Free Republic

A friend of mine from a previous life has been lobbying me to move to Idaho before TSHTF. If I could only afford to retire, I'd take him up on it. But I'm gainfully employed now and need the income.Next, he sends me a transcript of Idaho Primary Election Results to prove even the lowest vote candidate in most GOP primaries still gets more votes than all total votes in the Democrat primary. How can a state so big and so geographically dispersed have such uncommonly common sense?

After John McCain made a statement last week on the Don Imus Show that he would trade the First Amendment for "clean government", one would have expected the industry enabled by that portion of the Bill of Rights to speak out against such talk. Oddly, not one major newspaper addressed the issue until today, when the Washington Examiner takes the Senator to task for his minimization of free political speech: "James Madison, the prime mover behind the U.S. Constitution, and his colleagues among the Founders rightly feared arrogant men like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., so they limited the central government...

<p>BATON ROUGE - Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster will end two scandal-free terms Jan. 12, leaving an eight-year legacy of clean government and improved funding and attention to public schools. But he likely will be remembered for failing to address major problems in health care and missing key economic development opportunities for a state still struggling with intense poverty and joblessness.</p>