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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reportedly said Wednesday that what he and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have said about the future of the Republican Party is “remarkably similar.” The comment comes after Schumer said in an interview with the New York Times he would like Republicans to work with Democrats in the aftermath of the midterm elections. Schumer’s remarks precede a Senate Republican Conference meeting in which Republicans will have to choose between McConnell and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), the outgoing National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, as the new Senate minority leader.

Mitt Romney, whose campaign is preparing a multi-million dollar wave of negative advertising to persuade voters that Rick Santorum should not be president, says he is open to the possibility of choosing Santorum to be his running mate should Romney win the Republican nomination. Romney appeared on Fox News Wednesday morning and was asked, "You and Rick Santorum, we haven't seen you go head-to-head yet…In the big picture, could you see a scenario where you two team up?" "Oh, I think it's always possible to have people come together in our party, whether it's Rick and I, or others in...

PHOENIX – President Barack Obama's plan to send as many as 1,200 National Guard troops back to the U.S.-Mexico border quelled demands that he must do more to battle illegal immigration and drug smuggling, but advocates for tougher enforcement say the troops need authority to make detentions. The new plan looks similar to the National Guard initiative under former President George W. Bush, but on a much smaller scale: Troops will work on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support, and will eventually be replaced by more border patrol and customs agents. The plan at this point doesn't call for the ability...

Al Qaeda remains trapped in a Vietnam fantasy. It is desperately trying to produce an "Iraqi Tet" -- a Middle Eastern repetition of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong 1968 offensive in South Vietnam. On April 2 and again on April 4, the terrorist gang led by al Qaeda's Iraq commander, Abu Musab Zarqawi, launched "military-style attacks" on the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Baghdad. In the April 4 assault, U.S. forces took 44 casualties (most of them minor wounds). The terrorist gang, however, took 50 casualties, out of a force estimated at 60 gunmen. On April 11, the gang...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Democrats' dilemma -- what to say about war ANALYSIS: Strategy similar to Bush's Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief Saturday, May 22, 2004 Washington -- Turmoil in Iraq threatens to undermine President Bush and his Republican Party's electoral prospects, but Democrats are struggling to explain exactly how their position on the war offers a real alternative. Two developments on Capitol Hill this week demonstrate the ambiguity of the Democratic position on Iraq. On Wednesday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi assailed Bush's "incompetence'' and said the only way to prevail in Iraq would be to replace Bush as commander in chief. The...

PARIS - Astronomers say they have found a Jupiter-like body circling a distant star in a planetary system like ours, an intriguing discovery that raises the prospect of someday finding a planet resembling Earth. Hugh Jones of Liverpool John Moores University said his team had discovered the system, illuminated by a star dubbed HD 70642, some 94 light years from Earth. Jones was presenting the finding at a conference at the Paris Astrophysics Institute here Thursday. The star is similar to the Sun in structure and brightness and appears to be about the same age, Jones said. The planet is...