Free Republic

Election '10: Megalomania and chutzpah has been redefined with the Senate majority leader's assertion that without him we'd be in worldwide depression. Unfortunately, he couldn't save his home state of Nevada.

Election '10: The future debated the past in Nevada on Thursday night, with the Tea Party's Sharron Angle demonstrating why the Democrats will no longer be the majority and Harry Reid will no longer be their leader. It was no easy task for Sen. Harry Reid to stand up there and try to explain why he deserved re-election as senator from a state with 14% unemployment and a foreclosure rate five times the national average. If the policies of an administration whose legislation he quarterbacked through the Senate were working, it is certainly not evident in Nevada. This time around,...

Regulation: Thirty companies and organizations get waivers from the new health care overhaul because otherwise they'd have to raise rates or drop coverage. The president said neither would happen. Hey, where's our waiver? When McDonald's told federal regulators in a recent memo that it would be "economically prohibitive" for its insurance carrier to continue to cover its 30,000 hourly workers unless it received a waiver from the ObamaCare requirement that 80% of premiums for such minimed plans be spent on medical care, alarm bells went off in the White House. Suddenly the "affordable health care for Americans" that House Speaker...

Some of the longest-serving members of Congress, whose party has overwhelming majorities in both houses, are having far closer election races than they are used to. These include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, not to mention 18-year veteran Sen. Barbara Boxer. Despite their long records, they seem to want to talk about everything except their records. They could tell us why they voted for ObamaCare and huge stimulus bills, without time enough to read them. Instead, they've come up with enough red herrings to stock an aquarium.

Some of the longest-serving members of Congress, whose party has overwhelming majorities in both houses, are having far closer election races than they are used to. These include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, not to mention 18-year veteran Sen. Barbara Boxer. Despite their long records, they seem to want to talk about everything except their records. They could tell us why they voted for ObamaCare and huge stimulus bills, without time enough to read them. Instead, they've come up with enough red herrings to stock an aquarium.

Exits: Having helped bring the Chicago Way to Washington, the White House chief of staff leaves a crisis he helped create to bring the nanny state to the heartland. On the surface, Rahm Emanuel is leaving to fulfill a personal ambition — to be mayor of Chicago. In reality, he's jumping a sinking ship, and the credentials he brings to a mayoral race in the Windy City may also be his political albatross. He heads for the self-described "city that works" leaving behind a country that doesn't. Emanuel is famous for saying what has become the mantra of the Obama...

Election 2010: Another Tea Party candidate has dispatched another incumbent, riding a tidal wave of voter anger. The "angry mobs" that thronged town hall meetings were laughed at. No one's laughing anymore. When the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passed the House with the help of eight Republicans, Rep. Mike Castle, one of the eight and Delaware's at-large congressman, offered an explanation right off of President Obama's teleprompter. He cited Spain, which studies show has lost 2.2 jobs for every "green" job created with huge subsidies, and John Podesta's liberal Center for American Progress as approving the mandate-heavy Waxman-Markey bill as a...

Politics: California's Senate debate was between someone who knows how to pull a wagon and someone who wants everyone to ride. The choice is creating wealth and jobs or redistributing wealth while destroying jobs. California hasn't elected a Republican senator since Pete Wilson in 1988, but if Wednesday's debate and recent polls are any indication, the political sea change of 2010 may be about to wash up on Golden State beaches. The debate wasn't so much conservative vs. liberal as between freedom and dependency, with incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer attacking former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as serving the interests of...

Politics: The defeat of Alaska's Lisa Murkowski by a little-known conservative lawyer is the latest evidence of a tidal wave building that may sweep aside an out-of-touch establishment. "We the people" won't be ignored. Shays' Rebellion, an uprising of 1,200 farmers led by one Daniel Shays, angry over conditions in Massachusetts in 1786, prompted Thomas Jefferson to write to James Madison that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing" for America. A more peaceful rebellion is now occurring across the country, and we believe it's a good thing for America. Considering the excesses of this administration and...

Power: Show Me State voters overwhelmingly rejected the federal mandate to buy health insurance. Those who ignored the consent of the governed to pass ObamaCare take heed: The governed no longer consent. It is fitting that Missouri was the first state to hold a public referendum on ObamaCare, sending the notion that government can shred the Constitution to impose its will to a crushing defeat with three-quarters of the voters approving Proposition C. The measure would forbid the federal government from penalizing people who do not buy health insurance. A year ago, on Aug. 6, 2009, Kenneth Gladney, an African-American...

Leaders of the New Black Panther Party express joy in a newly available video that Attorney General Eric Holder tolerated their voter-intimidation activities and dropped a case against them. In the video below, Malik Shabazz, president of the New Black Panther Party, explains at a NBPP meeting why New Black Panthers were sent to polling places with batons. His comments include some jokes, as when he cracked to members “You know we don’t carry batons…. PSYCHE! I’m just playin’.” Shabazz goes on to explain that his brother got a pass from the Obama Justice Department because “Justice Department leadership changed...

The Nevada Democratic Party has filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against Sue Lowden, one of the leading candidates for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination. Naming Lowden and Carl Guidici, a donor to Lowden's campaign, the party's complaint accuses the Senate candidate of failing to fully report the in-kind donation of a luxury RV for use by her campaign.

Not that Ithaca Journal readers would know it from the reporting. They sniff at the notion that the GOP might make a concerted effort to push Maurice Hinchey out of Congress, then neglect to point out the rather troubling development for an incumbent of having a challenger surpass him in fundraising in an election year: Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey, meanwhile, is not a major GOP target in the 22nd Congressional District covering Ithaca and Binghamton and stretching east to Poughkeepsie on the other side of the Hudson River. Yes, yes, nothing to see here, just move along. Or — perhaps...

Secretary of State Ross Miller, in a stipulation agreed to with Assemblywoman Kathy McClain, agreed to allow her to donate a little more than $7,000 to charity as opposed to being sanctioned for illegally using campaign funds for personal use. The stipulation suggests Miller believes her payments to PERS are a "personal obligation" and that conclusion "could be sustained" in court. But because she did not make the payments "in bad faith" because she disclosed it on her campaign form, she simply has to donate the funds to charity. Both officials are Democrats.

Washington — When Nevada Democrats brought a goat and four chickens to Republican Sue Lowden’s campaign office last week to mock her suggestion that the uninsured barter for health care, it said as much about the political state of affairs for Harry Reid as it did his leading opponent. Lowden was ridiculed by Jay Leno and others for her bartering plan — goats for gallbladder surgery? — read one Democratic missive. Chickens for checkups? Lowden’s advice for the 500,000 Nevadans without health care coverage was another poor choice of talking points from the casino owner and former one-term state lawmaker...

U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle has won the Tea Party Express lottery and will get the national group's endorsement on Tax Day in Washington. Bryan Shroyer, the political director of Tea Party Express, told the Review-Journal late Wednesday that the group will make the announcement today.

Las Vegan Antonio Manriquez stood on the steps of the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse holding an American flag. Manriquez was one of nearly 3,500 immigration reform supporters who attended the Rally for America Saturday afternoon in downtown Las Vegas, which was hosted by Reform Immigration for America. The 45-year-old from Mexico City said he's an illegal immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for 20 years. He said he attended rally to push for comprehensive immigration reform, support others who are in the country illegally and to no longer live in fear of being separated from his three children, all...

For 18-year-old Kenia Pedroza, immigration reform means seeing the grandmother who raised her from a toddler when her mother died. Pedroza's grandmother voluntarily headed back to Mexico once her husband, who was undocumented, was deported a few years ago. Her grandmother was in the process of becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen when she had to move south to be with her spouse. The couple had three children in California, including Pedroza's father, which is how the teen became a citizen.

Gov. Jim Gibbons announced a plan today to have Nevada join a federal lawsuit to block health care reform. Democratic Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto fired back this afternoon, saying she could take action to stop the governor. During a noon news conference, Gibbons signed an executive order to appoint Mark Hutchison, a Las Vegas lawyer, to take the case for free. Gibbons said Nevada will join the federal lawsuit filed in Florida. He said the plan is to pay for any other fees with private donations. “This health care nationalization plan is illegal because it is unconstitutional,” Gibbons said....

Come 2014, we might begin to see help-wanted ads that emphasize the lack of employer-provided insurance, especially for modest wage-earners. It's known that ObamaCare redistributes from the rich to modest earners. Less well understood is how much the generous subsidies benefit some modest earners over others. The health care law creates incentives for employers and employees to shift away from job-based health care, leading some to predict cost overruns. Consider a family of four with