Any ideas why Rudy would do this?.

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani plans to skip the Ames straw poll in August, but compete to win the leadoff Iowa caucuses, a gamble by the former New York Mayor on a “non-traditional” caucus campaign and a first for Iowa.

The decision, announced in Des Moines Register telephone interviews today with Giuliani’s top national and Iowa advisers, moves closer to setting the table for the high-profile early Iowa test, albeit without the party’s national front-runner taking part.

“We’ve made a decision as a campaign not to play in any straw polls this year, most notably, obviously, the Ames straw poll,” Giuliani’s national campaign manager Mike DuHaime said in a Des Moines Register interview today.

Recently my fraternity brother, Mark Finelli, who survived 9/11 (read about his experience here), then went on to serve in Iraq as a Marine, decided to break his long silence on what he thinks of the war and the ‘08 race. Recently discharged Mark sent this email to family and friends.

Dear Family and Friends,

For the past few years, you have been asking me questions about how I feel about our state of affairs in Iraq. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I asked you to read “America’s Secret War,” by Dr. George Friedman (by the way, George Tenet’s recent revelation about the threat of an al-Qaeda’s nuclear cell back in September/October of 2001 was covered in “America’s Secret War,” which was published roughly 4 years prior to the recent Tenet statement-this is just merely one example of George Friedman’s scope of insight).

I have kept my mouth shut. I have been a good active- duty Marine. Now I can speak, and I wrote this little thing for you. Bear with me, I have been reading “blogs” for the entirety of my military life so I tried to write like a “blogger” here. FUN!

What I learned from being a 9/11 Survivor and a Marine in Iraq

Click to continue »

Huckabee in the debate

The attorney general of Nebraska, Jon Bruning, stopped by our office yesterday to let us know that tomorrow he will announce he will challenge Senator Hagel in the Republican primary, which is in May of 2008. A poll conducted for Mr. Bruning shows him leading Mr. Hagel among likely Republican primary voters by 9 percentage points. Mr. Bruning assails Mr, Hagel for being, “The Republican that talks like a Democrat,” pointing to Mr. Hagel’s support for a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, as well as his discussion of impeaching President Bush. “He’s become arrogant and out of touch,” Mr. Bruning said. “His constituent services are very poor.”

New York Sun

This is long overdue.  Nebraska is too conservative of a state to put up with a RINO like Hagel.  He is not representative of his state and it is time to send him packing.