Free Republic

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill’s husband used the U.S. Senate Dining Room to cut business deals selling tax credits tied to stimulus money, a whistle-blowing executive inside his company alleged on an audio recording exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller. “The thing that irritated me about this was he [McCaskill’s husband Joseph Shepard] entertained these outside investors in the Senate Dining Room,” the whistle-blower said. “That’s where he closed the deal.” The whistle-blower, Craig Woods, was a longtime high-ranking official within Shepard’s business empire, serving first as chief financial officer and then as vice president and chief underwriter for Missouri Equity...

Rep. John Murtha's invitation to house Guantanamo Bay detainees in his district has some local officials seeing dollar signs -- even though Murtha's comment was met with disbelief by others. The Pennsylvania Democrat, chairman of the defense subcommittee for appropriations, is renowned for his ability to steer earmarked dollars to his district. And after Murtha told FOX News that he'd be willing to take in terrorist suspects, some saw it as a job-creation opportunity. His district's maximum-security prisons are full, according to the state Department of Corrections, so a new prison would likely be needed to house any of the...

Newark, Oct 19, 2008 / 06:19 pm (CNA).- A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark has responded to reports that comedian Bill Maher filmed part of his anti-religion documentary “Religulous” at a parish in the archdiocese. Maher set part of the film at Our Lady of Mercy in Park Ridge, New Jersey. The relevant scenes show his sister and his Jewish mother, who explains why his Catholic father stopped going to church. Jim Goodness, an archdiocesan spokesman, told The Record that he turned down two requests to use the church property, one from Maher’s production company and one from the...

<p>Berlin (dpa) - Battling for reelection in a tight race, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party is putting up campaign posters showing flag-draped coffins of dead American soldiers to underline their opposition to the Iraq war, reports said Friday.</p> <p>Rolf Schwanitz, a state secretary in the Berlin chancellery, is using a poster with five coffins covered by the American stars and stripes being loaded into a transport aircraft flanked by a U.S. military honour guard. The caption of the poster is aimed at conservative challenger Angela Merkel, who backed the Iraq war while always vowing not to send German troops.</p>

Ex-President Bill Clinton said Monday that he had to assure world leaders that there was nothing seriously wrong with America after the Congress impeached him in 1998. "During that time, a lot of world leaders would ask, 'What is going on? Is this serious?'" he told New York magazine. "I kept assuring them that nothing bad had happened to America," he recalled, "but that we periodically went through spasms." Interviewed while traveling in Africa, the ex-president claimed, "Africans saw [my impeachment] for exactly what it was: an abuse of power." "They got it here," he insisted. The magazine noted that...

Kerry Touts Bush Impeachment Memo Failed presidential candidate John Kerry said Thursday that he intends to confront Congress with a document touted by critics of President Bush as evidence that he committed impeachable crimes by falsifying evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "When I go back (to Washington) on Monday, I am going to raise the issue," Kerry said, referring to the Downing Street Memo in an interview with Massachusetts' Standard Times newspaper. Story Continues Below "I think it's a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth and a profoundly important document that raises stunning issues...

LONDON (AP) — Monica Lewinsky begs to differ. The former White House intern scorned Bill Clinton's explanation that he had an affair with her "just because I could," and accused the former president of failing to correct the record and make clear their relationship was mutual in his new memoir. In her first public comments on the book, "My Life," Lewinsky accused Clinton of trying to destroy her with his characterization of the affair as something dirty and wrong, and argued the liaison was one of mutual affection. "I really didn't expect him to go into detail about our relationship"...

The hoopla over a minor story like whether John Kerry threw medals or ribbons over a fence in 1971 misses a bigger point. Wasn't his action thoroughly despicable? Doing what he did is on par with burning an American flag, legal but reprehensible. The day before, Kerry had his chance to petition his government by speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He told of rapes, torture, and other war crimes. But being the center of American news wasn't enough for Kerry. He had to shock the public. By throwing medals and ribbons he thumbed his nose to the government...

John Forbes Kerry The Most Peculiar Man in the Senate (excerpts) John Forbes Kerry, the new chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has accused America's soldiers of rape, torture, and genocide: he has worked openly with Communist dictators, and, he sought $200 billion in defense cuts. Boston Herald columnist Don Feder reported that before the 1984 election, John Kerry had been a stalwart apologist for the North Vietnamese and advocated policies guaranteed to assure a Communist victory. He slandered his country and all Americans who fought in Vietnam. While charging that U.S. soldiers were war criminals, he had nothing...

<p>June 26, 2003 Shelley slows the recall count Big news from the Secretary of State’s office on the recall. According to a spokesman, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has interpreted the law to say that county registrars need only be verifying the signatures they received by June 16. The rest they may set aside until the end of the next reporting period on July 23. Then they will report that number to Shelley and he will give them the go-ahead to verify the second batch. But they won’t be required to report that new number until Aug. 22. If this ruling stands, it will delay considerably the verification process and the date by which the recall qualifies for the ballot. It would almost certainly delay the election until March.</p>