Free Republic

Proposal Uses Private Equity to Keep Government from Buying Mortgage Assets, Assures Wall Street Won’t Get Rich While Taxpayers Get Stuck with Trillion Dollar Bill September 27, 2008 Washington, DC – Rep. Darrell Issa, a businessman and entrepreneur before coming to Congress, today offered a new proposal to protect the economy without a taxpayer-funded bail out of Wall Street. Under Rep. Issa’s plan, private investors would provide the capital for a Rescue Fund through the purchase of government issued Guaranteed Recovery Bonds. The Rescue Fund would be managed by the Treasury Department and would offer troubled financial firms interest accruing...

WASHINGTON — A funny thing happened in the drafting of the largest-ever U.S. government intervention in the financial system. Lawmakers of all stripes mostly fell in line, but many of the nation's brightest economic minds are warning that the Wall Street bailout's a dangerous rush job. President Bush and his Treasury secretary, former Goldman Sachs chief executive Henry Paulson, have warned of imminent economic collapse and another Great Depression if their rescue plan isn't passed immediately. Is that true? "It's more hype than real risk," said James K. Galbraith, a University of Texas economist and son of the late economic...

From the first Presidential Debate in Oxford, Mississippi last night, Barack Obama changes direction on missile defense quicker than an "unproven" defensive interceptor. But while he flipped in the right direction, is this Change You Can Believe In?

(CNN) -- In a video marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, al Qaeda's top leader in Afghanistan vows more "large-scale" attacks against the United States and its allies. Mullah Omar, chief of the Taliban, is shown in this undated headshot photo. In another segment, the personal adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Omar says al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is alive and well. Al Qaeda leaders featured on the video promise more violence against their enemies... Also on the video is a reading from the will of Saeed al Ghamdi, one of the 19 hijackers involved...

I seldom post vantities, but have been frustrated by the lack of answer (at least that I've been able to find) to what has become Obama's last stand - trying to convince the country that McCain is Bush's political twin. If any group can debunk this myth with force and creativity it is the FR community. Please post ideas, facts, articles, and other related info here. I'll start it off with a few ideas.

Enter Sarah Palin, a lifetime member of the NRA and now the Republican nominee for Vice President. She is well known in conservative circles for her staunch support of gun rights. Certainly selecting her is reassuring to the NRA. While I'm not suggesting that the NRA's endorsement of a Presidential candidate was the only factor in McCain picking Palin, the mere possibility that they might have endorsed Barr very well could be a much bigger factor than the mainstream media and the Republican Party will ever admit. Could it be that he's courting the NRA to make sure that they...

The FBI is investigating a Tennessee trucking company. Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, Bureau of Immigration and Customs and several other agencies searched the Swift Transportation trucking company in Memphis on Monday. Swift Transportation dispatches more than 500 trucks per day, transporting mainly for the United Parcel Service. Employees said agents seized computers but authorities have not released what they were looking for. "I haven't a clue,” said training driver James Richardson. “All I know is all of the training activities have been put on hold right now until an investigation is over...

It looks like we have been suckered again. The New York Times delays a lobbyist-scandal story until after McCain takes the lead (all the while endorsing McCain) and then slams McCain now that it is too late to nominate someone else. I write this out of bitterness and sadness over this disaster that need not have happened. We had the opportunity to support people that the NY Times was not spoonfeeding to us - even after Thompson dropped out. But we took the bait and now the Times has dropped the hammer, just like the polls that suddenly did a...

According to RealClearPolitics.com the three final polls leading up to the Nevada caucus had Romney up an avg of 5 points over McCain. Yet he beat him by 38 points. Yet I have yet to hear anyone raise a question about that (unlike the NH polling). Please explain.

Will McCain, now a leading contender for the 2008 GOP nomination, borrow Kerry’s idea and offer the vice presidency to Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut’s self-styled “independent Democrat”?

Second, on the Republican side, we have something of a puzzle. Most have the Romney-McCain margin well within the margin of sampling error, although one (MClatchy/MSNBC) gives Romney a statistically significant eight-point lead while another (ARG) shows McCain with a significant seven-point lead. Needless to say, both cannot be right. Given the conflicting results, and the 39% that say they "could still change their minds" on the McClatchy/MSNBC poll, the outcome is still clearly in doubt.

A Waterford Township family already enduring a son severely injured in Iraq and the loss of their home suffered an unbelievable blow this weekend - the deaths of their two youngest sons in a traffic crash. Joshua Brian Schrauger, 17, and Timothy Schrauger, 14, were killed Saturday afternoon after their vehicle collided with another vehicle in Riley Township in Clinton County. "I've never seen a family that has gone through what they have had to go through," said Pastor Tom Hampton of the Community Bible Church in Waterford Township, who has been a pastor for 30 years. "It's like the...

GREAT FALLS, Mont. - Blackhawk helicopters and interceptor jets have begun patrolling Montana airspace along the U.S.-Canada border, and American officials say unmanned drones could be deployed as early as next year. But the U.S. is playing down the new security measure, claiming it has little to do with Canadians but more to do with the threat of terrorists using Canada as a staging point for attacks in America. And they say that as long as the terrorist threat exists, border security will continue to be a high priority. On Monday, the U.S Department of Homeland Security officially opened its...

Four days after North Korea tried to set off its first nuclear bomb, U.S. intelligence agencies think the blast detected by seismic sensors was a plutonium-fueled device that did not fully explode. "The working assumption is that what happened, more likely than not, was an attempted nuclear test that fell far short of being successful," said one U.S. official familiar with the latest intelligence assessment. There is still no confirmation that North Korea succeeded in creating a nuclear explosion, and so far no radioactive particles that would confirm a successful nuclear test have been detected. The Washington Times first reported...

PESHAWAR: The head of the Islamabad-based Al-Quds Media Centre has received an audio message from a senior Taliban leader in which he asked Muslims living in the US to leave the country as soon as possible “because God’s punishment would fall on America in the month of Ramazan.” Jamal Ismail, a senior journalist who once worked for Al-Jazeera television channel and is now head of the Al-Quds Media Centre, told The News that he received a phone call Thursday from Taliban leader Mulla Masoom Afghani. “Afghani said he was speaking from somewhere in Kandahar province. He read out the message...

On the 4pm hour of CNN’s The Situation Room, correspondent Brian Todd was questioned about “internet suggestions” that recent Foley IM conversations were a prank or hoax by anchor Wolf Blitzer. The lawyer of one of Foley’s victims called it a “piece of fiction”. ABC News also commented and said the report is not true.

SEIZURES of smuggled radioactive material capable of making a terrorist “dirty bomb” have doubled in the past four years, according to official figures seen by The Times. Smugglers have been caught trying to traffick dangerous radioactive material more than 300 times since 2002, statistics from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) show. Most of the incidents are understood to have occurred in Europe. The disclosures come as al-Qaeda is known to be intensfiying its efforts to obtain a radoactive device. Last year, Western security services, including MI5 and MI6, thwarted 16 attempts to smuggle plutonium or uranium. On two occasions...

<p>2 Rockets Defused at Pakistan Parliament By MUNIR AHMAD Associated Press Writer October 5, 2006, 6:43 AM EDT ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Two rockets rigged with mobile phones and primed to fire toward Pakistan's parliament were discovered by a construction worker Thursday and safely defused by bomb disposal experts, a security official said. The security scare in Islamabad came hours after a homemade bomb exploded without injury in a park in the neighboring city of Rawalpindi, not far from a residence of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.</p>

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report extreme concern among security services in the United States, Europe, the Far East and Israel, after the source of 350 multiple attacks in Bangladesh on Aug. 17, 2005, was traced to Tripoli, Lebanon French counter-terror experts leading an international inquiry into the attacks discovered that a facility, set up there by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s late Iraq commander, had developed the new design which works through Internet messengers like Skype or MSN. Network-connected mobile phones can remotely detonate over the Internet simultaneous explosions hundreds of miles apart, anywhere on the world. US forces located...

Adnan el Shukrijumah possesses the uncanny abilities to blend into a crowd, to alter his looks, and to assume a multitude of identities. He is the proverbial Mr. Cellophane. Few things about Shukrijumah indicate his radical Islamic orientation. He is often clean-shaven and never wears a long shirt or chews a toothpick. He has been known to have a beer on occasion (like an average American Joe), to smoke an occasional Camel, and to carry rosary beads in his pocket. He has posed as an Italian-American, a Mexican-American, a Canadian, a Saudi, a Jamaican, and a Latino from Trinidad. He...