Free Republic

Matt Bennett can still hear the reporters laughing, all 90 of them. He can still picture Sam Donaldson doubled over, guffawing, on a riser that looked out over a dusty field in suburban Detroit. Bennett was a 23-year-old political rookie in 1988 when he was sent to a General Dynamics facility in Sterling Heights, Mich., to organize a campaign stop for Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis: a ride in a 68-ton M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. The visit, meant to bolster the candidate’s credibility as a future commander-in-chief, would go down as one of the worst campaign backfires in history....

As Sen. Scott Brown sweeps into his new office, it’s the end of the line for several of Sen. Paul Kirk’s staffers who are being ushered out of jobs a week earlier than expected. Kirk staffers weren’t talking today, but friends and colleagues of the group say some of the staffers were upset by the accelerated swearing in date. One Democratic colleague said the “carpet was pulled out” from preparations for a day that already promised to be emotional. Kirk’s office had worked for weeks to turn over the beloved Russell 317 office suite to Brown by Feb. 11, welcoming...

The Indian and Chinese governments have had a rethink on signing the Copenhagen Accord, officials said on Saturday, and the UN has also indefinitely postponed its Jan 31 deadline for countries to accede to the document. An Indian official said that though the government had been thinking of signing the accord because it “did not have any legal teeth and would be good diplomatically”; it felt irked because of repeated messages from both UN officials and developed countries to accede to it. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has written to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seeking a number of clarifications on...

Seems all DemocRATS now have a frown All because of a guy named Scott Brown In the leftist state, Mass. He had really kicked *** Bye bye, Martha, Scott's taken you down ...Doug from Upland, 1/21/10 FReepers, leave you congratulatory messages here. I'll print the thread late Saturday night and will deliver it in person. I'll have to find where he is, of course. My guess is that Harry Reid will try to stuff him in a broom closet. WAY TO GO, SENATOR-ELECT BROWN. MAYBE THE COUNTRY CAN BE SAVED AFTER ALL.

Another disaster is brewing as Obama seems to be winning the public perception battle regarding government-supplied healthcare. This is despite all the warnings about the failure of similar systems in places like Canada and England, and the absolute certainty that government healthcare will raise costs, and quickly lead to shortages of doctors and procedures, rationing and denials of treatments to certain patients. All this can be predicted, but Americans are not paying close attention. Now we also have the model of the failure of the Massachusetts experiment in a government-mandated heathcare system to observe. Will it make any difference?