Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday announced that he was withdrawing his nomination to be President-elect Barack Obama's commerce secretary amid a grand jury investigation into how some of his political donors won a lucrative state contract. Richardson's withdrawal was the first disruption of Obama's Cabinet process and the second "pay-to-play" investigation that has touched Obama's transition to the presidency. The president-elect has remained above the fray in both the case of arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the New Mexico case. A federal grand jury is investigating how a California company that contributed to Richardson's...

<p>A source said today that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning. The U.S. attorney's office would not confirm the information, and a spokesman for the governor did not immediately return a phone call for comment.</p>

Federal investigators recently made covert tape recordings of Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the most dramatic step yet in their corruption investigation of him and his administration, the Tribune has learned. As part of this undercover effort, one of the governor's closest confidants and former aides cooperated with investigators, and that assistance helped lead to recordings of the governor and others, sources said. The cooperation of John Wyma, 42, one of the state's most influential lobbyists, is the most stunning evidence yet that Blagojevich's once-tight inner circle appears to be collapsing under the pressure of myriad pay-to-play inquiries. Wyma, Blagojevich's chief...

Four days ago, Roger Bredow uploaded a video to YouTube beseeching like-minded people to come to Washington, D.C. and stand with him outside the Supreme Court. "[Barack] Obama was born a dual citizen," Bredow said, "British, and a citizen of the United States, at birth." This, said Bredow, meant that the president-elect could never take the oath of office. And on Friday, the Supreme Court would read Donofrio v. Wells, a suit brought by a New Jersey poker player against his state elections officer, which laid out the charges in the hopes of nullifying the election. Today at 8 a.m.,...

I thought we should have a link to post any and all updates.

According to The Schnitt Show, a radio program available in several Florida markets and XM radio, a birth announcement for Barack Obama was discovered in a 1961 Honolulu newspaper. See link for a PDF image of this announcement.

Do you wonder why 2008 election data shows that the majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama even though his record as Illinois state senator proves him the most pro-abortion candidate who ever ran for president? Perhaps one answer is that on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, millions of Catholics will again be putting in their church's collection plate their annual donation to what the pre-printed envelope calls "Campaign for Human Development: The Catholic Church working to end poverty and injustice in America; We'll turn your dollars into hope for the poor of our nation." The generous Catholics who respond to...

A case that challenges President-elect Barack Obama's name on the 2008 election ballot citing questions over his citizenship has been scheduled for a "conference" at the U.S. Supreme Court. Conferences are private meetings of the justices at which they review cases and decide which ones to accept for formal review. This case is set for a conference Dec. 5, just 10 days before the Electoral College is scheduled to meet to make formal the election of Obama as the nation's next president. The Supreme Court's website listed the date for the case brought by Leo C. Donofrio against Nina Wells,...

Friends, Will you please take the time to read this, and if you think it worthwhile, pass it along to your email list, and ask them to read it? Even if they voted, with all good intentions, for Mr. Obama? I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a...

Leo Donofrio filed a solid lawsuit. Hard to get behind Berg, his was not a good lawsuit. This, OTOH, is. Do I think it should be pursued, yes? Do I believe Obama was born in Hawaii? Probably. Is there something on Obama's birth certificate he does not want us to see. Foe shizzle. Should a President of the United States have to present his vault copy to take office? Absolutely. I don't know what is on the birth certificate- I do know Obama does not want us to see it. But with Obama - there is no law. It's Alinsky...

Instead of granting you seven wishes, the Obama Genie will make you grant him at least seven ways of taking your money. Watch out out for Obama and the Democrats witchery. They will be looking for even more creative ways to pay for their programs like. . . From CNBC: "Under Teresa Ghilarducci's - from the New School for Social Research in New York plan - workers would receive a annual $600 tax refund if they set aside 5 percent of their pay into a retirement account run by the Social Security Administration, which would then invest globally in risky...

Dazed and confused. A week after the election of Barack Obama, millions of American news junkies are in serious cold turkey, the big bump of withdrawal from two years of addiction to the dizzying ups and downs of a campaign that threatened never to end. Eat dirt, you sour Clintons, who said Obama was "unelectable." Obama's 8 million vote margin over his Republican opponent -- miraculously sparing us endless litigation and chad counting -- was an exhilarating testimony to his personal gifts and power of persuasion. And the formidable Michelle Obama, with her electric combo of brains and style, is...

President Bush is unhappy the conversation between him and President-elect Barack Obama has been cast as a trade-off between Bush signing a second stimulus package in exchange for congressional passage of the Colombia Free Trade Deal, administration officials told FOX News on Tuesday.

A seismic shift, a watershed moment, an electoral landslide or the dawn of a new era. No matter what the turn of phrase, Nov. 4, 2008, will go down in the history books as the beginning of the end of the 30-year political reign of the ultra-right and its vicious pro-corporate agenda, and the end of a beginning of new politics in the United States of America. Convinced by the power of one man’s arguments for hope, unity and change, his program and example, a 52 percent majority of voters rejected the old politics of fear, racism and red-baiting and...

As a South African reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s biography Young Stalin,1 I was struck with an alarming sense of déjà vu. The prevailing personal and broad social dynamics at play in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution seem to so parallel those of our country. Underlying every area of social intercourse—among and between the revolutionaries themselves, the various revolutionary ideologies, business interests and even the executive of the state—was conspiracy and mistrust, in a bitter struggle for supremacy...

Hat Tip: Buy Danish, commenter at Hot Air "When you choose to serve -- whether it's your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood -- you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That's why it's called the American dream." The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as...

How about that? No sooner than the voting was finally underway and Bill Ayers surfaces from the Hyde Park underground for...."spontaneous" simultaneous interviews with the Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/11/04/bill_ayers_speaks.html and The New Yorker... http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/tny/2008/11/mr-ayerss-neighborhood.html no doubt part of the rehabilitation effort necessary to enable the Obama confidante http://globallabor.blogspot.com/2008/11/ayers-and-obama-in-regular-contact-says.html open access to the White House. As might be expected, Ayers attempted to minimize his connection with Obama despite the extensive record and despite the fact that Obama himself told the media that they were in touch as recently as early 2007. But the New Yorker notes something the Post glossed over: Ayers...

The Electoral College will have the duty to certify that the winner of the "election" is properly qualified to take the oath of office and serve as President of the United States of America. Obama's birth cettificate may be required.

**Support The Military **Caring For The Wounded **Remembering The Fallen **Honoring The Sacrifices . . . These are the basic tenets of the site here at Blackfive. They are what drew me to the site to begin with, and upholding them led me to enjoy my time here. These are the most basic of principles we hold dear, and to a man, believe in with all of our hearts. We better, because I don't believe our President-elect has a freaking clue about any of them. Nor do those who will be working in complicit abrogation of all of these principles...

CHICAGO (AP) - In his first major public address since a cancer crisis, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the "hope of the entire world" that the U.S. will change for the better. The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at the annual Saviours' Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator. "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of...