Free Republic

<p>Dems start to realize that a campaign of hate won't beat President Bush.</p> <p>Monday, May 17, 2004 12:01 a.m.</p> <p>It's a cliché this is becoming the meanest year in politics yet. But it's true. Last week, Mike Lavigne, the spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party, admitted calling a state Supreme Court justice "a Nazi." When his boss, Democratic Party chairman Charles Soecthting, was asked if an apology was due, he said, "I don't have a problem that Mike said it."</p>

John Kerry is the Senate's most liberal member. But his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, looks to be even farther left, judging from her charitable giving. Over the years, she has poured nearly $6 million into the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, a kind of front philanthropy, founded by California activist Drummond Pike in 1976, that channels donations to left-wing causes in ways that make the original funders hard to trace directly. The Tides Foundation gives to causes to the left - sometimes way to the left - of the Democratic mainstream. It has been a big supporter (to the tune of...