Free Republic

Taxpayers should wake up the politicians and ask them to tell Wall Street: "We want the same deal Warren Buffett got." The Omaha billionaire announced he is playing White Knight to Goldman Sachs by investing $5 billion in the endangered investment house. What a big-hearted guy. Buffett is an old-fashioned capitalist who invests in companies for the long term and I am a big admirer. But Warren Buffett did not get to be a billionaire by committing public-spirited acts of charity. He plays to win. So his deal with Goldman Sachs is carefully wired to produce gorgeous returns for Buffett's...

In Washington these days, an 11-figure expenditure barely attracts notice.___ With Congress preoccupied with the massive, $700 billion bailout plan for the financial industry, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have finally secured Part One of their own federal rescue plan. A bill set to be passed by Congress and signed by President Bush as early as this weekend--separate from the controversial Wall Street bailout plan--includes $25 billion in loans for the beleaguered Detroit automakers and several of their suppliers. "It seemed like a lot when we first started pushing this," says Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, one of the...

The federal takeover of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae may stabilize the economy and help the housing industry. But politicians could take a hit, particularly Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Employees of the government-sponsored firms, which own or guarantee half of the nation's mortgages, have donated almost $4.3 million to federal elected officials and their various campaign committees since 2005. Obama is the largest individual recipient at about $112,000, federal campaign finance reports show.One reason Obama has collected the most is that he has raised far more than any other federal candidate, $390 million so far. The mortgage...

WASHINGTON - Auto industry allies hope to secure up to $50 billion in government loans this month that would pay to modernize plants and help struggling car makers build more fuel-efficient vehicles. With Congress returning this coming week from its summer break, the industry plans an aggressive lobbying campaign for the low-interest loans. The situation is growing dire after months of tumbling sales, high gasoline prices and consumers' abandoning profitable trucks and sport utility vehicles. Lawmakers authorized $25 billion in loans in last year's energy bill to help the companies build fuel-efficient vehicles such as hybrids and electric vehicles. With...

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday approved a five-year, $307 billion farm bill with wide bipartisan support, virtually sealing President Bush’s defeat in a battle over agriculture policy. Mr. Bush has promised to veto the bill because he says it would not do enough to limit subsidies at a time of record grain prices. His advisers said Thursday that he had every intention of making good on that vow. The Senate vote, 81 to 15, with 35 Republicans in favor, guarantees an easy override of a veto. The House passed the bill on Wednesday, 318 to 106, also far more...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congress is once again going coconuts over Rep. Don Young’s Coconut Road earmark. Anti-earmark crusader Sen. Tom Coburn is holding up passage of technical corrections to the 2005 highway bill until the Senate agrees to investigate how $10 million got dedicated to an interchange project at Coconut Road after the $286 billion bill had passed both chambers of Congress. The Senate has been trying all week to pass the technical corrections bill but Coburn has single-handedly held it up in an effort to force a vote on his amendment. The Senate was expected to take up the...

WASHINGTON — Texas has long viewed itself as a conservative bastion, but the Lone Star State ranked third in the nation between 2000 and last year in receipt of federal dollars, raking in aid and contracts worth more than $1.2 trillion. An analysis by a private watchdog group found that state agencies and a number of congressional districts were major beneficiaries of the federal largesse. For example: • Rep. Ron Paul has long crusaded against a big central government. But the maverick GOP lawmaker and presidential contender also has represented a congressional district that is consistently among the top in...

In the pantheon of dumb Army Corps of Engineers boondoggles, a $112 million flood-control scheme in Missouri's southeast bootheel ranks among the dumbest. It would drain more wetlands than all American developers drained last year, and the Corps has admitted that the town it's supposed to protect will flood just as often (once every 10 years) if and when it's completed. The Corps also admitted that its original economic rationale depended on a math error. In private e-mails, even the agency's top lobbyist described it as "an economic dud with huge environmental consequences." Now a federal judge has made it...

If you know anything at all about the federal student loan program, you will not have been surprised by the scandal of recent months. The only amazing thing is that it has taken so long to arrive. Here's how the program works: Banks and other private companies lend money to students. The federal government pays part or all of the interest—currently 7 percent or 8 percent. The government also guarantees the loans. What is wrong with this picture? Well, the government itself borrows the odd nickel to finance the national debt. This borrowing, obviously, is also guaranteed by the government....

Like their counterparts in the House, the Senate has larded its version of an “emergency” war spending bill with nearly $20 billion in pork-barrel outlays, including $100 million for the two major political parties’ 2008 presidential conventions. The $121 billion bill includes $102 billion for the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as $14 billion for Hurricane Katrina aid and more than $4 billion for “emergency farm relief.” “Congress will have to make the choice between booze and balloons or bullets and body armor,” John Hart, a spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., told The Examiner on Monday....

THERE is no easy, painless way out of the fiscal chaos left behind by the outgoing Congress. In six years we have seen a $5 trillion surplus drained, and our government swamped in an ocean of red ink. The outgoing congressional leadership ended 2006 without completing work on a single appropriations bill that invests in our communities, provides medical care for veterans, fights crime or works to make college more accessible. Americans expect better leadership from the new Congress that just convened. They demand a return to fiscal responsibility, and better stewardship of the tax dollars of hardworking Americans. As...

In a saga that just won't die, Donald Trump wrote a letter Tuesday to Rosie O'Donnell in response to media reports of her blow-up at Barbara Walters, telling her she had the right to be angry and saying Walters "lied to both of us." The tone of Trump's Jan. 9 letter, sent to FOX News and other press outlets, is snide — and some of his allegations about Walters' recent grumblings over O'Donnell, whom she hired last year to be the moderator on "The View," are shocking. "In fact, she lied to both of us!" Trump wrote in the one-page...

THE trouble with the West is that we have forgotten that some things are sacred. We find it so difficult to comprehend the reaction of the Muslim world to that ham-fisted Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist because our churches stand empty, our faith is weak and our God has left the building. The idea that this is still a Christian country is laughable. We may haul in the local vicar for weddings and funerals, but that's about it. We worship our idols -celebrity and money, the sex lives of the rich and famous - but the...

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay indicted on one count of criminal conspiracy by Texas grand jury, according to Travis County clerk's office.

DeLay declares 'victory' in war on budget fat By Amy Fagan and Stephen Dinan THE WASHINGTON TIMES September 14, 2005 House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget. Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans' choice to borrow money and add to this year's expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn't seem possible. "My...

President Ronald Reagan loved to rail against Congress' pork-barrel spending. But critics say that didn't stop Congress from earmarking $2.3 million for landscaping on the freeway that bears his name, one item among the $24 billion worth of special projects tacked onto the transportation bill signed Wednesday by President Bush. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who opposed the bill with four other senators, said the amount directed to special projects was "egregious." And he singled out Simi Valley's long-awaited landscaping project along Highway 118. "I wonder what Ronald Reagan would say?" McCain asked about the fiscally conservative president. In the city...

(IsraelNN.com) Graffiti proclaiming that 'Mohamed is a Pig" instigated Wednesday's stone throwing battle between Jewish anti-anti-activists and Mouassi Arabs at Tel Yam in Gush Katif, according to the Maariv Hebrew news site. The brawl started after the Arabs saw the graffiti. An Israel Radio reporter at the scene claimed that the activists began the brawl, which lightly injured an activist, an Arab, an IDF officer and a radio technician from the governmnet-backed station. The army arrested eight activists, several of whom climbed on army and police jeeps before reinforcements removed them. The area is quiet at this hour.

Cop shoots pet dog that bit him 06:52 PM CDT on Friday, May 27, 2005 By Wendell Edwards / 11 News Click to watch video A southeast Houston homeowner is angry that a Houston police officer shot his dog after walking into his backyard Friday morning. The officer was responding to a burglary alarm call on Parliament when he encountered the dog. "The officer was completely caught by surprise, you know. He was just responding, more or less to a routine alarm call," said HPD Lt. E.W. Harris. "And the dog was just in his backyard and the officer walked...

Cops shoot family dog Family upset after incident in backyard By Melissa Pinion-Whitt Staff Writer Thursday, May 26, 2005 - ONTARIO - A police officer investigating a fraud case shot and killed a dog in a residential backyard Wednesday. The 6-year-old boxer named Rocky charged at the officer when he entered the backyard in the 900 block of West G Street around noon. Police were at the home to interview a man suspected of credit card fraud and walked into the backyard because they saw him and suspected he might try to flee. "The officer felt the dog was going...

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) Monday named New York Sens. Hillary Clinton (D) and Charles Schumer (D) the Co-Porkers of the Month for February for pledging to fight the President's reforms of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. Sens. Clinton and Schumer lashed out at the President, with Sen. Clinton describing the federal grants as "a lifeline" for New Yorkers. President Bush's fiscal 2006 budget includes 154 program cuts or terminations, saving a total of $20 billion. The CDBG program, which is providing $4.7 billion to cities and towns nationally in fiscal 2005, is on that list. The budget...

can we really be proud of this country that kills 1.3 million of its most innocent citizens every year through abortion ?

Fahrenheit 9/11 Debuts in Beverly Hills Cinemocracy There to Cover Event Cinemocracy attended the 10:00 screening of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 last night at the Laemle Music Hall Theater on Wilshire last night. Never mind how we got in. Quickly noticing a friend from high school (we’re everywhere), we sat down just in front of the reserved aisles in the back. A legion of celebrities, fresh from the Laker game and Kobe Bryant’s last second heroics, filled in around us. To satisfy the salacious appetite of Defamer readers, we’ll mention them here. Leonardo DiCaprio, trying hard to look incognito, sat...

Relatives of the Muslim woman whose corpse was desecrated with bacon as it lay in a hospital mortuary are to sue for damages, it emerged today. The family of Habiba Mohammed will seek to hold Hillingdon hospital fully responsible after the failure of the police and hospital authorities to bring anyone to account. Today, 15 months after the incident occurred, the family will return to the hospital, saying they have yet to receive a formal explanation or apology. Up to this point, Mrs Mohammed's relatives - distraught at the act of desecration and mindful of police advice - have declined...