Free Republic

Watch video here.

Tony Knowles was a popular former two term governor of the state of Alaska when this debate took place during the 2006 campaign for Governor of Alaska.

With another hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast, the so-called “bridge to nowhere,” championed by Alaska’s Congressional delegation on behalf of the people of Ketchikan, just won’t go away. Three years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the plan to spend hundreds of millions to connect Ketchikan with its airport on Gravina Island became a national symbol of Congressional excess, much to the dismay of Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young. Sen. John McCain has made it a habit to ridicule the bridge project during his presidential campaign. McCain has promised to veto any bill sent to...

Edwards Took Mistress on 2006 Presidential Announcement Tour By Garance Franke-Ruta Well, you gotta give him one thing: the man has chutzpah. Photographs distributed by wire services and posted online by technology blogger Robert Scoble show that former North Carolina senator John Edwards took his mistress Rielle Hunter with him on the plane during his late 2006 presidential campaign announcement tour. As can be seen in this Dec. 28, 2006 photo (that's Hunter in the jeans and jester hat, as can be seen more clearly in this side-profile photo), Hunter stood off to the side of the national press corps...

Blood Brothers or Cousins...? Reviewing Paula Abeles' "Obama and Odinga" Rumors always abound, but this well documented [from highly credible news sources] article by Paula Abeles is a treasure of truth, and one that everybody should see. Not only did Obama endorse the candidacy of Odinga, but actually went to Kenya and campaigned along side of Odinga. Why does this matter? The attached article explains in full detail. It addresses the startling danger to our national security that lies behind the poor judgment and questionable associations that plague Barack Obama wherever he goes. A brief synopsis follows. The full article...

According to latest news, only 15.5% of US voters in overseas locations requested a ballot for the 2006 election, and only 1/3 of those voted. Pardon while I laugh. The Army Times Publishing Company has surveyed military members and the military votes Republican at a rate of 69 - 85%. There were 600,000 military personnel stationed overseas in 2006. It seems a safe bet that had the true military vote count been tallied, the Dems would not have squeeked-by with "wins" in MT, VA, and several other states. In other words, the Dems probably took the Senate through disenfranchising the...

Two top nuclear scientists of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) are currently in Taliban custody. The two were working at PAEC’s facility in North West Frontier Province. Zee News investigations reveal that the two scientists were kidnapped about six months ago. To avoid international embarrassment Pakistan Government has kept this information under wraps. According to information available with Zee News, nuclear scientists have been kidnapped by Taliban at the behest of Al-Qaeda.

The number of fatal firearms accidents for the last five years of record are: 2002 - 762; 2003 - 730; 2004 - 649; 2005 - 630; 2006 - 680. I had to hunt a bit for this information, which I think many are interested in. The accidental firearm death rate is down 94% since 1905. You have to scroll down a bit on the link to find the figures in the source.

Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) has been a fairly undistinguished member of the House of Representatives for nearly a quarter of a century. He is a career member of the Financial Services Committee who has made little or no name for himself since his first electoral victory, and has maintained incumbency through the funneling of pork back to his district. Even his Wikipedia entry says that Kanjorski "usually plays behind-the-scenes roles in the advocacy or defeat of legislation and steers appropriations money toward improving the infrastructure and economic needs of his district." “But [in] the temptation to want to win back...

Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) has been a fairly undistinguished member of the House of Representatives for nearly a quarter of a century. He is a career member of the Financial Services Committee who has made little or no name for himself since his first electoral victory, and has maintained incumbency through the funneling of pork back to his district. Even his Wikipedia entry says that Kanjorski "usually plays behind-the-scenes roles in the advocacy or defeat of legislation and steers appropriations money toward improving the infrastructure and economic needs of his district." Never one to stand out in a crowd outside...

Help bring this up on the radar. go to http://reddit.com/search?q=stretched+the+facts click on the up button (you may have to register to get reddit to allow you to vote). Freeping it will bring it up in the list at www.reddit.com Make you voice heard - let's return the favor to the bush bashers!

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) is seen in a video that has surfaced on the Web saying that Democrats “sort of stretched the facts” in the 2006 elections about their ability to end the Iraq war. In a video, posted to YouTube on Thursday, Kanjorski reflects on the Democrats’ approach to the war in 2006 and said they pushed the rhetoric “as far as we can to the end of the fleet — didn’t say it, but we implied it — that if we won the congressional elections, we could stop the war. “Now, anybody who’s a good student of government...

(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in September 2006 that "the Golan Heights will remain in our hands forever." He made the statement in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon after a ceasefire failed to win the release of IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose kidnapping by Hizbullah terrorists ignited the Second Lebanon War. The Prime Minister announced Wednesday he is conducting indirect peace talks with Syria, which repeatedly has said that Israel's surrendering the strategic Golan is a conditon for peace. After the Second War in Lebanon two years ago, Syrian President Bashar Assad stated...

Special election races for Congress have arguable value as bellwethers for upcoming general elections. Mostly these races get decided on local issues rather than national themes, as in Louisiana, where the Republicans ran a lousy candidate, considered the only person who could have lost the seat. They do demonstrate the strength of national party efforts, though, and when one party loses three special elections in districts previously thought safe, that sends a message — and rightly has Republicans worried about their chances in November: A Democrat won the race for a GOP-held congressional seat in northern Mississippi yesterday, leaving the...

PART 1In just one year. Remember the election in 2006? Thought you might like to read the following: A little over one year ago: 1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high; 2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon; 3) The unemployment rate was 4.5%. Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we have seen: 1) Consumer confidence plummet; 2) The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon; 3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase) 4) American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses)...

For years, Texas has been planning a privately financed super turnpike from Mexico to the Oklahoma border. But like rush-hour traffic, the plan for a Trans-Texas Corridor is only inching along. "It ran into a firestorm of controversy in Texas,� said Neal McCaleb, a former Oklahoma transportation secretary. Critics have a wide range of concerns about the corridor, which has a key stretch that would parallel Interstate 35. (Another stretch would extend from the Texarkana/Shreveport area to Mexico.) Particularly upset are landowners who may be in the corridor's path. The Texas Transportation Department calls many concerns myths. The department says,...

Some Republicans groaned at Gov. Rick Perry's announcement that he plans to seek another term in 2010, but Mayor Bill White's camp reacted with glee. White has made no effort to hide the fact that he is looking to run for governor after being term-limited out of the mayor's office next year. And Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the biggest vote-getter in Texas history, has been more than hinting that she plans to "come home" to run for the same office. She outlined to Texas Monthly last November a plan to resign the Senate in 2009 to make the race, while...

DENVER - A judge denied a request to subpoena Dick Cheney in a lawsuit filed by a man who claims he was wrongfully arrested for comments he made to the vice president about the Iraq war. Steve Howards' attorney, David Lane, had argued that Secret Service agents involved in Howards' arrest in Beaver Creek in June 2006 told different versions of the incident and that only Cheney could clear up what happened. In denying Lane's motion Tuesday to have U.S. marshals serve Cheney with a subpoena, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer said Lane had "not made a sufficient showing to...

ABC’s April 11 “World News with Charles Gibson” is showing they finally get it – ethanol production and high energy costs are causing food shortages worldwide. “[P]rices are rising across Africa, pushed up by the cost of oil and demand for biofuels,” ABC correspondent Jim Sciutto said. “Those biofuels are in fact a large part of the equation,” ABC correspondent David Muir added. “Many farmers around the world, who once grew wheat and rice, now grow corn and sugar cane instead, to produce ethanol a more lucrative market.”

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. An indictment in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary. In exchange, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. The lawmakers are not mentioned but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and...

BARACK OBAMA (D-IL) Top Contributors (for 2006) 1 University of Chicago $156,054 2 Kirkland & Ellis $143,138 3 Henry Crown & Co $79,500 4 Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal $74,950 5 Northwestern University $72,930 6 Exelon Corp $71,850 7 Sidley, Austin et al $71,432 8 Mayer Brown $69,960 9 Jenner & Block $62,710 10 Soros Fund Management $61,605 11 Goldman Sachs $61,500 12 Clifford Law Offices $59,550 13 Simmons Cooper LLC $58,500 14 Tejas Securities $57,250 15 JP Morgan Chase & Co $56,600 16 Ariel Capital Management $55,650 17 Skadden, Arps et al $54,071 18 Winston & Strawn $52,450 19 Piper...

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Jacqueline Klingebiel Report: During a Monday interview with ABC's Dallas affiliate, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., did not flatly deny the DrudgeReport's charge that her campaign leaked a photo of rival Barack Obama in traditional African dress. She then turned the tables on her Democratic rival and accused him of using the controversy surrounding the alleged leaking of the photo to distract the public's attention from deficiencies in his platform and experience. "I know nothing about it," Clinton told ABC affiliate WFAA. "This is in the public domain. But let's just stop and ask yourself: 'Why...

"A time for choosing: It appears that a significant number of our members are so disgusted with the GOP's failure to secure our borders against illegal aliens that they are willing to risk all by voting them out of office, even if it means Pelosi, Reid, Hillary, et al, are allowed to take charge. Is this the best course of action or should we be working harder than ever to hold the line and actually try to make a difference by getting more constitutionally-minded conservatives elected? Are you willing to give it all up or are you more determined than...

Embattled Muslim aide to leave Pentagon job Hesham Islam's 'resume didn't add up,' official says WorldNetDaily February 11, 2008In a stunning turn of events, a high-level Muslim military aide blamed for costing an intelligence contractor his job will step down from his own Pentagon post, WND has learned. Meanwhile, his rival, Maj. Stephen Coughlin, a leading authority on Islamic war doctrine, may stay in the Pentagon, moving from the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the office of the secretary of defense. However, sources say a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey is trying to block...

RUSH: I want to go back to the archives of this program. I want to illustrate for you my prescience. When I tell you that you are on the cutting edge of the societal evolution if you are a regular listener here, this will establish it. October 18th, 2006. This is prior to the November elections, the midterms, and I was getting phone call after phone call from conservatives saying they were not going to vote. They were mad as hell. They were sick and tired of the Foley thing and Macaca. They were sick and tired of Republicans not...

TAMPA, Fla. - Touch-screen voting machines likely performed properly and were not to blame for the large number of undervotes in a congressional race in 2006, as the loser has suggested, federal investigators said in a draft report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press. The U.S. Government Accountability Office plans to present the report Friday to a House task force that has been investigating the 13th Congressional District election. Republican Vern Buchanan beat Democrat Christine Jennings by 369 votes to win the seat 15 months ago. At issue was whether malfunctioning ATM-style voting machines failed to record more than 18,000...

A top political adviser in Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign helped arrange an introduction in 2006 between McCain and a Russian billionaire whose suspected links to anti-democratic and organized-crime figures are so controversial that the U.S. government revoked his visa. Rick Davis, who is now McCain's campaign manager, helped set up the encounter between McCain and Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska in Switzerland during an international economic conference. At the time, Davis was working for a lobbying firm and seeking to do business with the billionaire. There is no evidence that McCain did anything for Deripaska after they met at...

The thread below is from Al-Ekhlaas terrorist forum, the largest terrorist forum on the internet. The author of the thread is expressing his optimism that America will be defeated for many reasons but one of them is that Hillary Clinton may become President. He said:“ Look at the woman that may soon be in charge of the White House. Can the defeat of America be any more evident?”. The thread was written in English not in Arabic and posted in the Ekhlaas English section. The text of the thread: "I'm optimistic Not because things are going well or because the...

ATLANTA - Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years. The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies, too. An Associated Press review of birth numbers dating to 1909 found the total number of U.S. births was the highest since 1961, near the...

JANUARY 10--In our continuing quest to publish the "riders" of politicians (like Dick Cheney, John Kerry, and Rudy Giuliani), here's how Bill and Hillary Clinton like to roll on vacation. When the couple spent a long Easter weekend in 2006 at the swanky Goldeneye resort in Jamaica, hotel staff were provided the below memos describing the Clinton dietary requirements, lodging details, and menus. At the Goldeneye--which is where Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond books--the Clintons stayed in a $3000-a-night private house with friends (and fundraisers) Brian and Myra Greenspun. Along with a Secret Service detail, the Clintons also traveled...

This fell off from underneath the front passenger side of my car (06' Toyota Camry) about a half-hour ago, while I was driving: Anyone know what it is? Is it important to get it back on ASAP? I kind of new it was going to eventually come off as it was making noise and hanging low, flapping the past couple weeks. I fed a wire hanger through the hole two Fridays ago, and hooked it up using the front grate of the car. I knew it probably wouldn't stay on forever.Can't find much on the Toyota forums. There is another...

Had only married women been allowed to vote in the 2006 elections, Republicans might still control the House of Representatives. Fifty percent of married women voting in those elections, the network exit poll revealed, opted for a Republican candidate for the House. Only 48 percent went for a Democratic candidate. On the other hand, had only unmarried women been allowed to vote, the House today might be almost entirely composed of Democrats. While 53 percent of the overall vote in U.S. House races in 2006 went to Democrats, 66 percent of the unmarried-woman vote went to Democrats. What does this...

I am a bit late with this, and you have probably already seen it, but I thought it was worth commenting on anyway. Anjem Choudhury of the Omar Bakri group of jihadists in Britain here appears on the BBC's Hard Talk (thanks to Hana). He is entirely ready to condemn attacks on innocent civilians, but he notes that because non-Muslims have rejected Islam, none of them are innocent. Therefore attacks like 9/11 and 7/7 are perfectly justified.

Things are not working out as Democratic congressional leaders expected. For the first eight months of this year, they struggled to find some way to shut down the American military effort in Iraq. They took it for granted that we were stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, with continuous high casualties and very little to show for them. They pressed hard to get the Republican votes they needed to block a filibuster in the Senate and were cheered when some Republicans, like John Warner, seemed to lean their way. They worked hard over the August recess to pressure Republican House...

Karl Rove, President Bush's political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party's defeat in the 2006 elections.

A NEW REPORT from the centrist group Third Way complicates one's understanding of the 2006 midterm elections. There are already several competing theories of why last Election Day turned out the way it did. The storyline popular on liberal blogs is that in 2006 Democrats were true to liberal principles, fought back against the Bush machine, opposed the war in Iraq, and as a result the electorate woke up and took Congress away from the GOP.Another storyline that's popular among conservatives says Republicans lost control of both Houses for the first time since 1994 because the party strayed from the...

The Purple Heart on Kent Padmore's chest isn't for the shrapnel from an enemy rocket-propelled grenade that tore a cheek-to-cheek gash across his face. That wound was never documented; Padmore fixed it himself with a liquid suture in the rearview mirror of his Humvee. Padmore, a Marine reservist, works in civilian life as a City of Miami Fire-Rescue Department emergency medical technician, so he knew what to do. He patched himself up because he didn't want to steal precious time from the corpsmen in his unit, who were busy treating more seriously wounded Marines. Instead, the Purple Heart he wears...

In a move to increase its relevance in the presidential selection process, the Golden State is set to jump up its primary from June of 2008 to February 5th, less than a year away. This may benefit New York's presidential aspirants, and especially its Republican one. Last week I noted Giuliani's electric support at the California Republican Party convention. A recent poll has resoundingly brought forth the same message. This morning, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund notes the following numbers: With California moving its presidential primary to Feb. 5 of next year, what Golden State voters think about White...

The year 2006 was a complex time, marked in Iraq by violence, often of the sectarian variety, but also by progress. The past year was one of inclusiveness, as Iraq’s elected government functioned with representatives from nearly every sect and tribe. The year also saw major strides in security operations, as Iraqi Security Forces took the lead in law enforcement and anti-insurgent activity.Iraqis and their Coalition partners faced several challenges during the transformation from decades of dictatorship to a democratic government.Read 2006 year-in-review report here. 

The U.S. trade deficit climbed to a record high for the fifth straight year, with 2006 imports exceeding exports by $764 billion, the Commerce Department reported yesterday. The gap reflects higher oil prices, which increased the nation's import bill, and American consumers' rising appetite for foreign-made goods. The figures raised tensions in Washington, unleashing criticism on Capitol Hill of the Bush administration's pursuit of new trade deals. They also provoked a fresh round of demands for action against China, whose trade surplus with the United States swelled to a record $233 billion last year, according to the Commerce Department. The...

Former congressional candidate Vernon Robinson sounds resigned, and more than a little tired, when you ask him to explain his defeat. "The 2006 election was not a referendum on immigration," he says. "I would have liked it to be, but it didn't happen." That's an understatement. In the tumultuous political year of 2006, Robinson, a former city councilman from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, became one of the country's most notorious voices for a crackdown on illegal immigration. In March, as the Republican-led House of Representatives wrestled with a harsh reform bill that would build a wall on the border and classify...

Mild winter weather has something to do with it. So does heavy selling by financial funds. But a largely overlooked factor in the recent plunge in oil prices may portend an end to the multiyear rise in crude: For the first time in years, the developed world is burning less of it. Fresh data from the International Energy Agency show oil consumption in the 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fell 0.6% in 2006. Though the decline appears small, it marks the first annual drop in more than 20 years among the OECD countries, which...

One last post mortem Tonight I attended an informal dinner hosted by the Hoover Institution. The topic was the 2006 election. The dinner featured Stanford University political science professor David Brady and MIT political science professor Stephen Ansolabehere. Both are involved in (and the latter is heading) a massive empirical study of the 2006 election based on a survey of about 35,000 voters. It's early days when it comes to analyzing the data, but here a few of the professsors' observations: (1) dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq (including dissatisfaction among Republicans) played a huge role in the election, probably...

10 most underreported stories of 2006 WND readers, editors compile annual 'Operation Spike' list -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: January 3, 2007 The controversial movement to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada into what critics call a "North American Union" – in the face of what is already a massive, national illegal immigration and border security crisis – tops the list of the 10 most "spiked" or underreported stories of the last year, according to an annual WND survey. At the end of each year, news organizations typically present their retrospective replays of what they consider to have been the top news stories...

The year in review: From Pelosi to Pitt, perverts to Paris, Dave Barry offers a last laugh BY DAVE BARRY It was a momentous year, a year of events that will echo in the annals of history the way a dropped plate of calamari echoes in an Italian restaurant with a tile floor. Decades from now, our grandchildren will come to us and say, ''Tell us, Grandpa or Grandma as the case may be, what it was like to be alive in the year that Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears and Katie whatshername all had babies, although...

2006 was a busy year. The Religion of Perpetual Outrage, Islam dominated the news with riots, beheadings, and their quest for world domination. Please, before I begin our long journey through time, if I missed something, please feel free to enter a comment. Let’s have some fun with it! The United States in its infinite wisdom, elected a Islamic Congressman who wishes to ignore American custom and take the oath of office with his hand upon a koran, thus swearing his loyalty to Islam and their God of War, Muhammad. The Pope angered Muslims by using the words “jihad” and...

Agree or disagree? Click the link to read the list.

This year, FOX listened to the American public and just said 'no' to O.J. Simpson. The cancellation of Simpson's interview, in which he would have hypothetically detailed how he killed his wife, made enough of an impact to become one of the American Film Institutes eight moments of significance for 2006. A 13-person jury selected these moments which may include accomplishments, trends, milestones, anniversaries, movements in technology and negative/positive influences on film, television and digital media. Regarding the decision to not air the Simpson special, AFI states, "2006 marked a moment when what didn't air on television was as compelling...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks finished the year with strong gains, with all three major stock averages booking their best performance since 2003. The Dow Jones At the unofficial 4 p.m. close on Friday, the final trading session of the year, marking a 16% gain for the year. This was the Dow's best performance since 2003. General Motors Corp. (

As 2006 passes into the history books, it might just end up being lost, as nothing of really great significance took place in the country. There also wasn't much in the way of world events that significantly affected life in Russia. Analysts summing up the last 12 months make mention of shake-ups in the Prosecutor General's Office and the Justice Ministry, as well as the Sakhalin-2 scandal, in which the state unexpectedly played the "concern about the ecology" card in order to increase Gazprom's share of the project's profits. But did these events make much of a wave with Russians?...