Free Republic

In a bizarre outburst Varujan Vosganian, an MP for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), part of Romania’s ruling coalition, said that subsistence farming was denying the country’s budget billions of euros every year. “Every egg eaten direct from a chicken in a courtyard, instead of being bought in a shop, robs the budget of 0.50 lei,” Mr Vosganian said. “Take two chickens: one belongs to a farm, the other a family home. Eggs produced by the first chicken will go to market, where they will be sold for an average of 1 leu, organic eggs even more. They...

Agents within the Federal Bureau of Investigation want to take down the personnel at the top of the Justice Department, according to a former D.C. based U.S. Justice attorney. "Just think of the FBI as the Vietcong. That's what they are. They are digging tunnels under the Justice Department. They are going to sink that place," Washington attorney Joe DiGenova told The Daily Caller Thursday. [Snip] FBI agents pushed forward, against the wishes of the Justice Department and without the support of bureau leadership, to investigate the Clinton Foundation, according to a Wall Street Journal report. As a result of...

Compared to other issues such as communicable diseases, malnutrition and hunger, sanitation and water, and the rest, climate change ranked last on the list Chapman University recently completed its third annual Survey of American Fears (2016). The survey asked respondents about 65 fears across a broad range of categories, including fears about the government, crime, the environment, the future, technology, health, natural disasters, as well as fears of public speaking, spiders, heights, ghosts, and many other personal anxieties.

Senate Republicans are asking the Department of Homeland Security to explain a leaked agency memo reportedly revealing that federal officials are planning to evade a federal court order barring pieces of President Barack Obama’s executive immigration actions.Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, led eight others on the committee in a letter sent to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson last week demanding he clarify the document.The agency’s proposed regulations would allow immigrants, including those in the U.S. illegally, to receive extended work permits if sponsored by an employer, even if the sponsorship is terminated or expired.The leaked memo states that a benefit of the proposed...

ORANGE, Calif., - A new study by a California university shows Americans have a much greater fear of the government, technology and pandemics than ghosts or zombies. Nearly 60 percent of Americans are afraid or very afraid of government corruption, the Chapman University Survey of American Fears found. At 58 percent, the subject topped a list of 88 items people were asked about, with personal appearance -- specifically what people thought of how you were dressed -- being last at 4.2 percent. Researchers quizzed 1,541 people across the United States about all their various fears and anxieties and nearly half...

Members of Congress must pay secret fees known as “party dues” to the Democratic and Republican parties to secure and maintain top committee chairmanships and assignments, newly uncovered internal documents reveal. The never-before-published lists are reprinted inside the new book Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets, written by Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer. Senior congressional staffers say the committee price lists have long been rumored to exist but that few people on Capitol Hill have seen them, giving them an almost "mythical" quality. The book contains copies...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department says it is looking into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin to determine whether federal prosecutors should file criminal civil rights charges now that George Zimmerman has been acquitted in the state case.

A few years ago, after one corruption scandal too many, the then Liberal government in Canada announced that, to prevent further outbreaks of malfeasance, it would be hiring 300 new federal auditors plus a bunch of ethics czars, and mandating “integrity provisions” in government contracts, including “prohibitions against paying, offering, demanding or accepting bribes.” There were already plenty of laws against bribery, but one small additional sign on the desk should do the trick: “Please do not attempt to bribe the Minister of the Crown as a refusal may offend. Also: He’s not allowed to bribe you, whatever he says.”...

AN OPEN LETTER TO STATE REPRESENTATIVES TO BLOCK OBAMA FROM THE BALLOT Sir, Ma’am, Natural born citizenship was clearly defined in the Supreme Court holding Minor vs. Happersett (1875). It was a case about women’s suffrage, and in order to determine if Minor was allowed to vote, they had to define her citizenship. They said she was a natural born citizen because she was born in the US of citizen parents. It is a binding precedent that has never been superseded by any other Supreme Court holding or Constitutional Amendment and, therefore, supersedes all statutory law. As you may know,...

testimony today including a statement from a former welfare worker who described “overwhelming” levels of fraud by illegal immigrants. Lana Reed, who worked as a bilingual specialist for the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services in Overland Park from 2008 to 2010, urged lawmakers to adopt the bill targeting illegal immigration. She described a system overrun by illegal immigrants who used false Social Security numbers and other fraudulent documents to game the system. “I witnessed overwhelming levels of fraud and corruption resulting in the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars,” Reed told the House Judiciary Committee. “Most of the fraud...

GOTCHA government is profoundly unAmerican, but it’s what we get from the Obama Administration and the previous Congress that, it turns out, rigged the health reform law to deny the will of the people. The current Congress must act to un-do this heinous feature of the massive health reform bill that has come to light only recently.This past week, the conservative Heritage Foundation highlighted this scam recently uncovered by the Congressional Research Service. Here’s the dirty doing: Hidden quietly inside the 2,700-page bulk of the health reform bill, unspoken and unknown to virtually all of Congress was a stash of...

Forgive the obscene photo of Politically Incorrect show host Bill Maher, but it serves as a stark visual testimonial to the Left's true nature. Every day, the Left shows us with their own actions that they are exactly what they accuse conservatives and tea partiers of being. It is astonishing that they have the gall to accuse anyone of anything. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But then we remember that the smear and the lie is all they have. As a post at Powerline relates, "It is liberals, not conservatives, who rely on ad hominem attacks,...

DALLAS — Eight years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and despite repeated mandates from Congress, the United States still has no reliable system for verifying that foreign visitors have left the country. New concern was focused on that security loophole last week, when Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian who had overstayed his tourist visa, was accused in court of plotting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper. Last year alone, 2.9 million foreign visitors on temporary visas like Mr. Smadi’s checked in to the country but never officially checked out, immigration officials said... ...officials said, about 40 percent...

Click on above image to see larger picI wish I could say that I am in "Shock and Awe", but it is more like "Shock and Disdain". It seems that now Obama is going to cap Federal and Milatary pay raises. Okay, I'm confused aren't our Congressional leaders "Federal Employees"? Didn't they just take a pay raise of almost 3% back in December? Now tell me this, does it make sense to cut the raises that our Military Personnell get for defending our country and putting their life on the line every day, but not to cut the raises of...

Well, I guess we all know about Illinois' governor, Rod Blagojevich, trying to sell Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat. I've gotten used to learning about crooked politicians but this guy Blagojevich is either extremely brazen or just plain hillbilly dumb. Even knowing that he was under investigation for corruption, he was legally taped on the telephone talking about the rewards he could reap by appointing certain people to the Senate. A couple of years ago Louisiana Congressman, William Jefferson, was relieved of duty for accepting money for political favors. He must have made a lot of it because he had...

Rush talked about this article on his show yesterday and had a link on his website. It is gone now. Anyone know where to find a copy?

Not all of the suspected illegal immigrants detained in the raid are in Iowa some are back in Grand Island. In cases where married couples with children both worked at Swift and were detained, the mother has been allowed to return to her kids. One of the alleged illegal immigrants is back at home, but her husband is still with authorities somewhere in Iowa. The 261 suspected illegal immigrants detained in Tuesday's Swift raid were made up of both men and women, some of whom were married to each other. If they had kids, the mom could go home. Thursday...

Are you tough enough to be a Santa Cruz librarian? Think twice before you answer. For the past six years, 76 workers' compensation claims in the city-county library system amount to about $460,000 in medical bills, lost work time and other costs. There were 17 claims last year alone. That's a far higher injury rate than other systems report. • With four times the workforce at about 400 employees, Santa Clara County's library system reported 18 worker claims in 2003. Los Gatos' public library, with a staff of 32, had one injury claim in 2003. • A San Jose Public...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Philip Morris USA, in an effort to whittle down a $10.1 billion damages award, asked a judge in Chicago on Friday to permanently block $3 billion in punitive damages that was assigned to the state of Illinois last month by another judge. Thomas Frederick, an attorney representing the cigarette maker, said he filed a complaint in Cook County Circuit Court seeking a permanent injunction against Illinois collecting that money. The company argued the state had relinquished any future claims against Philip Morris when it joined 45 other states in a settlement with U.S. tobacco companies in 1998....