Free Republic

Canetoad wrote: Let's see, Corporate tax receipts as a share of profits are at their lowest rate in forty years. Somethings got to give and it shouldn't be the middle class.- World Begins to Heal with Taxes on Rich January 1st Dear Comrade Mr. Toad,Did I ever tell you how much I loved your Wild Ride at Disney when I was a kid?I really did.You are on to something here. Of course, you’re liberal and the fact that you have a point is accidental and unintentional. But you have made an effective case why tax rates on corporations should be...

Sometimes there is so much stupid going on in the world that you have to just stop and take stock of it all. Al Gore sells Current TV to Al Jazeera. The Americans who owned the anti-American network Current TV soon will be replaced as owners by foreigners who operate the anti-American network Al Jazeera. I doubt any of the 40,000 regular Current TV viewers would have noticed had the news not gone public. Of course, most of them spend their time writing diaries at the DailyKos, when not being yelled at by their moms to clean their rooms. But...

Duflo, who was raised in a “left-leaning Protestant” family, said she became aware of economic divides and social injustice at a very early age. “I was always conscientious of the gap between my existence and that of the world’s poor,” she told weekly French magazine l’Express in a January, 2011 article. “As a child, I was extremely troubled by the complete randomness of chance that I was born in Paris to an intellectual, middle class family, when I could have just as easily been born in Chad. It’s a question of luck. It inspired in me a sense of responsibility.”

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers. Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own. In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the...

The pro-Syrian Lebanese daily, Al-Akhbar, said in its Saturday edition that Assad was ready to offer a "solution" to the deadly conflict in his speech. The newspaper, citing anonymous sources, said Assad may submit a five-point plan that would not preclude him from contesting the next presidential election when his current term ends in 2014. The plan also provides a ceasefire, allowing international observers to monitor its application, a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, forming a national government and holding free elections for a new parliament, it said.

On December 29, the owner of American Spirit Arms; Joe Sirochman relayed this chilling news via Facebook: All, My name is Joe Sirochman owner of American Spirit Arms and I wanted to share my recent experience with Bank of America .(which we have been doing business with for over 10 years)…. Everyone is familiar with the latest increase in guns sales , dealers selling out of inventory , Manufacturers back logged for months , large revenue all generated in the last two weeks …. American Spirit Arms is no exception to the overwhelming demand . What we have experienced is...

The US Army has been called in to help with the battle to salvage Royal Dutch Shell’s stricken Kulluk Arctic drilling rig, which has now been beached in environmentally delicate waters for nearly a week. The Kulluk, one of two rigs crucial to Shell’s controversial Arctic oil exploration plans, ran aground on New Year’s Eve as it was hit by a fierce storm while being towed to Seattle for maintenance. Two Chinook helicopters from the 16th Combat Aviation Brigade flew to the scene on Friday to help transport heavy equipment for the salvage operations. Three vessels are on site and...

The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions. A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has been forced to recalibrate his election campaign in response to a downward spiral in opinion polls due to a surprise challenge from an ultra-nationalist startup millionaire and veteran of Israel's most elite commando unit. New tactics are expected to be in evidence on Sunday when Netanyahu appears at a youth rally, following the panicked cancellation of an event on Thursday after dismal turnouts at two campaign rallies earlier in the week. On the advice of his campaign strategist, US Republican adviser Arthur Finkelstein, the prime minister will stop making direct attacks on Naftali Bennett,...

The intentions of the Journal News’ editorial board in publishing a highly controversial “interactive gun map” are further occluded by an inconvenient fact. According to Rockland County Clerk Paul Piperato, in Rockland County a large number of the names and addresses on the map are not even correct. Piperato said, “I’d figure about 25 percent of the addresses are not accurate.” He explained that when persons change their address or pass away it is supposed to be reported to the County Clerk’s office, but the county has no means to vigorously enforce this regulation. Thus pistol permit and other permit...

This is the statement he made I am referring to: Addressing Feinstein directly, Mr. Boston, who served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, says he'll refuse to register his weapons and writes, "You ma'am have overstepped a line that is not your domain." "I am not your subject," he continues. "I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant."

In 1920, Detroit was the fourth biggest city in America. Its population had doubled in a decade. Migrants, many of them African-Americans from the rural South, were drawn by its pioneering car factories with their unprecedentedly high wages. The manic, mechanised, overcrowded metropolis of General Motors and Ford also drew journalists and writers. In 1934, Anne O'Hare McCormick of the New York Times wrote about Detroit's "democratized luxuries, with gas stations on every corner, chain stores, moving-picture palaces … as truly a world capital as any city on earth … Paris dictates a season's silhouette, but Detroit manufactures a pattern...

NEW YORK (AP) — The ability to access a car quickly and give it back after a few hours is exploding in popularity among both college students and city dwellers. Zipcar created the car-sharing concept in 2000. By the end of the decade car-sharing had caught the attention of the two largest U.S. car rental companies as Enterprise and Hertz started competing services. And this week, Avis, the nation's No. 3 car rental company, jumped into by offering nearly $500 million to buy Zipcar. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-look-at-the-pros-and-cons-of-car-sharing-4168037.php#ixzz2HAtWjxOx

[Video] Fox News Parody About Gun-Free Zones Stopping Crimehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dg_AcBeHgo --------------- --------------- Rep. Thomas Massie, R-4 KY H.R. 133: To repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 and amendments to that Act. Introduced: Jan 03, 2013 Sponsor: Rep. Thomas Massie [R-KY4] ====== Flashback 2011: Texas Congressman and GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul introduced a bill that would abolish "gun-free zones," ultimately permitting teachers to carry firearms on school grounds. Ron Paul Introduced Pro-gun Legislation The New American 04 August 2011 ==== Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has introduced a bill in the House that would allow teachers to carry firearms onto...

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- One of the Cleveland police officers involved in the Nov. 29 police chase that ended with two suspects dead fumbled a 2011 traffic stop so badly that the department suggested video of the incident be used to teach other officers what not to do. Recently released personnel files show that the 13 officers who shot at Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30, when the chase ended in East Cleveland range from highly commended to narrowly hirable. A few have come under gunfire while performing their duties, and some had shot at suspects before.

A new EU poster places the hammer and sickle emblem above the Christian Cross and symbols of other religions. MEP Dan Hannan is rightly angry over this atrocity at his blog: “For three generations, the badge of the Soviet revolution meant poverty, slavery, torture and death. It adorned the caps of the chekas who came in the night. It opened and closed the propaganda films which hid the famines. It advertised the people’s courts where victims of purges and show-trials were condemned. It fluttered over the re-education camps and the gulags. For hundreds of millions of Europeans, it was a...

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of some of the most strict interpretations of Islam, has a notoriously unyielding police force. But unlike most countries, the Saudi kingdom also has an active “religious police,” and the roles of the two sometimes seem to overlap. For instance, Al-Arabiya related Friday that a man was recently arrested by the ​real​ police after being found in possession of documents indicating his desire to…marry a Jewish woman. He was reportedly near the Grand Mosque in Mecca when apprehended. Al-Arabiya explains: Lieutenant Abdulmohsen Maiman, spokesman for the Grand Mosque police, told [al-Hayat newspaper] that the 49-year-old Saudi...

Girlguiding UK is considering the removal of any mention of God or the Queen from its oath. In one of the most controversial shakeups in its 102-year history, the organization has launched a consultation that could lead to significant changes to the promise Guides are expected to take when they join. It would be the first major reform for the Guides, which boasts more than half a million members, to be initiated under Julie Bentley, its new chief executive. The former head of The Family Planning Association, who took over in November, ruffled feathers when she described the Guides as...

Dr. Rosembaum: It appears today that your efforts to publicize your research ("Gun Utopias? Firearm Access and Ownership in Israel and Switzerland," Journal of Public Health Policy 33, p. 47 (2012)) have accelerated. The most recent showcase for your paper and the concepts that underlie it happens to be Foreign Policy ("A League of Our Own," Foreign Policy (December 19, 2012)) but Ezra Klein showcased your research in an interview for his Washington-Post sponsored Wonkblog some days before ("Mythbusting: Israel and Switzerland are not gun-toting utopias," Wonkblog (December 14, 2012)). It is unfortunate then that the body of your research...

It is an odd experience to enter a darkened room and, for more than two and a half hours, watch someone tell a story that you experienced intimately in your own life. But that is what happened recently as I sat in a movie theater near Times Square and watched “Zero Dark Thirty,” the new Hollywood blockbuster about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. When I was head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 2002 to 2004 and then director of the National Clandestine Service until late 2007, the campaign against al-Qaeda was my life and obsession. I must say,...