Free Republic

Most of you know her as Nancy Pelosi. When I first met my one-time neighbor, she was daughter to one Mayor of Baltimore, Tommy D’Alesandro, Jr., and sister to Tommy, III, who’d later become Mayor. Some of the stories about her, as she prepares to become Speaker of the House, have mentioned her past, but not honestly. At most, the glowing stories refer to the Baltimore City politics she grew up in as “rough and tumble.” Politics there and then were much more than rough and tumble. They were crooked as a dog’s hind leg. I know. I grew up...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A disputed election result in a House of Representatives race in Florida will be one of the first items raised when the Democratic-controlled House convenes next week, injecting partisan politics into the start of the 110th Congress. Rep. Rush Holt (news, bio, voting record), a New Jersey Democrat who has pushed for better safeguards on electronic voting machines, said on Friday that he will make a procedural point to establish that the swearing-in of Florida Republican Vern Buchanan does not prejudice ongoing challenges by his Democratic opponent, Christine Jennings. "This is a district, Sarasota area in Florida,...

SARASOTA — Incoming U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering not seating the state-certified Republican winner of a contested congressional election when the new Congress goes into session next month, her spokesman said. Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, said the congresswoman has not yet decided what to do about the contested District 13 race, in which Republican candidate Vern Buchanan was certified the winner by the state by a margin of 369 votes over Democrat Christine Jennings. "The bottom line here is that nothing's off the table," Hammill said. The House is currently investigating, and Jennings has pressed on...

Democrat Christine Jennings was in Washington over the last two days renewing her call for a revote in her race against Rep.-elect Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), as government and independent reviews failed to support her case. Jennings said she would do everything she could to see the legal challenge through. She set up shop at Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee headquarters and was to meet with lawmakers including Reps. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) and Rush Holt (D-N.J.). She was also asking for financial support and continuing to push her case to the news media. Jennings’s visit came as state officials...

State: Errors in disputed election test result of human mistakes By STEPHEN MAJORS Associated Press Writer November 30. 2006 2:03PM Discrepancies in the first round of testing of Sarasota County's touch-screen voting machines were the result of human error, not problems with the devices, state elections officials said Thursday about the audit in a disputed congressional race. The testing is in the contest between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings, who trails by a slim difference that she said was caused by machines losing thousands of votes. Tuesday's test used scripts telling mock voters who to choose, in an...