Free Republic

In the Stations of the Cross Jesus says a rather extraordinary thing. He addresses it to the women who have gathered to lament Him:Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children, for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, “Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.” At that time people will say to the mountains, “Fall upon us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?...

Though Sen. Joe Lieberman expects to win a lot of Republican votes Tuesday, the Connecticut lawmaker said he won't feel especially beholden to the GOP if he is elected to a fourth term. "I'll owe everybody and that's the point," Lieberman said Monday as he pressed for final votes at a senior center in Meriden. Lieberman, whose Senate career was at risk just three months ago after he lost to anti-war challenger Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary, led Lamont by 12 percentage points in a statewide poll released Monday. Lieberman is running as an independent and has enjoyed support...

A single towering issue — Iraq — powered Ned Lamont in his dramatic primary victory over Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman. Now Lamont is letting voters know he's got more to talk about than that, because Iraq alone isn't doing it for him in the fall campaign. Lamont is ticking off plans for expanded health care, universal preschool education and curbs in the influence of lobbyists. He's decrying U.S. addiction to foreign oil. To be sure, Iraq is no more settled than when he tapped the anger of so many Democrats over the war's course, securing the Democratic place on the...

Democrat Ned Lamont has just $329,560 cash on hand for the final weeks of the campaign, far less than rival Sen. Joe Lieberman whose account totals $4.7 million.

Wealthy Democratic businessman Ned Lamont is pumping another $2 million of his personal fortune into his bid to unseat three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman. Lamont wrote the check Tuesday, his campaign confirmed. With less than a month left before the Nov. 7 election, Lamont has personally contributed $8,751,500 to his campaign.

Democrat Ned Lamont, seeking to erase Sen. Joe Lieberman's double-digit lead, is turning to his campaign's biggest financial backer for another infusion of cash: himself. The multimillionaire businessman, who trailed by 10 percentage points in a recent poll, wrote a $500,000 check to his campaign this week, an aide said Tuesday. Just last week, Lamont had tapped his personal wealth for $750,000 to help fund the race. He has spent $6,751,500 of his own money to unseat the 18-year incumbent. The Lamont camp said it needs the money to blunt Lieberman's aggressive television ad campaign; both sides are spending heavily...

If Sen. Joe Lieberman’s Democratic colleagues are anxious to get rid of him, they gave no indication of it in their first gathering since Lieberman lost a Connecticut primary to Ned Lamont last month and launched an independent bid. “I don’t think there’s any of us out there saying ‘Goddamn, I hope Joe doesn’t win,’” said Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who has endorsed Lamont in the general election.Indeed, Democratic senators applauded Lieberman at their weekly policy luncheon, when Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) asked him to brief the caucus on upcoming port-security legislation.“Welcome back,” said Reid, who was scheduled to...

In a private meeting at her Chappaqua, N.Y., home on Friday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton offered to help Ned Lamont in his battle to unseat Senator Joseph I. Lieberman by sponsoring a fund-raiser, campaigning by his side and lending him one of her top political strategists. That strategist, Howard Wolfson, said Mrs. Clinton wanted to throw her considerable political weight behind Mr. Lamont because the national Republican Party “is clearly invested in Ned Lamont’s defeat.” “I think they are going to do what they can to see him defeated,” Mr. Wolfson said, adding that he was particularly concerned with “Bush-Cheney...

Liebernman (I) - 49.4%Lament (D) - 39.4%Schlesinger (R) - 2.1%Lieberman held a 12-point edge over Lamont in an Aug. 17 Quinnipiac poll......... A new poll by Zogby International suggests that the Connecticut gubernatorial race has begun to tighten, placing Gov. M. Jodi Rell ahead of New Haven Mayor John DeStefano by 17 points. But a Rell spokesman discounted those results, saying Zogby doesn't use a random sampling process and that it questioned only about half the number of "likely voters" surveyed in another poll. And while the Zogby poll tracks Rell's lead at about half the 32-point margin she held...

Hartford -- Critics of Sen. Joe Lieberman's independent run to keep his job attacked on two fronts Monday, with one group asking an elections official to throw him out of the Democratic Party and a former rival calling on state officials to keep his name off the November ballot. Staffers for Lieberman, who lost the Aug. 8 Democratic primary to Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont, called both efforts dirty politics. The senator filed as an independent candidate a day after the loss, running under the new Connecticut for Lieberman party. A group whose members described themselves as peace activists asked Sharon...

Waterbury, Conn. -- Democrat Ned Lamont's campaign manager said he will send an apology to the mayor of Waterbury for describing the city that backed his opponent, Sen. Joe Lieberman, as a place "where the forces of slime meet the forces of evil." Tom Swan said the comment was made to a reporter on Tuesday, after the city voted heavily for Lieberman in the Democratic Senate primary. He said the comments were in the context of a broader discussion of state politics in which former Mayor Philip A. Giordano was the "slime" and former Gov. John G. Rowland was the...

To hear the nation's governors talk, these are the worst of times for state governments. The sluggish economy has dried up revenues and blown huge holes in their budgets. According to the National Governors Association, states face the deepest fiscal crisis since World War II. Hard times have forced ''substantial cuts'' in spending, governors say, and prompted many to raise taxes. On Tuesday, Michigan's state representatives were ordered to take a 3% pay cut. Despite such actions, billion-dollar budget gaps loom for many states. Congress is listening to their pleas. This week it is considering whether to include $30 billion...