Free Republic

Two in a series: Hidden in the Senate's health-care bill are huge incentives for corporate America to stop covering their workers. If that happens, the deficit could skyrocket. Now that the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the health-care bill proposed by Sen. Max Baucus will shrink the federal deficit over the next ten years, its champions are heralding the legislation as a model of fiscal responsibility. But the CBO's comforting analysis relies on a big assumption that's highly questionable, an assumption that virtually no one on either side of the debate -- politicians, pundits, even economists -- is even...

LANGLEY, Va. - Part of the new Dan Brown novel is based on a local mystery. In the introduction to his new best-selling novel, "The Lost Symbol," author Dan Brown lists the following: "In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today, its cryptic text includes references to an unknown location underground. The document ... includes the phrase, 'It's buried out there somewhere.'" Brown says the 20-year-old document contains the answers to a 20-year-old mystery. WTOP's National Security Correspondent J.J. Green investigated the claim, and found out it's...

The truth of what really happened on July 18, 1969, on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts will never be known. What is known is that at the end of the evening, Mary Jo Kopechne was found dead in a car that Edward (Ted) Kennedy had been driving. Was her death the result of a tragic accident or due to gross negligence on the part of Ted Kennedy? Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne attended the same party on the evening of July 18, 1969. Kennedy left the party with Kopechne as a passenger in his car and accidentally drove off the road...

Ex-Wives Eagerly Await UBS Tax-Cheater List By Stephen Gandel It's not just the U.S. government that wants to get its hands on the list of Americans who hold secretive Swiss bank accounts. Ex-wives, creditors and former business partners are also salivating over the idea that a settlement between the U.S., the Swiss government and a Swiss bank may lead to the public disclosure of as many as 4,450 U.S. individuals that used the foreign bank accounts to hide money. Prominent New York City divorce lawyer Raoul Lionel Felder says he is already getting calls from clients who want to know...

The Federal Reserve Board, despite being ordered to disclose to whom it awarded roughly $2 trillion in discount "stimulus" loans, is fighting to keep the information under wraps as a protected "trade secret." Earlier this week, a U.S. district court judge rejected the Fed's argument that the names of borrowers are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act and ordered the board to release the information by Monday, Aug. 31. The Fed's board of governors, however, has now filed a motion asking the judge to delay enforcement of the order, seeking time to appeal and arguing that disclosing...

Tonight’s Poll Would you trust your senator or congressman with a secret? Yes 5% 205 No 95% 4139 Total Votes: 4344 This is not a scientific poll ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Your America Below you will find the information you need to contact the leaders of Your America: To find your Senator, click here. To find your Representative, click here. Or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Email: sf.nancy@mail.house.gov Phone: 202-225-4965 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Email: senator_reid@reid.senate.gov Phone: 202-224-3542 President Barack Obama To Email President Obama, click here. Phone: 202-456-1111 Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano Mail: Department of...

WASHINGTON -- A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said CIA Director Panetta, above, told lawmakers Vice President Cheney ordered information be withheld from Congress. . The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn't clear, and the CIA won't comment on its substance. According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001...

No president in modern times has managed to conceal so much of his biography as this one. The journalists assigned to the Obama beat seem to have lost their traditional avidity for digging out the missing details. We do not have a medical report, or a college transcript from Columbia, or a notion of how well he did in Harvard Law School. These things are not automatically significant, but they can be. Nobody thinks the president has some basic medical problem. He shows every sign of being in excellent physical condition. But so did John F. Kennedy, who turned out...

When liberals feel as much empathy for our own troops as they feel for our enemies, I will pay attention to what they say. When they show as much concern for Daniel Pearl as for the man who beheaded him, I will listen. When they are as distressed by the 3000 innocent people who died horribly on 9/11 as by the discomfort of 28 terrorists who are still alive, I will hear them. Until then, they should shut up. Listening to them is painful − in fact, it might be “torture.”

Health insurance can seem impenetrable. For starters, have you tried reading your policy? It's dense. With different regulations in each state, countless varieties of policies and elusive pricing practices, health insurance can seem downright confounding. And wrapped up in all this are myths about health insurance that were perhaps once true -- or never were. Here's a look at seven things you probably didn't know about your health insurer.

Last week, the computer hacker Gary McKinnon was given a Thursday deadline to apply for an oral judicial review, which is the last legal challenge that could stop his extradition to the United States. As he runs out of time and chances, it seems to me and others from across the political spectrum that we should look again at the fundamental case for extradition. There are strong arguments for allowing McKinnon to stand trial in the UK and serve any sentence in this country. The London-based hacker, who is alleged to have broken through Pentagon and Nasa security, has recently...

Belgrade, 1 August (AKI) – Bosnia's wartime president Radovan Karadzic may testify "embarrassing" secrets to the UN's Hague war crimes tribunal, a former senior international representative, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, said on Friday . "I believe Karadzic knows certain things which in any case aren’t pleasant for the international community,” Christian Schwarz-Schilling (photo) told German radio on Friday. “I suppose that he, having been involved in the events, will have to say some new things which were unknown until now,” Schwartz-Schilling said. Schwarz-Schilling, a German diplomat, was appointed High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and as the European Union's special representative in...

Both Presidential contenders have released a list of their top Texan Contributors on their respective websites... While McCain released the donors occupation and employer, Barry withheld that information. Granted that information is public record that can be located on the Federal Election Commission website, my question is why did the Obama campaign go out of there way to conceal that information on the site? Because honestly ladies and gentleman, would could Barry possibly have to hide? ::coughs:: Special Interests::coughs::

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new book on the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon alleges that White House counsel John Dean ordered the infamous Watergate break-in in 1972, a charge Dean strongly rejected. James Rosen, a Fox News Channel correspondent in Washington, made the charge based on interviews and an exhaustive review of documents for "The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate." Dean called Rosen's assertion "pathetic." Rosen quoted from a 1990 interview from another central Watergate figure, Jeb Magruder, that "the first plan that we got had been initiated by Dean." To help build his...

My hobby is Secrets. I am fascinated by secrets — the bigger the secret, the better I like it. Over the years, I have spent many hours and lots of money digging through mildewed stacks of forgotten government documents in libraries, reading reams of self-published zines and newsletters and pamphlets by crazy, semi-literate po' buckra, and going from link to link on the Tubes trying to glean tidbits of verifiable (or at the very least entertaining) information from various websites, all in an effort to discover the hidden truths that I crave. To this end I spent several years doing...

US military secrets sent to Suffolk tourist site By Tom Chivers Last Updated: 5:00pm GMT 29/02/2008 A tourist information website promoting a small Suffolk town has had to shut down after it received a barrage of thousands of classified US military emails. USAF F16s from Mildenhall. Thousands of sensitive emails have been misdirected to a tourist website Sensitive information including future flight paths for US Presidential aircraft Air Force One, military strategy and passwords swamped Gary Sinnott's email inbox after he established www.mildenhall.com, a site promoting the tiny town of Mildenhall where he lives, the Anglia Press Agency reports. As...

LONDON, Dec 19 (Reuters Life!) - Italian scientists have cracked open the genetic make-up of Pinot Noir, responsible for the great red wines of Burgundy, in a breakthrough that may lead to hardier vines and cheaper fine wines. The researchers said on Wednesday they had found more than 2 million genetic variants within the Pinot Noir grape, providing winegrowers with a "treasure trove" in the hunt for new strains. Pinot Noir, made famous by the 2004 film Sideways, has been dubbed the "heartbreak grape" because it is so difficult to grow and susceptible to disease. Understanding what makes up the...

Source: North Dakota State University Date: September 10, 2007 Bog Mummies Yield Secrets Science Daily — Human remains yield secrets. Researchers, including Dr. Heather Gill-Robinson, assistant professor of anthropology at North Dakota State University, are now probing the secrets of 'bog mummies' some dating back 2000 years, preserved from the Iron Age with amazing detail in peat bogs of Europe. Dr. Heather Gill-Robinson of North Dakota State University, Fargo, studies several peat bog mummies in her research, including Damendorf man, discovered near Damendorf, Germany in 1900. Using CT scanning and other technology, Dr. Gill-Robinson has identified five lower vertebrae, a...

Maintenance Man Charged With Stealing Nuclear Secrets Posted: 11:31 AM Jul 19, 2007 Maintenance Man Charged With Stealing Nuclear Secrets Knoxville (WVLT) - A former Bechtel Jacobs maintenance man at an Energy Department facility in Oak Ridge has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of stealing materials used for uranium enrichment and then trying to sell it to a foreign power. Sixty-five-year-old Roy Lynn Oakley is accused of trying to sell national secrets from the East Tennessee Technology Park. But he is home with his wife after bonding out minutes after his arraignment and only hours after turning himself in...

Shades of Valerie Plame, Guatanamo and Abu Ghriab somebody’s telling all the secrets and putting lives in jeopardy and it ain’t Karl Rove or Dick Cheney either!