Free Republic

A database company that has showered money on Bill and Hillary Clinton – and is alleged to have aided scam artists – now appears to have close links to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's family as well. The firm InfoUSA, headed by major Clinton backer Vinod Gupta, has placed Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi Jr., on its payroll – even though he has no experience in the company's main business activities, NewsMax has learned. [...] The company is also under fire in a shareholder lawsuit which alleges that Gupta is appropriating company funds for personal use and his political pet projects. Shareholder...

Former strip club owner Michael Galardi bankrolled the plan to bribe San Diego councilmen to repeal a no-touching law at the clubs, but he was not the leader and organizer of the plan and should not be penalized as such, prosecutors said. JERRY RIFE/Union-Tribune Michael Galardi testified in the council bribery trial. In documents filed Thursday with the court, prosecutors took the unusual step of objecting to a sentencing recommendation by the neutral U.S. Probation Office by saying it is too harsh. Prosecutors are better known for objecting when they consider recommendations to be too lenient. The government disputed the...

Latin America: Ecuador's government deserves all the trouble it's got coming now that it's decided expropriation is the way to get rich. But the trouble won't come from the U.S. It's headed their way from Ecuadoreans....The loss of Ecuador's hard-won free-trade pact with the U.S., something it was on the razor's edge of signing, is virtually guaranteed. Ecuador also will probably lose all practical access to U.S. markets when its 2006 Andean trade preferences expire.Two free-trade-pact neighbors, Peru and Colombia, will gladly help themselves to Ecuador's market share in exports of flowers, shrimp and other regional specialties. About 60% of...

Scotland Yard has been called in to investigate Britain's Labour Party after allegations that Prime Minister Tony Blair organised multi-million-dollar loans and then rewarded those lending the money with peerages. For a week, Mr Blair has been caught up in the 'loans for Lordships' scandal after revelations he arranged loans to the Labour Party totalling $34 million. The loans were kept secret and shortly afterwards Mr Blair recommended some of those big party lenders for peerages. Most of the party, including the Chancellor Gordon Brown and senior leaders in the Parliamentary wing, were kept in the dark. Mr Blair has...

Hey, look what I found. Here is a website full of illegal aliens talking about how they can pass liberal laws, get amnesty, get licenses, and taxpayer tuition breaks! Can you believe that these illegal aliens are flagrantly organizing online to push their agenda? I'm going over there to set these people straight. Anyone want to join me? This is the web page: http://www.cosaonline.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2540 This is typical of what they are saying: "Democrats always have our backs. I used to identify with the Republican party, no more. Independent from now on, and I think we would of been better off...

SAN DIEGO ---- When it comes down to dividing the spoils of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed $68 billion infrastructure bond, Sacramento likely will do that by formula rather than on the basis of a long list of specific projects, a San Diego County legislator said Friday. "There will be major resistance to trying to earmark," said Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego. "We're trying to set up a process that's fair and a formula that's fair, not a line item." Ducheny made the comments at a late Friday afternoon gathering of San Diego County's delegation of state lawmakers and elected local...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Former state Sen. Roscoe Dixon is undecided if he will go to trial to fight public corruption charges, his lawyer said in court Tuesday. Outside the courtroom, defense lawyer Walter Bailey refused to say if Dixon is talking with prosecutors about a guilty plea. Dixon is one of five current or former state lawmakers charged with bribery or extortion in a federal investigation called Tennessee Waltz. At a routine hearing for setting court dates, Judge Jon McCalla asked Bailey if Dixon expected to go to trial. "We're not sure yet," Bailey said. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim DiScenza...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A lobbyist plans to plead guilty to seeking bribes for Tennessee lawmakers caught up in a federal sting operation, his lawyer said Wednesday. Charles Love is charged with passing along payoffs from undercover FBI agents to Democratic state Sen. Ward Crutchfield and Republican state Rep. Chris Newton during the investigation code-named "Tennessee Waltz." Barry Myers, a political operative, already has pleaded guilty to handling similar payoffs for Sen. Kathryn Bowers and former Sen. Roscoe Dixon, both Democrats. Former Sen. John Ford, a Democrat, also is charged in the bribery and extortion scandal and is accused of threatening...

Remember George Galloway ? He's the pro-Saddam Member of British Parliament,who was listed on the payoff books of that dictator's murderous regime. Apparently, in spite of all the disclosures,he has been returned to office. The "Iraqi Resistance" network has all the heart-burning details.(Click link.)

Friday, March 25, 2005 10:57 p.m. EST Greer Got Donation From Mike Schiavo's Lawyer Reclaiming America, an organization backed by Rev. D. James Kennedy, reported that a serious conflict of interest may exist for the Fla. State Judge who is ruling on the Terri Schiavo case. The report from Reclaiming America follows: As if the circumstances surrounding Terri Schiavo could not get any more suspicious, the Center for Reclaiming America has uncovered evidence that Pinellas-Pasco County Circuit Judge George W. Greer accepted a campaign contribution from the law firm of Michael Schiavo’s attorney only one day after "Terri’s Law” was...

State Senate leaders condemned the Schwarzenegger administration's decision to halt work on a suspension-span foundation for the new Bay Bridge, saying Wednesday the move could drive up the price for a bridge that is already on a collision course with the $6 billion mark. The stop-work order issued this month could add more than $100 million in penalties to a foundation contract that was supposed to cost $177 million, although administration officials contend the additional penalties would be closer to $30 million. The contract is one facet of a construction project that has been mired in political delays, miscalculated price...

I only have access to a few English language television stations while I am visiting Israel: BBC News and CNN International. Every quarter hour they recap the top stories. Today’s big story (after the non-stop images of a tidal wave taking out resorts frequented by Europeans and few Americans) is the comment of U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland who said that western nations, particularly the United States, were being stingy with their aid packages offered for victims of the disaster. Without putting into context the fact that the United States provides more funding to the UN than any...

Recent history has seen the emergence on the world stage of two transnational groups which have committed, aided and abetted terror worldwide: Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda and Kofi Annan’s United Nations. Because the UN has been cloaked with an aura of legitimacy it should not enjoy, it has been granted or greedily assumed powers it should never possess. The United Nations has been so completely been shaped by the failures of its presiding leader Kofi Annan that this octopus-like amalgamation should be characterized as Annanistan. A requirement of world peace is that Annanistan be not just contained, but that...

<p>Hours after his sexual encounter with a hotel employee in Colorado, Kobe Bryant told investigators that Shaquille O'Neal, his Laker teammate at the time, had paid up to $1 million to women to keep them quiet about "situations like this," according to a police report.</p>

Did Saddam Hussein use any of his ill-gotten billions filched from the United Nations oil-for-food program to help fund Al Qaeda? Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam’s overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda that continued after billions of oil-for-food dollars began pouring into Saddam’s coffers and Usama bin Laden declared his famous war on the U.S. Now, buried in some of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Back when federal lawmakers legally could be paid for speaking to outside groups, John Kerry collected more than $120,000 in fees from interests as diverse as big oil, tobacco, the liquor lobby and unions, records show. Between 1985 and 1990, Kerry's first five years in the Senate from Massachusetts, he pocketed annual amounts slightly under the limits for speaking fees set by Congress. Unlike many colleagues, he donated a speaking fee to charity only once, according to annual financial disclosure reports reviewed by The Associated Press. One of the companies to pay Kerry $1,000 for a speech...

Tuesday, March 23, 2004 Political Jobs Rise 66 Percent Under Governor Associated Press Jobs under direct control of the governor have grown 66 percent since Gov. Bill Richardson took office. At the same time, the number of so-called exempt employees controlled by other elected officials, such as the attorney general, state treasurer, secretary of state and state auditor, has dropped. Last year, Richardson's administration created 110 exempt jobs -- political posts that serve at the will of the Democratic governor or department heads. The administration had 277 exempt jobs by the end of 2003. In December 2002, the last month...

<p>SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - Some 3,000 Orange County teachers have agreed to reduce their salaries by 4 percent over the next two years to help avoid layoffs and larger class sizes in their financially strapped Santa Ana Unified School District.</p>

Posted on Sat, Oct. 11, 2003 FEDS GET MORE CITY DATA TAKE DOCUMENTS ON MINORITY BIZ AGENCY, 2 MORE STREET MINI-COMPUTERS By CHRIS BRENNAN & MARK MCDONALD brennac@phillynews.com THE STREET administration, already tainted by an FBI investigation into suspected public corruption, has surrendered documents from the city's Minority Business Enterprise Council to federal agents, it was learned yesterday. MBEC, which certifies minority ownership of companies that do business with the city, qualified the mayor's brother, Milton Street, for a $1.1 million baggage contract at the airport that is part of a federal grand jury probe. It's not known what connection,...

Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean has been -- and I quote -- "paying `bloggers' or professional Internet surfers to keep the enthusiasm up on his website," according to The Hill, a newspaper which reports on the U.S. Congress. The shocking revelation appeared in an October 8 article titled, "Dem Presidential Rivals Suffer `Growth Pains' Chasing Dean." James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal's online Best of the Web page comments: We're all for free enterprise, but this does point up an advantage of "old media" over bloggers. Professional journalists may have their biases, but those of us who work for...