Free Republic

FEBRUARY 17, 2017 WEEK THREE We are starting to have a few bills working their way through the system, but at this point nothing of any major impact. There are, however, the beginnings of discussions in some subject areas that will have significant implications. Having said that, the real issues taking front stage are the budget and the projected deficit. From that perspective I took a look at the bills that have been assigned to the House Revenue committee to see how many tax increase measures were there. I counted 38, but I have since been told there are now...

The United States is much better off without Michael Flynn serving as national security adviser. But no one should be cheering the way he was brought down. The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America's democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn's ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn't the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function. Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around. Far too many Trump critics appear not...

President Barack Obama does not understand the power of the presidency, the news media do not ask enough tough questions of the political candidates, and, as a result, American voters really do not know enough about the people running for high public office. Those were among the observations of Washington Post associate editor and author Bob Woodward in a sobering, at times humorous, and thought-provoking address as keynote speaker for the Aurora Economic Development Council annual A list dinner, held Thursday night at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum.

Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said Sunday a huge “secret government” and a government on “automatic pilot” has led to many of the concerns now making headlines. “They need to review this secret world,” he said of the Obama administration on “Face the Nation" on CBS. “You get to a point where it’s what do you worry about? Secret government.” National Security Agency spying both domestic and abroad and the disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act are the results, he said. “We have an incredibly powerful government that gets on automatic pilot,” he said. People aren’t checking all of...

Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

The Bush administration recently announced it will allow select members of Congress to read Justice Department legal opinions about the CIA's controversial detainee interrogation program that have been hidden from Congress until now. But as the administration allows a glimpse of this secret law -- and it is law -- we are left wondering what other laws it is still keeping under lock and key. It's a given in our democracy that laws should be a matter of public record. But the law in this country includes not just statutes and regulations, which the public can readily access. It also...

This is Part II of a three-part series. Read Part I, North American Union: Deconstructing the U.S. By 2010, the integration of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. will be almost complete. Congress and the media will not know what happened. Americans will be as clueless as ever; thanks to the complicity of the brain-dead media, the triumph of a bloodless bureaucratic elitist coup will become a reality, or close to it. Jerome Corsi writes in Human Events: "Without announcing his intentions to do so, President Bush has decided to support the creation of a North American Union through a process...

By now many Texans have heard about the proposed “NAFTA Superhighway,” which is also referred to as the trans-Texas corridor. What you may not know is the extent to which plans for such a superhighway are moving forward without congressional oversight or media attention. This superhighway would connect Mexico, the United States, and Canada, cutting a wide swath through the middle of Texas and up through Kansas City. Offshoots would connect the main artery to the west coast, Florida, and northeast. Proponents envision a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines,...

To: National Desk Contact: Doug Heller (310) 392-0522 ext. 309 SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 30 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Governor Schwarzenegger's California Performance Review, or CPR, secretly developed a reportedly 2,500 plus page report recommending radical changes to California government. According to information received by the Foundation for Taxpayer Consumer Rights (FTCR), the governor required participants in the CPR to sign confidentiality agreements that barred them from talking about the proceedings or aspects of the ongoing review. The California Performance Review was formed by executive order S-5- 04 in February. FTCR is issuing a public records act request to the Governor,...