Free Republic

It doesn't get any better in the U.S. Senate race where former party state chair Jane Timken, perennial right-wing candidate Josh Mandel and author J.D. Vance are fighting over who is the most Trumpian. Ohio State Sen. Matt Dolan jumped into the race, giving the anti-Trump forces an outside shot if the others split their vote. It'll be interesting to see if retiring Sen. Rob Portman — who didn't stand up to Trump for four years — will show political courage now that he’s not facing voters. It’s not much better in neighboring Pennsylvania, where the leading Republican U.S. Senate...

New government documents show that John Kerry’s wife, heiress of Heinz Ketchup, has millions of dollars in Chinese investments, leaving Biden’s climate change envoy facing an ethical dilemma. Kerry’s latest filing with the Office of Government Ethics in March shows his wife benefits from an investment of “at least $1 million” in a hedge fund that specializes in private partnerships and investments with Chinese government-controlled funds, the Daily Mail reports. Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz, is the widow of late senator John Heinz and heiress to the Heinz family fortune, which is estimated to be worth over $750 million. Kerry often...

Party loyalty runs so deep -- and is connected to so many past battles -- voters struggle with an identity crisis when confronted with the reality that the Democratic Party has long left Mass-attending Catholic workers behind. EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA — Religion runs deep in eastern Pennsylvania. Through mountains and valleys, in once-thriving mining and factory towns, Catholic steeples dot low skylines. In smoky pool halls, Monday afternoon drinkers would rather talk about the Knights of Columbus than national politics. Man for man, they’re lifelong Democrats — or once thought so. It’s common for American families to transmit political values from...

Yesterday in this space, the focus was on the latest wrinkle in the Left's developing strategy for dealing with dissent. It began with using the IRS regulatory power to suppress conservative, Tea Party and evangelical dissenters. The new wrinkle is expanding the tax agency's activity to impose new restrictions on permissible activities of 501(C)(4) nonprofit advocacy groups and to require reporting the names of donors and the amounts they contributed. The avowed purpose of these initiatives is to put an end to what is known throughout the politically correct precincts of the mainstream media as “dark money.”Dark money is funding...

PHILADELPHIA - A lawsuit filed by Teresa Heinz Kerry after her first husband, U.S. Sen. John Heinz, died in a midair collision in 1991 was settled for $15 million, according to newly unsealed court records. Last year, attorneys for The Philadelphia Inquirer sought to unseal the settlement papers when U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., ran for president; Kerry married Heinz's widow in 1995. At first, attorneys for the Heinz estate tried to prevent the Montgomery County Court records from being unsealed, citing the family's need for security and privacy. In October 2004, Montgomery County Judge Paul Tressler unsealed portions of...

As his long record on national security shows, Sen. John Kerry is no John Heinz. John Heinz is everywhere yet nowhere in the race for Pennsylvania's electoral votes. Taken by tragedy in a horrific plane crash 13 years ago, the memory of the U.S. senator who was my boss is daily invoked by the presense of his widow and sons as the second family of the Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry.

If you listen to talk radio on a regular basis, you'll notice a chorus of complaints on a single theme. How can the widow Teresa Heinz Kerry use the fortune she inherited from Republican Senator John Heinz to aid the liberal John Kerry's presidential campaign? Furthermore, how can John Heinz's sons so blithely lend their support to a man of the left like Kerry? The complaints assume that Senator Heinz was a conservative or even a right-of-center moderate. Neither was the case. John Heinz was the first man in his family to choose public service over a place at the...

We don't know if this has anything to do with the controversy about Sen. John Kerry's refusal to release the records from his 1988 divorce, but his wife is pining for the good old days of her late husband. 'My Husband'Recalling the death of Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., in a plane crash in 1991, multimillionaire heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry said yesterday in Des Moines, Iowa: "It was a very sad day when that happened. I'd rather have my husband alive than that money."

Heinz Kerry Recalls Death of First Husband By RYAN J. FOLEY Associated Press Writer DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Teresa Heinz Kerry, who inherited a vast family fortune and heads a billion-dollar foundation, said Tuesday she would give up the money to have her first husband back. "It was a very sad day when that happened," Heinz Kerry said, speaking of Sen. John Heinz, heir to the Heinz food fortune, who was killed in a 1991 plane crash. "I'd rather have my husband alive than that money." Heinz Kerry, a philanthropist now married to Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the...

A Vietnam veteran who plotted to kill members of Congress in 1971 is reportedly ready to accept a position working in the presidential campaign of John Kerry. Leaders of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, including John Kerry, debated a plot to assassinate congressmen in November 1971, according to a report in the New York Sun. The Kerry campaign denies the senator and presidential candidate was present at the meeting, saying he quit the organization prior to the heated session in Kansas City, Nov. 12-15, 1971. However, Randy Barnes of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, disputes that account. Barnes participated in...

Where would we be without Teresa Heinz? The fantastically rich, wildly candid wife of Sen. John Kerry is the only compelling figure so far in a presidential race that otherwise threatens to be devoid of color, drama, and really chewable stories. But "compelling" doesn't begin to capture the unmuzzled abandon, the compulsive, almost imperial determination to say and do as she pleases -- in short, the bottomless newsiness that this woman brings to virtually every encounter she has with the big-time political media. Mrs. Heinz Kerry -- in a rare concession to the practical realities of politics, she recently added...

COLLEGE STATION -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert today blamed presidential hopefuls in the Senate for impeding President Bush's tax cut plan. "I think one of the things is we're going into the time of presidential politics," Hastert, R-Ill., said after a lecture at Texas A&M University. "You have four or five people who I'll call the prancing ponies of the Senate that all want to be a presidential candidate, or a wannabe. "It's to their advantage to not help this economy and have a bad economy going into a political year. I think it's shortsighted... I think it's politics, that's...