Free Republic

Unions spent more than $100 million getting out the vote, knocked on millions of doors and delivered Election Day support to Democrats running for the House by a more than 2-to-1 ratio. Now organized labor is spelling out what it wants from the new Democratic Congress. The priorities include raising the minimum wage, expanding health care and improving pension protections. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney sees the elections as a "mandate for a union agenda." Likewise, says Bill Samuel, legislative director for the AFL-CIO, "we have an opportunity to push our agenda... The AFL-CIO executive council is scheduled to meet Tuesday...

Iran is "one step" away from achieving its nuclear ambitions and will celebrate victory before the end of the Iranian year, next March, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today.Speaking in Baneh, a town in the northwest of Iran, near the border with northern Iraq, Mr Ahmadinejad told a crowd that the enemies of Iran were trying to stop the country pursuing its peaceful nuclear programme but that they would soon fail. "They want to keep their monopoly on nuclear energy and thereby dictate on nations," he said, according to a report by IRNA, the state-run news agency. "However, they should know...

Tuesday night by a vote of 4-2, the San Francisco Board of Ed banned Junior ROTC training in seven city high schools, throwing 1,600 students out of those clubs. This is a direct insult to the U.S. military and violates the civil rights, I believe, of the ROTC students. The federal government should immediately suspend all federal aid to San Francisco schools. There's no reason to ban JROTC. Nobody's required to join it. And if a student with parental approval wants to investigate a career in the military, every American school should encourage that. Obviously, the military is protecting us...

Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is imploring her colleagues to support Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) for majority leader, multiple House Democrats said yesterday, dealing an unexpected but not necessarily fatal blow to Murtha’s opponent, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). It had been unclear until yesterday whether Pelosi would use her clout to turn votes to Murtha. She endorsed him in a letter Sunday, but some dismissed it as a nod to personal loyalty rather than a statement of her intentions. But by yesterday, her intent was clear, several lawmakers said; she hopes to oust her onetime rival Hoyer from the leadership. “She’s...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - An attorney for a Guantanamo Bay detainee has asked a judge to block a planned medical procedure on the prisoner's heart, saying that performing it at the U.S. base puts his life at risk. Saifullah A. Paracha, a 59-year-old multimillionaire businessman from Karachi, Pakistan, already had one heart attack while in U.S. custody and in recent days has suffered chest pains, his lawyers said. Doctors plan to perform a cardiac catheterization on Paracha this month at the isolated Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in southeast Cuba. Gaillard T. Hunt, one of Paracha's attorneys, asked a...

From the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: Demand House Republicans Denounce Ann Coulter's Hate-Speech PetitionWe, the Undersigned, endorse the following petition:Target: Republican Members in the United States CongressSponsor: Democratic Congressonal Campaign Committee As Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said on the House floor recently, we are blessed with many freedoms, and among those is the right to freely speak our minds. While Freedom of Speech is one of the principles that makes our country great, it also means we have to endure hate filled rhetoric, like what was recently used by Ann Coulter. In her...

WASHINGTON - Nancy Pelosi was unanimously named speaker-elect by House Democrats Thursday, the first woman to be ensured the post that constitutionally is second in line of succession to the presidency. Even as Pelosi was enjoying her finest hour politically, her fellow Democrats remained divided by a family feud over whom to select as her top lieutenant.

a video posted by an anti-Murtha campaign shows it's clear his recorded refusal to accept a $50,000 bribe "at this point" was because he had bigger goals in mind. "I expect to be in the [expletive deleted] leadership of the House," Murtha said on the profanity-laced video posted by BootMurtha.com..."I'm just avoiding having a problem. I do business like this all the time," Murtha told the FBI agent in explaining his "disinterest"

WASHINGTON -- When cable news channels projected that Democrats would win control of the House, the crowd roared at the party's official election-night party here. California Rep. Nancy Pelosi was introduced as the first female speaker of the House. Mrs. Pelosi, in turn, drew an ovation when she referred to Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid as the next Senate majority leader, even though it would take another day for the election results to become known. Another winner that night was David Bolger, who exchanged high-fives with other Democrats, as the crowd applauded the party leaders. Mr. Bolger isn't a lawmaker...

Here is another tidbit of information that has also been conveniently overlooked by our one party media.From Wikipedia glowing entry on our hero: Harry ReidHarry Mason Reid (born December 2, 1939) is the senior United States Senator from Nevada and a member of the Democratic Party, for which he presently serves as Senate Minority Leader. He will become the first Mormon Senate Majority Leader in 2007, after the Democrats won control of the United States Senate in the 2006 Congressional Elections.Early life, education, and careerReid is a converted member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is...

Will the Democrats' new control of the House and Senate shake things up that much abroad? They certainly will have plenty of opportunities to alter the present American course of fighting terrorists, the war in Iraq and our overall foreign policy. For over three years, partisan opponents of the Bush administration have made two arguments against its conduct of the "global war on terror." First, they've argued, the absence of another Sept. 11-like attack has not been the result of anything our government has done, here or overseas. Remember, after conditions in Iraq began to worsen, they began to say...