Free Republic

Late in the negotiations for the Senate version of the health care reform bill, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd worked to add a provision that could help the University of Connecticut partially fund the new hospital it has been seeking to replace the antiquated John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington. Dodd, chairman of the Banking Committee and a senior member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, is facing stiff competition for re-election in November. He introduced the amendment to the main bill, designed to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance and enact other reforms, that...

Liberal reporter Ceci Connolly admitted to Greta Van Susteren tonight that Senator Dodd received a $100 million sweetheart deal from the White House in the Obamacare bill to help him with his re-election. It’s nice to know that our taxpayer dollars are helping to support this corruptocrat’s reelection, huh?

Senator Christopher Dodd, facing an uphill battle for his senate seat next year, received a little Christmas present from Harry Reid in the health care reform "manager's amendment:" a $100 million plum for a hospital. The AP reports that the $100 million will be used for "a health care facility that provides research, inpatient tertiary care, or outpatient clinical services." It must be affiliated with an academic health center at a public research university in the United States "that contains a State's sole public academic medical and dental school." Would it surprise you to learn that Connecticut has only one...

You can follow Richard Nixon's prescription on how to win a Republican nomination for high office. You can even heap praise on Jimmy Carter. You cannot, however, do both. Nixon, the disgraced 37th president, reduced his formula for victory to this: Run to the right to get nominated, then dash to the middle to get elected. Many Republican candidates find it still works. Former Congressman Rob Simmons, the front-runner in the 2010 contest for the U.S. Senate seat held by beleaguered Democratic incumbent Christopher Dodd, won three terms in the House of Representatives as a moderate Republican. Ambitious Republicans, even...

Politics: Sen. Mary Landrieu was the new "Louisiana Purchase." Sen. Ben Nelson got the federal government to pick up his state's future Medicaid tab. Maybe we should just put Senate votes up on eBay. Nelson, the 60th vote in the middle-of-the-night Senate party line vote on health care reform, will go down in American political history as the inventor of the permanent earmark. His seemingly principled stand against including federal funding for abortion evaporated like the morning dew as he decided to take what was behind door No. 1. The deal for Nelson includes special Medicaid funding for Nebraska, along...

Chris Dodd has has a pretty bad 18 months,With each day Senator Chris Dodd's hold on the Senate seat he has held for almost 30 years grows more tenuous. As the Chair of the Senate Banking committee he deserves a share of of the blame for the economic mess we are in now, on top of that, are the recent scandals in which he has been involved. ...At the same time all of these scandals have been happening, Chris Dodd has been the dutiful democrat, pushing through the Porkulus and a key player on healthcare. The problem is that Connecticut...

"It's unequivocally what I'm hearing, I'm hearing, that if Senator Dodd is the nominee, not only will we lose the Senate seat, it will be a drag on the ticket"-Democrat businessman who is challenging Chris Dodd (Video)

Biden: Dodd is 'getting the living hell beat out of him' Posted: December 11th, 2009 05:17 PM ET From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser Washington (CNN) – Joe Biden praised Sen. Chris Dodd Friday, but conceded his good friend - one of the Senate's most vulnerable Democrats - is "getting the living hell beat of him." The vice president made his comments at a fundraiser for Dodd Friday in Hartford, Connecticut. Dodd had been scheduled to accompany Biden at the fundraiser and at event earlier in the day to announce nearly $4 million in federal stimulus funding to replace...

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry........ The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

The 2010 election is still almost a year away, and as they say, a lot could happen. But if the Stupid Party doesn't mess up the "Dump Dodd" movement, Connecticut will have a new U.S. senator come January 2011. But even in defeat, corrupt Democrat Christopher Dodd would be a big winner because he voted many times to make it so. Besides a career's worth of dirty wealth he has amassed — the Irish cottage, the real-estate equity enhanced by sweetheart mortgages, the money he saved touring the globe in special-interest and taxpayer-funded junkets and God know what else —...

The fastest way to destroy U.S. capital markets is to give Congress more control of the U.S. financial system. And yet Sen. Dodd is proposing to create a new agency in charge of supervising banks and bank-holding companies, led by a White House appointee. The leader of that agency and no doubt a number of other management people would likely be political appointees and would change as the White House occupant changed and the political winds in Congress shifted. It is the worst possible solution. Dodd's proposal is a method for Congress and the administration to gain more control of...

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. -- The state Green Party is hoping to enlist a new candidate to run against Sen. Chris Dodd in 2010. Friday, the party urged Winsted-native Ralph Nader, the 76-year-old frequent presidential candidate, to jump into the race. Nader has experience running in national elections, having run for president three times. Nader was in West Hartford on Friday for a book signing. At the same time, supporters are urging him to get into what they called one of the hottest political races in the country. “If enough people, hundreds and hundreds of people urge Ralph Nader to run,...

At Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Oct. 29th press conference, a CNS News reporter asked, “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” Speaker Pelosi responded, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” The reporter said, “Yes, yes, I am.” Not responding further, Ms. Pelosi shook her head and took a question from another reporter. Later on, Ms. Pelosi’s press spokesman Nadeam Elshami told CNSNews.com about its question regarding constitutional authority mandating that individual Americans buy health insurance. “You can put this on the record. That is not a serious question. That is...

Enabling terror: This month, corrupt Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd helped block a congressional amendment, supported by nearly 150 relatives of the victims of 9/11, that would have prevented the prosecution of Islamic terrorists in the U.S. court system. Days later, the Obama administration announced it would try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorist suspects in a civilian court in New York City. Granting the accused the U.S. constitutional rights they despise and raising the possibility of acquittal on legal technicalities are bad enough. But the trial poses a severe threat to public safety by making the courthouse and federal...

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) says Tuesday’s Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey should be a “wake-up call” for Democrats in Congress. Here are 10 likely to be hearing alarm bells. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) No one noticed the election results more than Reid’s advisers, who know he faces a situation similar to that which befell New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Like Corzine, Reid is an unpopular incumbent running in a state whose economy is in the tank. And like Corzine, he’ll have to use his massive war chest to create a negative impression of his opponent...

U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd on Countrywide financial loan: "I feel the matter's behind us. We ought to Move on.''

House Democrats Lock GOP Out of Committee Room A bitter divide over Countrywide mortgage scandal. By JAMES FREEMAN Democratic staff for the House oversight committee informed their GOP counterparts today that the majority has changed the locks on the committee's hearing room. While Republicans previously enjoyed their own key to the room, they will now have to request access from Democrats. This followed a bitter partisan argument in which Republicans refused to take down a video from their website that contradicted Dem explanations about a closed-door meeting on the Countrywide VIP loan scandal. As we reported last week, the committee...

When he was a presidential candidate, Barack Obama promised to make negotiations over healthcare reform an open and transparent process. Now that he's president, the reality is that most of the high-stakes work is being conducted by just three senators behind closed doors. According to the Washington Post, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sens. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., gather in Reid's office to hammer out a merger of competing bills before a Senate vote. The only other people allowed in the room are key aides and Obama's representatives on healthcare reform. More than a year...

 Free-market Peter Schiff, who runs Euro Pacific Capital. He is now a potential Republican challenger to Sen. Chris Dodd in 2010.“I'm interrupting my career. It's not like I want my new career in politics. But I'm willing to interrupt it the same way that somebody interrupted their career and joined World War II and went off to fight the Nazis. I don't think that I'm that heroic, and I don't think I'm risking as much as a soldier. But it's the same principle,” Schiff said  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkBRmty7fKc 

The latest Quinnipiac Poll is out and it’s more bad news for Sen. Chris Dodd. Despite a public relations blitz that had him returning to Connecticut for what seems like the first time in years, and a statewide email and choreographed “shout out” from President Obama in the Rose Garden, (Rob Simmons) is still leading Dodd 45%-39%.