Free Republic

Former U.S. senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyoming) passed away on Wednesday at age 78. The Washington Post obit for him has a quote from one of his Cato appearances: Sen. Wallop was unapologetically conservative as a Republican, a position that sometimes drew ire from members of his own party.“Too many Republicans prefer to be a Democrat Lite,” he said in a speech at the Cato Institute in 1994. “As any beer connoisseur can tell you, Lite is a tasteless, repugnant concoction.” Way before the Tea Party came along, he penned a scathing and wide-ranging critique of the expansive growth of the federal government in...

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - On the campaign trail, Teresa Heinz Kerry is soft-voiced, elegant and eloquent, and practices a brand of politics rarely heard from the wife of a presidential candidate. She speaks her mind and doesn't let anyone else speak for her. Her opinions are both personal and partisan and she delivers them with aplomb, as she demonstrated in the course of a day of barnstorming for her husband, Democratic presidential contender John Kerry of Massachusetts. Bouncing through a series of meetings and interviews in recession-plagued Midwest towns, Heinz Kerry responded promptly to a question about first lady Laura Bush...

<p>Nearly four years ago, Gov. Gray Davis signed a little-noticed piece of legislation that allowed state agencies, cities and counties to boost the retirement benefits of their employees, particularly peace officers and firefighters.</p> <p>Now that law, debated for only a few minutes in the frenetic closing days of the 1999 legislative session, has come back to haunt California. Those greatly improved retirement benefits -- and a stock market in the tank -- are about to devour billions of dollars that could otherwise be used for education, police and fire protection and road improvements.</p>