Free Republic

Authorities were combing New Jersey woods for a man wanted on charges related to the January 6 riot at the Capitol. The search for 46-year-old Gregory Yetman began around 9am on Main Street in Helmetta, as police were trying to serve a warrant. The FBI described him as a white man in his 40s wearing a red jacket and a ball cap. Yetman fled into a wooded area, according to officials, who said he may be armed. Spotswood Public Schools sheltered in place and local streets were closed. Tactical teams could be seen in the backyard of homes. Aerial footage...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is a federal act passed in 2002 with bipartisan congressional support to improve auditing and public disclosure in response to several accounting scandals in the early-2000s. The act was named after the bill sponsors, Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael Oxley, and is also commonly referred to as SOX. Find the statutory text here: Pub.L. 107–204. Background In the early-2000s, accounting scandals at major firms shook financial markets, calling on Congress to increase investor protection.... Provisions: In enacting SOX, one of Congress’s primary aims was to prevent a firm’s management from interfering with an independent financial...

Does anyone know if this law is applicable to Hillary? Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 802 This section is listed within Title VIII of the act (Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability), and pertains to 'Criminal Penalties for Altering Documents'. Summary of Section 802 This section imposes penalties of fines and/or up to 20 years imprisonment for altering, destroying, mutilating, concealing, falsifying records, documents or tangible objects with the intent to obstruct, impede or influence a legal investigation. This section also imposes penalties of fines and/or imprisonment up to 10 years on any accountant who knowingly and wilfully violates the requirements of maintenance...

Next week, a 24-year-old man who knew Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev is scheduled to appear in U.S. Federal Court for sentencing on obstruction of justice charges related to the 2013 attacks. Khairullozhon Matanov, a former taxi driver, did not participate in or have any prior knowledge of the bombings, according to U.S. authorities. What could land him 20 more years in prison — where he has been since his arrest — are the charges that he deleted video files from his computer and cleared his browser history in the days following the attacks. A Grand Jury indictment...

John Yates may have dreamed that one day he would wind up on the cover of Florida Sport Fishing magazine. Instead, he wound up in Florida Federal District Court and now in the Supreme Court of the United States, where he is the latest poster child for overcriminalization. His story would make for a good episode of “South Park” or “The Simpsons” but for one fact: It’s true.

Friendly reminder, America. They think you're stupid: A top White House official blamed a computer crash for the disappearance of emails from embattled former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, echoing the explanation the agency gave Congress last week for the two years' worth of missing subpoenaed correspondence. "I think it's entirely reasonable. And it's fact," incoming White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One Monday. "You've never heard of a computer crashing before?" he asked.

The saddest thing about a guy like Obama, as opposed to say, Bill Clinton, is that if you went forward in time and showed him all his mistakes, showed him an alternate vision-- one that's successful for the country-- he is such an ideologue that he would reject the advice out of hand. But still that doesn’t mean that I won’t share the five things Obama could do to turn the country and the economy around. Some of these are things anyone could do. OK, anyone but Obama: 1) Negotiate with Republicans on Obamacare—This signature piece of legislation is...

<p>I'm officialy endorsing Newt Gingrich for president today. Was going to wait until after Florida, but see no reason to delay. We need Newt to win in South Carolina and Florida to stop any possible momentum building up for the establishment big government, statist, abortionist RINO!!</p>

In an exclusive Human Events interview, the senior Republican on the Senate’s Agriculture Committee's Jobs, Rural Economic Growth and Energy Innovation subcommittee discusses his take on the MF Global bankruptcy scandal. “I have heard from several South Dakotans who were affected by the apparent fraud that occurred in the final days of MF Global before its collapse,” said Sen. John R. Thune (R-S.D.), who worked in the Small Business Administration​ under President Ronald W. Reagan. [Video of Thune's December 13 questioning Corzine is at the bottom of the article.] The firm’s Halloween bankruptcy was followed by the November 4 resignation...

In Tuesday night’s Dartmouth debate, the Republican candidates were generally agreed on the need to repeal Dodd-Frank. That is all well and good, but banking does need regulation. For 70 years a cluster of New Deal laws, the Glass-Steagall laws, successfully prevented American banks from becoming “too big to fail.” Dodd-Frank should be repealed, and an updated Glass-Steagall should replace it.

Economic Reform: Newt Gingrich may have, to the glee of the left, been written off by everybody who's anybody on the right. But he's put forth one of the most laudable economic plans in memory. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page says the former House speaker has a big mouth and timid policy instincts, and that his best move right now would be to shut down his presidential campaign and donate the cash he's raised to House Republicans. Indeed, no one can understand why Gingrich stuck his foot in his mouth and Paul Ryan's hindquarters at the same time, unfairly...

Silicon Valley is teeming with budding startups whose user bases and valuations are skyrocketing. As these companies seek breathing room to grow, they will face a tough decision: stay private, seek out a buyer or go public. Making this complex choice all the more challenging is government uncertainty. Filing for an initial public offering is harder than ever due to the onerous regulations and burdensome laws Washington has handed down over the past decade. Microsoft's $8.5 billion purchase of Skype surprised analysts, many of whom had predicted Skype would seek an IPO or a deal with Facebook or Google. Meanwhile,...

Congress wants to wallop business with even more regulation in the wake of the financial panic, but perhaps the Members should pause on Monday and visit the Supreme Court. The Justices will hear arguments on whether major portions of the last great Congressional overreaction, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, are constitutional.

Next Monday, the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Free Enterprise Fund and Beckstead and Watts v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and United States of America. If the plaintiffs are successful, they could unravel one of the most used and persuasive tools in security technology sales: the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The particulars of the case aren’t really that important, but I’ll recount them quickly. Beckstead was a small accounting firm in Henderson, Nev. (just outside Las Vegas). It was audited by PCOAB in 2004 for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and several deficiencies were...

It took just five weeks after the WorldCom accounting scandal erupted in 2002 for Congress to pass, and President George W. Bush to sign, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. That... --snip-- The House Financial Services Committee this week approved an amendment to the Investor Protection Act of 2009 — a name George Orwell would appreciate — to allow most companies to never comply with the law, and mandating a study to see whether it would be a good idea to exempt additional ones as well. Some veterans of past reform efforts were left sputtering with rage. “That the Democratic Party is the...

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,...

There is blame on both sides of the political aisle for our current economic mess. But the siren call of socializing failing sectors of the economy - whether in banking, housing, health care or in Detroit - leads to a wrong and dangerous course that undermines the renewing and self-correcting nature of market forces. Good intentions from Washington have too often resulted in harmful unintended consequences. Worse, there often is no corrective to harmful government-engineered outcomes because accountability is obfuscated and vested interests become entrenched, thus perpetuating a new dysfunctional status quo. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a reaction to Enron-style accounting...

There was a newsflash this morning on Reuters that "Mark to Market is NOT going to be suspended", allegedly sourced from someone at the SEC. MTM was put into place after ENRON due to the amazing abuses on their balance sheet with asset "valuations" in an attempt to prevent re-runs of that debacle. It has been circumvented to a large part by "Level 3" assets, which are in fact marked to model (same thing as non-MTM eh?) So why the furor? Let's say you are a bank and have $1 billion of some bond issue that was stuffed to the...

The provisions of SOX has changed the behavior of senior corporate executives and accounting professional in the way business is practiced by publicly traded and financed companies. Some companies comply while others try to find ways around it much like politicians try to avoid following legislation they help to create. For some people it gives them a calmer state of mind because they think this legislation will stop some behavior from occurring. Politicians did something to appease the public who may not understand accounting principles and un-savvy investors.

Even as economic losses and unemployment levels mount, America's most effective engine for wealth and job creation is being dangerously -- perhaps fatally -- compromised.