Verizon admits it turned over personal data on its customers to the federal government hundreds of times since 2005.
Even worse, the telecommunications giant says it did so without a court order.
The Republicans still have a dream that they can reclaim the House of Representatives in 2008.
That dream, a long-shot at best, is fading even more because of the growing number of GOP retirements from the House.
U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, who flip-flopped over whether he would quit after being caught in a restroom sex scandal, said in remarks released on Monday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “threw me under his campaign bus.”
Craig, an Idaho Republican, resigned from Romney’s White House campaign after it was disclosed in August that he had been snared in an undercover sting operation in a Minnesota airport men’s room.
The case has been particularly embarrassing for Republicans, since they have long billed themselves as the party of conservative family values.
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton has pulled ahead of rival Barack Obama at the bank as well as in the polls and both continue to crush Republicans in the money race.
Clinton holds nearly $35 million three months before the voting starts, to Obama’s $32 million.
The Republican money leader, Rudy Giuliani, reported $11.6 million in the bank for the primaries.
Clinton, who had trailed Obama in fundraising and in money in the bank at the end of June, edged past him with an aggressive third quarter of fundraising.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has largely steered clear of traditional radio and television advertising, instead nurturing the Internet audience and drawing the largest number of online visitors.
Clinton, a senator from New York and former first lady, had the most visitors to her Web sites in August, almost 760,000, compared to her rivals, but she ran only about 2,200 radio and television spots so far this year, according to Nielsen data released on Monday.
Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson cast himself Monday as the consistent Republican conservative in the race and suggested during a speech on Rudy Giuliani’s home turf that the former New York mayor was a liberal.
“Some think the way to beat the Democrats next year is to be more like them. I could not disagree more,” Thompson told the Conservative Party of New York.
“My friends, I suggest it’s not time for psychological flexibilities in terms of our principles. That’s the surefire way of making sure we don’t win,” he added.
Just when you thought it was safe to turn on the television set.
Looks like political campaign TV ads will top $3 billion — that’s “billion” with a “b.”
Forget the pleasantries. The criticism grows sharper by the day in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
The reason: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Fred Thompson are bunched at the top and trying to emerge with voting to begin in just a matter of weeks.
“We’re now into a 90-day sprint and each of the campaigns is struggling for a strategy,” said Scott Reed, Republican Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign manager. “Who do they take out, who do they go after and who do they risk alienating by being the aggressor? They’re all trying to figure that out.”