Free Republic

Governor Warner Announces New Home Modification Program for Injured and Disabled Veterans — Governor recounts forward momentum in safe and affordable housing in Va. — ROANOKE - Governor Mark R. Warner today announced Granting Freedom, a home modification program for soldiers injured or disabled in the current military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Granting Freedom will provide grants up to $4,000 per home or rental unit to make home accessibility improvements and modifications. The Virginia Housing Development Authority and the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development will administer the program. The Governor announced the program during his keynote address...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton, touring Alaska this week to view melting permafrost and shrinking glaciers, said the evidence is mounting that global warming is real and human activity is significantly to blame. "The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action," McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters at the Hotel Captain Cook Wednesday morning. "Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary." Clinton, D-N.Y., said the scientists and Native people she's spoken to on this trip to Alaska and Canada's Yukon Territory make the case with...

(2005-08-15) -- A new multi-million dollar Harvard University effort to study the origins of life in the universe seeks to prove that life did not begin with "a major grant" from an intelligent source, but rather sprang up spontaneously and entirely without purpose. The university will fund the research with $1 million per year in a number of multi-million dollar facilities, employing some of the best minds in science to establish that the complexity of life started with no plan, no design, no forethought and no intelligent creative agent. "Harvard University has proven over the years that the more complex...

A panel of 36 distinguished public policy experts and scholars—ranging from Nobel laureate Milton Friedman to Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey—has selected the Internal Revenue Code as the No. 1 item on this year’s Human Events list of the Ten Most Harmful Government Programs. The programs elected by our judges don’t just cost money, they also attack our values and corrode the spirit of liberty that makes America the greatest nation. As in previous years, we initially asked our judges to nominate programs for the list. The judges were then sent ballots listing...

Inside the Ring By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published June 10, 2005 Spies and studies The FBI and other U.S. security agencies are approaching top colleges and universities to better deal with foreign spies stealing technology secrets, we are told. The FBI recently carried a subtle if unmistakable message to 15 university leaders: If you want to continue receiving millions of dollars in government defense contracts for research, tighten up security against foreign spies. For example, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore gets some $300 million a year in government contracts for overt research. Additional millions are...

"The extremists have taken over so many of our mosques, one mosque at a time. They have driven out those who disagree with their ideology." Those are the words of Dr. Ibrahim Mohamed, a respected faculty member at a university not far from Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Mohamed is a proud and brave man, but he is also quite concerned that this interview will cause him to be marked as an apostate. At the onset of this interview, he made it clear that he fears retaliation in response to the information he is providing, especially possible during the trip to Cairo...

The Ford Foundation, the main financial backer of public broadcasting in its formative days, is undertaking its largest initiative to support nonprofit media in more than 25 years, officials said yesterday. The initiative will funnel $50 million over five years to a baker's dozen of public television, radio and other media organizations. A major focus of the effort will be to spur the creation and distribution of public affairs programming, particularly programs dealing with international affairs. The Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio will receive the largest grants, $10 million and $7.5 million respectively. But less well-known entities will...

Rustic Gillespie County, where the Pedernales River flows past ranches and peach orchards near historic Fredericksburg, doesn't seem like the kind of place terrorists would strike. Yet the federal government has provided more than a half-million dollars to protect this portion of the homeland since Sept. 11, 2001. The money — roughly $24 for each of the 22,226 men, women and children in the county — has bought military-style laptop computers, heart defibrillators, 150 traffic cones and a new Ford F-350 pickup. An $80,000 decontamination trailer for dealing with hazardous materials is on the way. What a county with no...

In the worst case of scientific fakery to come to light in two decades, a top obesity researcher who long worked at the University of Vermont admitted yesterday that he fabricated data in 17 applications for federal grants to make his work seem more promising, helping him win nearly $3 million in government funding. Eric T. Poehlman, a leading specialist on metabolic changes during aging, acknowledged that he altered and made up research results from 1992 to 2002, including findings published in medical journals that overstated the effect of menopause on women's health. Under a plea agreement with federal prosecutors,...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - In a report triggered by questionable campaign donations to Kevin Shelley, the controller's office said Wednesday it found serious weaknesses in the Department of Parks and Recreation's handing of state grants for local projects. The office's auditors looked at recipients of 20 grants totaling $14.26 million and questioned $1.11 million of the expenditures. In some cases the money wasn't spent for the intended reason, and in one instance bank records indicated some of it went for "personal purposes," the report said. "We believe there are serious control deficiencies in the state's system and processes for awarding and...

The US yesterday warned that Kenya could lose billions of shillings for the fight against Aids. The ambassador, Mr William Bellamy, said the Government was not using the money to save the lives of thousands of Kenyans. "Millions of dollars of World Bank grants and loans for health are currently unspent. There is a meter ticking, and the money might well be lost," he said. "Tens of millions from the Global Fund have been available to Kenya for well over a year now, and only a small fraction has been spent. "The money is available, and it has been available...

In furtherance of Jonathan Adler's point, if you go to Landmark Legal Foundation's website you will find thousands of environmental groups that receive government grants. The Washington Post has used scores of these groups in its news stories. Does the Washington Post have a policy of disclosing the groups' government connections in its news pages? Not that I can discern. When the groups' representatives are on radio and TV shows, do they disclose that they've received money from the government? Not that I can discern. And when Kurtz took an incredibly lame slap at (my friend, associate, advisory board member,...

Jacksonville, Fla. - President Bush proposed Friday an increase in the government Pell Grants that help lower-income students afford higher education but said he would shave the cost out of a federal student loan program that also provides college aid. "Pell Grants make it possible for people to go to school who otherwise won't go to school," Bush said in announcing his plans at Florida Community College. Sharing a stage with Pell Grant recipients, Bush pledged to seek a 12% increase in the awards over five years, which would cost $15 billion. That would allow the maximum grant to rise...

A family planning group is asking a judge to halt what it says is a conflict between a law that requires health care providers to inform women about abortions and a new rule passed by Congress. The conflict, according to the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, could cost states, hospitals, clinics and doctors billions of federal dollars in grants. Under Title X of the Public Health Service Act authorizing the largest federal-funded family planning program, the Department of Health and Human Services makes grants to states, localities, clinics and hospitals for family planning services. Aimed primarily at low-income...

"Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the right-wing majority that controls Congress threatened the college dreams of more than 1 million American students." "They authorized cuts to the leading federal college grant program (Pell Grants) that children of working families rely on to afford college. Those cuts would endanger the college education primarily of students whose families earn less than $40,000 a year, and who are already scrimping to put their sons and daughters through school. [1]" "After all of the conservatives talk about 'family values,' you'd never expect them to pull the rug out from under the feet of America's...

Lexington(AP) - The largest commercial winery in the state is getting help from Uncle Sam to better market its products to African-Americans, Asians and Latinos.Equus Run Vineyards has been awarded a 147-thousand dollar grant from the US Department of Agriculture to do a better job of marketing to those ethnic groups in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.The grant was formally announced in a ceremony yesterday at the Woodford County vineyard.Equus Run co-owner Cynthia Bohn says the money will be used over one year to develop and buy advertising targeted to reach those groups. Money also will be used to develop new...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

SAN DIEGO-A lawsuit filed in Washington D.C. Thursday is aimed at keeping California's 21 missions from receiving a $10 million repairs grant that President Bush approved.

The Ford and Rockefeller foundations hand out millions of dollars each year to a variety of organizations. We may or may not agree with the activities of a given group that gets some portion of that money, but both foundations have properly drawn a line against their money supporting terrorism or other violence. The Ford Foundation says funding recipients must agree not to engage in activity that "promotes violence, terrorism, bigotry, or the destruction of any state." News reports say this rule was put in place because some Ford money previously had wound up in the hands of radicals who...

Republicans and Democrats disagree over the impact of using more current tax information to determine student eligibility for popular Pell college grants, now funded at their highest level in history. Republicans say a Bush administration plan to use tax information from 2001 or later to determine which students are eligible for the $12.8 billion college-aid program would permit more students from poor families to get Pell grants, currently about $4,050 a year. The grants do not have to be repaid. Using tax tables from 1988 to determine eligibility for the program was required by an amendment to prevent changes last...