Free Republic

There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January. In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq. When some claim that President Bush shouldn't have started this war, remember the following: a. FDR led us into World War II. b. Germany never attacked us; Japan did. From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ... an average of 112,500 per year. c. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea. North Korea never attacked us. From 1950-1953, 55,000...

WASHINGTON -- A Democratic Party task force Saturday proposed changes aimed at bringing more diversity to the early stages of the 2008 presidential nominating calendar, but it did so only after defeating a far more significant proposal to eliminate the special first-in-the-nation status of Iowa and New Hampshire. The final report of the Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling reaffirmed Iowa's opening caucuses and New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary election, but it also proposed changes that would authorize caucuses in one or two other states between Iowa and New Hampshire, and primaries in one or two other states the week...

PHOENIX, Dec. 3 -- Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean offered a preview of the 2006 elections here Saturday with a blistering critique of President Bush's policies on Iraq and immigration and the Republicans' ethics scandals. But he warned Democrats they cannot expect to win next year without offering an agenda of their own. Speaking at the fall meeting of the Democratic National Committee, Dean pledged that Democrats would offer tax policies aimed at middle-class voters, a plan to provide health insurance to all Americans, immigration proposals that offer a path to legalization for illegal immigrants, and defense policies that would...

Incase you have nothing better to watch.....

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Counting the days to 2008, New Hampshire Democrats are shopping for the ideal presidential candidate - and finding plenty to check out in person. Since the first of the year, former vice presidential candidate John Edwards has traveled to the state four times, most recently to discuss poverty at a Dartmouth College rally last month. Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh has made two trips; other potential candidates one apiece. On Saturday, the party's 2004 presidential nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, visits New Hampshire for the second time this year. Kerry will campaign for Democratic candidates, including Manchester...

DEMOCRATS are getting cold feet about starting an abortion fight over Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito — because if they do, they could lose big-time in the court of public opinion. Alito backed a law requiring a woman to notify her husband before an abortion. The Supreme Court disagreed. But Americans — by a nearly 3-1 majority — agree with Alito, so the fact that he might shift the court could be a plus. In all, 72 percent of Americans favor spousal-notification laws, according to a 2003 Gallup Poll, and an equally lopsided margin thinks teens under 18 should have...

FARGO, N.D. - Former attorney general and governor candidate Heidi Heitkamp, a well-known Democrat, got a surprise birthday president from her brother that fits her politics, though maybe not her yard. Heitkamp said she woke up Saturday morning to find a young donkey in her yard, a 50th birthday present from her brother, Joel. "It's just about the cutest thing you ever want to see," Heitkamp said. "My biggest problem is, I can't figure out how to warm up a two-quart bottle." Heitkamp said the young donkey is well behaved, but has a habit of braying loudly when trains pass...

The conservatives' noisy split over the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination has largely obscured the fact that Senate Democrats could control her fate in a way that was never possible in the confirmation battle over Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. While the turmoil on the right offers Democrats a tantalizing opportunity, party strategists said, it also will confront them with a difficult choice: Confirm a conservative with close ties to President Bush, or oppose her and join ranks with hard-right activists who historically are their archenemies. For now, Democrats and liberal groups have been content to stay mostly quiet...

WASHINGTON -- Despite vows to fight President Bush's next conservative Supreme Court nominee, Senate Democrats and leading liberal groups are largely holding their fire over Supreme Court nominee Harriet E. Miers, calculating that their best move is to stay out of the conservative movement's internal battle about whether Miers is the best choice for the high court. Since Bush nominated Miers, his White House counsel, to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor 12 days ago, prominent Democrats like senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Charles E. Schumer of New York have been mostly silent. Both senators, who sit on...

Sometimes when people have a blog up they get "advertising keyed to it"--well, kind of. I saw the BoreAmerica blog ("listening to Air America so you don't have to") and since Kerry got mentioned often on the site, it automatically generated an ad for a site full of Dim propaganda T-shirts and bumper stickers. Kind of like rightwingstuff.com, only meant to serve the losers who still have Kerry-Edwards stickers on their cars. Here are some examples (gotta laugh, laugh...schadenfraude!) "How Can 59,054,087 People Be So Dumb?" (re-pro of that Daily Mirror headline) "F The President" (spoof of those "W: Still...

Howard Dean rolled into red-state Tennessee during Holy Week and promptly quoted Scripture twice. While Billy Graham shouldn't yet worry about being eclipsed by the Democratic National Committee chairman, Dean is an aggressive participant in a party-wide attempt in the wake of the 2004 elections to, as they say in the revival meetings, "get right with God." There is much good in this: The Democrats need to demonstrate greater openness to religion, and in the past, faith has informed great liberal causes, including the civil-rights movement. But there has been a fumbling quality to the Democrats' recent grappling with politics...

I guess I'll have to say it again. I AM NOT AGAINST THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. One of my daughters is even married to a Democrat. She was always a little strange.... The Democratic Party, per se, is not an "evil group of people attempting to destroy our country." There are many Democrats in our country who are decent patriotic hard working people, with only the best interests of our country in mind. The party has brought forth issues and ideas that could and would benefit all of us. I would love to support some of those ideas, but can't. We...

Freepers, This election has taken a lot out of all of us, so while we're in between tasks of getting George Bush re-elected I found some FUN that we can have: I always like to know the strategy of my enemy, so I listened to 'Err America' for a while tonight. They had on some guy from 'Texans for Truth' who was promoting his website: www.videovotevigil.org. He was stating how they had just increased the bandwidth and were going to have folks send in pictures and video detailing how the Dumbocrats are being denied their vote. I thought to myself:...

With this being the last Dog Playing Poker column to see print before the big election, the onus is on your humble canine to rally the troops in some stirring, hopefully unique way. Early-voting initiatives notwithstanding, the experts all say that this race will be won by the team that produces the biggest turnout on the day. And I guess Dog should be advancing that agenda by encouraging you, the committed progressive, to spend a few hours on Nov. 2 driving elderly registered Democrats and other like-minded folks without cars to the polls to put Kerry over the top. But...

WASHINGTON — Redistricting in Texas has left some Democrats with the odds stacked against them as they search for a political home. In Democrat Rep. Nick Lampson’s (search) case, his hometown of Beaumont is still in his district, but so are over 300,000 new voters, leaving him with the task of selling himself for the first time since he was elected in 1996. "It’s not that I have no connection at all — I’ve been a Houston-area member of Congress for these four terms," Lampson told FOXNews.com. "I think I have proved my independence and have shown that I am...

Democrats filling the hotels, sidewalks, cafes, bars and restaurants of Boston and swarming through the FleetCenter this week have a message they desperately want the rest of America to hear. We are not liberal. These politicos will spend the bulk of this week insisting that the Democratic Party is the one that represents the values and ideals of Middle America. The Republicans, they will say, are the ones whose beliefs are so far beyond the norm that they simply cannot be trusted. Even the City of Boston is in on the act. The city, its boosters and local journalists are...

Michelle Malkin has a new column out, and it's linked through the NRA's home page, under "More NRA News & Information..." It's a good read, and even worth going through all this trouble to get. The opening line sets the tone for the article, and grabs your attention "I am what this year's election pollsters call a "security mom." I'm married with two young children. I own a gun. And I vote." and follows later with the heart of the piece, discussing her real concern: "Security moms will never forget that toddlers and schoolchildren were incinerated in the hijacked planes...

The Senate's top Democrat said Monday that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's weekend attacks could extend the current budget impasse by as much as two weeks. "You can't go kick somebody in the groin and then say, 'Come, let us reason together, come let us do this, let us join hands and sing 'Kumbaya,' "said Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco.

The odd couple, John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry, albeit inadvertently, keep providing the electorate with reasons why they should all reelect GWB. A few samples: (1) Running against a president with impeccable defense credentials, Kerry said on network TV that he "hadn't had time for a national security briefing on a new al-Qaeda threat." Kerry remarked on CNN that the Bush administration offered to brief him on the latest al-Qaeda threat, but "I just haven't had time." I guess he had to find time from his and Edwards continually televised Love-Fest and Ball-Throwing to get the briefing this past...

Anti-choice Democrats don't want the people to have the option of voting for Ralph Nader. So they're trying to toss him from the ballot. Jano Cabrera, a spokesman for the national party, said Democrats would start in Arizona with a challenge to the validity of thousands of signatures that landed Nader on the ballot. Cabrera made it clear that the orchestrated attack was payback for Nader's contribution to Al Gore's defeat in 2000 and a pre-emptive strike to keep him from undermining John Kerry in November. "We have never been moved by Nader's repeated assertions that it was Al Gore...