Free Republic

Former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., may have announced his candidacy for president from Jay Leno's couch in Los Angeles, but when it came to his campaign Web site, he brought his business to Chattanooga. Mr. Thompson's site, Fred08.com, was developed and is maintained by episode49, a Chattanooga-based Web development company. Episode49 also maintained Mr. Thompson's "testing the waters" Web site, ImWithFred.com. "We're totally responsible for Fred08," said Ken Smith, managing partner for episode49. Mr. Smith said the company's relationship with the campaign grew through work episode49 did for the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "That's...

We’ve put up a new section on the website. You can now dig into Fred’s stance on issues like national security, the budget, taxes, and healthcare. Fred believes these are serious problems which will require us to unite behind common sense solutions; and this section of Fred08.com will provide some insight into his approach on these topics. Let us know what you think. What issue concerns you the most?

A majority of Americans say they would feel more comfortable with Rudy Giuliani in the White House than Hillary Clinton if another terrorist attack were to happen in the United States, according to a new FOX News poll. When compared to other top Republican candidates, more voters see Giuliani as hardworking and as a strong leader, while Clinton leads the Democratic field for not only having the right experience, but also being able to bring about change — as well as doing whatever it takes to win. Views are divided on whether it’s appropriate for Oprah Winfrey to use her...

The PolitiChoice.com Candidate Matching tools were created to help individuals analyze candidate views on important issues, and find which candidates align most closely with their own views on those issues. Our single most important goal is to provide accurate, unbiased representations of major candidate views to help people make informed decisions about which candidate they plan to vote for and support.

This week Rudy Giuliani rolled out another of his 12 Commitments -- this one to ensure preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Giuliani is promising not to repeat the errors of Katrina and to develop a better funded and coordinated and more decentralized Department of Homeland Security. His chief advisor on this issue is Louis Freeh, who served under Giuliani as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and then later as FBI Director. He talked about disaster preparedness as well as the Justice Department and his past experience with Giuliani. How is Giuliani's approach to disaster preparedness better than the current...

Socialism: Hillary Clinton wants to reform health care again, but health care decisions are best left to doctor and patient. If we needed a second opinion, it wouldn't be the government's. Speaking in New Hampshire last week, Sen. Clinton said as president she would improve health care by raising standards for providers, educating patients and requiring insurers to reward innovation. Sounds good, but there's more. She is unveiling her plan in installments. In June, she gave a speech on reducing health care costs. Last Thursday's address dealt with the issue of quality of care. She has saved the best —...

Politics: A couple of prominent Democrats have conceded that another terrorist attack on the U.S. would improve Republican election prospects. They're right, but it seems they don't even know why. While campaigning in Concord, N.H., Sen. Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, tried to make the point that the GOP has "mishandled" terrorism, actually making the world "much more dangerous." Instead, she inadvertently issued a confession. "If certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism," Clinton said Thursday, "that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again." Speaking recently to the New York Observer,...

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's campaign took aim at Fred Thompson, after the former senator posted a blog on his Web site criticizing New York City gun-control laws and singling out Giuliani by name. "When I was working in television, I spent quite a bit of time in New York City,” Thompson wrote, according to The Hill newspaper. "There are lots of things about the place I like, but New York gun laws don’t fall in that category. "Now, the same activist federal judge from Brooklyn who provided Mayor Giuliani’s administration with the legal ruling it sought to...

Reading the polls and listening to the critics, it might appear that President Bush and the Republicans are on their last legs. Only about one third of the voters approve of the job Bush is doing, and the Democrats have more credibility in handling many of the nation's problems, from the economy to healthcare. Democratic presidential front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are leading their GOP rivals in many hypothetical matchups for 2008. Clinton, Obama at a New Hampshire debate.(Charles Krupa—AP) But that's not the whole story. The Republicans believe they still have a not-so-secret weapon in their arsenal—their long-standing...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Thursday repeated his pledge to make West Virginia coal key to his national energy plan, and said that commitment would include federal funding for technology to convert coal into liquid fuel. “We will invest as a nation in new sources of energy, including clean coal,” Romney told The Associated Press while walking with a crowd at the State Fair of West Virginia.

WASHINGTON - George W. Bush is far from the peak of his power as president, but in one area of social policy — the regulation of abortion — Bush’s agenda is triumphant. Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on the procedure called partial-birth abortion is a victory for Bush and for social conservatives at a time when they’ve had little to celebrate. In the 5-4 ruling in a case called Gonzales v. Carhart, Bush’s two appointees to the high court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito supplied the margin of victory. “It confirms that elections have...

Politics: Barack Obama says U.S. forces in Afghanistan are "just air raiding villages and killing civilians." If a GOP presidential candidate put his foot in his mouth so often, the media would have destroyed him by now. Speaking to a New Hampshire audience Monday, Obama answered a question about shifting U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan as follows: "We've got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we are not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure there." It would be news to the soldiers we...

Two 50-something men who wear black robes, rarely speak in public and remain unrecognizable to most Americans are turning up in campaign playbooks from Oregon to Maine. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito may well become the bogeymen of 2008. Their decisions in the last term on abortion, school desegregation and pay equity angered pillars of the Democratic constituency, already prompting Senate campaigns and issue advocates to invoke the Supreme Court in fundraising pitches and attacks on Republican incumbents. “When you are dealing with hypotheticals, when you talk about civil rights, privacy, Roe v....

"My religion is for me and how I live my life," he declared. "I don't impose all my faiths and beliefs on you." For example, he noted that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn't approve of booze and that he doesn't drink. But he won't be pushing for a new constitutional amendment banning alcohol...... (US News) For more than a year, there has been talk inside Mitt Romney's presidential campaign (mittromney.com) that the GOP candidate would give a JFK-ish speech explaining his religion--he's a Mormon--and how it would or wouldn't affect his presidency. Well, it wasn't what...

Mitt Romney's own Republican Party has made religion fair game, and Romney will be asked how his faith would affect his policies. -SNIP- But Mitt Romney is a serious contender in 2008, rich and disciplined, and he's running in an era when presidential candidates are virtually expected to parade their religiosity. This is particularly true in the Republican camp, where religion and politics are now routinely intertwined; indeed, candidate George W. Bush upped the ante in 2000, when he said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus, ''because he changed my life.'' So it's no surprise Romney is facing questions about...

Dear FairTax supporters, I hope each of you were able to watch yesterday morning’s GOP debate where the FairTax was one of the few domestic policy issues raised with the candidates. Our FairTax bus was prominently parked just outside the debate in front of a local theater with “FairTax” on the marquee! In the face of five of eight GOP candidates embracing the FairTax, because of our early primary strategy, our numerous rallies, and the growing visibility of the issue, ABC News’s top editors agreed with us in meetings over the past several weeks that the FairTax has become...

The Upcoming Presidential Election Should Be All About The Supreme Court for Social Conservatives Big Trouble We are in big trouble. Whether you consider the historical cycle of presidential elections; the results of the 2006 election; the mood of the country; or the unfavorable ratings of the President, the odds are that conservatives will have our heads handed to us on a silver platter in 2008. Unless our movement gets its act together quickly and gets on the same page, one thing is for sure-- we are in big trouble. No Perfect Candidate Many conservatives are frustrated by the field...

WASHINGTON - U.S. presidential candidates agree Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons but at this point in the 2008 campaign, their prescriptions for preventing such an outcome are vague. Dealing with Iran -- its nuclear ambitions, its involvement in Iraq and its opposition to Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts -- commands a lot of President George W. Bush's attention. But he is not likely to resolve the conflicts before leaving office in January 2009, so Iran is expected to be among the more difficult foreign policy challenges inherited by his successor, U.S. officials and experts say. "Allowing Iran, a...

No Candidate is Safe… Although candidates will be forced to discuss a laundry list of special interest issues throughout the campaign season, abortion, gay rights, campaign reform, health care, social security, just to name a few, the 2008 national election is likely to be decided upon two issues that no candidate has offered a good solution for yet. No Candidate is Safe On the Democrat side, the mostly unpopular wife of a once party popular oval office playboy is running and leading in a vacuum void of any serious qualified challenger. But her campaign is far from safe. She has...

<p>WHEN a majority of Supreme Court justices adopt a manifestly ideological agenda, it plunges the court into the vortex of American politics. If the Roberts court has entered voluntarily what Justice Felix Frankfurter once called the “political thicket,” it may require a political solution to set it straight. The framers of the Constitution did not envisage the Supreme Court as arbiter of all national issues. As Chief Justice John Marshall made clear in Marbury v. Madison, the court’s authority extends only to legal issues. When the court overreaches, the Constitution provides checks and balances. In 1805, after persistent political activity by Justice Samuel Chase, Congress responded with its power of impeachment. Chase was acquitted, but never again did he step across the line to mingle law and politics. After the Civil War, when a Republican Congress feared the court might tamper with Reconstruction in the South, it removed those questions from the court’s appellate jurisdiction. But the method most frequently employed to bring the court to heel has been increasing or decreasing its membership. The size of the Supreme Court is not fixed by the Constitution. It is determined by Congress. The original Judiciary Act of 1789 set the number of justices at six. When the Federalists were defeated in 1800, the lame-duck Congress reduced the size of the court to five — hoping to deprive President Jefferson of an appointment. The incoming Democratic Congress repealed the Federalist measure (leaving the number at six), and then in 1807 increased the size of the court to seven, giving Jefferson an additional appointment. In 1837, the number was increased to nine, affording the Democrat Andrew Jackson two additional appointments. During the Civil War, to insure an anti-slavery, pro-Union majority on the bench, the court was increased to 10.</p>