Free Republic

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid thanked Turkey on Thursday for helping foil an Iranian plot to harm Israelis in Istanbul and said the effort was still under way.Turkish authorities arrested five Iranians suspected of planning attacks on Israelis ahead of Lapid’s visit, Turkish media reports said earlier in the day...Lapid arrived in Turkey on Thursday for talks with Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu as the two countries press ahead with efforts to repair ties...Police seized two pistols and two silencers in searches conducted in houses and hotels where the suspects were staying, according to the report...Earlier this month, Israel issued a...

The Iranian Ministry of Defense has announced that it has launched a second three-stage satellite for research...

On the same day that Senate Budget Committee Republicans revealed that spending on federal welfare programs constituted the single largest expenditure in the 2011 budget, the Department of Agriculture failed to meet a key deadline to further explain its food stamp partnership with the Mexican government....(SNAP), or food stamps, which recently reached an all-time high enrollment of nearly 47 million participants. Non-citizen participation in SNAP has quadrupled since 2001 and doubled since 2008.

Misuse of the FHA Preforeclosure Sale Program may have cost the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) over a billion dollars for claims that did not meet program according to an audit released this week by the HUD's Region 7 Office of Inspector General (OIG). OIG initiated the audit after noticing significant deficiencies in borrower qualifications during an audit of program claims at one large lender. The Preforeclosure Sale Program allows borrowers in default due to an adverse an unavoidable financial situation to sell their home at fair market value and use the proceeds to pay off an FHA-guaranteed...

St. Louis, Mo., Aug. 17, 2012 – The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is urging caution to anyone considering doing business with representatives of Advanced Marketing & Promotions (AMP), an Alabama-based business managed locally by Dean Stanley. The warning comes in the aftermath of an event near St. Louis Power House Church this week in which St. Louis area residents were offered $500 worth of food vouchers in return for signing up for a prepaid debit card. Police were called to the 4000 block of West Florissant Avenue on Tuesday after hundreds of people jammed an area near the church to...

Solyndra’s CEO labeled President Barack Obama’s administration “The Bank of Washington.” Chris Gronet offered the description in an internal email one year before the company collapsed in 2010, costing taxpayers roughly $500 million. “The Bank of Washington continues to help us!” he wrote in the October 2009 e-mail, which described several government programs and incentives. The email bolsters GOP claims that Obama’s support of green-tech companies amounted to “crony capitalism.” Several White House officials had close ties to green-tech companies, and many green-tech executives have donated to Obama’s political campaigns.

Do you remember that thing about how the banks wouldn't lend to blacks and Hispanics because they were racists? And do you remember how they passed the Community Reinvestment Act so that banks were forced to reduce down payments practically to zero and lend to a lot of people they knew were bad credit risks? And do you remember how Wall Street bundled all these risky subprime mortgage and sold them to investors around the world so that when it became clear that those people weren't going to be able to pay their mortgages banks everywhere were left holding the...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) - James Holmes, the alleged gunman in the recent theater shooting that left 12 dead in Aurora, Colo., was previously awarded a $26,000 federal grant. WNEW News reports that Holmes was awarded a prestigious grant from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It gave the graduate student a $26,000 stipend and paid his tuition for the highly competitive neuroscience program at the University of Colorado in Denver. Holmes was one of six neuroscience students at the school to get the grant money. http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/07/24/james-holmes-received-26k-grant-from-bethesda-based-national-institutes-of-health/

Obama administration ‘guts’ welfare reform with new HHS rule 11:05 AM 07/13/2012 The Department and Health and Human Services announced the agency will issue waivers for the federal work requirement of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program — considered a central facet of welfare reform in 1996 — Thursday. The “Information Memorandum” states that the agency will be issuing waivers for TANF’s work participation requirements for parents and caretakers as a way to find new approaches to better employment outcomes. “While the TANF work participation requirements are contained in section 407, section 402(a)(1)(A)(iii) requires that the state plan...

BRONX (WABC) -- What is drawing huge crowds in the Bronx, people lining up around the block, to get into a storefront that houses a tax preparation office, what's really going on? People who went to the storefront asked Eyewitness News to investigate after they claim they were promised thousands of dollars in government surplus money that would be put on pre-paid debit cards. Now, the bank that issues those debit cards has put out a warning. "I'd like to talk to the boss," Eyewitness News Investigative Reporter Sarah Wallace said. "He's not here," security at E &M Multi Service...

Alexandra Pelosi debuted a video she made for HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" last night. The video shows multiple welfare recipients in New York City proclaiming they were at the welfare office to get their "Obama bucks" and that they supported Obama because he "gives me stuff." Pelosi reported that people at the HBO headquarters in New York had said to her "you can't show this" even though just last week the ran a controversial video showing Mississippi voters saying inflammatory things against the president.