Free Republic

.....Among the reforms we put forward: – The budgets of the committee must be sufficiently large to compensate for the challenge of dealing with agencies whose budgets and actions are highly classified and to recruit the kinds of skilled, professional nonpartisan staff needed to get the job done. – Leaders of both parties must commit to making assignments to this committee different from all others, with national security trumping all other considerations, including partisan politics and seniority. – Expertise and a willingness to put the time on task -- which should be considerably more than any other committee -- should...

It looks as though the USSC or for that matter any of our elected representatives are going to do anything to call into question Barrack Obama's foreign national status. So, it's up to us (American Citizens) to apply the pressure to get them to take notice. We can BOYCOTT any spending on luxury/non-essential items. This will get the governments attention. Pay your bills but don't spend your tax refund, don't spend your stimulus payment. Call in to local radio talk shows.......you know the drill. If it's good enough for Jesse Jackson, then it is certainly good enough for us in...

America is falling apart. Literally. From highways to bridges to plumbing to telecommunications, we are not keeping up with our national maintenance chores. Our highways are crumbling. Just maintaining them as they are would cost up to 40 cents a gallon more in gas taxes over the next five years. And that would do nothing to meet the increased demand; highway travel and hours stuck in traffic have both grown by about 25 percent in the past 10 years. Remember that bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last summer? More than one-quarter of U.S. bridges -- including one-quarter of Oregon's --...

Ray Kopp enjoyed tooling around in a hydrogen- powered Honda prototype vehicle so much that, for a moment, he pictured driving one home. Then Mr. Kopp, an economist at Resources for the Future, remembered the car's price tag - $1.5 million - and his hopes were dashed. Therein lies the core of America's energy problem. Short of radically altering America's driving habits, the United States cannot achieve energy independence without spending billions of dollars on new initiatives. And no political consensus exists to spend those sums despite decades of promises to cut oil imports. But new plans are emerging that...