dismissed the plan as a politically driven one that would cut short the mission...

Clarke challenges Rice to reveal secret emails Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Monday March 29, 2004 The Guardian (UK) Richard Clarke, the former terrorism adviser whose revelations threaten to torpedo George Bush's re-election strategy, launched a counterattack yesterday at a White House that he said was determined to destroy him. In a riveting television performance, Mr Clarke called on his principal critic and former employer, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to release the entire record of their emails in the months up to the September 11 terror attacks to prove his contention that the White...

White House challenges Pentagon's role in Iraq By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 07/10/2003) President George W Bush has ordered the White House to take tighter control over American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, an apparent sign of dissatisfaction with the Pentagon-led efforts on the ground. His national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is to head an "Iraq stabilisation group", giving the White House a more active role. President Bush listens to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in the Oval Office The change was seen as the closest the administration has come to acknowledging that the Pentagon's post-war mission in Iraq...

<p>SACRAMENTO - Gov. Gray Davis faces an increasingly daunting challenge in devising a campaign to defeat the drive to recall him.</p> <p>With Arnold Schwarzenegger on one flank and two prominent Democrats on the other, grim Democrats found it hard to predict Thursday that Davis would survive the recall. Davis, who has confronted electricity shortages and budget crises, has seen his approval rating drop to a record low. Last week, a Democratic poll put it at 19 percent.</p>

<p>Gov. Gray Davis' recall campaign and state Democratic Party leaders are considering two new legal options for defeating the recall.</p> <p>According to sources close to the anti-recall campaign, pro-Davis lawyers are examining legal arguments that the election is unconstitutional if the governor is denied a place on the list of replacement candidates. Under state law, Davis cannot be a candidate to replace himself if he loses the recall.</p>

<p>Supporters of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis on Monday plotted potential court challenges to a Republican-led recall campaign and prepared to take their counterattack public Tuesday.</p> <p>They said all options were open.</p> <p>"We're looking at everything in terms of who's handling petitions, what the people were being told, whether people who were circulating petitions were legally able to do so or not," said Nick Velasquez, spokesman for Taxpayers Against the Recall.</p>

<p>HOPKINGTON, N.H. (AP) - Raising $7.5 million for his Internet-fueled campaign was the easy part. Now Democrat Howard Dean says he must urgently expand his political machine, broaden his message and soften the rough edges of his personality.</p> <p>Although two of his rivals, John Kerry and John Edwards, have collected more money overall, and others have put more cash in reserve, Dean's fund-raising haul from April to June has shaken up a race that now has three distinct tiers of candidates - but no front-runners.</p>

RALEIGH, NC -- Frank Williams, a Raleigh-based public relations and political consultant, has published a series of articles analyzing the PR challenges President Bush faces as war with Iraq looms on the horizon. Williams is president of Pioneer Communications Strategies, Inc., a Raleigh-based marketing and public relations firm. Williams' first two articles, written in the weeks after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provide a detailed overview of the communications challenges the president faced in the aftermath of those attacks. His third article, written on March 13 of this year, reviews the first two articles with the benefit of 20/20...

This is the transcript from the 6 p.m. WCAX-TV news 21} MCMULLEN_INTRO -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Massachusetts millionaire who was humbled by a Tunbridge farmer in the U-S Senate race four years ago is back for a second try. Jack McMullen says he will again seek the Republican nomination -- hoping to take on incumbent Democrat Patrick Leahy. Darren Perron has our exclusive report. 22} MCMULLEN_PKG -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ((I will seek the republican nomination.)) Jack is back. Jack McMullen says he plans to unseat Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. ((Time for a new voice. Leahy is not the favorite son with the current administration...

Saturday, 8 February, 2003, 17:28 GMTGermany challenges US on Iraq Mr Fischer (r) didn't like what Mr Rumsfeld had to say German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has directly challenged the United States over the justifications for possible military action against Iraq. More than 10,000 protesters took to the streets in Munich "I am not convinced... I cannot go to the public and say these are the reasons because I don't believe in them," he told a European defence conference in Munich. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earlier appealed to America's allies to act urgently against world terrorism, as the UN...

By Andrew Orlowski in London Posted: 07/19/2002 at 20:11 EST Yesterday, we broke the story that an obscure Texan video conferencing company is seeking royalties from a patent it acquired five years ago. With the help of a gold-bricking law firm, it wants to collect back royalties from every client device manufacturer which might possibly ever be in receipt of a transmitted JPEG image, and this includes digital cameras, PDAs, phones, scanners and of course, web browsers. As we disclosed, Sony has already paid $15 million for the right to use Forgent's patent. Perhaps "broke the story " isn't the...