Free Republic

Washington -- Dan Lungren, a Republican member of Congress from Sacramento County, wants to give the world "a second Yosemite Valley." The valley already exists, in Yosemite National Park - buried under 300 feet of water in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which provides San Franciscans and 1.7 million other Bay Area residents with pristine water straight from the Sierra. All that would be needed would be to blow up the dam, which Yosemite godfather John Muir fought to his dying breath in 1914. The Schwarzenegger administration in 2006 estimated the cost at $3 billion to $10 billion. Lungren said Yosemite...

WASHINGTON – As Democrats seek to fatten their lead in the U.S. House in 2010, they're taking the fight to traditionally Republican turf – and Rep. Dan Lungren is directly in their cross hairs. Lungren, 62, of Gold River, won an eighth term to Congress last year, even though he received less than half the votes in California's 3rd District. He had previously represented a Long Beach district from 1979 to 1989. The district's minority population has risen dramatically since 2000. And while Republicans still outnumber Democrats by 2 percent, President Barack Obama carried the district, which includes Sacramento's suburbs...

Challenger Bill Durston cries foul as 'Democratic' slate lists GOP's Dan Lungren. It was either a printer's error or a political trick.But somehow, the "Democratic Voters Choice" slate mailer that went out to voters in the 3rd Congressional District ended up endorsing Republican incumbent Dan Lungren instead of his Democratic challenger, Bill Durston.Durston condemned the for-profit mailing Monday, calling it "dirty politics" designed to mislead Democratic voters.Meanwhile, Burbank political operative Tom Kaptain, who runs the mailer, said the Lungren endorsement was a typesetting mistake. He said he had been unaware of the problem until notified by a reporter."Absolutely, it's a...