Free Republic

NEW YORK - A musician who wrote the 1970s pop tunes "Still the One" and "Dance with Me" toppled a longtime Republican lawmaker after a campaign that merged his minor-league celebrity with anti- Iraq war momentum and YouTube. John Hall, who founded the band Orleans and produced albums for Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt, ousted Rep. Sue Kelly, who swept into office as part of the 1994 GOP revolution. "When I make a record, it's 110 percent, when I run for office, it's 110 percent," Hall said. On his nightly Comedy Central show, TV faux-news anchor Stephen Colbert...

Ex-Boston City Councilor Scondras nabbed in underage sex sting By Laura Crimaldi Tuesday, October 10, 2006 - Updated: 06:06 PM EST LAWRENCE - Former Boston City Councilor David Scondras was busted in a Lawrence school parking lot before dawn Monday after showing up with lubricant and booze in hope of a tryst in the woods with a 15-year-old boy he’d met online, the authorities said. The ‘‘boy” that Scondras, 60, of Cambridge allegedly drove some 30 miles to meet for sex turned out to be a 20-year-old Lawrence General Hospital security guard, police say. The guard said he’d received a...

One of the stories going around Democrat Party circles is that party operatives like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and American Family Voices weren't quite ready for primetime with the opposition research materials they had gathered for the 2006 election cycle. According to one political consultant with ties to the DNC and other party organizations, "I'm hearing the Foley story wasn't supposed to drop until about ten days out of the election. It was supposed the coup de grace, not the first shot." So why the rush? According to another DNC operative: bad polling numbers across the...

It is now a month away from the mid-term elections and we might as well not hold them. I mean the MSM has already declared the Democrats to be the overwhelming winners. Not a doubt about it. The reason is that Mark Foley is gay. That's it. The Democrats will win FOR SURE in November because Mark Foley is gay. See, according the Democrat and MSM hopes, the "fundies" as they are called will stay home and not vote because Mark Foley is gay thus giving the victory to the Democrats. To ensure they stay home, Lawrence O'Donnell and...

As time passes, it is increasingly clear that the ABC News report which started the Foley firestorm is odorous—and I’m not talking Chanel. (1) It dealt with the emails which the FBI and many media organizations considered as innocuous as the Republican leadership did. Who circulated these reports is not yet clear.Foley’s spokesman said his opponent, Mahoney had been shopping the story to the media for some time....(much more)

CNN: PAGE LAWYER DOES NOT RULE 'IN OR OUT' PRANK CLAIM... DEVELOPING... Former congressional page Jordan Edmund's lawyer Stephen Jones... BLITZER: He will join us live in the next hour. What are you hearing, Brian, about some of these Internet suggestions, some Republicans suggesting this whole thing is a prank, a hoax and there is no there, there. CNN REPORTER: "We asked him about that item in the DRUDGE REPORT. He said very clearly he cannot rule that in, he cannot rule that out. He says he is not saying it was not a prank but later in the interview,...

The watchdog group that first provided the FBI with suspicious e-mails from then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) said yesterday that FBI and Justice Department officials are attempting to cover up their inaction in the case by making false claims about the group. Law enforcement officials said the allegations by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are without merit, and they stood by allegations that the group had refused to provide some information to the FBI. The dispute is the latest controversy this week for CREW, a liberal-leaning group that has come under attack from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert...

Replay of this morning's Washington Journal on C-Span 1 right now. Just started a few minutes ago, she said CREW was given the emails by "a congressional staffer."

Foley setup? As I’m a constituent of Rep. Mark Foley, I’ve been keeping up on this story about his alledged computer sex with a sixteen year old male page. In light of the fact that he resigned it’s obvious that the incidents took place. But there are many, many questions about this that need to be looked at. First, I don’t condone these kinds of actions in anyway. I’m former law enforcement and even worked to help capture child predators on the internet before people even knew what that was, so I’m not defending Foley. However watching the news coverage...