Free Republic

20 minutes ago WASHINGTON — Barack Obama became the first black presidential nominee in U.S. history on Tuesday, declaring victory over Hillary Clinton and lifting the curtain on an epic struggle for the White House against Republican John McCain. Clinton, credited by Obama as an inspiration to millions, refused to concede defeat and sparked a buzz early in the day about the possibility of a dream team by saying she's open to joining the ticket as his running mate. "Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another," Obama told nearly 20,000 cheering supporters in...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON--The Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee meets Saturday to wrestle with the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida. The essential questions, according to documents prepared for the meeting by the DNC--and obtained by this blog--is whether the Florida and Michigan delegates are to be seated and how these delegates then should be allocated between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama. The package of materials includes staff analysis of the various issues, arguments and potentials. solutions. Michigan and Florida were stripped of their delegates as punishment for holding January primaries,...

Maureen Dowd is worried that the Republican smear machine is at it again, attacking Barack Obama by using…his middle name. It seems Ed Rogers referred to Obama by his full name on "Hardball" a while back, setting off indignation among some on the left. I don't know why it came to Rogers' mind, but it is true I included Obama's middle name in an NR story (not available on the web) in early November: "Obama has joked that he worried his political career was over after 9/11 because his name sounded too much like Osama. In fact, it's better than...

Americans have not yet begun to pay the price for the Bush presidency. The global ramifications of his foreign policy, the long-term impact of his budgetary excesses, our depleted military, the ongoing erosion of civil liberties and church/state separation, the unprecedented acquiescence to corporate power…all these factors, and more, will dictate the course of this nation for decades to come. Had Al Gore assumed the presidency in 2001, he would have confronted the same challenges - a nation, and world, simmering in a mix of cultural/religious extremism and declining resources. Realistically speaking, Mr. Gore could probably not have solved any...

Scores of convicted felons voted illegally in the state's 2004 general election, and officials never noticed because of serious flaws in the system for tracking them, The Seattle Times has found. The Times, reviewing felony convictions as far back as 1997, identified 129 felons in King and Pierce counties who were recorded as having voted in the Nov. 2 election. Another 23 likely voted. Several methods were used to confirm the findings. Either the counties failed to flag or purge felons on the voter rolls as required by state law, or they allowed them to register without checking their status....