Free Republic

April 25, 2012 Sanford commission rejects police chief's resignation Commissioner Patti Mahany on her decision, Zimmerman case

The Palestinian Authority anti-corruption commission announced Monday it was seeking to restore plundered public funds hidden abroad by PA officials. Rafiq al-Natsheh told the PA affiliated Ma'an News Agency that the commission is chasing corruption suspects living outside PA enclaves pending an agreement with their countries of residence. Natsheh's remarks follow a report in the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustour last week that PA officials were moving deposits from Jordanian banks to foreign accounts. "If suspects accused of stealing public money (are moving funds abroad), that falls within our jurisdiction," al Natsheh said. "We will ask these countries to help us restore...

President Obama must prevent the shutting down of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The need for its work has never been so acute as Islamists gain power. Prof. Phyllis Chesler Prof. Phyllis Chesler is the author of fifteen books, including Women and Madness (Doubleday, 1972), The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and most recently, The New Anti-Semitism. She is the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network. â–º More from this writer Time has run out for the cause of worldwide religious...

Scoffing at Washington's troubled effort to cut just $1.2 trillion in federal debt over 10 years, the Tea Party's own debt commission today unveiled a shocking plan to slash nearly $10 trillion over the next decade, in part by eliminating several federal agencies, balancing the budget by 2015, and killing foreign aid to unfriendly nations. "Go bold or go home," says the report from the Tea Party Debt Commission. "Are you listening, Washington?"The FreedomWorks-led effort started months ago by asking Tea Party members for ideas on what to cut from the federal budget. They ended up going much further than...

ANNAPOLIS — A Maryland commission recommended Tuesday that the state raise its gas tax by more than 60 percent over the next three years, but members acknowledged that taxpayers facing a dire economy could find the increase hard to swallow. The proposed hike, approved by the state-appointed Blue Ribbon Commission on Maryland Transportation Funding, would raise the gas tax on wholesalers by 5 cents a year for three years, from the current rate of 23.5 cents per gallon. The move could generate nearly $500 million in annual revenue and is part of $870 million in annual tax-and-fee increases recommended by...

Republicans’ increasing complaints that the commission appointed to oversee the redrawing of borders for state legislative and congressional seats has gone partisan are “absolutely not true,” according to Gil Ontai, a San Diego architect who is on the panel. In an interview with a U-T editorial writer, he cited a lack of appreciation of the “complexity of this process.” We have no reason to question Ontai’s honesty or sincerity. Nevertheless, some of the criticism aimed at the commission seems valid. Plans to release a second draft of proposed borders this week were scrapped. Instead, interested parties can go online to...

Climate change is now critical, says the Climate CommissionMalcolm Holland, Padraic Murphy From: Herald Sun May 23, 2011 12:00AM "THE atmosphere is warming, the ocean is warming, ice is being lost from glaciers and ice caps, and sea levels are rising." This is the dramatic conclusion of scientists who say climate change cannot be denied, and carbon offsetting is not enough to stop it. The findings are included in the first report by the Government's newly created Climate Commission. It warns people are to blame for rising temperatures, with the last decade the hottest on record. "The biological world is...

Obama's worst enemy is Obama, and his downfall will commence when voters awaken to the fact that many of his current "crises" -- and all the most critical ones -- are self-inflicted. They don't simply come out of nowhere, in the form of "events," unforeseen and random, but are generated through acts of omission or commission by none other than Obama himself. This creates an opening that must not be overlooked by the GOP candidate, whoever that may be. The gas crisis is something that, in its impact on the daily life of voters, should have a serious effect on...

In one of its first acts, the new Citizens Redistricting Commission has decided to ignore the United States and California Constitutions by in effect repealing the historical “one person one vote” rule that has been law in America for 47 years. They did this by telling their staff to draw districts that will clearly violate constitutional population standards. This is so their final maps can over represent liberal areas of California that are losing population, such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and then under represent the more conservative inland areas of California that are growing.

Obama wants to raise taxes. So does Mondale. Obama won't tell you. Mondale just did. Remember Walter Mondale? Oddly enough, we do, mostly for this fun fact: He's the only major-party American politician to have lost elections in all 50 states. In 1984, he told Americans to take a hike, and they told him the same thing. In a Washington Post op-ed piece over the weekend, Mondale quotes his own speech to that year's Democratic National Convention in San Francisco: "Taxes will go up. . . . It must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I....

THIBODAUX — Larry Luther didn’t see the Facebook post by a Terrebonne Parish child-support hearing officer about a barroom bouncer appearing before him who has 23 children and “too much time on his hands.” But people who read a Courier and Daily Comet story containing questions about the posting’s propriety had little trouble determining who the posting was about and called Luther to tell him. Now the 41-year-old grandfather says he is preparing to file a Louisiana Judiciary Commission complaint against the hearing officer, William Dunckelman. “I am waiting on the papers in the mail,” Luther said Friday night. “I...

A bipartisan panel investigating the financial crisis has referred cases of potential wrongdoing by financial industry officials to the Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. The 2009 law creating the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission instructs the congressionally appointed panel to refer anyone who may have violated the law to the Justice Department and state attorneys general

The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a Congressional inquiry. The government commission that investigated the financial crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors, and risky bets on securities backed by the loans. < snip > ..... Many of the findings have been widely described, but its synthesis of interviews, documents and testimony,...

The While House oil-spill commission made it official today: The entire oil industry, not BP, is evil and potentially the source of another Deepwater-sized spill. Thus the entire oil industry, which has already been punished by the administration with its drilling moratorium and slowdown in permitting, should be punished further with massive new regulations and fees. Those conclusions were virtually predetermined when the administration appointed a panel heavily stacked with academics and environmentalists. And those findings are wrong. Why? A simple reality check:

During his 2008 campaign, President Obama famously mocked blue-ribbon panels and commissions: "A commission. You know, that's Washington-speak for 'we'll get back to you later.' " He couldn't have been more correct in the case of a panel that his longtime friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, D, ordered up in late 2008 to address the state's job market. The panel hasn't even met yet, the Boston Herald reports, because the commissioners have only just recently taken their jobs on it. A jobs commission ordered almost two years ago by Gov. Deval Patrick and the Legislature to find ways to create...

The Deficit Commission did not get the necessary 14 votes to send their proposal to Congress. They did get a majority, for which they are claiming some kind of victory....frpa

ABC News has learned Andrew Stern will vote no on the deficit commission’s plan to reduce the national deficit by nearly $4 trillion. Mr. Stern, the former president of the SEIU, has informed co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson that he will be the fifth member voting no, ending the commission’s hopes of officially passing the plan to Congress. The commission needed votes from 14 of the 18 members in order to pass the plan to Congress. Mr. Stern joins Sen. Max Baucus and Reps. Dave Camp, Paul Ryan and Jan Schakowsky in voting against the plan. He is also...

Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, an influential member of President Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction panel, says he won’t vote for the panel’s recommendations–but praised the proposed package of cuts and tax reforms as a good start. Speaking to reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, the future chairman of the House Budget Committee said the bipartisan panel failed to tackle the health-care challenge. “It not only didn’t address the elephant in the room–health care–it expanded it.” But Mr. Ryan did heap praise on the overall package, saying it has advanced discussions and highlighted changes on the taxes and budget front that Republicans...

Two Republican senators on President Obama's deficit commission -- Tom Coburn and Mike Crapo -- announced Thursday that they support the recommendations put forth by the panel's chairmen, which include $2.2 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending and $1 trillion in tax increases over the next nine years.

The Committee to Reinflate the Bubble — the National Association of Realtors, the builders’ lobby, and the rest of the gang committed to using government policy to artificially increase real estate prices, enriching themselves while undermining the economy and imperiling the nation — is now the Committee to Increase the Deficit. The Simpson-Bowles panel has released its deficit-reduction report, and, to nobody’s great surprise, the proposal to reduce bubblicious tax subsidies for homeowners has drawn a pledge of resistance from the most self-interested parties. Reports the WSJ: Joe Stanton, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Home Builders, said his...

Cheat Sheet: Fiscal Commission releases final proposal Share4 Today, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, or the “Fiscal Commission,” released its final proposal on how to bring the country back from the fiscal brink. The plan, to be voted on this Friday, will almost certainly receive harsh criticism from both sides of the aisle. But before you take any sides, make sure you have the facts.Click on the image below to see our latest Fiscal Cheat Sheet: a break down of the Commission’s final plan. Also, for some context on today’s release, here’s a rundown of past...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- After working for eight months, the 18 members of President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission will finish their deliberations this week over how to reduce the nation's long-term debt. Expectations are low that the panel, which holds its final public meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, will get the 14 votes required to make official recommendations to Congress. But even if the panel doesn't produce a unified report, the group's efforts may not have been in vain

The deficit reduction committee, created by President Obama a few months back to kick the can of his irresponsible overspending down the road a few decades, is out with its trial balloon recommendations for reducing the federal deficit. According to the Wall Street Journal, its ideas include: For businesses, it would lower the corporate tax rate but remove a number of deductions currently available. It would make permanent the research-and-development tax credit. Federal subsidies to agribusinesses would begin to be slashed by $3 billion a year. On Social Security, it would gradually increase the retirement age when people can start...

Review of Tax Reform Proposals -By: Larry Walker, Jr. -I am in agreement with the Fiscal Commission's goals on tax reform. Although the details are a little vague, it's clear to me that Option 1 is probably out of the question, Option 2 is promising, and Option 3 is pretty much a joke. I think that those who have discounted this initial 'draft' report at face value are doing the commission a disservice. And as far as the Trash Talker In Chief, who has already started spouting off without even reading it, I have nothing but contempt for the comments...

On Election Day 2008, Maruse Heath, the leader of Philadelphia's New Black Panther Party, stood in front of a neighborhood polling place, dressed in a paramilitary uniform. Within hours, an amateur video showing Heath, slapping a black nightstick and exchanging words with the videographer, had aired on TV and ricocheted across the nation. Among those who saw the footage was J. Christian Adams, who was in his office in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in Washington. "I thought, 'This is wrong, this is not supposed to happen in this country,' " Adams said. "There are armed men in front...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- U.S. President Obama keeps education in the spotlight Tuesday when he signs an executive order for the Educational Excellence for Hispanics initiative.

President Obama is looking to fill out the six-member Federal Election Commission (see recent pro-SEIU FEC decision) with someone he can count on to support his views on campaign law. It is not surprising he turned to his friend Andy Stern’s union Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Obama has appointed SEIU lawyer John Sullivan, who was intertwined in the Clinton/DNC/McAuliffe/Teamster scandal that resulted in Jimmy Hoffa’s ascension to the Teamster throne, but for over a year the nomination remains in political limbo. Could it be that Obama appointees have finally reached such a level of ethical absurdity that even the...

I believe that there is a large body of factual information available, such that, if any reasonable person were to be made aware of just those facts alone, they would conclude several things: 1. The 9/11 terrorists were aided and protected by corrupt elements within this country. 2. It is far more likely, than commonly thought, that Sadaam Hussein had an active role in the 9/11 attack. I would like find a web page which already assembles those facts in a concise, and readable format. I would like to find a book which does the same. A movie should be...

Financial Crisis Commission Examining WachoviaSeptember 1, 2010 Rick Rothacker The panel investigating the U.S. financial meltdown will put Charlotte's Wachovia Corp. under the microscope on Wednesday. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on Monday said former Wachovia chief executive Bob Steel will be one of the witnesses at a hearing in Washington. He will be joined by Scott Alvarez, the Federal Reserve System's general counsel, and John Corston, acting deputy director of supervision and consumer protection at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. CEO Dick Fuld is slated to testify in an afternoon session. Federal Reserve Chairman...

The Federal Communications Commission Thursday suspended its weeks-long series of talks with Internet providers on Net neutrality, dealing a blow to efforts to produce a deal that the agency could take to Congress. The decision to cut off negotiations marks a major political setback for Chairman Julius Genachowski, whose office reached out to stakeholders six weeks ago to strike an agreement and avoid a public battle over rules that would treat all users’ Web traffic equally. But the end to industry discussions — which a source close to the FCC talks blamed entirely on news that Google and Verizon separately...

Obama's always pleading for bipartisanship. You think he will listen to this? The White House Gets DrilledWall Street Journal July 9, 2010 How ideologically stacked is President Obama's offshore drilling commission? So much that even many of his fellow Democrats can't support it. Five Democrats on the Senate Energy Committee last week delivered an embarrassing rebuke to the White House, voting with Republicans to have Congress set up an "independent" commission to investigate the BP disaster, bypassing the President's appointees. Offered by Wyoming Republican John Barrasso to broader oil-spill legislation, the amendment that passed the committee on an 15-8 vote...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. commission is planning to focus on the ties between Goldman Sachs Group Inc and American International Group Inc, and how derivatives transactions between the two financial giants may have contributed to the financial crisis. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a congressionally appointed panel, will begin two days of hearings on Wednesday headlined by former AIG Financial Products head Joseph Cassano and Goldman President Gary Cohn. A key focus on the hearing will be "how the interaction of these two financial giants may or may not have contributed to the causes of the financial crisis," Phil...

President Obama has announced the creation of yet another federal commission. This time, it will examine the spill in the Gulf and make sure it never happens again. But there are a lot of question marks surrounding President Obama’s latest blue ribbon bunch of greenies. First, the panel is comprised mostly of academics and enviros with zero experience dealing with the oil industry. That’s right. Not one of the seven people named could actually drill a well. Second, they all espouse a similar ideology – one that is opposed to drilling and oil. And one member of the commission, in...

Three academics, two environmentalists and two politicians get appointed to a commission. Unfortunately that's not the beginning of a joke; it's the group that President Barack Obama has appointed to his BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission. Given the lack of anyone with real world, oil industry experience and the fact that at least two of his appointees have already publicly stated their conclusions on the issue, perhaps it is a joke after all.

As reported by The Fiscal Times, President Obama's commission to study the problem of what to do about the government running short of money is running short of money. "President Obama's bipartisan fiscal commission is operating on a shoestring budget and some panel members and lawmakers worry that it may run short of money. "The 18-member commission faces the daunting challenge of coming up with proposals by Dec. 1 to tame the federal government's trillion-dollar budget deficit.  But the panel's own budget is only $500,000, barely enough to cover office rent and the salaries of four staff members. "...Despite the...

Barack Obama promised us leadership not commissions when he was running for President: Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book – you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here’s the thing – this isn’t 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I’ll provide it, John McCain won’t, and that’s the choice for the American people in this election. America took him for his word. Instead the President keeps pulling commission after commission out of his sleeves.The...

GRAND ISLE, Louisiana (AFP) – President Barack Obama unveiled a commission Saturday to probe the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as the growing environmental catastrophe blackened Louisiana's fragile wetlands and beaches. With the federal government facing accusations of lax supervision of lucrative offshore oil drilling, Obama vowed to hold Washington accountable and warned that the future of the industry hinges on assurances such a disaster "never happens again." As frustration grew that the huge spill gushing from a ruptured well nearly a mile (1,500 meters) below the surface was still not capped more than a month into...

(CNSNews.com) – When President Obama asked former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Democrat Erskine Bowles to chair his debt commission in February, he told them to consider any and all ways to reduce the federal deficit – including new taxes, apparently. Bowles, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House, told Fox News Sunday that “the president looked Senator Simpson and me in the eye and he said, ‘Everything is on the table.’ So we are going to look at every single way to right this fiscal ship,” Bowles said. That includes cutting “sacred cows” and raising revenue,...

March 15, 2010 “India arrests two for planning attacks in Mumbai” SNIPPET:”* Anti-terrorism police chief says Rashid and Ali are Indians who took orders from across the border * Says they intended to target a fuel facility and a shopping centre” SNIPPET: “MUMBAI: Indian police said on Sunday they had arrested two men for planning to attack a fuel facility and a shopping centre in India’s financial and entertainment capital Mumbai, where terrorists killed 166 people in November 2008. The two are Indian nationals, Mumbai residents and have been identified as Abdul Latif Rashid and Riyaz Ali, aged 29 and...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's four appointments to the bipartisan debt panel he established last week include the head of manufacturing giant Honeywell and a former top-ranking Federal Reserve official. Obama on Friday named David Cote, chief executive officer at Honeywell International, and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin to the panel. He also appointed Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, and Ann Fudge, the former chief executive officer of Young & Rubicam Brands.

In 2008, candidate Obama attacked John McCain for proposing a commission on the economic crisis: Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book – you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here’s the thing – this isn’t 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I’ll provide it, John McCain won’t, and that’s the choice for the American people in this election. In 2010, President Obama now demonstrates that leadership...by establishing a commission on fiscal responsibility and reform: For far too...

Even as a bloodbath looms in the November distance, the Obama administration continues to push healthcare because they know that Americans love their entitlements like winos love wine. They are betting the farm that once that fiery warmth begins running through the National body we will not only love national health care, but will fight to defend it. We will also be too glassy eyed to notice that we have suddenly signed away our liberty, becoming slaves to those that serve us. But I digress. Like wine, entitlements cost money. Sadly the more addicted we become the less money we...

"AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday defended his removal of three commissioners looking into whether the state used bad science to execute an innocent man, suggesting too much was being made of his move. On Wednesday, Perry decided to replace three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, including its chairman, just two days before it conducted a hearing to examine the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. The new chairman canceled the meeting."

NEW YORK, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Jewish Committee sharply criticized South African Judge Richard Goldstone's verbal attack on Israel during a UN Human Rights Council debate concerning his commission's recent report on the Gaza conflict earlier this year. "Judge Goldstone described Israel's own investigations into allegations of wrong-doing by IDF personnel as 'pusillanimous,'" said AJC Executive Director David Harris. "I wonder what is the appropriate word for the Goldstone Commission, which convicted Israel before its investigation had even begun, which barely mentioned the suffering of Israelis living with endless Hamas rocket attacks, and which received its mandate from...

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that Section 13, Canada's much-criticized human rights hate speech law, is an unconstitutional violation of the Charter right to free expression because of its penalty provisions. The decision released Wednesday morning by tribunal chair Athanasios Hadjis appears to strip the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its controversial legal mandate to pursue hate on the Internet, which it has strenuously defended against complaints of censorship. It also marks the first major failure of Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an anti-hate law that was conceived in the 1960s to target racist telephone...

LOS ANGELES — California's three-member State Lands Commission has passed a resolution urging the Legislature not to support a proposed new oil drilling project off the Santa Barbara coast. ... Last year, Houston-based Plains Exploration & Production Co. unveiled an unprecedented deal with longtime anti-oil conservationists in Santa Barbara County to allow the state's first new offshore oil project in more than 40 years. ... The commission rejected the proposal in January. ... Members of environmental groups accused the governor of attempting a power grab. ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US lawmakers voted Wednesday to create a 9/11-style commission of experts to probe the causes of last year's devastating financial meltdown and to draw lessons to prevent its recurrence. The vote in the House of Representatives coincided with a new study that accused US and foreign banks of deliberate culpability in the collapse that engulfed the US and world economy. The House voted 367-59 for a bill aimed at curbing financial fraud that included the proposal for an independent panel modeled on the bipartisan commission that investigated the September 11 attacks of 2001. Republican Representative Darrell Issa,...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday rejected calls for an independent commission to investigate harsh interrogation methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency, making such a panel unlikely. The Nevada Democrat said he wanted to wait until an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee is completed. That panel's hearings will be closed and its chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), said in a letter to President Barack Obama that the work could take six to eight months.

It seemed appropriate that a panel examining ways to overhaul the state's tax structure met Thursday in the academic confines of UC Davis rather than the politically charged Capitol. The discussion focused on the theoretical, from examining the merits of a flat income tax to considering a "split-roll" property tax system that treats commercial businesses differently from homeowners. The daylong meeting occurred largely in a political vacuum, for now ignoring the difficulty of getting such ideas through a divided state Legislature where special interests hold great sway. But Chairman Gerald Parsky said the state's current fiscal woes may allow for...

Illinois Reform Commission P.O. Box A3935, Chicago, IL 60690 Ÿ Phone: 312.324.8486 Ÿ Fax: 312.324.9486 For Immediate Release Contact: Lori G. Anger, Media Relations 312.324.8685 ILLINOIS REFORM COMMISSION TO MEET IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS TO TACKLE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM CHICAGO (February 20, 2009) – The Illinois Reform Commission (IRC) will hold its next meeting in Springfield, Illinois on Monday, February 23, 2009 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The meeting, the first of two on the topic of campaign finance reform, will take place at the University of Illinois Springfield, One University Plaza, in Conference Room C/D on the First Floor...