Free Republic

Things You’ll Never Read… AP. “Addendum to House Bill on the $700 billion Bail Out Added to the house bill was a clause that amends IRS regulations to retroactively tax officers of the 700 financial companies as follows. Any income derived from salary and sale of company shares at inflated market prices that were based on falsely booked profits from dubious loan activity from 2003 onward, shall be retroactively taxed by the government at a rate of 90%. Those individuals unable to come up with the tax money due to the retroactive nature of the tax shall be given the...

California citrus farmers would get $20 million, spinach growers $25 million and salmon fishermen $60.4 million in an emergency war spending bill that passed a House committee Thursday. The money for citrus and spinach growers is part of $3.7 billion for farm disaster relief in the bill, including $1.8 billion for crop loss assistance and $1.48 billion for livestock compensation. Farmers in California and other states would be able to apply for that crop and livestock money. The relief comes as part of a $124 billion war spending bill - including $95.5 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq...

ANGELES (Reuters) - Karl Rove, U.S. President George W. Bush's senior political advisor, on Tuesday took the administration's message on immigration reform to Latino leaders, saying the country was approaching a "critical moment" in the debate. >br> Speaking at the annual convention of leading Latino civic group the National Council of La Raza, Rove said Bush would work with Republicans and Democrats in coming weeks to push through reform legislation that has bitterly divided Congress, the Republican Party and the nation. "We face a critical moment in our immigration debate, a moment when our nation will make an important decision...

White House adviser Karl Rove is scheduled to speak tomorrow at the annual conference of the federally funded, left-wing, open-borders-advocacy group, the National Council of La Raza. If he does not want his speech to look like an act of appeasement, he should confront La Raza on its opposition to commonsense policies designed to secure both U.S. borders and U.S. pocketbooks. La Raza, which means “The Race” in Spanish, has denounced as “horrendous” and “appalling” the House immigration bill passed in December, which was sponsored by Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wis.) and supported by the overwhelming majority of House Republicans....

Serious Penalties for Overstaying Visa, One Million Asian-Pacific People Affected Asian Pacific Justice Center Vigorously Denounces New Bill passed by US House of Representatives (World Journal Reporter Lin Baoqing, Washington, DC) If the immigration bill passed by the House of Representatives becomes law some one million people of Asian Pacific descent may be labeled illegal immigrants and face federal penalties of a year in prison. In addition, if the Department of Homeland Security is not notified of a permanent address within ten days of a residential address change the holders of uncorrected student residency F1 visas and those with temporary...

House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.) has promised disgruntled conservatives that the House's top priority in the 109th Congress is passing legislation that bars illegal aliens from obtaining driver's licenses, language the Senate stripped from the just-passed intelligence bill. House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wis.), a strong proponent of the driver's license provision, secured Hastert's assurance once House leaders agreed to vote on the intelligence bill last week. Sensenbrenner helped thwart a November 20 vote on the legislation because the provision was removed. Hastert's spokesman, John Feehery, said the speaker wouldn't hesitate about attaching the language to an Iraq supplemental bill,...

Dear Governor Blagojevich: As a life-long Illinois resident, I would like to express my opinion regarding House Bill 1118 which you recently signed into law. Specifically, I believe that House Amendment No.1 ruined the intent of the bill and creates an injustice to current students and their families. The bill was introduced to provide that the tuition charged an undergraduate student who is an Illinois resident shall not exceed the amount that the student was charged at the time he or she first enrolled in the university as an Illinois resident if that student enrolled not more than 3 and...

Pastors had these rights until 1954 when Lyndon Johnson added an amendment to ban non-profit groups from getting involved in political activity. – A Republican congressman is plotting his next move after his bill to defend the rights of church pastors went down to defeat. Members of the U.S. House voted Wednesday to kill the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act. However, there are already plans to resurrect the bill. "To permit churches and other houses of worship to engage in political campaigns," said the House clerk as the bill was announced on the floor after a year long...

Associated Press EL PASO, Texas (AP) - A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday would allow thousands of part-time foreign students to continue commuting into the United States for school. U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., announced the bill that would create a new kind of visa for such students. In the recent past, part-time foreign students have entered the United States using tourist visas. But those visas are for business and pleasure trips and are not supposed to be used by students. The INS announced earlier this year that it will begin to again enforce...

The House voted Thursday to prevent President Bush's big tax cut from disappearing after 2010, an action both Republicans and Democrats said would echo loudly in this year's congressional campaigns. The legislation's most substantial results will be political arguments, since Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has said he will not bring the bill up for a vote in his chamber. Republicans said they would nevertheless work to increase pressure on Senate Democrats, particularly the 12 who voted for the tax cut last year. Republicans, who prevailed in the House on a largely party-line 229-198 vote, said making the $1.35...