Free Republic

With California facing a potential $21 billion dollar deficit, a near riot broke out at government operated UCLA, over a proposed 32% tuition hike. VIDEO AT SITE UCLA's Daily Bruin reports: A crowd of more than 500 demonstrators rushed Covel Commons on Wednesday to protest a proposed 32 percent student fee increase. They were met by dozens of university police, some of whom were outfitted in riot gear. At one point, protesters broke through police barricades that surrounded the main entrance to Covel. Officers responded to the stampede of students and union workers by extending the metal barricades around the...

LOS ANGELES — Hundreds celebrated in the streets outside Staples Center after the Los Angeles Lakers' NBA title win Sunday night, with some revelers damaging police cruisers, throwing rocks and bottles at officers and setting bonfires in the street, authorities said. About 25 people were arrested, most part of a rowdy crowd that split off on to surrounding streets after police declared the gathering an unlawful assembly, officer Karen Rayner said. Several police cruisers were damaged and reinforcement officers were called in from throughout the city to help disperse the crowd, Rayner said.

Gov. Deval Patrick’s free wheels for welfare recipients program is revving up despite the stalled economy, as the keys to donated cars loaded with state-funded insurance, repairs and even AAA membership are handed out to get them to work. But the program - fueled by a funding boost despite the state’s fiscal crash - allows those who end up back on welfare to keep the cars anyway.

Live on C-Span 2, Amendments being voted on @ present.

As the United Nations prepares to leave its New York headquarters for a four-year renovation, staff are scouring the corridors to try to find valuable works of art that have gone missing.The lost items include a sculpture by Jose de Rivera, the 20th century American abstract expressionist, and an oil painting entitled "Evening", a gift from Belarus. An internal audit said the absence of these art works, listed as gifts in the UN's files, was of "extreme concern".Other missing works, including gifts from Mexico and China, do not even show up in the UN's official art register. Investigators had to...

I didn't see a live thread and I just can't watch this debacle alone. Meagan Kelly on Fox said the FBC filed a lawsuit under the freedom of information act to find out where this "lost" 78 billion dollars went from the first "bailout". Things are getting a tad bit too interesting for my taste!

<p>Just checked the airlines. Looks like we can get reasonably priced tickets to DC. Will arrive Sunday night. Available to protest Porkulus Monday and Tuesday and return to Fresno as a free man on Wednesday.</p>

(sigh) Time to bend over and grab the Vaseline.

Party of Crooks By: Jennifer King To those who studied the election issues it should come as no surprise that President Obama’s first week in office was a full out Executive Order pander to the hard left. Additionally, it appears that one must be a tax cheat and law breaker in order to receive a nomination to the new Cabinet. The Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle that started this economic crisis was perpetrated almost entirely by Democrats, who passed legislation under President Carter, and ramped them up fourscore under President Clinton, aimed at providing home loans to people who had no-jobs-no-income-no...

Only weeks ago, the political world was buzzing about a "team of rivals." America was told that finally, after years of yes men running the government, we were getting a president who would follow Abraham Lincoln’s lead, fill his administration with varying viewpoints, and glean empirically sound policy from the clash of ideas. Little did we know that "team of rivals" was what George Orwell calls "newspeak": an empty slogan "claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts." Obama's national security team, for instance, includes not a single Iraq war opponent. The president has not only retained...

The so-called stimulus bill, written in secret, kept secret, transfers more than $12,000 from the average family to the federal government. It is easily the largest transfer of wealth since 1917 and the formation of the communist government in Russia. There can be no excuse, none, for the burden that the government, driven almost solely by an out of control Democrat majority, is imposing on American workers. Jobs will be less rewarding, futures less bright, employment less widely available because of this travesty. This will stimulate the government, at enormous costs to its subjects.

Sometimes comes a column so incisive and so well-crafted that it changes the entire course of national debate. We may be witnessing such a phenomenon in the case of Charles Krauthammer’s “The Fierce Urgency of Pork” in today’s Washington Post. Of course I encourage you to read it all. But here are a few emphasis-added excerpts from this devastating indictment of the stimulus bill–and the tactics Pres. Obama is using to promote it. * “A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.” — President Obama, Feb. 4. Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president...

Not $3.5 trillion. Not $5 trillion. ABC News now says the government has committed $7.5 trillion to bailouts. The government bailouts are an unbelievably enormous mistake (which probably won’t even work). 1) They convert debt that needs to be unwound through bankruptcy into taxpayer debt that can’t be unwound. 2) The bailouts are morally offensive, handing vast sums of taxpayer money to those who should not be getting the money. 3) If the government persists with escalating bailouts and out-of-control spending, the U.S. will come up against the limit of its ability to borrow - making the economic situation far...

As news of weekend wildfire evacuations spread in the Southland, thieves took note. In Porter Ranch, a man accidentally left open the rear sliding-glass door of his house and forgot to activate the security alarm when he evacuated the area Saturday morning. When he returned at about 12:30 p.m., he found two women packing their car with what he said were his family's belongings, Los Angeles police said. --- "They said they were waiting for a friend, Jerry," Officer Sandy Acevedo said Sunday, recounting the previous day's incident. "Jerry who?" Acevedo asked. "Jerry Maguire," the women replied. As in the...

Malibu -- A 39-year-old man was arrested for suspicion of arson near Malibu Creek State Park, a sheriff's deputy said today. Suren Sahakyan was booked on suspicion of arson at the sheriff's Lost Hills Station and held in lieu of $75,000 bail, said Deputy Byron Ward of the Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau.

There is a story floating around the Internet about a teacher who decided to hold a mock election for president in her 5th grade classroom.  The gist of the story is that she instructed the class to pick several possible candidates for president on each side, as a kind of primary election.  Then the class voted for one candidate out of each of the two groups of candidates.  The names of the two finalists were Johnny and Mary.  The teacher then told Johnny and Mary to give a speech about what they would do as president.  Johnny got to go...

...What this election has truly accomplished is to draw sharp lines between the four factions currently existing in America. For years we have been tricked into thinking the Republicans and Democrats are on opposite ends of a tug-of-war rope, pulling against each other, when actually they are holding hands and skipping heartily together toward collectivism, socialism, and The State As Savior. All the arguments of Conservative versus Liberal, Democrat versus Republican, and Right versus Left are smoke and mirrors to distract us from the eternal truth that the only struggle is between government control and individual liberty. The old terms...

Senior NAACP official Hilary Shelton said blacks would get angry if they felt disenfranchised because of voting irregularities. "On Election Day," she said, "you may have some tempers flare."

The Subprime home mortgage collapse...a Primer. It's ALL about the CRA of 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 - This required banks to offer credit throughout their entire market area for “underserved” populations and small businesses. The CRA gave incentives to help low income borrowers become “home owners”. Liberals call this group “low income borrowers”. Conservatives call them a RISK!The CRA was passed by the Carter administration. In 1995 the Clinton administration authorized subprime loans under the CRA. Democrats added these provisions for the securitization of subprime loans and then ENFORCED the lending to high risk individuals. By 2000,...

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Afterword to Anthem ...Some of those who read the story when it was first written, told me that I was unfair to the ideals of collectivism; this was not, they said, what collectivism preaches or intends; collectivists do not mean or advocate such things; nobody advocates them. I shall merely point out that the slogan "Production for use and not for profit" is now accepted by most men as commonplace, and a commonplace stating a proper, desirable goal. If any intelligible meaning can be discerned in that slogan at all, what is it, if not the idea that the motive...

The Trial of Hank Rearden from ' Atlas Shrugged ' by Ayn Rand For a month in advance, the people who filled the courtroom had been told by the press that they would see the man who was a greedy enemy of society; but they had come to see the man who had invented Rearden Metal. He stood up, when the judges called upon him to do so. He wore a grey suit, he had pale blue eyes and blond hair; it was not the colours that made his figure seem icily implacable, it was the fact that the suit...

Talk about your bigotry of low expectations . . . Brian Williams has defended armed looting during Katrina as the work of heads of family providing for their own. The NBC Nightly News anchor is in New Orleans on the second Katrina anniversary. He appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" at 7:30 A.M. EDT. Williams first passed along a predictable race-and-classed based explanation of the botched relief efforts. BRIAN WILLIAMS: That's when human life started to degrade. That's when people ran out of of bathroom facilities and started having to use the entire [Superdome]: no power, no circulating air, and worse,...

Even if it's just for a moment, let us give credit where credit is due. The Texas Department of Transportation has realized — finally — that it has an image problem when it comes to convincing Texans of the need for a vast network of toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor. The realization, however, comes with a price tag of $7 million to $9 million that, rather than going to build highways, will fuel an advertising campaign centered around a memo titled, "Keep Texas Moving: Tolling and Trans-Texas Corridor Outreach." This is where I get off the track. Outreach? The...

Business execs arrested for refusing to cut prices By Angus Shaw ASSOCIATED PRESS July 9, 2007 HARARE, Zimbabwe – Police arrested 16 more business leaders in a crackdown on those suspected of violating the government's order to slash prices by 50 percent, the official media reported yesterday. The mandated price cuts ordered more than two weeks ago are a desperate attempt to confront inflation that has spun out of control during Zimbabwe's economic crisis. The falling prices have caused stampedes, panic buying and near-riots. Among those arrested in the latest sweep were the directors of Edgars, a leading clothing and...

Enraged Fatah leaders on Saturday accused Hamas militiamen of looting the home of former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in Gaza City. "They stole almost everything inside the house, including Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize medal," said Ramallah-based Fatah spokesman Ahmed Abdel Rahman. "Hamas militiamen and gangsters blew up the main entrance to the house before storming it. They stole many of Arafat's documents and files, gifts he had received from world leaders and even his military outfits." Abdel Rahman said the attackers also raided the second floor of the house and stole the personal belongings of his widow, Suha, and...

Enraged Fatah leaders on Saturday accused Hamas militiamen of looting the home of former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in Gaza City. "They stole almost everything inside the house, including Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize medal," said Ramallah-based Fatah spokesman Ahmed Abdel Rahman. "Hamas militiamen and gangsters blew up the main entrance to the house before storming it. They stole many of Arafat's documents and files, gifts he had received from world leaders and even his military outfits." ...

Relic hunters stole America's heritage when they left more than 100 holes around the Texas Memorial in the Vicksburg National Military Park, Patty Montague said Friday as archaeologists began surveying the damage. “The park is continually plagued by varying degrees of looting, digging and excavation,” Montague, the park's supervising ranger, said. “They're stealing America's heritage. This belongs to the American people.” Archaeologists and historians with the National Park Service arrived from Florida to begin meticulously processing the crime scene, which extended west of the memorial near a Confederate marker to the Railroad Redoubt. The Texas Memorial is on the south...

They swarmed down the valleys and over the clifftops – an army of treasurehunters heading jauntily off to the beach. Some came in pick-up trucks or on tractors with trailers. Others sported bags and rucksacks big enough to carry anything from a washed-up oil painting to a half hundred weight bag of dog food. By the time they had finished, about £1million-worth of cars, motorbikes, spare parts, bric-a-brac and countless items of treasure trove must have been liberated, salvaged, scavenged or rescued – not to mention stolen – from a once peaceful little seaside idyll.

Jubilant Iraqi looters strip military base after British forces pull out By Oliver Poole in Baghdad (Filed: 26/08/2006) Thousands of jubilant Iraqis looted the British military base in Amarah yesterday, only a day after the Army pulled out of the camp. Everything from doors and window frames to corrugated roofing and metal pipes was pillaged from Camp Abu Naji, previously Britain's only permanent base in Maysan province. Witnesses said that thieves filled up lorries with their gains. When one was asked what he was doing, he answered: "This is war loot." The British decision to hand over the camp to...

NEWS RELEASES ACORN (ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS FOR REFORM NOW WORKING FAMILIES FOR WAL-MART ****************** Big Box living wage ordinance passes in Chicago ACORN and a community-faith-labor coalition secure living wage law CHICAGO, July 26 - On July 26th, the Chicago City Council approved an ordinance that will require Big Box retailers to pay workers a living wage. After a raging battle in Chicago this week, the council voted 35 to 14 to approve the ordinance, leaving no possibility for Mayor Daley to use his veto power. The ordinance will require a $10 minimum hourly wage and $3 an hour...

KENNER, Louisiana — Three people convicted of hauling away liquor, wine and beer from a grocery store after Hurricane Katrina were sentenced to 15 years in prison. The judge said Wednesday he wanted to send a message that looting would not be tolerated when he gave the maximum sentence to Coralnelle Little, 36, Rhonda McGowen, 42, and Paul C. Pearson, 36. A jury convicted the trio May 2 on a portion of the state's looting law that took effect two weeks before the Aug. 29 storm. The amended law set a three-year minimum sentence, and a maximum of 15 years...

EL PERU WAKA, Guatemala (Reuters) - Archeologists outsmarted tomb raiders to unearth a major Maya Indian royal burial site in the Guatemalan jungle, discovering jade jewelry and a jaguar pelt from more than 1,500 years ago. The tomb, found by archeologist Hector Escobedo last week, contains a king of the El Peru Waka city, now in ruins and covered in thick rainforest teeming with spider monkeys. He may have been the dynastic founder of the city, on major Mayan trade routes that could have stretched from the city of Tikal in Guatemala up through Mexico. "If this is indeed the...

FEATURE Remember New Orleans Monday, in a small police trailer in downtown New Orleans, police began returning firearms seized in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Weapons, city residents like Frederick Thomas say were taken at the time they were most needed. "You got to imagine you're in a neighborhood with no lights," said Thomas. "It's really dark. We're like the only ones in our block that came back first. What are you going to do pick up a stick and fight somebody with a gun." Fredrick Thomas is one of the lucky ones. He got his gun back. According to...

Many of those on the left who are attacking President Bush for toppling Saddam Hussein were not so particular when Clinton was president. The man who sent American troops into Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, etc, did so with the support of liberal-leaning Congressmen and Senators. This fact needs to be borne in mind because I think provides a clue as to why the same Liberals are now snapping at President Bush’s heels. Taking a look at the 1972 George McGovern presidential campaign we find that it provided the means by which those who are deeply hostile to American values and...

Four New Orleans police officers have been cleared of allegations that they looted a Wal-Mart store after Hurricane Katrina, but each was suspended 10 days for not stopping civilians from ransacking the store, the Police Department said. The probe stemmed from an MSNBC report that showed the officers filling a shopping cart with shoes, clothes and other items. When a reporter asked the officers what they were doing, one responded, "Looking for looters" and turned her back. Assistant Police Chief Marlon Defillo, commander of the Public Integrity Bureau, said the officers seen on the video were recently cleared of looting...

"ONITSHA, Nigeria – Charred bodies littered the streets of this bustling commercial center yesterday after three days of rioting in which Christian mobs wielding machetes, clubs and knives set upon their Muslim neighbors. Rioters have killed scores of people here, mostly Muslims, after burning their homes, businesses and mosques in the worst violence yet linked to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad first published in a Danish newspaper. The violence erupted after similar attacks on Christians in northern Nigeria last week by Muslims infuriated over the cartoons. " ~snip~ "Residents combed through destroyed shops and homes of Muslims to loot."...

HOUSTON Houston Mayor Bill White says federal money should fund a six and a-half (M) million dollar task force to target a rise in post-hurricane crime. White says Houston police face additional demands after an influx of hurricane evacuees following Katrina. The hurricane slammed the Gulf Coast on August 29th. White says Houston's homicide rate rose nearly 25 percent since last year and jumped 70 percent this month. White says Houston's crime increase isn't solely blamed on Katrina evacuees. But White says the Federal Emergency Management Agency should fund the task force because of the strain of those additional residents....

Greece's seas: the looters' next destination New law opens access for traffickers to a hoard of underwater antiquities Helena Smith in Athens Tuesday December 6, 2005 The Guardian (UK) Lost and found ... a 16th century Spanish cargo ship off Zakynthos When it was first proposed, it seemed like a good idea: open up the Greek seas to divers and create a paradise for tourists underwater. Those who backed the law never thought of it as a windfall for looters, nor did it occur to them that it might put the acquisition policies of museums under further scrutiny. But the...

The parents or guardians of juveniles accused of looting during Hurricane Rita may have to face punishment themselves after they appear next month for hearings before Judge Guy Bradberry in 14th Judicial District Court. Bradberry ordered the parents or guardians of the children into court to face the possibility of sanctions for allowing the teens to ignore the law. The judge said the Louisiana Children's Code gives him the authority to hold the parents or guardians responsible for the criminal acts of their children. Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Clay Guillory, who prosecutes juvenile offenders, said seven teens — both male...

When she noticed the human waste on the floor of the trendy women's shoe boutique she manages, Lindsay Foret suspected looters had soiled the store out of spite. "I was like, 'This is horrible. There's brand new bathrooms and they couldn't even go there?"' Foret said. "I went back to the bathrooms and they were perfectly fine." As she spoke to fellow merchants along trendy Magazine Street, on the edge of the Garden District, Foret quickly learned she wasn't the only one who found such unseemly messes while trying to reopen a looted store. Around the city, merchants returning after...

According to a well-known anecdote, anthropologists studying "primitives" who supposedly held certain superstitious beliefs (that they descend from a fish or from a bird, for example) asked them directly whether they "really" believed such things. They answered: "Of course not--we 're not stupid! But I was told that some of our ancestors actually did believe that." In short, they transferred their belief onto another. We do the same thing with our children by going through the ritual of Santa Claus. Since our children (are supposed to) believe in him and we do not want to disappoint them, they pretend to...

2 States, 22 Observations Things I have noticed while watching media coverage of the recent hurricanes. 1. Texas: Productive industrious state run by Republicans. Louisiana: Government dependent welfare state run by Democrats. 2. Texas: Residents take responsibility to protect and evacuate themselves. Louisiana: Residents wait for government to protect and evacuate them. 3. Texas: Local and state officials take responsibility for protecting their citizens and property. Louisiana: Local and state officials blame federal government for not protecting their citizens and property. 4. Texas: Command and control remains in place to preserve order. Louisiana: Command and control collapses allowing lawlessness. 5....

"A Marine Came For Me" David J. Danelo Proceedings, October 2005 Discuss this article in the eForum. The odyssey of Marine Corporal Ross Craft (center) began with his hunt to find his aunt and uncle, Diane and Richard Angelico, who were missing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR On 30 August, the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, shattered two levees, and flooded New Orleans, a local television station ran footage of a Marine on a jet ski zipping through the floodwaters guiding rescue boats to safe evacuation routes. Corporal Ross Craft, a...

CHALMETTE, La. About 100-thousand dollars in goods believed to have been stolen after Hurricane Katrina in Saint Bernard, Orleans and Saint Tammany parishes and in Mississippi have been recovered. The items, which were found at a trailer park in Picayune, Mississippi, included four-wheel all-terrain vehicles, welding equipment, jet skis and a gun. A resident at the trailer park, 30-year-old Marvin Kritzmann Junior was arrested and booked with looting and burglary. Arrest warrants have been issued for 35-year-old Danny Brown, a former Chalmette-area resident; his brother, Oscar Brown; and Marvin Kritzmann Senior -- all of Mississippi. Doran says the case began...

Witnesses: New Orleans cops took Rolex watches, jewelry Police probed in looting NEW ORLEANS (CNN) -- Four New Orleans police officers have been suspended and one has been reassigned over allegations of looting in the chaos after Hurricane Katrina, acting Police Superintendent Warren Riley said. The city's police department is investigating reports that at least 12 police officers may have gone on a looting spree in the days after the storm hit. The probe began after police officials reviewed videos from news reports, Riley said. "The investigation does show police officers with some items," Riley said, but some of the...

Waff 48 News busts New Orleans Police officers taking advantage of the chaos in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Waff photojournalist Jeff Gray was working with our sister station WAFB in Baton Rouge. While there he and his crew learned of New Orleans officers holed up in a New Orleans hotel, drinking by day, looting by night. They climbed ten stories up the fire escape to confront the officers and caught the tense moments on tape. The hotel's engineer, Perry Emery flagged down our crew. "Right now it seems like we're being held hostage," said Perry. "They threatened us. Said...

The police department has launched an investigation into whether officers participated in the giant looting spree that overtook the city after Hurricane Katrina, a spokesman said Thursday. News reports in the aftermath of the storm put officers at the scene of some of the heaviest looting, the Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District. Some witnesses -- including a Times-Picayune reporter -- said police were taking items from shelves.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti's office confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating the alleged looting of a New Orleans car dealership by city police officers. More than 200 vehicles were taken from the Sewell Cadillac Chevrolet dealership in the Central Business District, and in the most chaotic hours after Hurricane Katrina, some New Orleans Police Department officers reportedly pulled up outside the mobile command center at Harrah's casino in bright, shiny Cadillac SUVs. The cars allegedly still had "2004" stickers in their windshields and "Sewell" medallions on the back. The fancy rides appeared at a time when a desperate force,...