Free Republic

Yesterday was the first cattle call of the Democratic presidential campaign and -- holy cow! -- these candidates can moo. "Each candidate has been given seven minutes to speak," announced Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean before the first of six Democratic candidates took the stage at the Hilton Washington. He further announced that an "official timekeeper" will hold up warning and "time's up" signs. "After 10 minutes, wild gesticulations will take place," he threatened. This quaint exercise in Democratic Party discipline lasted about, well, seven minutes. The first candidate, Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.), took the floor for 20 minutes...

John Gibson just stated that Rep. Conyers has announced that since Speaker Pelosi said that impeachment is 'off the table' that there will be no impeachment of President Bush.

Sandy Berger is caught cramming top-secret intelligence documents down the front of his pants. Dan Rather is caught using forged documents to try to influence a presidential election. John Kerry slanders a million of his "band of brothers" in bogus testimony before Congress and then continues to lie for the next 30 years, claiming that in 1968 he was sent by Richard Nixon (who wasn’t president yet) to Cambodia on Christmas eve (which never happened), hearing the Vietnamese "sing Christmas carols" (the Vietnamese are Buddhists and don't celebrate Christmas) and being fired upon by the Khmer Rouge (which didn't become...

COMMENTARY Beinart: Truth is, Hillary has always been a centrist Peter Beinart, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON POST Advertisement Tuesday, May 10, 2005 Hillary Clinton has moved to the center in preparation for 2008. It's become a cliche — so self-evidently true that it shows up not merely in editorials but in news articles as well. One of the reasons it's so uncontroversial is that it seems innocuous, even flattering. It shows how shrewd a politician Clinton is. She knows Democrats must do better among hawkish, culturally traditional voters — so she's moving in that direction herself. But in fact the...

<p>"Guys in my unit would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."</p> <p>"...an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old..."</p>

Sen. Ken Salazar has backed off the position he took during his campaign last year that Democrats should not filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees. Republicans had been counting on Mr. Salazar, a Democrat from Colorado, as a key vote against the filibusters. His defection is a serious blow to the hopes of Senate Republicans who wanted more bipartisan weight behind their "nuclear option" to dislodge filibusters

LITTLE ROCK (AP) -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson stopped in Arkansas on Friday to motivate voters to go to the polls on Tuesday, urging blacks to make their voices heard in the voting booth. "Arkansas is now in the mix to determine the track of the country," Jackson told a crowd of about 100 gathered in a meeting room at St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Little Rock. "The big issue is to vote, people in Arkansas, is to vote their hopes and not their fears," he said at a last minute stop in Little Rock. "The big deal is...

St. Louis (CNSNews.com) - Republicans had no sooner shot down rumors of a military draft when Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe warned a group of College Democrats on Friday that President Bush would call them up for duty if re-elected. "I know it's controversial to say it, but don't think for one second that if George Bush gets re-elected and we have another conflict in some other theater of the world, we're going to have to reinstitute the draft," McAuliffe said. "It is very controversial to say it, but it is what it is." McAuliffe spoke to about a hundred...

Dan Rather came under criticism after it was revealed by the Washington Post that he had given a keynote speech at a fund-raiser for Texas Democrats: GERALDO RIVERA: Let me just read you this news account, April 5th, USA Today: "Conservatives and pundits had a field day at Dan Rather's expense Wednesday after the CBS anchor apologized for being the star attraction at a recent Democratic fundraiser in Texas that raised 20 grand." Was that one of the worst mistakes you've made at least recently? DAN RATHER: Well, it certainly was one of the dumbest mistakes I ever made. But...

September 9, 2004 Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and RALPH BLUMENTHAL ASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the National Guard came under renewed scrutiny on Wednesday as newfound documents emerged from his squadron commander's file that suggested favorable treatment. At the same time, a once powerful Texas Democrat came forward to say that he had "abused my position of power" by helping Mr. Bush and others join the Guard. Democrats also worked to stoke the issue with a new advertisement by a Texas group that featured a former lieutenant colonel,...

Have at him!

Excerpts.... The Kerry end is near? At this precise time every four years, the most media-savvy members of the Gang of 500 begin to think about their roles in the premiere post-election forum that revisits the actions and players of the presidential race. But if nothing changes in the race as it now stands — with President Bush winning a decent-sized victory — much of the talk will be about the greater technical proficiency of the Bush-Cheney effort.Democrats, who deny up and down that they had anything to do with the documents, tell ABC News that they plan to continue...

<p>September 10, 2004 -- THE populist revolu tion against the so- called mainstream media continues. Yesterday, the citizen journalists who produce blogs on the Internet — and their engaged readers — engaged in the wholesale exposure of what appears to be a presidential-year dirty trick against George W. Bush. What the bloggers and their audiences did was call into profound question the authenticity of four documents proudly trumpeted by CBS News in a much-heralded investigative report on Wednesday night's edition of "60 Minutes" about the president's National Guard service in the early 1970s.</p>

This is a serious crime, altering military records to not only slander a war-time President, but that also suggest criminal activity. These forged memos suggested serious charges against our President, and should not be taken lightly. Whenever the Democrats suggest the Republicans might have done something wrong, they demand a full-scale congressional investigations. These memos are linked to sources inside the DNC, and it is important to get to the bottom of this. Whomever did this commited a serious crime. Our limp-wristed Representives must grow a backbone and demand that this be thoroughly and quickly investigated. I can guarentee you,...

Here is a pretty good current summary of the situation: The Shot Heard Round the World   The echoes of the big Internet bang which annihilated a 60 Minutes story in under 12 hours are still resounding. The key riffs apparently started at Powerline and as Samizdata notes, the distributed intelligence of the Internet took over. Under the scrutiny of thousands of analysts, the CBS story began to melt down.   The start of it all:  Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard   -more- The Thread that broke the Camels Back:Post 47, and the Freepers who busted C.B.S. Let us...

(scroll down to the bottom of the article for the update section): UPDATE: NEW PROOF OF FORGERY Following the Little Green Footballs blog lead, CB decided to test the pantograph replication technique on another of the CBS documents to see if it held true. Using Microsoft Word on its factory default settings with 12 point Times New Roman font we copied the address line of CBS memo #1 and overlapped the two for comparison. As you can see the test worked and, in doing so, inadvertantly uncovered more proof that the document is a forgery. The new evidence revolves around...

Proof the CBS document BushGuardaugust1.pdf is a FAKE: Original text, slightly adjusted for rectangular fit: Same text, screen capture of document written in MS Word 2002 with no effort to match original aside from document width: Overlapping images, with original as B/W negative: Aside from slight warping presumably due to distortion introduced by a low-quality photocopier, the two texts line up exactly. The "30+ year old proof" against Bush is a fraud.

(CNSNews.com) - The White House says the Kerry campaign is "coordinating" the attacks on President Bush's National Guard record, just as the Kerry campaign accused the Bush administration of coordinating with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. "You absolutely are seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president," White House press secretary Scott McClellan was quoted as saying on Thursday. "The polls show Senator Kerry falling behind, and it's the same old recycled attacks that we've seen every time the president has been up for election." McClellan's comments drew a huffy response from former Clinton...

The White House yesterday accused John Kerry of "coordinating" attacks on President Bush's National Guard service in response to the president's widening lead in the polls. "You absolutely are seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One. "The polls show Senator Kerry falling behind, and it's the same old recycled attacks that we've seen every time the president has been up for election." Mr. Kerry refused to denounce Texans for Truth, a group known by its tax code classification as a 527, for...

<p>More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received documents purportedly written by President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian.</p> <p>The oppo researcher claimed the source was "a retired military officer." According to a DNC staffer, the documents were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign.</p>