Free Republic

Newark Mayor Cory Booker officially launches his campaign for the U.S. Senate this morning, but before he was even out of the gate, the attacks against him had begun. Hours after Booker’s aides leaked the news yesterday that he will run in the special Senate primary in August to replace U.S. Frank Lautenberg who died this week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out a blast email attacking the mayor’s celebrity status. "It remains to be seen whether Cory Booker the candidate can match Cory Booker’s celebrity persona in this kind of race, since campaigning is so much different from...

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) told students at Rider University that conservatives are wrong to make deficit reduction a priority. … “Bottom line is that the right wing, and I say the Tea Party, has made deficit reduction the main priority—the main economic priority, and I will tell you point blank—that I do not think it is. … I believe in economic growth, and I think the only way we get out of the recession—and we are gradually getting out of it—is by having policies in Washington that create growth and therefore create jobs and therefore eliminate the problems that we...

The terrorists who attacked Mumbai had come from the sea. This serves as a reminder to us that the LTTE has in years past tried to penetrate our harbours and Colombo has always been a target. (...) Whenever there was military action against the LTTE by the Sri Lankan forces, LTTE had two cards to play. First relates to violation of human rights by the armed forces, which resonates well with the West. That also helps LTTE immensely as foreign governments tend to make their bilateral assistance to Sri Lanka conditional to good governance by GSOL. The second was the...

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, said Thursday that he wants to “be here one day when Republicans finally realize that we did the right thing, the world is not coming to an end, and in fact, the nation will be better because of the Affordable Care Act.” … “Let me start out by saying that I’m beginning to learn the Republican playbook on the Affordable Care Act. First, they spent a year and a half holding repeal votes. When that didn’t work, they advocated that the Supreme Court would most certainly reverse...

The scheduled reading of the Constitution in the House went off smoothly today, after a few of the usual procedural squabbles and legislative throat-clearing. Most representatives of both parties did a perfectly fine job of reading their assigned bit of the text. Speaker John Boehner got to read the really soaring words at the beginning, and gave an exceptionally powerful performance. At the other extreme, watching disgraced Democrat Charlie Rangel read from the Constitution was like watching atheist comedian Ricky Gervais read the Bible, but not as funny. The only bump in an otherwise smooth process came when the requirements...

"I refused to support the war in Iraq and I have consistantly voted against writing the President a blank check to conduct the war as he sees fit," Pallone said. "I would bring this same consistant progressive voice to the Senate."

Pallone said he was motivated to seek the Senate seat because of "philosophical" differences with the Republican-dominated Congress.

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