Free Republic

Americans are the most generous people on earth; show us a natural disaster, and we can’t whip our checkbooks out quickly enough. We overload online servers trying to get our donations in. Note: this is true only of normal Americans. Liberals, Obama included, are notoriously stingy when it comes to charitable giving when it involves their own money. What people resent is being forced to give up their hard-earned income to support those who choose not to participate in what we refer to as work. Socialism mandates surrendering enormous control over our lives to a powerful centralized government in the...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Police in Charlotte said 13 Salvation Army donation kettles were stolen at gunpoint late Friday night. Police said two armed men covering their faces entered the business at 4300 Stuart Andrew Blvd. just after 10 p.m. Two employees were held at gunpoint while the property was taken, police said. Jim Price, of the Salvation Army, said the kettles held an estimated total of $4,000.

In one fell swoop, the ACLU lost 25% of it's funding with the loss of a single donor. Another large recipient from the same donor, the Sierra Club, has also been advised of their funding cuts. David Gelbaum, a wealthy conservationist out of California, has donated about $389 million to the ACLU, the Sierra Club, as well as an organization that provides services to military personnel from 2005 to 2009. David Gelbaum, a major donor to the Sierra Club Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and an organization that provides services to military personnel, said he would cut donations next...

NEW YORK (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union has lost a quarter of its yearly donations after a major donor cut off $19 million in annual donations because of economic difficulties. David Gelbaum, a wealthy California conservationist, said he was indefinitely stopping the donations that had made him the New York-based group's largest anonymous donor

Executives at Comcast, the media behemoth looking to buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal, have given large sums of money to presidential candidate Barack Obama and Democrats in recent years The Hill reported Saturday: Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts made more than $76,000 in political contributions to Democrats since 2006, compared to $13,500 in contributions to Republicans. Comcast vice president and top lobbyist David Cohen made about $180,000 to Democrats in the same period, compared to $12,000 to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Concerns that the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee may have used a credit card bill to woo donations from credit card companies has prompted the chamber's ethics panel to open an investigation. The Washington Post first reported on Friday that staffers to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) suspected foul play as early as this summer, after the committee unexpectedly took up a tough bill that would have implemented new fees to protect against credit card identity theft. According to the Post, Thompson collected about $15,000 in donations from the industry shortly after those hearings began, but no bill was...

Spc. Adam Butler, of Summersville, W.Va., passes a pre-packaged bag of food to Saad Hawas Salim, at a mosque in the Zaydon marketplace, Nov. 23. American troops delivered 100 bags for distribution to the needy just in time for Eid al-Adha. Photo by Spc. Ruth McClary, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team. BAGHDAD — Military vehicles carrying a harvest of pre-packaged foods pulled up to the Salim Molaw Abu Hathafa Mosque in the Zaydon marketplace here, Nov. 23, just in time for Eid al-Adha. U.S. troops delivered 300 packages containing cooking oil, flour, tortillas, beans, canned meat, canned tomatoes, and powdered...

A local architecture firm that recently won an $8.3 million federal contract to redesign a U.S. border crossing in California is being investigated by the Federal Election Commission for irregular campaign contributions to Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who is up for re-election next year. Henderson resident Randy Spitzmesser prompted the FEC probe of his former employer, Tate Snyder Kimsey Architects. On behalf of the architecture firm, Las Vegas attorney Stan Hunterton told the Las Vegas Review-Journal by fax last month, "We do not believe that anything was intentionally done wrong" regarding campaign finances. Spitzmesser also thinks Henderson-based Tate Snyder...

Sacramento real estate developer Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis and her husband have contributed $438,880 to federal candidates, committees and leadership PACs since 1989, with 95 percent of the money going to Democratic candidates and committees, according to a new report by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) Last Friday, President Barack Obama announced that Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis is his choice to become the new ambassador to Hungary. She is married to Markos Kounalakis, who is the president of Washington Monthly.

CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE BASRA, Iraq, Oct. 14, 2009 – U.S. troops and reconstruction team members in Iraq’s Basra province completed what some say was a small task with a huge impact on improving the lives of some Iraqi families with disabled children. Army Master Sgt. David Deuel assembles one of 20 wheelchairs donated to the provincial reconstruction team in Iraq’s Basra province by Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids, a nonprofit group created to meet the needs of Iraqi children who suffer from mobility-limiting disabilities. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Maurice A. Galloway  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. In a combined...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2009 – Sometime around Thanksgiving some troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will receive boxes filled with gifts from a women’s group in Alexandria, Va. A child’s card stands among donated items at an Alexandria, Va., service project to fill boxes for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Sept. 26, 2009. Courtesy photo by Wendi Maney   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. For the first time in 15 years of doing fall service projects, the Mount Vernon Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints donated granola and energy bars, mints, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other...

When contributors hand over money to a trade group that’s lobbying on a bill before Congress, the public has a right to know who’s putting up that cash, a federal appeals panel has ruled. In an opinion issued Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a relatively recent law requiring public donor lists. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) had challenged the disclosure provision in the 2007 ethics overhaul law (PL 110-81), arguing that the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to petition Congress means that financial backers of lobbying...

8/24/2009 - JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq (AFNS) -- The pint-sized bags of cloudy, yellow liquid may not look like much, but the fluid inside them has proved to be a lifesaving substance to injured servicemembers. "Platelets heal. I've seen it firsthand," said Lt. Col. Thomas Jordan, the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Support Squadron platelet aphaeresis chief. "I was here in 2006 when we first brought platelets into modern warfare by using them (at Joint Base Balad)," Colonel Jordan said. "We noticed an increase in the survival rate compared to when we were using whole blood. They serve as the main factor...

Capt. Jason Glanovsky of the 727th Expeditionary Air Control Squadron loads soccer balls into boxes to be distributed to Iraqi children living near Balad, July 15. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Christopher Hubenthal. JOINT BASE BALAD — Airmen and Soldiers here recently received donations for Iraqi children who live near this base from a stateside fraternity.  The Pennsylvania State University chapter of the social fraternity Phi Kappa Tau supports programs to increase the quality of life for terminally ill children. Through their program Kicks 4 Kids, along with some inquiring by Capt. Craig Bryan, Expeditionary Aeromedicine Squadron psychologist...

Sarah Palin’s political action committee raised nearly $733,000 in the first six months of 2009 and has more than $450,000 in cash on hand, according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission. While Republicans are hopeful that Palin will be a big fundraising help for them, her PAC hasn’t exactly been a campaign-finance ATM. Since its formation in late January, it appears to have made just two political contributions — $5,000 to Palin’s 2008 running mate, Sen. John McCain, and $5,000 to Alaska’s Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski. The majority of the money raised by SarahPAC so far has come...

I get phone calls constantly from 800-942-1970. When I answer, no one is there. If I don't answer, they don't leave a message. I am getting called twice a day beginning at 8:15 AM. They even call on Sunday. I have tried to call them back but the number is always busy. I know it's the Reagan site because I found it on google. Lots of people complain about them. Michael, make them stop.

An analysis of the list of Chrysler dealers closed down by the Obama-run auto maker show that many were donors to Republican candidates and Democrat rivals of Barack Obama during the 2008 election cycle.

Cavuto reports that donations are pouring in for the presidential library of former President George W. Bush. In 100 days, he's raised $100 million - an amount that former President Bill Clinton planned to raise in one year.

To feed their insatiable appetite for cash, the two parties’ House campaign committees are turning to their own members to fill their coffers. And as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has far outpaced its GOP rival in fundraising, so too have Democratic members given far more to the effort than their Republican counterparts. In total, Democrats have transferred $4.87 million from their campaign accounts to the DCCC, with 19 members forking over more than $100,000. By comparison, Republican members of Congress have given the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) just $477,000, with no member topping the six-figure mark. Both...

DES MOINES, Iowa – A mystery is unfolding in the world of college fundraising: During the past few weeks, at least nine universities have received gifts totaling more than $45 million, and the schools had to promise not to try to find out the giver's identity. One school went so far as to check with the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security just to make sure a $1.5 million gift didn't come from illegal sources.