Free Republic

With global moral hazard having long ago become institutionalized, and codified as "monetary policy", catering almost exclusively to the TBTF entities in the financial sector, we were surprised it took as long as it did for Obama to announce (as he did last week), that the administration is now studying "new bankruptcy options" for student loan borrowers: code word for an across the board student debt moratorium, or forgiveness. To wit from "Student Aid Bill of Rights: Taking Action to Ensure Strong Consumer Protections for Student Loan Borrowers":The President is directing his Cabinet and White House advisers, working with the...

Do you run a government agency but hate complying with the law? Then you need DC Matic, the Hillary Clinton-approved email server! Video at https://youtu.be/OlWo05vlKkM

I sincerely wish that GOP candidates who cannot win the presidency would simply not run and save us all the trouble. Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, Rick Perry — none of these people is going to be the next president of the United States and each of them could do his country and his party a service by staying out of the race. Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee both stand a slim shadow of a ghost of a chance but I wish they’d drop out, too. Presidential Candidate is not supposed to be a prestigious line on your CV....

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Armed robbers stole $4 million in gold on Sunday from a truck traveling north along Interstate 95 from Florida to Massachusetts, authorities said Monday. The two security guards working for Transvalue Inc. of Miami reported pulling off to the side of the interstate about 6 p.m. Sunday after their vehicle began having mechanical problems in Wilson County, the sheriff’s office said. [snip] They were then approached by three armed men driving a white van who ordered the guards to lie on the ground, tied their hands behind their backs and then marched them into nearby woods....

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina public university leaders decided Friday to kill an anti-poverty center headed by a sharp critic of Republican lawmakers and Gov. Pat McCrory, taking their vote after protesters disrupted their meeting and were led out by campus police. The University of North Carolina Board of Governors, which consists almost entirely of Republican appointees, voted to disband the think-tank created to help launch John Edwards' presidential campaign and run by a law professor and former Democratic candidate for Congress from Colorado. [snip] The center provided Edwards a platform to travel the country discussing poverty, which he had...

Gov. John Kitzhaber’s office last week requested state officials destroy thousands of records in the governor’s personal email accounts, according to records obtained by WW and 101.9 KINK/FM News 101 KXL. The request came as investigations into allegations of influence-peddling involving Kitzhaber and first lady Cylvia Hayes were intensifying. Records show the request to destroy Kitzhaber’s emails came from Jan Murdock, Kitzhaber’s executive assistant. She wanted all emails from Kitzhaber’s personal email accounts removed from state servers. [snip]Personal emails of public officials can be subject to the state’s open records laws if they are used to discuss public business. Earlier...

[snip] And that’s the way the story played out in the media, here and in Israel, until the New York Times appended the following correction a few days ago to a January 30 story on the controversy: “An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.” This correction has circulated in conservative and pro-Israel circles, but doesn’t seem to have led to any followup, or any investigations by those who initially reported the...

A female healthcare worker who returned to Glasgow from Sierra Leone last night has been confirmed as having Ebola. The woman, possibly a nurse, returned to Scotland via Casablanca and London Heathrow, arriving into Glasgow Airport on a British Airways flight at around 11.30pm. The patient was admitted to hospital early this morning after feeling unwell and was placed into isolation at 7.50am. She is in a stable condition. She has been isolated and is receiving treatment in the specialist Brownlee Unit for Infectious Diseases on the Gartnavel Hospital campus, but will be taken to the Royal Free Hospital in...

If the commodity markets were followed as widely as the stock market, the financial world would be buzzing with the news of a crash that has taken place in the value of "stuff." While the plunging prices of oil, natural gas and gasoline are making headlines every day, thanks to the benefits accruing to consumers of energy products, the message of the commodity markets, in many ways, is hardly a reassuring one when it comes to the outlook for global economic growth. Basic materials prices for the likes of copper, nickel, iron ore, and other industrial commodities, have collapsed, both...

GREENE, Iowa – While school districts can be blamed for the pitiful preparation of meals, the skimpy portions are due solely to the federal regulations championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. Many students are continuing to turn to Twitter to expose their disgusting school lunches, with many of them using the #ThanksMichelleObama hashtag. One student’s meal consisted of a half-scoop of apple sauce, a quarter of an orange, a carton of low-fat milk and … dog’s vomit?Mady Bixby, the student who posted the photo, tells EAGnews this lunch was served at North Butler High School in Greene, Iowa. Others were...

Mexican drug cartels are now smuggling higher grade and more expensive marijuana grown in the US south of the border. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the alleged smuggling involves marijuana grown by American entrepreneurs in states that allow marijuana for medicinal or recreational use, most recently Oregon and Alaska. DEA spokesman Lawrence Payne said the agency learned of the trafficking from intelligence operations - but said the scale of the operation is not known.[snip]Earlier this week, NPR reported that domestic sales of marijuana are undercutting the operations of Mexican cartels - and as a result, the Sinaloa Cartel is...

Did President Obama just set up Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to be a candidate for impeachment [snip]? The inquiry begins with the question: Where are the executive orders Obama supposedly signed to permit up to 5 million parents of young illegal aliens to remain in the United States for three years?[Snip] The White House appears to have engaged in administrative sleight of hand, changing U.S. immigration law not by executive order but by a memorandum “exercising prosecutorial discretion” Johnson signed the day of Obama’s Nov. 20 nationwide address that so far has not been filed in the...

A social media campaign calling for a boycott on spending this Black Friday has caught the attention of celebrities. In an effort to protest the Missouri grand jury’s decision on Monday not to indict officer Darren Wilson for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in August, US celebrities have taken to social media to use the hashtags #NotOneDime, #BlackoutFriday and #BlackoutBlackFriday to advocate for a retail boycott. They include actors Michael B. Jordan and Jesse Williams, Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler, actress Kat Graham, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and journalist Soledad O’Brien . The hashtags are meant to encourage people...

This past week, on This American Life, the first 20 minutes or so are the incredible story of just how screwed up the ATF continues to be (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). Much of this has been reported on over the past year and a half by reporters in Milwaukee (and investigated by Congress), but it's absolutely worth listening to the details -- which you can do over on the This American Life page (I'd post the embed here, but unfortunately This American Life does not yet appear to support HTTPS, so we can't). The story is all...

NASSAU, Bahamas — On the first day new immigration rules took effect this month in the Bahamas, officers in green fatigues swept through poor sections of the capital filling two yellow school buses with dozens of people who couldn't document their right to be in the island chain. The government, amid fierce criticism of the raid, later insisted the timing of the operation was coincidence. Still, the message of the surprise morning raid, in which the officers were accompanied by local media, couldn't be clearer: The Bahamas aims to become less hospitable to its swelling population of migrants lacking legal...

In a letter addressed to parents which was leaked to the media today, it was suggested children would have junk food, including lollies, chocolates and potato chips, confiscated if they were brought to school. “These foods will not be returned to the student until the end of the school day. If your child has chosen to make inappropriate food choices for their lunch they will not be provided with an alternative,” the letter read. The letter was followed by claims made to 6PR radio that students had already been told their bags could be searched for junk food. But, acting...

They might as well change its name from “The View” to “The Feud.” A shrill, backstage brawl at “The View” Wednesday left co-host Rosie Perez in tears while panelists Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell battled over how to cover the latest allegations against Bill Cosby and the racially charged upheaval in Ferguson, Mo., sources said. O’Donnell believed the show — now overseen by ABC News — needed to delve deeper into both controversial subjects, while Goldberg wanted to steer clear of the topics altogether.

Pres. Obama's and the mainstream media's focus on "relief from deportation" is a distraction from the real issue which is the work permits that the President's executive immigration action would provide in the millions. It is the giving out of work permits that most strongly challenges the Constitution. And it is the work permits that deliver the most harm to U.S. citizens and legal immigrants already here. It is one thing to claim prosecutorial discretion in deciding not to deport somebody for breaking the law. It is quite another to actively reward that law-breaking foreign citizen with cards giving legal...

The Mainstream Media Truth Team is on the Gruber story:

TONY Abbott has foiled Barack Obama’s attempt to hijack the G20 with climate change, refusing to put a cent into the US President’s push for a $10 billion global green climate fund. And as chair of the G20, he succeeded in ensuring global economic growth and job creation was at the top of the final declaration yesterday, delivering a blow to Mr Obama’s attempts to elevate climate change to a first order issue .... ... Mr Abbott refused to allow the final communiqué to include a binding requirement that all G20 nations commit to the Green Climate Fund announced by...