Free Republic

On Monday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the American Bar Association annual meeting in San Francisco that she would be launching a series of speeches about American foreign policy in the “next few months.” According to Philip Rucker, White House correspondent for The Washington Post, Hillary planned to emphasize restoring faith in government – an ironic theme, considering that she was a member of the current administration presiding over the rapid decline in faith in government.

The IRS official in charge of the exempt organizations office in the Cincinnati branch at the time conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status were unfairly targeted just got a promotion. Cindy Thomas has been appointed to the senior technical adviser team for the Director of Exempt Organizations. Thomas, a 35-year IRS veteran, will fill the spot vacated by Sharon Light. Light, a one-time close adviser to Lois Lerner, is the sixth senior IRS official to leave the agency. Lerner is the employee at the center of the political storm that hit the nation earlier this year. She was the first...

Excerpt (source - email) OBITUARY? In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy...

A person needs to understand how “Power” is distributed among the levels of the Triad. First level is the power elite who draw its members from three areas: the highest political leaders including the president and a handful of key cabinet members and close advisers; major corporate owners and directors; and high-ranking military officers. The Second or middle level (the Congress, the courts, the states), who implement corrupt policies and trample liberties, and the Third level are the masses (sheeple), you and I that get NOTHING. Most of the participants in the middle level are actually motivated by rather selfish...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Federal regulators on Tuesday filed civil charges against Bank of America Corp. /quotes/zigman/190927/quotes/nls/bac BAC -1.12% alleging that the big bank lied to its investors about the riskiness of loans packaged and sold in $850 million worth of mortgage-backed securities. The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint alleging that Bank of America defrauded investors when it sold them the securities.

<p>Obamacare would keep running even in a government shutdown, a new congressional report suggests.</p> <p>The new health care law draws funding from sources that are not subject to the congressional budget process, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Also, the revenue collected under Obamacare is considered to be part of a category that ensures the "safety of human life or the protection of property," which makes it immune to government shutdowns, the report said.</p>

Urban legend holds that Willie Sutton told a reporter that he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.� Not to be outdone, Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison recently made a similar observation. CNS News reports: Ellison was discussing his “Inclusive Prosperity Act� measure at the July 25th Progressive Democrats of America roundtable in Washington.“The bottom line is we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money, it’s just the government doesn’t have it,” Ellison continued, “The government has a right, the government and the people of the United States have a right to run the programs of the United States. Health, welfare,...

Apple Inc.'s AAPL +1.27%e-book problem is spilling over into its other media businesses. After winning last month an e-books antitrust suit against Apple, the Justice Department on Friday asked a federal judge to limit Apple's influence in the publishing market and give the government oversight of the iTunes Store and App Store. . The government proposals, if accepted, could give music, television-show and content owners more leverage in negotiations with a company that has been an aggressive bargainer in opening up traditional media to digital distribution

You can feel safer today knowing that a no-kill animal shelter in Wisconsin was recently raided by a group of 13 heavily armed agents of the government. They were there to get Giggles, an illegally rescued baby deer. A shelter worker said the agents descended on the property “like a swat team” and soon the deer was being carried off in a body bag. Giggles is dead now and the world is somehow a better place thanks to our government helpers. Speaking of killing things, the logging industry in the western states was mostly killed by an environmental movement in...

The Federal Aviation Administration is missing key information on who owns one-third of the 357,000 private and commercial aircraft in the U.S. — a gap the agency fears could be exploited by terrorists and drug traffickers.The records are in such disarray that the FAA says it is worried that criminals could buy planes without the government's knowledge, or use the registration numbers of other aircraft to evade new computer systems designed to track suspicious flights. It has ordered all aircraft owners to re-register their planes in an effort to clean up its files.About 119,000 of the aircraft on the U.S....

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) told a gathering of Democrats, “The bottom line is we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money, it’s just the government doesn’t have it.” Ellison was discussing his ‘Inclusive Prosperity Act’ measure at the July 25th Progressive Democrats of America roundtable in Washington. “People like, George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sax, Dean Baker, Robert Poland, Larry Summers have said they all support a transaction tax,” Ellison said. “The bottom line is we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money, it’s just the government doesn’t have it,” Ellison continued, “The government...

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- The White House has approved a deal that will exempt members of Congress and their staff from some of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, Politico reported late Thursday. Under the law, popularly referred to as Obamacare, lawmakers and their aides were required to source health insurance "created" by the law or offered through one of its exchanges, and without the subsidies they currently enjoy, the members of Congress would have faced thousands of dollars in additional premium payments each year, the report said.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Postal Service takes pictures of every piece of mail processed in the United States - 160 billion last year - and keeps them on hand for up to a month. In an interview with The Associated Press, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said the photos of the exterior of mail pieces are used primarily for the sorting process, but they are available for law enforcement, if requested. The photos have been used "a couple of times" by to trace letters in criminal cases, Donahoe told the AP on Thursday, most recently involving ricin-laced letters sent to President...

(snip) Persistent high unemployment has produced a crisis for virtually all Americans. But we can resolve the crisis by adopting a federal job guarantee for all citizens. A system of job assurance, rather than unemployment insurance, could have been implemented at any point by presidential directive under the mandate of the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 (popularly known as the Humphrey-Hawkins Act). Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has proposed a new bill: the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Training Act, which could pave the way for implementation of a federal job guarantee. The idea is straightforward: any American 18...

Trayvon Martin’s hoodie became a nationwide symbol following his fatal shooting, and now the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History wants the original. The museum’s director, Lonnie Bunch, said Mr. Martin’s hoodie, the one he was wearing the night of his death on Feb. 26, 2012, represents a unique opportunity to further the discussion about race in America, The Washington Post reported.

Hawaii is hoping to take the burden off its welfare system by saying aloha to its 17,000 homeless residents. The state will offer one-way tickets home to any eligible homeless person to anywhere in the continental United States. Hawaii has allotted $100,000 for a three year trial run of the so-called 'return-to-home' program, which could also even offer participants beds on cruise ships bound for their homes.

Athol, Idaho (NorthWest Liberty News) Patriots and Preppers of all ages and professions joined together in northern Idaho, at Farragut State Park, for the 1st annual “Northwest Patriot and Self-Reliance Rally,” sponsored by Oath Keepers. Over 1300 guests, and over 100 vendors and volunteers were in attendance over the 3-day gathering. Vendors from throughout Idaho and the northwest were there to provide the goods, while guest speakers traveled from as far as 1500 miles to attend the event. The days were filled with on-the-hour workshops covering topics about Survival Oils, Self-Defense, Sound Money, and Dressing a Rabbit for Dinner, to...

A journalist and a researcher have sued the Justice Department for access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s records on the late journalist Michael Hastings. The lawsuit follows the FBI’s failure to respond to separate Freedom of Information Act requests for records on Hastings submitted by journalist Jason Leopold of al-Jazeera and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Ryan Shapiro. Agencies are required by statute to notify applicants about whether it will fulfill their requests within a 20-working-day period of the initial application. In the hours before his death, which was ruled an accident by the Los Angeles Police Department, Hastings...

**SNIP** Usually, they vote with their feet and leave. But in extreme cases like Detroit, they simply fail to pay them: Nearly half of the owners of Detroit's 305,000 properties failed to pay their tax bills last year, exacerbating a punishing cycle of declining revenues and diminished services for a city in a financial crisis, according to a Detroit News analysis of government records. ... "Why pay taxes?" asked Fred Phillips, who owes more than $2,600 on his home on an east-side block where five owners paid 2011 taxes. "Why should I send them taxes when they aren't supplying services?...

Dear Carrie, I'm turning 65 next year and plan to work for a couple more years. Should I apply for Medicare even though I have coverage through my employer? --A ReaderDear Reader, This is an important question that affects a growing number of workers. In fact, data from the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Study (2006 to 2010) sponsored by the National Institute on Aging shows some eye-popping trends. According to the study, 79.5 percent of respondents expect to work past age 65, with 65.2 percent expecting to retire by age 80 -- and 22.4 percent planning never to...

A Florida congressman has introduced a bill that would eliminate one of the U.S. government's most unusual institutions: the Raisin Administrative Committee, keepers of the national raisin reserve. The raisin reserve is a program established by the Truman administration which gives the Agriculture Department a heavy-handed power to meddle in the supply and demand for raisins. To limit the supply of raisins on the market, the government can simply take tons of raisins from the farmers who grew them. Sometimes, the farmers don't get paid a cent in return. On Thursday, Rep. Trey Radel (R)introduced a bill that would eliminate...

Low-income families in New York City struggling with obesity will soon be offered doctor prescriptions -- not for pills, but for fruits and vegetables. The idea is that families will meet with a doctor at each clinic, as well as a nutritionist and community health worker, to discuss the connection between health and nutrition. They will then be offered Health Bucks equivalent to $1 per family member per day, so that they can buy unprocessed fruits and vegetables at the markets. That adds up to about $128 per month for a family of four. Patients are asked to return to...

Pennsylvania legislators are gearing up to tackle one of the largest financial problems facing states today: unfunded pension liabilities. The traditional defined-benefit model for government pensions enables lawmakers to promise generous pension benefits without saving sufficient funds to pay for them. A lack of funding and the fact that benefits are guaranteed—regardless of investment performance—has led to significantly underfunded pension systems across the country. Both the House and the Senate in Pennsylvania have recently advanced legislation to reform the state’s pension system. Unfortunately, these efforts have been stalled, but Gov. Tom Corbett will likely pursue pension reform again this fall....

What Do You Fear Most Terrorism Natural Disaster The Government

Hodgdon said the seal was barely floating and was doing everything it could to take a breath. He got the 2-foot pup onto a raft and it immediately stuck its neck out and kissed Hodgdon. He brought the seal to shore and got a better view of its injuries. "There was a whole row of marks going across his belly up on his side," Hodgdon explained. "You could just tell his whole body was in the shark. It had to have been." The rescue quickly turned from a heartwarming experience to a frustrating one. When a New England Aquarium volunteer...

The acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security flouted nepotism rules by employing his wife, and took multiple jaunts, at taxpayers’ expense, to Florida, according to documents obtained by The Post. The documents show at least four trips that Charles Edwards — the acting inspector general assigned to root out fraud in the agency’s $40 billion budget — took from DC to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, where he was earning a computer and information-sciences degree at Nova Southeastern University, in 2011 and 2012. Travel receipts submitted by Edwards list the university’s name next to the rate charged by...

School administrations continue to hang posters in cafeterias trying to convince students that what is being fed to them is "fun food" which is healthier for them than the foods they enjoy eating. Meanwhile schools are having to purchase more garbage cans to contain the Michelle mandated foods that kids are dumping, some preferring to go hungry rather than eat "required" foods. Students just throw away the food being forced on them by the US Government.

Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are deliberately and unapologetically engaging in economic sabotage; simultaneously targeting numerous sectors of the American economy using orchestrated systemic crisis in an effort to overwhelm the U.S. economy and effect the destruction of capitalism and America from within. By using the Cloward-Piven Strategy to promote economic and social change through the exploitation of misfortune, national crisis and disorganization the Left is advancing government as the tool for reorganization. Their tactics and intended consequences include: • Strategically planned "crises" to systematically takeover private industry. • Flooding government with impossible financial burdens until the debt becomes unsustainable....

Applying our labor supply estimates directly to this population, we predict a decline in employment of between 530,000 and 940,000 in response to this group of individuals being made newly eligible for free or heavily subsidized health insurance. This would represent a decline in the aggregate employment rate of between 0.3 and 0.6 percentage points from this single component of the ACA. The researchers arrive at these numbers by examining the labor market impact of Tennessee’s 2005 decision to discontinue its expansion of TennCare, the state’s Medicaid system. They found that the TennCare disenrollment caused “a large and immediate labor...

1. “In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.” Strobe Talbot, President Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, as quoted in Time, July 20th, l992. 2. “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of “liberalism” they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” Norman Thomas, for many years U.S. Socialist Presidential candidate. 3. “Today the path of total dictatorship in...

This past Saturday, July 13, marked the Cost of Government Day for 2013. The Cost of Government Day is the day at which point the average American has earned enough money to pay their portion of the government (national, state, and local) spending and regulatory burdens for the year. The average American would be working for the government until July 13th in 2013 before they could make any money for themselves (if everyone paid for all government spending). 2013 marks the fifth consecutive year that the Cost of Government day has fallen in July. The Cost of Government Day report...

Trial By Media and More This country has entered a new era of justice. Actually, it goes all the way back to the trial of O.J. Simpson, Jodi Arias and now George Zimmerman. More and more the media have begun trying these cases on television and using public opinion and a high degree of emotionalism. Channel HLN, headline News, Nancy Grace has been prominent in this. Now I believe that we will enter a new era that can be very beneficial to the justice system. That of using the television media to actually try criminal cases in vivo. Before you...

Keynesians continue to claim the recent recession and weak recovery have as their root cause a shortage of demand. If only the government would spend more money in the short run to augment demand from the private sector, we could fully recover. At that point, miraculously, the economy begins to generate sufficient demand on its own to replace the temporary government stimulus spending and the government can go back to business as usual. The problem with this scenario is that it misunderstands the role of demand in an economy and it also equates continuing, private sector demand with temporary government...

It was the kind of meeting that conspiratorial conservative bloggers dream about. A month after President Barack Obama won reelection, top brass from three dozen of the most powerful groups in liberal politics met at the headquarters of the National Education Association (NEA), a few blocks north of the White House. Brought together by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Communication Workers of America (CWA), and the NAACP, the meeting was invite-only and off-the-record. Despite all the Democratic wins in November, a sense of outrage filled the room as labor officials, environmentalists, civil rights activists, immigration reformers, and a panoply of other...

Obama wants to crush black employment with illegal aliens, is trying to drive up black unemployment with amnesty, pushing to take away entry level jobs from minorities, channeling his racist white half... Hillary Clinton is too old, needs to retire, 65 years old, has health issues, fumbled the Bengahzi episode-mental clarity questioned, may need adult diapers... Marco Rubio is losing the GOP support, will not change his mind on amnesty, is trying to divert attention away from his Illegal immigration stance, does not understand "no mas"... No more using the phrase "community organizer". Use Community agitator, communist agitator, community divider,...

The Financial Times reports Muslim Brotherhood calls for uprising after Cairo violence  The political crisis in Egypt deepened on Monday when the Muslim Brotherhood called for an uprising against those who want to “steal the revolution� after at least 51 people were killed and 435 injured at a Cairo rally in support of the nation’s ousted president, Mohamed Morsi. Adli Mansour, the interim president, ordered the creation of a judicial committee to investigate the violence while an administration spokesman, told Reuters the violence “will not stop steps to form a government or a road map�. The interim administration earlier expressed “deep...

Looks like Phys-Ed major is the way to go!  h/t Kirby

Excerpted from "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit. Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. “To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends,” a friend of Culosi’s told me shortly after...

From the world's suddenly most confused State Department: PSAKI WON'T CONFIRM IF U.S. RECOGNIZES MURSI AS EGYPT'S LEADER: it did in this picture PSAKI: WE EXPRESSED CONCERNS ON ARBITRARY ARRESTS IN EGYPT: but unconcerned by un-arbitrary arrests of politcal opponents PSAKI: U.S. HAS NOT BEEN IN TOUCH WITH MURSI SINCE HIS ARREST: the whole "under arrest" part may the reason why PSAKI: US CALLS ON EGYPT'S MILITARY TO EXERCISE "MAXIMUM RESTRAINT" IN RESPONDING TO PROTESTERS: just harsh language instead of live ammo? PSAKI: US "DEEPLY CONCERNED" BY INCREASING VIOLENCE ACROSS EGYPT: because the tear gas used is Made In Russia...

Select tax incentive deals are in the news, again. A new report from the left-leaning national group, "Good Jobs First," lists 240 "megadeals" nationwide over the past few decades and found that Michigan leads the pack with 29; six more than second-place New York. MLive reporter Melissa Anders noted that this adds up to $7.1 billion worth of incentives and does not include sports stadiums. Bridge magazine writer Rick Haglund has written a series of recent articles on the state's recent experience with these deals. Haglund quoted my Mackinac Center colleague Michael LaFaive as well as Gilda Jacobs, president of...

Dozens of people have gathered in a Gaston County park for a memorial service for 144 Canadian geese that were euthanized by county workers worried they had become a health hazard.

Often, when a Freeper proposes an idea that seems too crazy to be true, we totally dismiss him, and describe him as one who wears tin foil hats. One year ago, nobody would have believed that the American government spies on everyone. If someone had suggested such a thing last year, he would have been dismissed as a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist. What other theories have respectable American conservatives dismissed in the past, that may be true? I keep thinking back to Robert Welch of the John Birch Society of the 1960s, who suggested that there exists a communist...

I have believed for some time that the left is intellectually bankrupt. I can’t think of a single new idea from the left of the political spectrum since the end of the Vietnam War. The left has no idea what to do about our failing public schools. It has no solution to the problem of entitlement spending. It has no earthly idea what to do about all the problems in our health care system. There is no coherent proposal on the left to reform the tax system. I think it is no exaggeration to say that the left has no...

Want a limited government that’s held accountable by society? Then start packing...

On the Fourth of July, in the United States of America we celebrate freedom. In particular we celebrate freedom from tyranny, and a government that is not representative; freedom from unchecked power and unaccountable sovereigns.Distorted and faithless notions - Yet, as Christians we cannot overlook that there are ways of understanding freedom today that are distorted, exaggerated and detached from a proper context. Many modern concepts of freedom treat freedom as something that faith limits, not enhances.Alexis De Tocqueville said Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith. In America today we are seeing the erosion of all...

Recent opinion polls demonstrate a deepening distrust of the federal government. That's not an altogether bad thing. Our nation's founders recognized that most human abuses are the result of government. As Thomas Paine said, "government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil." Because of their fear of abuse, the Constitution's framers sought to keep the federal government limited in its power. Their distrust of Congress is seen in the governing rules and language used throughout our Constitution. The Bill of Rights is explicit in that distrust, using language such as "Congress shall not abridge," "shall not infringe,"...

Recent opinion polls demonstrate a deepening distrust of the federal government. That's not an altogether bad thing. Our nation's founders recognized that most human abuses are the result of government. As Thomas Paine said, "government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil." Because of their fear of abuse, the Constitution's framers sought to keep the federal government limited in its power. Their distrust of Congress is seen in the governing rules and language used throughout our Constitution. The Bill of Rights is explicit in that distrust, using language such as Congress shall not abridge, shall not infringe...

WASHINGTON — National Intelligence Director James Clapper is apologizing for telling Congress earlier this year that the National Security Agency does not collect data on millions of Americans. In a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, Clapper says his answer was “clearly erroneous.” Leaks by NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden have revealed the NSA’s sweeping data collection of U.S. phone records and some Internet traffic every day, though U.S. intelligence officials have said the programs are aimed at targeting foreigners and terrorist suspects overseas. Clapper was asked in March if the NSA gathered “any type of data at...

As a kid, I remember watching a rerun of the 1952 I Love Lucy Show episode in which Lucy finds her marriage license while cleaning out a closet. She discovers, to her horror, a typo that refers to husband Ricky’s last name as Bacardi rather than Ricardo, which causes her to question the legality of her marriage. The ensuing hijinks are the makings of sitcom legend. I’ve thought about that episode in the years in which the contentious battle over gay marriage has unfolded, as it touches on a key part of the public-policy question embodied in the Supreme Court's...

The cost of inaction is too high. On Tuesday, I unveiled a new national plan to confront climate change. It's a plan that will reduce carbon pollution to prevent the worst effects of climate change, prepare our country for the effects we can't stop, and lead the world in combating the growing threat of a changing climate. ... This plan will cut the dangerous carbon pollution that contributes to climate change. ... We will be judged as a people, as a society, and as a country by where we go from here. The plan I put forward to reduce carbon...