Free Republic

(snip) PHOENIX, AZ – U.S. Senator John McCain’s re-election campaign today issued the following statement from campaign Communications Director Brian Rogers on former Congressman J.D. Hayworth entering the Republican primary this morning: “Senator John McCain has full confidence that the people of Arizona will again return him to the U.S. Senate this year and will work hard to earn their continued support. Senator McCain understands that to earn the votes of hardworking Arizonans, you first have to respect them by telling the truth. Former Congressman Hayworth obviously disagrees, and it was sad to see him use blatant lies and fabrications...

Republican lawmakers in Congress are sponsoring a bill that seeks to abolish birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents. Federal law automatically grants citizenship to any person born on American soil, regardless of the immigration status of the child's parents. Supporters of the bill say that many people come to this country for the express purpose of having children who are American citizens, making the family eligible for welfare and other government benefits. "You have many people coming to this country illegally," said Rep. Gary Miller, R-Brea, a co-sponsor of the legislation. "They come...

The illegal immigrant charged with arson and murder in the Brooklyn boarding house blaze that killed five people purposely started the fire in his neighbors' baby carriage to settle a score, residents said yesterday. Daniel Ignacio, 27, told cops that "demons" made him start the deadly fire while in a drunken stupor. But neighbors said Ignacio was angry with Miguel Chan and his wife, Luisa, for leaving the stroller in the hallway of the Bensonhurst building. Luisa died in the fire, and the 2-month-old daughter she pushed around in the carriage suffered a fractured skull. According to police, Ignacio used...

A long-running and divisive debate among Florida Republicans over immigration policy has emerged as a major issue in the nationally watched Florida Senate race between Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio. The immediate question is whether the Census should count unauthorized immigrants (foreign residents who lack documentation and whose legal status has not been determined.)

Immigration reform may seem a distant priority for a ruling party that’s made the increasingly elusive goals of job creation and health care reform its primary focus in 2010. Nevertheless, President Barack Obama and top congressional Democrats have signaled that, as Obama said in his State of the Union address, “fixing our broken immigration system” remains at the top of their legislative To Do list before the midterm elections. But Democrats push immigration reform legislation, which would include amnesty for illegal residents, at their own peril. With employment persisting at 10 percent, addressing immigration risks reviving the grass-roots backlashes that...

Arizona Sen. John McCain's possible primary challenger is now official. Former congressman J.D. Hayworth -- voted out of office three years ago -- is making his political comeback in this year's Senate Republican primary, challenging McCain from the right. After filing official papers last week, Hayworth will formally announce his candidacy Feb. 15.

I don't claim to be clairvoyant....... a political prognosticator..... But I am going to make a prediction today about U.S. Senate race being held in Arizona .... U.S. Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, is going to get beat. One of the false assumptions many Republicans hold following the special election for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts ...., is that this is simply a bad year for Democrats. It will be a bad year for Democrats running for re-election in the House and Senate, but it's not just because they are Democrats. It's because they are incumbents...

Meghan McCain believes in limited government and the pro-life platform. She also supports the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But she believes the Republican Party needs to evolve. McCain spoke at the University Auditorium Wednesday night, and about 360 tickets were distributed for the event. She was paid $10,000, according to the UF Student Government Finance Office. “The Republican party has a serious PR problem,” McCain said. “Anyone who doesn’t think so is smoking something.” Describing herself as a “progressive Republican,” McCain, the daughter of U.S. Sen. John McCain, focused on the need for civility within the realm of politics...

Arizona's U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, ranked as one of the top recipients of campaign contributions from interests enmeshed in a raging lobbying scandal, has no reason to return the money, his top aide says. Moreover, the donors want Hayworth to keep the funds, chief of staff Joe Eule said. With four other politicians returning more than $250,000 in recent days to Indian tribes and others connected with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pressures have mounted for Hayworth and other recipients to follow suit. Eule said that the Republican congressman has received campaign contributions totaling $150,000 from tribes affiliated at one time...

In the new book Game Change there are a number of revelations, gossip and innuendo that are attributed to those who were running for president in 2008. There are two quotes in the book though that I have no doubt were actually made. Both are from Senator John McCain. The first is where McCain said that those who oppose amnesty for illegal aliens are "going to destroy the f--king party”. The second is in a call with Senator Lindsey Graham where McCain said in frustration at the rebuke he was getting, "Listen to these people ... Why would I want...

Less than two weeks ago, the shape of the Republican U.S. Senate primary in California changed dramatically when former Rep. and liberal GOPer Tom Campbell announced he would become the third major Republican in the race. In abandoning his bid for the GOP nomination for governor, the 57-year-old Campbell joins State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in the battle for nomination to oppose Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer this November. At first glance, the seasoned observer of Golden State Republican politics is tempted to shrug and say “Who cares?”

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group in Washington that monitors the influence of money in politics, Mr. Hayworth was the largest single Congressional recipient of donations from Mr. Abramoff and his family, his associates, his Indian tribe clients and a gambling cruise ship line that he owned, with more than $101,000 going to Mr. Hayworth and his political action committee since 1999. Mr. Hayworth was also a frequent guest in sports skyboxes controlled by Mr. Abramoff and his clients, and at Signatures, a Washington restaurant owned by the lobbyist. Mr. Mitchell said Mr. Hayworth needed to...

This morning in Green Bay, Wisconsin, John McCain, a former major figure in the 1989 Lincoln Savings & Loan Scandal and the $160.1 billion dollar collapse, with his running mate, Sarah Palin, under her own ethics investigation in her state of Alaska by the legislature over "Troopergate", gave an absurd and disingenuous speech calling for firings of some public officials and indictments for some other corrupt persons in business. Yet it is exactly these same sort of a personalities that McCain would either fire or indict that he was himself back in 1989 during the savings and loan collapse scandal...

At one time, John McCain said the worst thing that ever happened to him, Vietnam included, was the so-called Keating 5 scandal. "The Vietnamese," he would say, "didn't question my honor." Among McCain's earliest benefactors in Arizona was Lincoln Savings and Loan chief Charles Keating Jr., who filled McCain's campaign coffers with more than $100,000 and hosted the McCains multiple times at his vacation home in the Bahamas. Keating expected his largesse to be rewarded, and when federal regulators began looking into Lincoln's questionable lending practices and investments in the late 1980s, he turned to five senators whose coffers he...

Arizona Sen. John McCain raised more than $1 million during the last six months of 2009 to report the largest filing so far during 2010 election cycle of any political action committee tied to a lawmaker or candidate. While there are still other politician PAC fundraising reports that may trickle in before the January 31 deadline, McCain is head and shoulders above all other such groups. Click here to learn more! His PAC, named Country First after his slogan in his 2008 presidential campaign, outraised that of his running mate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose SarahPAC took in $732,000...

John McCain says that he has heard the American people and now understands that we need to secure the border before enacting any “comprehensive” immigration reform. But John McCain has also said that he hasn’t changed his position. He supported amnesty in 2003 by name, proposed it in 2006 and 2007 without calling it amnesty, and says that anyone who says that he ever supported amnesty is a liar. He has insulted Americans who advocate border security and has cursed at the thought of building a border fence. Which of all of these is the real John McCain? The presence...

"WASHINGTON: A day after Senator Barack Obama said he could support broad energy legislation even though it would permit offshore oil drilling, which he has opposed, an aide to Senator John McCain said Sunday that he too might support such a package."

In perhaps the most biased, incorrect, misleading and blatantly disgusting piece of journalism this campaign season, the Global Edition of the New York Times - The International Herald Tribune has published an article entitled...

John McCain today is poised to make the biggest mistake of his 2008 presidential run. The presumptive Republican nominee will address the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza in San Diego. La Raza is billed by too many as simply "the nation's largest Hispanic rights group." But this is perhaps the most radical apologist group for illegal immigration and the "rights" of illegal aliens -- and worse.

Escondido city officials refuse to give up. Two years ago, the city passed an ordinance to punish landlords for renting to illegal immigrants. But it rescinded the rental restriction after a legal challenge was filed and bills began to mount. Now Escondido is trying a new approach to what it calls the "public nuisances" of illegal immigration, citing residents for code violations such as garage conversions, graffiti and junk cars. The city is also debating a new ordinance that would restrict overnight street parking without a permit. In addition, it is drafting a policy that would prohibit drivers from picking...