Free Republic

SAN JOSE - Gov. Schwarzenegger, heading into a tough re-election campaign, turned on the charm Friday to rally party activists upset in recent months by his administration's perceived tilting to the left. In a dinner speech kicking off the state GOP's San Jose convention, Schwarzenegger did not mention his appointment of longtime Democratic operative Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff, nor other actions that have irritated the party faithful, such as his call to raise the minimum wage. Instead, the governor touted past accomplishments, lavished praise on Republican idols such as Ronald Reagan and laid out his vision for...

PHOENIX -- As the airplane - having left wind wakes high over Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico -- slides into Arizona's baked air, I'm thinking about America, which soon will celebrate its 227th birthday, I haven't yet seen all of our impossibly huge, pasted-together country, but I haven't missed much of it. Just this year I've been in Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina and now Arizona, to say nothing of Missouri and Kansas. America takes my breath away. It is deserts -- huge reaches of hot sterility in which only the...