Free Republic

CHICAGO (AP) — Three activists who travelled to Chicago for a NATO summit were accused Saturday of manufacturing Molotov cocktails in a plot to attack President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's home and other targets. But defense lawyers shot back that Chicago police had trumped up the charges to frighten peaceful protesters away, telling a judge it was undercover officers known by the activists as "Mo" and "Gloves" who brought the firebombs to a South Side apartment where the men were arrested. "This is just propaganda to create a climate of fear," Michael Duetsch said. "My clients came...

[gullible suckers]-- I know this probably isn't the first time you're hearing about this, but chances like this don't come up very often. And the deadline is approaching. Chip in $3 or whatever you can to be automatically entered to go to L.A. and spend an evening with President Obama and George Clooney. We'll cover airfare and hotel for you and whoever you choose to bring with you. All you have to do to be automatically entered is donate what you can to support this campaign: https://donate.barackobama.com/Obama-and-Clooney Thanks, Julianna Julianna Smoot Deputy Campaign Manager Obama for America

We all know that Obama is a poser sack of crap. but who are his foot soldiers? Lets document them in one place. Many of us know the AG, Eric Holder. Some have mentioned the Energy secretary Stephan Chu Does any one know who Lisa Jackson is? Then there are the advisers the inner circle like Valerie Jarrett List them and vet them here Freepers. Let us document them and frame the picture

ROCKVILLE, Md. - There are major flaws with the way the concrete was poured in the $101 million Transit Center in the heart of downtown Silver Spring. During a news conference Monday, Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner outlined the issues, calling the situation a "serious problem." He also hinted at the possibility of legal action against the contractor. "Specifications for the project called for there to be 10 inches of concrete. The analysis that has been done has shown that for significant portions of the second floor and the third floor, there's only eight and a half inches," Berliner...

New independent circulation numbers show a sharp decline in readership of Politico and other left-leaning news websites, an ominous trend for the suburban Virginia-based news outlet and its peers as Americans head into an election year. Recently published and publicly available Web traffic data indicates that “unique visitor” traffic to politico.com in November 2011 was 15 percent lower than in the previous month, and 31 percent lower than in November 2010. The data, from Compete, Inc., also show an overall two-year decline. Political websites gain and lose readers throughout election cycles, with presidential election years trending higher in unique Web...

Most homebuyers will pay an increased fee to finance their mortgage as part of a U.S. Senate compromise approved today to continue a 2 percentage point cut in payroll taxes and extend unemployment benefits until February. In a last-minute compromise reached Friday night, the Senate agreed to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits but only for two months and to pay the estimated $30 billion to $40 billion cost by increasing the fees on new mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The increase is expected to cost a new homebuyer about $17 a month for a...

Members of Congress already get better health insurance and retirement benefits than other Americans. They are about to get better insider trading laws as well. Several academic studies show that the investment portfolios of congressmen and senators consistently outperform stock indices like the Dow and the S&P 500, as well as the portfolios of virtually all professional investors. Congressmen do better to an extent that is statistically significant, according to studies including a 2004 article about "abnormal" Senate returns by Alan J. Ziobrowski, Ping Cheng, James W. Boyd and Brigitte J. Ziobrowski in the Journal of Financial and Qualitative Analysis....

Attorney General Holder being questioned.

The Broward Teacher's Union has a new administrator, amidst a financial investigation. John Tarka has been appointed by the American Federation of Teachers to be the head of the BTU. "Our primary concern with the American Federation of Teachers is to make sure that our children are doing well...

Just like clockwork, the Obama administration never misses an opportunity to unload thousands of records it hopes no one will ever bother sifting through during the holidays. On Black Friday, the White House released more visitor log info — trumpeting disclosures it has fought tooth and nail. I’ve started looking through the data. And you can, too, right here:

Guys like Bill Cellini don't get indicted in Illinois. And the puppet masters don't sit at the defense table in federal court, tapping their fingers, waiting for the jury to pronounce judgment. *snip* They're Democrats, they're Republicans. They're the bosses of the Combine. *snip* All involved should know that their ((prosecutors)) work is appreciated, by every taxpayer in this thoroughly corrupt state who've wondered how the puppet masters of the Combine keep getting away with it. On Tuesday, they didn't get away with it. And Bill Cellini went down.

Hundreds of Long Island Rail Road employees may have cheated their way to big pensions through a $1 billion fraud by paying off doctors to say they were unable to work, authorities said

Well they finally did it to themselves. At least now, and at least in one state, Democrat politicians are starting to feel the effects of the type of accounting fraud they committed on the country for the last three years.  As the Obama “It’s-not-my-fault” Reelection Tour rumbles westward spewing diesel-powered and politically enhanced particulate matter, charges of fraud are overhanging the Democrats’ fall campaign in California. But the charges aren’t the familiar “I see dead people voting” scams that usually accompany left-leaning races. Instead they are fraud charges of the Madoff kind.California Democrat uber-finance guru, Kinde Durkee, apparently has been...

Former Gov. Joe Kernan says a signature on a petition to place Barack Obama's name on Indiana's 2008 primary ballot isn't his, putting him among dozens of dubious signatures found in a newspaper's investigation. Kernan, a Democrat who campaigned for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary, told the South Bend Tribune that he didn't sign the Obama document. "No, not at all," the former South Bend mayor said when asked whether the signature next to his name on the Obama petition looked like his own. "Nor does the printing look like mine." The Tribune reported Wednesday that it has talked...

Breaking on Fox ...

An audit of the Federal Reserve has revealed that the privately owned Federal Reserve secretly doled out more than $16 trillion in zero interest loans to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world. The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed acted illegally. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to its employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans. The report is evidence that reveals major securities fraud...

Three Wake County, North Carolina, Democrats have admitted to voter fraud charges, according to local news reports.Kierra Fontae Leache, Shelia Romona Hodges and Brandon Earl Mclean each admitted to casting two ballots in recent elections. Local reports indicate all three voted for President Barack Obama twice in 2008.According to ABC News Channel 11 in Raleigh-Durham, authorities have placed the three on $10,000 bonds.The North Carolina Republican Party says this kind of fraudulent voter behavior is why the state needs a voter ID law. In July, Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue vetoed state Republicans’ latest attempt at instituting such a law, calling...

Senate Democrats are charging taxpayers for a trip to Hawaii, The Daily Caller has learned. The entire press staff of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee is in Maui, even though a field hearing there won’t happen until next Wednesday. The committee’s oversight field hearing, scheduled for next Wednesday at 9 a.m. at the Maui Beach Hotel, will focus on “Strengthening Self-Sufficiency: Overcoming Barriers to Economic Development in Native Communities.” Rick Manning from Americans for Limited Government, which first discovered the hearing, told TheDC it’s unbelievable that Hill staffers talking about fiscal responsibility would waste money on a trip to Maui....

The appearance of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett at the Lied Center last week was a reminder of the fluidity in American society that allows talent and drive — not birthright and connection — to earn power and wealth. Although both men came from comfortable backgrounds, neither was born to that old wealth stratum of American society that sometimes seems to be tantamount to an aristocracy. Dressed casually, they sat on a couple of stools, cracking jokes, speaking plainly, fielding unscripted questions. “They seemed like ordinary people, very normal, very knowledgeable and funny,” observed Yong Zhao, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln...

As Wisconsin heads toward lifting a ban on carrying concealed weapons, researchers at the University of California-Davis have turned up some unsettling information about those who may take advantage of the law. In a study using 15-year-old data -- the most recent available -- published online in the journal Injury Prevention, the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program says those who carried concealed weapons or who had confronted someone with a gun were twice as likely to be heavy drinkers than non-gun owners. Gun owners who drove with loaded weapons were four times more likely to hop behind the wheel...

Acting with unusual speed, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated Gov. Scott Walker's plan to all but end collective bargaining for tens of thousands of public workers.

When the world didn't end on May 21, many people who had given up their earthly possessions were left with nothing. But one believer never lived to see the day. She left nearly her entire estate - around $300,000 - to the group behind the failed prediction, leaving some family members out in the cold. Eileen Heuwetter was shocked to find out that her aunt left the majority of her estate to Family Radio, the group responsible for the doomsday warnings that the world would end on May 21. She and her sister were each left $25,000 from their aunt's...

<p>Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Friday that it has hired former U.S. Senator Judd Gregg as an international adviser.</p> <p>Gregg, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, joins a group of 17 international advisers to the New York-based investment bank and its clients, and will assist in business development initiatives.</p>

More than 100 employees of the Internal Revenue Service cheated the government by fraudulently claiming a first-time homebuyer tax credit included in the 2008 and 2009 economic stimulus packages, according to federal investigators. The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, in several reports over the past few years, has identified a total of 128 IRS employees who claimed the credit but who also made other claims that showed they either weren’t first-time buyers or bought their homes outside the eligibility period for the credit, which was worth up to $8,000. Meanwhile, one other IRS employee has been charged with...

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is in trouble again. Still reading? If you are, you must be a Goldman employee, regulator, class-action lawyer, financial journalist or trolling the Internet for news about Steve Jobs. (See how I dropped the name to make this column more Google-friendly?) No one seems to care much about Goldman's latest troubles, and many Americans seem numb to more allegations of wrongdoing related to the financial crisis. Yet they keep coming, especially at Goldman. One of the biggest was last week's disclosure that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's staff has "orally advised" the company that it "intends...

EL PASO, Texas -- Luther Jones and Gilbert Sanchez were taken into custody Wednesday afternoon after a jury found them guilty of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Twelve jurors agreed Jones and Sanchez devised a scheme to make money and defraud the citizens of El Paso County of honest services by rigging a multi-million dollar contract to digitize records in the district clerk’s office in 2004. The jury reached the guilty verdict around 1:30 p.m. after deliberating for roughly seven hours over two days. Jones and Sanchez showed little visible reaction to the verdict,...

Sen. Doug LaMalfa billed the state $1,317.12 for hitting a raccoon with his state-issued car. Former Assemblywoman Mary Salas drove her state car into a post on one trip, into a concrete guardrail on another and later ran a red light, hitting a vehicle. Her four claims cost nearly $28,000. Assemblyman Cameron Smyth and Sen. Mimi Walters, meanwhile, each filed claims for hitting their personal vehicles with their state-issued cars. With approval ratings hovering in the teens, California lawmakers are often criticized for failing to solve the state's problems. ..A Bee review of vehicle claims paid on lawmakers' state-issued cars...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWa76N5B1_0

Feb 23 (Reuters) - A $61.5 billion spending-cut bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday would slow economic growth significantly this year, according to an analysis by the global investment firm Goldman Sachs (GS.N). "Under the House passed spending bill, the drag on GDP growth from federal fiscal policy would increase by 1.5pp (percentage points) to 2pp in Q2 and Q3 compared with current law," according to Alec Phillips, who signed the analysis that is dated Tuesday. Democrats, who want to maintain spending this year at around current levels, seized on the Goldman Sachs analysis. "This nonpartisan...

I have been fairly active in pursuing the issue of Obama's Constitutional eligibility and have posted some fairly effective articles on the subject. I now find my site is being deluged with comments under different names but all originating from one IP address. 108.20.41.193 I searched this IP address and find that messages with the same attacks on birthers are posted all over the net. My final message to the spammers is here.

At least two investigations will examine whether it was extreme weather and high demand -- or perhaps power companies' greed -- that led to last week's rolling blackouts across Texas. Within a few hours, the price electricity generators charged briefly skyrocketed on Feb. 2 from $50 per MW to $3,000 -- the highest legally allowed. Some 82 of the state's 550 generating plants were offline, leading to an electricity shortage and forced blackouts that lasted up to 45 minutes.

Conyers to go for 24th term in 2012Published: Jan. 31, 2011 at 10:41 AM DETROIT, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- Saying he's not ready to retire, U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., who has been in Congress since 1965, announced plans to run for re-election in 2012. The 81-year-old Michigan Democrat has had an easy time retaining his seat, but political analysts say the 2012 contest could be challenging because of his age and a redistricting exercise that could expand his district, The Detroit News reported Monday. "It's understood that I'm going to be running again," Conyers told the News. "I mean,...

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein bagged a $14.6M compensation package.....including stock awards, which were also paid to other top executives. Blankfein also got a 230% bump in his base salary to $2M, up from $600,000 since 2007....excluding private jets, cars and other perks. CFO David Viniar, COO Gary Cohn and Vice Chair Michael Evans received identical boosts, with each hauling in $1.85M annually. Blankfein's pay in the halcyon days of 2007, was $67.9M. Other firms have been hiking base pay at a time when regulators are mulling new rules for Wall Street pay.

OPEC ministers said on Friday that they saw no need to supply the world with more crude as oil prices approached a two-year high....frpa

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., backed off threats today to force a reading of the New START arms-reduction treaty after the White House assailed the delay tactic as a “new low.” Senate leaders had estimated that a full reading of the accord could take 15 hours, which would have thrown a wrench into ambitious plans to finish work on New START, an omnibus spending bill, and several other pieces of legislation before the Senate adjourns for the year.

Between October 2008 and October 2010, the European Commission approved 4,589 billion euros, the equivalent of 45 years of Romanian GDP, of state support to banks. And this may not include all of the funding for financial institutions, because our overly generous Commission has not been too eager to count the cost of this policy. One thousand billion euros were spent in 2008 and 250 million in 2009. At the same time, the total for state support to all other sectors of the economy was only 73 billion (less than one sixtieth of the sum for banks). The figure for...

In a reversal, the Obama administration said Wednesday it will not pursue offshore drilling off the East Coast of the U.S. and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. In a reversal, the Obama administration says it will not pursue offshore drilling in East Coast waters, including the eastern Gulf of Mexico. A senior administration official told The Associated Press on Wednesday, Dec. 1,, 2010 that because of the BP oil spill, the Interior Department will not propose any new oil drilling in the East Coast for at least the next seven years. (AP Photo/ Michael Spooneybarger, File) Collapse (AP)A senior administration...

DETROIT (WJBK) - The son of Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., says items were stolen out of the government vehicle he was driving last Wednesday in downtown Detroit, FOX 2's Simon Shaykhet reports. John Conyers III, 20, told police two Apple MacBooks, valued at $1,100 apiece, and more than $27,000 worth of concert tickets to the Fillmore were stolen out of a burgundy 2010 Cadillac Escalade registered to the 14th Congressional District.

*snip* "Don't answer it," the county executive said, unaware that more agents were listening in. Johnson ordered his wife to find and destroy a $100,000 check from a real estate developer that was hidden in a box of liquor. "Do you want me to put it down the toilet?" Leslie Johnson asked. "Yes, flush that," the county executive said. But what about the cash? she asked - $79,600. Put it in your underwear, the county executive told his wife. She replied, "I have it in my bra" - which is where agents discovered the money after she answered the door.

Cisco was hit in afterhours trading on Wednesday following a rare revenue warning. Futures are down but dip-buying strength has been so insane lately that one must wonder if there will be any follow through. Regardless of what the stock does, the huge warning may portend the end of the ramp in capital spending on technology by corporations. If so, what's left of the recovery (if anything) is all on the backs of consumers. While pondering that grim setup, please consider Cisco Forecasts Fall Short of Estimates; Shares Slide Cisco Systems Inc., the largest maker of computer networking equipment, forecast...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today she has "no regrets" one day after a Republican landslide stripped her of the power that defined her historic tenure as the first female speaker of the House. The California Democrat, who won a new two-year term in Tuesday's election, said she has yet to consider what she will do now. "I'll have a conversation with my caucus, I'll have a conversation with my family, and pray over it, and decide how to go forward," she said in an exclusive ABC News interview with "World News" anchor Diane Sawyer. "But today isn't that day."

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC: "What is the secret here to turn out? In the old days, the old machine days, what we called 'walking around money,' handing out money to get people to vote. Is it still the case? What do you do, what is the magic in Philadelphia? REP. ROBERT BRADY (D-PA): "We still have the street money and we're very knowledgeable." Rep. Brady is also the chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic party.

...five well-known Hollywood Democrats -- David Geffen, Bob Iger, Peter Chernin, Haim Saban, and Ari Emanuel -- are hosting a November 4 fundraiser for Ari's brother Rahm Emanuel in his bid to become Chicago's next mayor. Rahm, a former Democratic U.S. Representative from Illinois' 5th Congressional District (2003-2009), resigned as President Obama's White House Chief Of Staff on October 1 to throw his hat into the mayoral race following the retirement of Richard M. Daley whose last name more or less owned that political office the way most families would takeover the dining table. The Hollywood fundraiser will be held...

Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said he knows that just mentioning a possible statewide property tax will stir up emotions.

Afghan private security forces with ties to the Taliban, criminal networks and Iranian intelligence have been hired to guard American military bases in Afghanistan, exposing United States soldiers to surprise attack and confounding the fight against insurgents, according to a Senate investigation.

Lately, the White House and its allies have been drawing attention to the political activities of libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. In an August 9 speech, President Obama singled out Americans for Prosperity, a free-market political group founded by David Koch in 2004. In the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, Obama said: ... "Using a great deal" of research by the left-wing Center for American Progress, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer reported in the magazine's August 30 issue that the Kochs are "waging a war against Obama." Reason's Nick Gillespie argued that Mayer's report was nothing...

In the wake of last month’s DHS memo on how to create a de facto amnesty without congressional consent comes a similar “draft” proposal instructing local police to stop enforcing immigration laws. As reported by my colleague Jessica Vaughan, “According to a draft policy document now being circulated among a limited group of stakeholders, ICE chief John Morton intends to prohibit not only his officers, but also local officers with 287(g)immigration authority, from busting illegal aliens who are discovered as a result of traffic violations.” So that means we’ll go back to the situation where illegal aliens can drive illegally...

Chicago - He was a political giant who rubbed elbows with presidents, prime ministers and CEOs from around the world, but Dan Rostenkowski was happiest spending time with family and friends from the old neighborhood on the city's Northwest Side. Tuesday, old Rosty, as he was known, was laid to rest. His funeral mass was at the Catholic church he called his own for his whole life, Saint Stanislaus Kostka. He died last week of lung cancer at the age of 82. Rostenkowski was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1959. He was considered Mayor Richard J. Daley's...

...[S]he’s right. While she’s discussing the corporate world, it’s equally true — perhaps even more so — in the world of politics. Surely it takes a robust ego for anyone to think she’s got the stuff it takes to lead a school committee or town, much less a state or even the entire nation: and not just lead it, but take it in the right direction, all the while avoiding the dizzying emoluments of the culture of greed, graft, bribery, quid-pro-quo, and you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. Not only that, but you’ve got to have the apparently not-so-common...

He comes from a crooked family. His father stole at least $10 Million from investors and still owes at least $9.4 Million. I guess birds of a feather......