Free Republic

About the best that can be said about the Republican attacks on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital is that President Obama is going to do the same thing eventually, so GOP primary voters might as well know what's coming. Yet that hardly absolves Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and others for their crude and damaging caricatures of modern business and capitalism.

Dear FReepers, Sun tsu cautioned smart leaders to 'keep your friends close, your enemies even closer' Besides, it's always fun to know what's happening inside your opponent's camp. For that reason, I volunteer time and contribute money to MoveOn, the community Presidential 'brownshirts' and true believers. So, after almost 500 daily emails from MoveOn, I was quite taken a back and concerned by their latest e-mail, parts of which I've posted below.

History often repeats itself, and if you have lived two lives, as I have done, you may have a chance of seeing that reenactment with your own eyes. “Stealing from capitalists is our duty,” I repeatedly heard Nikita Khrushchev shout. “Don’t raise your eyebrows, Comrades. I intentionally used the word steal. We have a historical duty to steal from capitalists.” “Stealing from capitalists is our historical duty,” I also often heard my former boss, Nicolae Ceausescu, shout as he banged the table with true Khrushchev-like fervor. Both leaders rose to lead their countries without ever having earned a single penny...

BECKLEY, W.Va. -- A West Virginia woman is accused of stealing a hearse containing a body from a funeral home. Beckley police tell media outlets the hearse's driver left the vehicle's door ajar and the engine running outside a local funeral Tuesday while he went to unlock the door to the building. Angela Dehart, of Beaver, is accused of taking the hearse and driving it home. Police found the hearse and the body a couple hours later. Police say the 23-year-old Dehart told investigators she and another person had been in the area in another vehicle. She got out of...

Link only - 'Bernie Madoff of campaign finance' charged with stealing from Democrats

Chicago - Here's a Chicago Public Schools math problem: a system hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, inner-city schools so strapped teachers are digging into their own pockets for supplies, yet on the Gold Coast there's a principal spending thousands to trot around the globe in luxury. Does that add up? Ogden International School Principal Kenneth Staral, who makes $142,000 per year, created an international studies program at the neighborhood school several years ago to teach students about countries, cultures and issues around the world. That program has since expanded to a high school on the Near West Side....

For the second time in a week, a flash mob robbed a convenience store in our area. Could it be a new trend in the Washington region? In the latest incident, 10 women stormed the Shop Express convenience store along Benning Road in northeast Washington at about 3:15 a.m. Thursday. They loaded up on food, drinks and snacks at different parts of the store. Some of the women were carrying bags to hold some of the items. Then they all rushed out of the store at the same time without paying. Employees said that each of the women stole about...

Obama to raise 10-year deficit to $9 trillion By Jeff Mason, WASHINGTON, Fri Aug 21, 2009 6:50pm EDT (Reuters) - The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to approximately $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday. The higher deficit figure, based on updated economic data, brings the White House budget office into line with outside estimates and gives further fuel to President Barack Obama's opponents, who say his spending plans are too expensive in light of budget shortfalls. The White House took heat for sticking with...

The treasurer of the AFSCME union at the state Department of Labor and Industry drained the union's bank account of more than $13,000, a criminal complaint filed in Ramsey County District Court alleges. Carrie Christine Rohling, 42, of White Bear Lake told fellow employees in Local 2672 that she had a drinking and prescription drug problem. She was charged with two counts of felony theft. "I know it was wrong for me to do that," Rohling said Friday when contacted by a reporter. "I was still thinking I could pay these guys back before they would even notice it was...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused Western countries of plotting to "cause drought" in Iran by using high tech equipment to drain the clouds of raindrops. Moments after the Iranian president made the startling claim at the inauguration of a dam in a central province, it started to rain. "Western countries have designed plans to cause drought in certain areas of the world, including Iran," Mr Ahmadinejad said in the city of Arak in Markazi province. "According to reports on climate, whose accuracy has been verified, European countries are using special equipment to force clouds to dump" their water on their continent,...

MINNEAPOLIS -- A former auditor with the Minnesota Department of Revenue was charged Friday in Minneapolis Federal Court, by way of an Information, with creating false tax refunds and using those refund proceeds for personal benefit.

Watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside. This is the theme of my forthcoming book on the controlling, poisonously misanthropic and aggressively socialistic instincts of the modern environmental movement. So how very generous that two of that movement’s leading lights should have chosen the anniversary of Climategate to prove my point entirely. The first comes courtesy of German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer who has openly admitted what some of us have been saying for some time: that “Climate Change” has nothing to do with man’s modest and thoroughly unthreatening contribution to global mean temperatures, nor even...

Axelrod Suggests Dem's Stay Up late for an Upset on Election Night; that's the headline today folks. What does ace Dem insider and Obama Campaign Chairman know that the media, the pundits and the rest of the voting public doesn't? The second shoe to drop came today. Confirmation that Operation Stealing the Midterm Election 2010 is in full swing. Today, Fox News reported that an unprecidented number of absentee ballots have already been cast. The Former Speaker of the House reported that it's typically the DEMOCRATS who take advantage of Absentee Ballots, because of lower ballot security. If you believe...

(NewsCore) - A legal dispute between the U.S. and India over a herbal toothpaste was leaving a bitter aftertaste between the two countries Thursday, with Colgate Palmolive accused of filing a bogus patent. Colgate, the world’s largest producer of toothpaste, patented a toothcleaning powder in the hope that it would take the multibillion-dollar Indian oral hygiene market by storm. However, Indian activists claim that the patent is bogus because the ingredients -- including clove oil, camphor, black pepper and spearmint -- have been used for the same purpose for hundreds, “if not thousands,” of years on the subcontinent.

Michelle Obama today faced a fresh wave of attacks over her lavish break in Spain with 40 friends, which could easily cost U.S. taxpayers a staggering £50,000 a day. The First Lady has been lambasted for her extravagance at a time when the economy is still struggling. One blogger went so far as to brand her a modern-day Marie Antoinette. And her critics will be further annoyed when they learn that the president's wife had a Spanish beach closed off today so that she, her daughter and their entourage could go for a swim. Spanish police cleared off a stretch...

MINDEN, Nev. (AP) -- A Nevada woman is accused of stealing a bottle of wine from a store while she was topless and intoxicated. Brandi Smith, of Gardnerville, acknowledged her behavior was "mind-boggling" during an appearance Wednesday before a judge to face charges of indecent exposure, felony drunken driving and burglary.

A Transportation Security Administration agent has been arrested for allegedly stealing $400 dollars from a wheelchair bound passenger as she passed through a security checkpoint at Newark Airport. Leroy Ray allegedly went into the disabled woman's bag as it passed through the X-ray machine. Ray was caught on surveillance video on February 3, 2010, reaching into the woman's bag to steal an envelope of cash, according to a criminal complaint. The fiftyish year old woman, investigators said, was from North Jersey and was flying out of Newark to visit relatives overseas.

An Auburn elementary school teacher has been charged with three counts of petit larceny and endangering the welfare of a child. Police say Alan Robinson, a third grade teacher at Genesee Elementary School, had three students use their identification numbers to purchase school lunches. Students told police they would bring the lunches to Robinson’s class where he would then eat them and not pay the students or the school for the food. Police say Robinson admitted to taking the lunches. An investigation began when the parents of one student questioned some unauthorized charges on their child’s account. Robison was released...

A pro Cap and Trade Democrat, Tom Perriello of Virginia's 5th district, was caught on tape admitting that the US Congress is blatantly stealing from the American people. While the fact of congressional theft is hardly shocking or news to most Americans, the fact that a serving congressman would say it so shamelessly and bluntly most certainly is. In effect, Perriello was saying unless there are actual laws in place preventing Congress from relentlessly spending hard-working, taxpayers' money on waste, pork and unpopular legislation like Obamacare, Congress will continue stealing from the American people without hesitation. Perriello's exact quote was:...

Video of an "honest" Democrat saying that they will keep stealing from US if we Americans do nothing to tie their hands!

Democrat Congressman Tom Perriello admits: “If you don’t tie our hands, we will keep stealing.” See video on the site. This amazing comment came from the lips of Tom Perriello (D-VA). Yes, you read that correctly that is indeed a Democrat who admitted this!

Bloomberg is reporting that the idea of secret banking groups that control the country and global economy are not such a crazy idea because of what came out of this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., better known as AIG. The hearing described a secretive group “deploying billions of dollars to favored banks.” The legislators are looking at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most influential part of the federal-reserve system, due to its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts, called credit default swaps that AIG...

"My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift." Father Tim Jones preached these words to his congregation at St. Lawrence Church in England yesterday, according to this article in the Daily Mail newspaper. And he wasn't kidding. Father Jones went on, teaching the poor how and when to steal: "I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices. I would ask them not to take any more than they need, for any...

Hawaii received $2,284,000 million of federal stimulus funds for the 11the Congressional district, $40,903,941 million for the 15th Congressional district, $1,651,811 for the “00” Congressional district, and $799,656 in the 99th congressional district creating a combined “3.4” jobs or $13,423,355 per job, according to the federal government’s transparency web site for stimulus funds, http://www.Recovery.gov/.However, Hawaii has just two congressional districts, 1 and 2. Those districts received $592,211,484 million and $174,075,308 respectively, according to the federal web site, creating combined total of 1,541.5 jobs. See the full report on Hawaii here: http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/StateSummaries/Pages/statesummary.aspx?StateCode=HI Media inquires to the governor’s office, the state budget...

KISSIMMEE — Stealing power from utilities has become the recession's crime of choice for penny-pinching suspects large and small across Central Florida. A supermarket CEO, cash-strapped homeowners and even pot growers have landed in jail in recent months, all charged with meter tampering for allegedly stealing electricity — a crime costing local utility companies millions each year. Industry spokesmen say power thefts have spiked as unemployment and housing foreclosures have increased during the past two years.

States are getting creative in the search for new tax revenue…

FOX News: "Everyone knows that people around the table are stealing, but they don't want to turn each other in if they're going to have to pay the full penalty," said Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Asked in an interview on MSNBC what he meant by stealing, the New York Democrat replied, "I mean stealing." Asked if he were referring to drug companies, he said, "I'm talking about pharmaceuticals, in the sense that they're now coming forward saying that they want to be able to fill that vacuum that's there." FOX News: Rangel Accuses...

Paleontologist gets 4 months in halfway house, three years of probation GREAT FALLS, Mont. - Renowned dinosaur hunter Nathan Murphy was sentenced Wednesday to four months in a halfway house and three years probation after pleading guilty to stealing fossils. Murphy was accused of stealing 13 dinosaur bones from central Montana's Hell Creek badlands in 2006. He pleaded guilty in April to theft of government property. U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon also sentenced him to 300 hours of community service and ordered him to pay $17,325 in restitution.

I stole a laundry bag from the Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires. It was made of thick ivory linen, embroidered with the words "dry cleaning" in cerulean blue, and looked like something that I could have found at an antique textiles show. But that wasn't the case. I'm usually pretty scrupulous about purloined souvenirs. Of course, I help myself to soap and shampoo, sewing kits, even those black sponges meant to spruce up your shoes -- oh, and ballpoint pens and darling little notepads. But the laundry bag was my first sojourn into the land of, what shall we...

After about a month of will-he-or-won’t-he intrigue, the disgraced ex-CEO of Qwest Communications International Inc. has reported to prison in Pennsylvania.Joe Nacchio entered the system on Tuesday after a federal judge denied a last-minute appeal for a new trial. Nacchio faces the same fate as other inmates of the luxury, minimum-security Schuykill facility – according to the Wall Street Journal, Nacchio will work 7.5 hours per day and eat lots of margarine. That’s the only condiment served with meal-time bread. (Apparently “luxury prison” does not include butter, which we find to be most apropos. Perhaps Nacchio’s nickname will be “Oleo...

Ironic: The same union demands big business return the money to the workers of America for stealing from them. Of all the ironies that come out of this story. Watch videos: http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/20/seiu-member-who-met-with-biden-caught-stealing/

DES MOINES - A Cedar Rapids man, apparently at the State Capitol Thursday with a union group, was arrested after a lobbyist caught him trying to steal women's wallets. Marshall Clemons, 38, of Cedar Rapids, was arrested by the Iowa State Patrol and charged with two counts of fifth-degree theft. Lt. Mark Logsdon of the Iowa State Patrol's Post 16 said lobbyist Jim Henter spied Clemons reaching into a woman's bag and retrieving a billfold. Henter followed Clemons and stopped him, Logsdon said. Clemons gave the woman back the money that was in the billfold and then went to a...

The Taliban are stealing U.S. supplies and selling them in roadside markets. You know this kind of thing happens in wartime, but it still steams your blood. I hope a predator fired 'hellfire' missile has their name on it soon. Video here.

Money Magazine) -- Alicia Munnell is a Harvard-trained economist. She served as an assistant secretary of the Treasury and is regarded as one of America's foremost experts on 401(k)s. You'd think she'd be terrific at managing her own retirement, but even she has to fess up to some mistakes. "When my son got married, I took some money out of my plan to help," says Munnell, who heads Boston College's Center for Retirement Research (CRR). "And I ended up paying a 10% penalty and taxes."

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) predicted on Thursday that none of his Senate colleagues would "have the chance" to read the entire final version of the $790-billion stimulus bill before the bill comes up for a final vote in Congress. “No, I don’t think anyone will have the chance to [read the entire bill],” Lautenberg told CNSNews.com.

A rising chorus of GOP leaders are protesting that the blockbuster Democratic stimulus package would provide up to a whopping $5.2 billion for ACORN, the left-leaning nonprofit group under federal investigation for massive voter fraud. Most of the money is secreted away under an item in the now $836 billion package titled “Neighborhood Stabilization Programs.” Ordinarily, neighborhood stabilization funds are distributed to local governments. But revised language in the stimulus bill would make the funds available directly to non-profit entities such as ACORN, the low-income housing organization whose pro-Democrat voter-registration activities have been blasted by Republicans. ACORN is cited by...

The Fresno County District Attorney's Office filed charges on Friday against a deputy coroner, alleging that he stole property from at least one dead person. Joe Tiger is accused of grand theft and embezzlement in an incident that allegedly took place last March.

Link only - Ex-Weight Watchers worker gets 10 years for stealing nearly $1M

A state appeals court in San Francisco has upheld a San Mateo County Superior Court sentence of three years in prison for a former political fundraiser who was a fugitive for 15 years. Norman Hsu, 57, was sentenced in January for a 1992 no-contest plea to a charge of grand theft in an investment scheme. County prosecutors said Hsu operated a so-called Ponzi scheme, by soliciting investments in a purported latex glove company and paying returns to early investors with funds from later investors. Prosecutors said he defrauded about 20 victims of nearly $1 million. After pleading no contest to...

MAKING OF A CANDIDATE Obama knows his way around a ballot By David Jackson and Ray Long | Tribune staff reporters 6:48 PM CDT, April 3, 2007 The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot. Fresh from...

From the October 10, 2008 Newsweek poll... (www.newsweek.com/id/163337) Results: Obama 52, McCain 41. SAMPLE SIZE/MARGIN OF ERROR FOR REGISTERED VOTERS SUBGROUPS: 1,035 Registered voters (plus or minus 4) 280 Republicans (plus or minus 7) 402 Democrats (plus or minus 6) 325 Independents (plus or minus 7) 839 White (plus or minus 4) 175 Non-White (plus or minus 9) 491 Men (plus or minus 5) 544 Women (plus or minus 5) 126 18-34 (plus or minus 10) 159 35-44 (plus or minus 9) 434 45-64 (plus or minus 6) 283 65+ (plus or minus 7) 247 White Evangelicals (plus or minus...

Lehman employees in London were seen leaving carrying boxes filled with Lehman swag--which might fetch a pretty penny on eBay. After the firm detonated their shares and bonuses, it's the least they could take:

CAMBRIDGE (WBZ) ― The elected official in Middlesex County accused of stealing has resigned. Prosecutors say Register of Probate John Buonomo was caught stealing thousands of dollars from copy and cash machines in the Registry of Deeds in Cambridge. Authorities say Buonomo, 56, was caught on surveillance video committing the alleged crimes. Police say the thefts occurred in June, July and August. Watch: Theft surveillance video (at the link) Just last month, the Supreme Judicial Court suspended Buonomo without pay. Buonomo reportedly sent a letter on Friday to Gov. Deval Patrick telling him that he quit, effective immediately. Buonomo's attorney...

Ask virtually any store manager at the Saint Louis Galleria about shoplifting, and you'll invariably get two responses: One, it's out of control; and two, it's gotten exceedingly worse since August 2006, when MetroLink opened a stop just 500 yards from the high-end shopping center. In the first six months of this year, Richmond Heights police made 345 arrests at the mall. That's nearly double the number of arrests made in all of 2005, before MetroLink opened its Shrewsbury line. This year police are on pace to take 276 juveniles into custody for shoplifting and other offenses — a sevenfold...

Jul 21st, 2008 The RNC agrees to remove the Republican Elephant from CafePress’ Endangered Species List - Grand Old Party Ensues! Some of you may have seen some of the media coverage (maybe here, here, or here) regarding the Republican National Committee’s recent complaints about our shopkeepers’ use of the terms “GOP,” “Grand Old Party,” “Republican National Committee,” “RNC,” and various elephant designs. To sum it up: back in February, the RNC demanded that CafePress “cease and desist from allowing vendors to utilize the federally registered trademarks of the RNC” and threatened legal action. While we’re open to working...

An ancient Ukrainian code was used as the basis for the United States constitution, insists Ukraine’s Prime Minister, Yulya Timoshenko. She made the extraordinary claim while addressing compatriots on the country’s Constitution Day, on June 28. The Gas Princess said: “The Ukrainian state has an undeviating constitutional tradition. In 1710, when civilised Europe was tentatively mulling over the separation of powers, and baron de Montesquieu even didn’t start writing The Spirit of the Laws, Ukraine had its own constitution by Pylyp Orlyk.” Timoshenko also claimed that she once read that the U.S. and some of the European constitutions were copied...

A Fourth-grader at Toy Town Elementary School in Winchendon, MA was suspended for five days for showing his friends an empty shell casing to some friends at lunch. According to the NRA-ILA (http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=3975), Bradley Geslak had been given the casing — from a blank fired during Memorial Day — by a US veteren. He was given two, one of which he gave to his grandfather, also a veteren. He was showing his souvenier off to some friends during lunch when a teacher confiscated the casing and called the boy’s mother to take him home. He’s also been told he won’t...

A Nixa woman accused of stealing more than $25,000 from her former employer over a two-year period was bound over to Christian County Circuit Court May 21 and scheduled for a June 6 arraignment. Sandra J. Martin, 42, will appear in front of Judge Mark Orr on one count of a class B felony for stealing from her dentist employer. She was originally slated for a bench trial May 21 in Christian County Associate Court, but instead waived her preliminary hearing and was bound over to circuit court. Martin was arrested Dec. 19, 2007, after her employer, Nixa dentist Michael...

click the link to see video of these two specimens who stole from a girl scout selling cookies. There's a commercial first, then the video.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- A Florida man is accused of ripping off his wife's prosthetic leg during a fight after leaving a sports bar. Officers in Port St. Lucie said they found a 29-year-old woman in a sport utility vehicle Tuesday night with a bruised eye and missing a leg and pants. "He ripped my leg off," the woman told police. Police then questioned the woman's husband, Luis Ramirez, 35, who said he was arguing with his wife after leaving a bar, TCPalm reported. He denied stealing her leg. The woman told police that Ramirez became possessed and started...