Free Republic

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said yesterday that it paid Niger Delta militants $6 million in order to allow it repair the Chanomi Crude oil pipeline in Delta State. The Corporation also said that a total of $77.031 billion or N3.930 trillion was generated between January 2003 and March 2008. Out of the amount, it said, the Corporation remitted the sum of $56,222 billion or N3.930 trillion to the federation account .

Former Vice President Al Gore (D) offered the opinion that global warming, not terrorism, is the biggest threat to America. The former VP said that it is imperative that the nation go “green” before it is too late. “Terrorists may kill thousands,” Gore said. “Warming will kill billions and destroy civilization. If the government doesn’t take immediate action, the survival of the United States as we know it is at risk.” Step one of Gore’s proposed plan of action calls for the federal government to establish a “carbon-offsets” reserve. The reserve, modeled on the “Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” would have the...

Are we seeing another speculative bubble or are crude oil prices merely responding to fundamental changes in worldwide demand? Are U.S. crude oil prices likely to drop sharply, say back to the levels of 2003, when the average was about $31 per barrel, or will worldwide demand keep prices at or near record levels?

The Better Business Bureau has issued a warning about an internet scam that is trying to take advantage of the identity of slain Michigan soldier Byron Fouty. It works through the online classified Craig's list. An add appearing on the website says someone claiming to be Fouty's father Mick is trying to sell his son's BMW M6 for $2,800. The car has a Kelley Blue Book value of $80,000. The add reads: "this car will be my gift, my gift in the memory of my son. money not a problem, all I want is to find the right person. person...

Banks owed money by convicted boy band mogul Lou Pearlman will be the last of his creditors to get anything if he pays back the $300 million he swindled out of investors and financial institutions, a U.S. judge ruled on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp said after ordering Pearlman to pay the full $300 million in restitution to his victims that small-time investors would be given preference as creditors. Ten banks who lent him money, including American Bank of St. Paul, Bank of America and First International Bank and Trust, "are going to be paid after," Sharp said....

A French couple has been charged and arrested for running an immigration scam that cheated more than 100 people of thousands of dollars. 4 July 2008 LOS ANGELES - A French woman was arrested in California early Thursday on charges of running an immigration scam with her husband that netted thousands of dollars, US justice officials said. Deborah Sion, 25, was detained without incident by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, one day after charges were filed against her and her husband, who is in custody in France in an unrelated fraud scheme. Sion was due to appear in a...

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears. The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos,...

If the trial lawyers say it, then it must be true: America is not sue crazy. If so, what explains the more than 3,000 "victims" of 9/11 who are trying to snag a piece of the taxpayers' $1 billion insurance fund despite having no more than nominal injuries? About 10,800 people have signed onto a lawsuit claiming they were hurt when the Twin Towers in New York City fell. Half of the claimants are city workers, including police and firefighters. But the law firm hired by the city to separate the valid claims from the fraudulent ones has told U.S....

Photo courtesy of The Logan Daily News Hocking County resident Jason Gadrim stands beside his water-hybrid car, a 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis. LOGAN - Want better gas mileage? The answer to one Hocking County resident's gas woes has turned out to be as simple as H2O and cheaper than most people's monthly gas budget. Water fuel cells have been used to power vehicles for years; and the supplies needed for the conversion to a water-hybrid vehicle are only about $200. Hocking County resident Jason Gadrim is one of a few local people who have converted their vehicles to run partly...

I got a letter from Kofi Anan (sic)! I'm so excited! And I just can't hide it! Kofi Anan (sic) really loves me. And he wants me to be rich!DATE:26-2-2008 Attention: How are you today? Hope all is well with you and family?,You may not understand why this mail came to you. We have been having a meeting for the passed 7 months which ended 2 days ago with the then secretary to the UNITED NATIONS. This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world, the UNITED NATIONA have agreed to compensate...

Character from climatescience.com on Fox now. Warns that the North Pole may (50-50 chance) COMPLETELY MELT this summer because of "global warning." This will, he says, create an ever accelerating melt of the Arctic that will be unstoppable. This sounds like good news for shipping and oil drilling to me.

A Washington woman was sentenced on Wednesday to two years in prison and five years of supervised release for her role in an Internet counterfeit check scheme. Edna Fiedler pleaded guilty in March to attempting to defraud U.S. citizens in a scheme known as a Nigerian check scam. Fiedler helped her accomplices in Nigeria send fake checks to people who had agreed to cash the checks on behalf of the sender, keeping some of the proceeds and sending the rest back. The Nigerians found people willing to cash the fake checks via e-mail. They would send their names as well...

Liberals dismiss studies that show a link between abortion and breast cancer, claiming they are biased because the people promoting the studies are "anti-choice." For the same reason, no one should believe the Democrats' "energy" policies. Democrats couldn't care less about high gas prices. The consistent policy of the Democratic Party, going back at least to Jimmy Carter, has been to jack up gas prices so we can all start pedaling around on tricycles. Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26-cent tax on gas. John Kerry...

One of the biggest factors in high oil prices, according to many experts, is that investors, such as hedge funds and investment bankers, can use loopholes in commodities law to manipulate the market and drive crude oil, heating oil, gasoline and diesel fuel prices to new heights. Congress is aware of the problem and lawmakers recently passed legislation to address the “Enron Loophole,” one of the major loopholes that opens the door to abusive trading practices, but the law didn’t go far enough.

Larry Kudlow show on WABC just had John Mcintire of Reel Politics and Jerry Boyer on discussing energy. Here are a few quotes: Kudlow--"The old "green" talking points used by the dems don't work at $4.00 per gallon." One of the guests: "What the dems are trying is social engineering, craziness...." "It's in our DNA to want energy security/independence" Jerry Boyer--You have to do everything(wind, solar, drillng etc. nukes) at$4.00 per gallon...

My wife just handed me a letter she recieved from Amscot Shoppers World informing her that she was choosen as a secret shopper. Enclosed with the congradulatory letter was a cashier's check for $3,300 dollars. She handed me the letter and check and asked me to look at it and tell her what I think. Of course we are both sceptical of stuff like this so I read the letter. The letter gives instructions as to what to do with the money in the enclosed check. $500 for yourself, spend $100 at Walmart, 100 at Sears, 50 for either McD's...

One fire ebbs but another is being kindled in the great global-warming debate. For those determined to save the planet, it's all about taking action. Posthaste. In other words: Do now, think later. As the push for the Senate's cap-and-trade Climate Security Act fizzled, environmentalists and the European Union were trying to shake things up at talks in Germany led by the United Nations. Attendees rallied behind a call for action on global warming, which the E.U.'s lead climate negotiator called "a huge urgency." To his credit, U.S. climate negotiator Harlan Watson stood his ground: "We do not see negotiating...

Undercover agents rooted out a handful of people in San Bernardino County this week suspected of scamming convenience- store customers out of lottery winnings, authorities said. Over the past few months, California Lottery agents took winning scratchers and turned them in to convenience stores throughout the county. Two store owners and two clerks claimed the scratchers were not winners and later tried to cash the tickets themselves, authorities said. Those arrested Wednesday on suspicion of grand theft were: Wasel Moussa, owner of Jay's Market at 1855 N. Baker St. in Ontario; Sukhbir Singh, clerk at Redlands Gas and Food Market...

120W fuel cell system Internal portion of the 120W fuel cell stack 300W generation system mounted in a luggage room (left) Genepax Co Ltd explained the technologies used in its new fuel cell system "Water Energy System (WES)," which uses water as a fuel and does not emit CO2. The system can generate power just by supplying water and air to the fuel and air electrodes, respectively, the company said at the press conference, which took place June 12, 2008, at the Osaka Assembly Hall. The basic power generation mechanism of the new system is similar to that of...

Drivers Seek Mileage Boost From Hydrogen, Oxygen BubblesBy TIM KNAUSS   Steve Kushnir's 'Hydrogen Hurricane' is an equipment package he sells that uses a car's electricity to make hydrogen and improve the way the engine burns gas. (Photo By Frank Ordonez)     [Liverpool, NY] -- Stephen Kushnir's 7-year-old Chevrolet Prizm used to get 35 miles per gallon on the highway. Not bad, but Kushnir thought he could do better. A month ago Kushnir, a middle school technology teacher in Liverpool, N.Y., popped the hood and installed a gas-saving gizmo he had purchased over the Internet. He got it from...

Location: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Date: June 12, 2008 Time: 7:00pm Building: Old Depot Station Building Fair Tax Presenter: Thad Viers

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices fell Tuesday, giving up an earlier advance as the dollar held its gains against the euro and the Energy Department slashed its oil consumption projections. Retail gasoline prices rose to a new record over $4.04 a gallon.

Last week Democrats tried to kill the economy in the name of solving a problem that doesn't exist. Republicans should hang this bill around their necks in every district where an incumbent voted for the woefully misnamed and deservedly DOA Climate Security Act, technically S.3036. Asking Americans to pony up even more at the pump with already record gasoline prices creeping higher almost daily seems offensive enough. But compelling such burden under the guise of moral imperative to curb global warming at a time when the planet is actually cooling rings downright obscene. And thatÂ’s why last weekÂ’s cavalcade of...

THE home of grand opera will soon be staging a different kind of tragedy. La Scala in Milan has commissioned a musical version of An Inconvenient Truth, the apocalyptic eco-documentary presented by Al Gore, the former American vice-president. Gore will be replaced on stage by a cast of tenors and at least one soprano as the story of man-made climate change is told. The makers believe this format will be more suited to the 230-year-old opera house than the graph-heavy lectures given by Gore in his Oscar-winning 2006 film. Gore, 60, will pick up a writing credit for his part...

The deniers of global warming are about to latch on to a new argument. The world is cooling. And they are right - well, slightly. Globally, this year is likely to be the coolest for some time - back to the average of the early 90s, according to some unpublished forecasts. This is no refutation of man-made global warming. It is the inevitable consequence of one of nature's climatic cycles. The La Niña, the cold phase of the El Niño cycle in the Pacific, has sent average global temperatures plunging this year. And there is more. Longer term climate cycles...

Capture your car's CO2 and use it to re-power your vehicle - and your home A new technology that can capture the carbon emissions from your car is about to be unveiled to the world for the first time. Origo Industries has developed a system that captures the CO2 from your vehicle’s engine and then allows you to turn these emissions into fuel at your own home to re-power your car. The same fuel could also be used to power your house. The system uses a revolutionary new approach where CO2 is regenerated through algae in a home unit, allowing...

Oil prices fell closer to $122 a barrel Thursday as investors become more wary of falling global demand and a strengthening dollar, despite an explosion at a Kuwaiti petrochemical plant. By early afternoon in Europe, light, sweet crude for July delivery fell 10 cents to $122.20 per barrel in electronic trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract had risen rose as high as $123.25 earlier in the session. On Wednesday, it fell $2.01 during the floor session to close at $122.30, its lowest settlement since May 6. Changing expectations over global demand were seen as the main cause...

Casselberry, FL Central Library215 N. Oxford Road Casselberry, FL 32707 Monthly Meeting for Casselberry and surrounding areas is every second Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Central Library. There will be a presentation of the FairTax followed by a Q&A and a discussion of recent volunteer activities. For more information, please contact Larry Walters at 407-949-2959. Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008Time: 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM Repeat on the second Tuesday of the month until 07/20/2008 This event does not require an RSVP. Registered users can request event reminders. Register

Greensboro, NCFairTax Meeting - Greensboro, NC Benjamin Branch Library 1530 Benjamin Parkway Greensboro, NC 27408 (336) 373-7540 Our FairTax meetings are scheduled for the first Tuesday evening of each month at the Benjamin Library on Benjamin Parkway across from Nathaniel Greene School. I hope everyone will make plans to attend. We have a small, but committed core group, so let's brainstorm and get some ideas flowing. Come alone or bring a friend and let's get some action going. Thanks and looking forward to seeing you. Bill bbtidwell@yahoo.com336-656-3992 Date: Thursday, June 5, 2008Time: 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM Repeat on the...

Double checking my spam box before deleting it today I found out I've been dead since precisely December 30th, 2003...and my wife too. And the daughter we never knew we had. Apparently I was never knew I was well off either, since I left "...an estate of 10.2 million Us Dollars". This may explain why I've been feeling so poorly lately.

The global warming debate arrives in the Senate next week, and it's about time. Finally, the Members will have to vote on something real, as opposed to their buck-passing to courts and regulators, and their easy trashing of President Bush. The vehicle is a bill that principal sponsors Joe Lieberman and John Warner are calling "landmark legislation." They're too modest. Warner-Lieberman would impose the most extensive government reorganization of the American economy since the 1930s. Thankfully, the American system makes it hard for colossal tax and regulatory burdens to foxtrot into law without scrutiny. So we hope our politicians will...

The afterglow didn’t last long, however. The proverbial ‘red flags’ soon began to appear. The volume of complaints from authors steadily grew; the production backlog became the elephant in the room, and uncertainty over company funds became fodder for water cooler chat. Then on August 31, 1997, an event occurred that signaled the beginning of the end.....

The interview itself, however, was quite bizarre. A pleasant if not docile woman, Ms. Hillman seemed not to know how to conduct an interview. She seemed unprepared and unsure of what to do from one moment to the next. In short order, I became the one keeping the conversation afloat, even offering suggestions as to what questions should be asked. Indeed, an interesting first impression. The next day I received a call back from Faye. It took me a moment to realize who she was on voicemail when she referred to herself as ‘Lorraine Phelan’ – Don’s wife. Odd, I...

Videographer Tom Morgan placed an ad on Craigslist to drum up business - but ended up getting mugged and losing his livelihood. Morgan, 22, was robbed at gunpoint of his wallet and $4,000 worth of equipment after showing up to what he thought would be a $200 job shooting a two-hour bachelorette party in Brooklyn. "The only thing I saw was the gun," he said. "I had never been close to a gun before." Business had been picking up for theVassar College graduate, who has been freelancing full time since December. He had two jobs booked for the weekend when...

Kennesaw, GA Georgia's 6th & 11th Districts Monthly Meeting is every third Saturday at 9 a.m The meeting takes place at the Golden Corral on Barrett Pkwy in Kennesaw.] Date: Saturday, May 17, 2008 Time: 9:00 AM Repeat on the third Saturday of the month until 07/20/2008 This event does not require an RSVP. Registered users can request event reminders. Register

...In the city of Edmonton, Alberta in the early 1990’s, there was one such man. His name was Donald Phelan, and what he built – and subsequently destroyed – left a long trail of broken promises and shattered dreams.....

Unless some other candidate enters the race I will be voting for you in November. However, that is only because neither of the likely Democratic candidates has the experience to be the nation's Chief Executive Officer. Your acceptance of the nonsense about purported "global warming", which Meteorologist John Coleman calls "the greatest scam in history", indicates a level of gullibility that is undesirable in presidents. I can understand how American leaders would believe that Saddam Hussein still had significant amounts of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Hussein had used such weapons in the past and there was no evidence he had...

Congress seems ready to spend billions on a new "Manhattan Project" for green energy, or at least the political class really, really likes talking about one. But maybe we should look at what our energy subsidy dollars are buying now. Some clarity comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent federal agency that tried to quantify government spending on energy production in 2007. The agency reports that the total taxpayer bill was $16.6 billion in direct subsidies, tax breaks, loan guarantees and the like. That's double in real dollars from eight years earlier, as you'd expect given all...

After three years of clandestine development, a Georgia company is now going public with a simple, natural way to convert anything that grows out of the Earth into oil.

Dear Sir First we must solicit your confidence in this issue. This is by virtue as being utterly confidential and "top secret". We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family's political careers since our country has been frustrating us. We are top officials of the United States Senate Government...

I received one of those scam emails today, this one was different. It claimed to be from Bank of America concerning to many login attempts on my online account and that I was to go to their link and update my security info, the big problem is I don't have a Bank of America account and this email is remarkably similar to ones I have received about e-bay accounts etc. This is a scam intended to rip people off after obtaining secure info from the customer dumb enough to actually go to the link. I need to report this and...

A former staffer in a Bronx City Council member's office is under investigation by the Bronx District Attorney for allegedly running a housing scam that bilked more than a dozen constituents out of thousands of dollars, according to sources familiar with the case. The woman reportedly charged up to $2,000 with the promise that she could secure federally subsidized Section 8 housing. Under the federal program, the government covers up to 75% of rent for persons who can prove they qualify for the subsidy. Sources said that Councilwoman Maria Baez hired the staffer about two years ago, shortly after the...

Al Gore reinvents the medieval racket of selling indulgences (pardons for one's sins, worth hundreds of years of penance in an invisible Purgatory). With due credit to Geoffrey Chaucer for the original: Now, good men, Earth forgive you each trespass, And keep you from the sin of greenhouse gas. My carbon offsets cure and will suffice, So that it gains me gold, or silver brings, Or else, I care not- brooches, spoons or rings. You must embrace fully Al Gore’s line of bull, While o’er your eyes we will pull the wool! An offset certificate I’ll give you, anon, And...

The Clinton campaign just blasted out the following email: Hillary Clinton's campaign is on track to raise $10 million online in the 24 hours since she was declared the winner of the Pennsylvania primary last night. "Senator Clinton's game-changing victory last night has turned the tide and resulted in an historic outpouring of grassroots support," said Campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe. "Just like Hillary, our supporters have met every challenge and come through each time. Thanks to them, we will have the resources needed to compete and win as we move ahead to the next contests." In addition, the campaign has...

Handsome, intelligent, charismatic, blessed with a golden tongue, and irresistible to his besotted followers, Elmer Gantry – the title character of Sinclair Lewis’s 1927 novel – inspired his supporters to swoon, indeed faint, at his seductive oratory. He told them they were “sinners,” then gave them “hope” that they could “change” if they would only follow his path to redemption. As it turned out, Gantry was a fraud – a sinner himself – ultimately exposed and discredited. “That’s not fair!” liberals protest. “Gantry was fictional.” True, but he is a character that resonated with the reading public because he was...

Ah, spring! I know it’s here when swarms of red-breasted robins descend on my Virginia farm, rooting for every worm that survived winter. No one gains much political traction writing about global warming’s threat to turkey buzzards, but robins are cute, so they’re more often the subject of climate change speculation. Global warming is not pushing the robin to extinction. Au contraire: It’s expanding the robin’s range northward, into places where it's never been seen. Robins are venturing so far north that they’ve even been sighted in the Inuit territory of northern Canada, where, Sen. John McCain tells us, there...

OXFORD, England -- Marc Stuart and Pedro Moura Costa have become multimillionaires in a booming new market designed to fight global warming. Now, their empire is under attack. Their firm, United Kingdom-based EcoSecurities Ltd., helps companies in the industrialized world meet their obligations to pollute less by selling them "credits" that fund clean-air projects in poorer nations. Last year, some $9.4 billion in these credits were traded, up from almost none four years earlier. The market's anything-goes early days now appear to be ending. United Nations officials who regulate the trade have started questioning scores of proposed projects, from hydroelectric...

BELVIDERE, N.J. - The former pastor of a Washington Borough church has pleaded guilty to running a church raffle scam. The Rev. Robert Ascolese pleaded guilty Friday to three counts of theft, even as he maintained that he never knew he was doing anything wrong running a church raffle with fake "winners." The $100-a-ticket raffles at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church were from 2001 to 2005, and were to raise $200,000 a year for the church, with an annual $200,000 going to winners. But nearly $1 million of what was supposed to be winnings were funneled back into the struggling...

While conservatives inside the administration are unhappy about intervention in markets, President Bush seems content with how the Federal Reserve and Treasury cooked up the deal with erstwhile colleagues in Wall Street. There is little conservative or Republican about the administration's approach to the fiscal crisis, as reflected in Room G-50. Uncritical Democratic senators were not even inquisitive. The closest a senator came to asking who set the price for JPMorgan was this apologetic question from Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd: "There's just reports -- I want to share them with you -- that JPMorgan Chase would make an offer of...

Direct Buy Direct Lie Frauds Liars Biggest scam ever ripoff Shrewsbury Massachusetts "S" thompson, Connecticut: We fell into the trap after the initial visit tour. We should have known better because of the high pressure sales tactics but unfortunately we joined DIRECT LIE. We were builing a new home and were told that we would save tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah, right. This from someone who has no clue about building. It was not until after the first two months, we discovered that they could not beat our price quotes on windows, shingles, doors, siding and most importantly the...