Free Republic

Fifteen months before the 2008 election, the Democrats are odds-on favorites to put one of their own into the White House. A solid majority of the country rejects the Bush administration and the war in Iraq he initiated. But psychologist Drew Westen says Democrats could lose yet again if they don't learn how to stand up for themselves and connect with voters emotionally. Westen is a clinical, personality and political psychologist and a professor in the departments of psychology and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta. He's also a political consultant whose bestselling book, "The Political Brain:...

Texas Congressman Ron Paul files for GOP presidential bid HOUSTON -- Ron Paul, the iconoclastic nine-term congressman from southeast Texas, took the first step Thursday toward launching a second presidential bid in 2008, this time as a Republican. Paul filed incorporation papers in Texas on Thursday to create a presidential exploratory committee that allows him and his supporters to collect money on behalf of his bid. This will be Paul's second try for the White House; he was the Libertarian nominee for president in 1988. Kent Snyder, the chairman of Paul's exploratory committee and a former staffer on Paul's Libertarian...

Leading Senate Democrats vowed today to use their new majority in Congress to press for troop reductions in Iraq within a matter of months, stepping up pressure on the administration just as President Bush is to be interviewed by a bipartisan panel examining future strategy for the war. The Democrats ? the incoming majority leader, Senator Harry Reid; the incoming Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin; and the incoming Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. ? said a phased redeployment of troops would be their top priority when the new Congress convenes in January, even before...