Free Republic

There is a reflexive desire among a certain species of moderate Republicans to be perceived as "civil" by liberal opponents who believe that the mere existence of free-market, limited-government conservatism is an indecent affront to humankind. All aboard the U.S.S. Lost Cause. This disastrous, bend-over bipartisanship is a hard habit to break. In 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain rode the "Barack Obama is a nice guy, but vote for me" wave to crashing defeat. In 2012, McCain's endorsee, Mitt Romney, has made "Barack Obama is a nice guy but in over his head" a standard stump-speech talking point. Conservatives of...

The Department of Justice is using the liberal “watchdog” group Media Matters for America to deflect questions about the Fast and Furious scandal, including those regarding a gun that might have been used in the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

In El Paso, Texas, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Ricardo Montalvo has been arrested and charged with attempting to smuggle guns and ammunition into Mexico. More specifically, he’s been accused of trying to smuggle the weapons to the Mexican cartel. His girlfriend, Carla Gonzales-Ortiz, has been charged in the matter as well. Montalvo and Gonzales-Ortiz are also accused of making a number of straw purchases of weapons between November 2010 and January 2011. Included in these were five Ak-47s, two .380 pistols, and a couple of .22 rifles. In other words, Montalvo and Gonzales-Ortiz made purchases similar to those which our...

A House Committee voted Wednesday to clear the way to subpoena the Obama administration over two separate probes -- one concerning allegations dating back to the BP spill that it misrepresented a report on the temporary offshore drilling ban. The 23-17 vote along party lines allows GOP Rep. Doc Hastings, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, to issue the subpoenas, which will go to such agencies as the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. Related Stories Domestic drilling advocates warn of increased global demand for oil, dwindling supply EPA proposes first-ever limits on new power plants' carbon pollution...

BP today corrected a number of inaccurate reports that the ARCO brand would be withdrawn from Southern California. BP remains committed to the ARCO and ampm convenience store brands. BP announced plans to divest its Carson, California refinery and Southern California retail network in February 2011. The company intends to sell the refinery, associated businesses and the ARCO-branded retail network in 2012 as an on-going business. A number of prospective buyers have already expressed interest in the refinery and ARCO brand. There are about 920 ARCO-branded stations in Southern California operated by independent dealers and franchisees. Approximately 130 of these...

BP lawsuit will be heard in Key West CITIZEN STAFF A class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be heard in Key West. More than 300 people and businesses are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against British Petroleum. The plaintiffs are seeking a cut of the $20 billion the oil company set aside to cover damage claims related to the spill. The 328 plaintiffs in the 69-page complaint filed on Feb. 25 include many Monroe County companies, including, but not limited to: Banner Tire...

NEW ORLEANS -- BP agreed late Friday to settle lawsuits brought by more than 100,000 fishermen who lost work, cleanup workers who got sick and others who claimed harm from the oil giant's 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, the worst offshore oil spill in the nation's history. The momentous settlement will have no cap to compensate the plaintiffs, though BP PLC estimated it would have to pay out about $7.8 billion, making it one of the largest class-action settlements ever. -snip - Trial preparations produced a staggering 72 million pages of documents and included depositions of more than 300 witnesses....

Nearly two years after the worst accidental offshore oil spill in the history of the energy industry, some of the biggest companies in the world are busy pointing their legal fingers at one another in court over who has to pay what in claims, damages and fines over the deadly Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A federal judge this week ruled that BP is still obligated to a clause in its contract with Transocean that would protect the rig owner from damages related to the spill. That means BP still has to shell out money to settle claims filed by those...

A Coast Guard inspection of a freighter docked at the Port of Longview "didn't uncover or reveal anything," a Coast Guard spokesman said Saturday, but the crew members are not allowed off the ship and security will be maintained until the ship leaves. "We were not expecting to find anything," Lt. Cmdr. Glynn Smith, the Coast Guard's public affairs officer for the Pacific area, said Saturday by telephone from his office in Alameda, Calif. The search was routine, according to the Coast Guard, but Longview officials said the security crackdown is the most port activity since the Sept. 11, 2001,...

Throughout the months-long 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists expressed surprise at the development and relatively speedy disappearance of giant plumes of subsea oil and gas that jetted from the wellhead and refused to surface. A new study explains how bacteria degraded the plumes so efficiently: A succession of hydrocarbon-noshing species mushroomed because their movable feasts were repeatedly replenished. Only about 15 percent of the BP gusher floated up to form giant surface slicks, a second new study finds. Natural gas constituents and dissolvable chemicals amounting to twice that mass remained near the seafloor, creating the...

Today, I’m going to say some nice things about BP and some not so nice things about the lawyers who are suing BP. Please don’t spill your coffee. As horrific as the Deepwater Horizon accident was in April 2010 — killing 11 rig employees, while pouring millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico — BP has performed quite admirably in its aftermath. It has spared no expense in cleaning up the oil. It has set aside $1 billion to restore the environment and coastal ecosystem. It underwrote an advertising campaign to lure tourists back to the Gulf...

Solar failuresThe Orange County Register December 29, 2011 10:03 AM Sooner or later, the laws of economics prevail, even in heavily subsidized industries like solar power. The latest evidence that government manipulation cannot overcome economic reality is the decision by BP PLC, the giant British energy company, to leave the solar power business. BP has developed solar energy for 40 years and for more than a decade touted its “Beyond Petroleum” campaign. The Wall Street Journal suggested, however, that BP’s solar experiment was more gimmick than serious investment. BP spent millions trying to go green, but simultaneously spent billions on...

Alan D. Bersin, commissioner of the 57,000-employee U.S. Customs and Border Protection, will resign effective December 30, he said Thursday. Bersin was appointed to the post by President Barack Obama on March 27, 2010. He notified the president of his resignation Thursday, he said in a statement. "My service as commissioner has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my public life," Bersin said. "I am immensely proud of the significant and meaningful achievements we have made on our borders and at our nation's ports of entry over nearly two years. "Through innovative solutions and strengthened partnerships, we have...

The Monty Python defense. My goodness. Joltin' Joe Lieberman announces a Senate Homeland Security investigation on F&F "inter-ageny miscommunication" and the head of Border Patrol runs away the very same day. Folks, just received this statement by email: Statement from Alan D. Bersin, Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Earlier today, I notified the President of my intent to resign as Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection effective Dec. 30. I have expressed my deep gratitude and appreciation to President Obama and Secretary Napolitano for the opportunity to have led such an exceptional organization and for the confidence they...

Oil giant BP is preparing to exit the solar industry entirely. BP is preparing to wind down its BP Solar unit and sell-off the stakes it has in various projects around the world. A document announcing the decision to the 100 employees who will be affected says changes in the solar industry have left BP unable to achieve sufficient margins in the sector. It says the decision is made with regret after a “near 40-year commitment to solar energy”. A BP spokesman confirms the move and says that over the last six months "regrettably we have come to the decision...

The savage violence among cartel rivals in Mexico and Central American countries for control over drug smuggling routes into the United States to supply degenerate addicts and party people is among the top ten underreported stories in 2011 as reported by Nate Rawlings for Time. Of course, maybe the story is widely ignored because the media has swallowed the lies from the Obama administration that there is no evidence of any spillover violence into the United States, and as long as it's only people in other countries getting killed the self-absorbed hacks who otherwise call themselves journalists -- some of...

BP on Monday accused Halliburton of destroying potentially damaging internal test results that showed that the cement it used to secure the Macondo well that blew out in the Gulf of Mexico last year was unstable.

When Zach Taylor, a retired U.S. Border Patrol supervisory agent, talked about the situation on the U.S. border with Mexico, he didn't pull any punches. Disputing assertions by Barack Obama, the president, and Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security, that the border is "safer than it's been in years," Taylor was blunt in his disagreement: "It's more dangerous than I've seen in my 26 years in the Border Patrol." According to Taylor, ever since the Border Patrol was moved from the jurisdiction of the Justice Department after 9/11 to the Department of Homeland Security, it's become a political tool of...

Reporting from Taft, Calif.— Anywhere else, linking an aromatic cup of coffee and a gooey glob of oil would quickly kill a restaurant. Not so in Taft, Calif., the Taft Crude Coffee House is a popular stop for hot coffee or iced mocha. And in an era when oil spills tend to be environmental disasters, people here are happy to provide directions to the Lakeview Gusher, even though it spewed more than 9 million barrels of oil, nearly twice the amount spilled in 2010 from the Deepwater Horizon, the ill-fated British Petroleum rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Over 18...

Lady Justice has tossed aside her blindfold and tipped her scale. A border-crossing drug smuggler walks free while the officer who arrested him has been jailed. In the age of Obama, the law has been turned upside down. U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jesus E. Diaz Jr. is set to spend the next two years behind bars after being sentenced last month for what the Justice Department called deprivation of an illegal-immigrant suspect’s constitutional right to freedom from the use of unreasonable force. The unnamed Mexican suspect, who was 15 at the time of his arrest in 2008, received immunity from...