Free Republic

While America as a whole slides toward unemployment and poverty, certain well-connected people are doing very nicely indeed. Consider Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul. Kevin Bogardus of The Hill reports:  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saw her net worth rise 62 percent last year, cementing her status as one of the wealthiest members of Congress.Pelosi was worth at least $35.2 million in the 2010 calendar year, according to a financial disclosure report released Wednesday. She reported a minimum of $43.4 million in assets and about $8.2 in liabilities.For 2009, Pelosi reported a minimum net worth...

It’s rather dismaying to see the thoughtful and well-regarded online magazine Front Porch Republic being roiled by a series of articles written by editor John Medaille celebrating the virtues of monarchism as compared to democracy. I don’t believe John’s point was call for the U.S. to build its own Buckingham Palace or design its own crown and scepter, which will never happen in a million years. It was to simply show the follies of democratism as a guarantor of the public’s liberties compared to an enlightened king (one tyrant 3,000 miles away as compared to 3,000 tyrants one mile a...

The Hot Air Boss Emeritus has published an updated list of the exploding number of groups and businesses being granted waivers from having to participate in Obamacare. This is one of the more under-reported stories of the entire HCR saga in the mainstream media, in my opinion. In early October, the Obama administration announced it had granted waivers not only to McDonald’s, but also to several other firms and labor unions. Now comes word that Torquemada HHS Secretay Kathleen Sebelius has approved a whopping 111 waivers for businesses of all sizes, along with more unions and other providers of health...

Joe Miller, Alaska’s Republican nominee for the United States Senate, recently expressed support for an idea that is rapidly gaining steam in Tea Party circles: the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment. Miller subsequently backtracked from his statement, but he shouldn’t have: Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment would go a long way toward restoring federalism and frustrating special-interest influence over Washington. Ratified in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment replaced the election of U.S. senators by state legislators with the current system of direct election by the people. By securing the Seventeenth Amendment’s ratification, progressives dealt a blow to the Framers’ vision of the...

As we all know, Libs say the darnest things be it in blogs, posts, discussions or on TV. So we want you to scour the net and post the dumbest quote you can find from a Liberal/Progressive...or whatever they are calling themselves today! I'll start the thread with one of the most ridiculous ones I've seen today: You've seen the video, you know how silly it is: “Are things in our country so bad that it might actually be time for revolution?” Dylan Radigan asked yesterday on his MSNBC show. His unequivocal reply: “The answer is obviously ‘yes.’ The only...

VIDEO: Arnold Schwarzenegger shares energy policy ideas with Diane Sawyer. The following is a partial transcript of the exchange (see video) • World News asked California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger about the clean energy policies that he says are his legacy • Does he think the nation will join in his conviction? SCHWARZENEGGER: "What would help is if we now are successful in beating back the Texas oil companies, the same players that have been there for decades, ruining everything -- you know -- trying to burn and get rid of our light rail in 45 cities. "And so now the...

For months, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House members were privately and publicly fuming about the absence of liberal TV and radio ads by third-party groups in support of Democratic candidates. From their point of view, all sorts of groups were AWOL on the media front — ranging from environmental and health groups, to women groups and unions. Things reportedly came to a head in mid-September when endangered Democrats in two private House caucus meetings pilloried liberal advocacy groups with the speaker in attendance. Their aides took notes and reportedly began calling in threats to the activist groups: go on...

As Democrats head for what promises to be an election fiasco of historic propor tions, a pre-emptive excuse has begun to circulate: It's all because of Citizens United. Team Donkey fans claim the Jan. 21 decision, in which the Supreme Court overturned restrictions on the political speech of corporations, triggered a flood of negative advertising by what President Obama calls "shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names." If independent groups favoring Team Elephant have a spending advantage so far, it's not because of recent changes in the law. Most of the advertising that irks Democrats was legal before Citizens United, and the...

<p>BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is docking his family's new $7 million yacht in neighboring Rhode Island, allowing him to avoid paying roughly $500,000 in taxes to his cash-strapped home state.</p> <p>If the Isabel were kept at the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee's summer vacation home on Nantucket or in Boston Harbor near his city residence, he would be liable for $437,500 in one-time sales tax. He would also have to pay $70,000 in annual excise taxes.</p>

The National Academy of Sciences creates virtual blacklists of scientists who dare to disagree with 'the consensus.' While most people understand that governmental entities are politicized, there are some we like to think maintain enough integrity to serve the public good. We hope, for example, that the Centers for Disease Control would be free of politicized determinations for what to do about swine flu. And we hope that the Food and Drug Administration were more concerned about whether a drug were beneficial than about how the cost of that drug might influence new healthcare legislation.One such entity we have relied...

BOSTON – Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is docking his family's new $7 million yacht in neighboring Rhode Island, allowing him to avoid paying roughly $500,000 in taxes to the cash-strapped Bay State. If the "Isabel" were kept at the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee's summer vacation home on Nantucket, or in Boston Harbor near his city residence, he would be liable for $437,500 in one-time sales tax. He would also have to pay $70,000 in annual excise taxes. Rhode Island repealed those taxes in 1993. That has made the state something of a nautical tax haven.

Sen. Kerry Predicts ‘Ice-Free Arctic' In '5 or 10 Years’ Friday, July 23, 2010 By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) – Speaking at a town hall-style meeting promoting climate change legislation on Thursday, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) predicted there will be “an ice-free Arctic” in five to 10 years.. “The arctic ice is disappearing faster than was predicted,” Kerry said. “And instead of waiting until 2030 or whenever it was to have an ice-free Arctic, we’re going to have one in five or 10 years.” However, the Web site of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says: “Using the...

In introducing his last Supreme Court nominee 13 months ago, President Obama gushed forth like an out-of-control oil spill about what he saw as Sonia Sotomayor’s main qualification—her “wisdom accumulated from an inspiring life's journey.” Obama lavishly praised her “distinguished career,” which included having worked “at almost every level of our judicial system.” All this courtroom time, he assured us, provided Sotomayor “with a depth of experience and a breadth of perspective that will be invaluable as a Supreme Court justice.” “Walking in the door,” he continued, “she would bring more experience on the bench and more varied experience on...

In 2007, outside Bangalore, India, an explosion decapitated an industrial worker, hurling his body through a brick wall. In 2005 a routine procedure at a manufacturing plant in Taiwan caused a spontaneous explosion that killed a worker and ignited a blaze that ripped through the factory, shutting down production for three months. Both incidents shared a common cause—silane, a gas made up of silicon and hydrogen that explodes on contact with air. And both incidents occurred in the same industry—solar power. Among other environmental black marks, the process of manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) cells from silicon relies on this dangerous pyrophoric...

Remember way back —all the way back in time to that distant memory known as the year 2008—when Barack Obama made a big deal about cleaning up special interests and lobbyists that were buying influence all over Washington? Remember when he used that crafty angle in part to make himself appear as the long-awaited outsider or "messiah" who could, in a hope-like fashion, "change" Washington from its special interest-heavy influence? It's not going well! Obama's been caught lying again regarding his empty promises versus his actual record. But the extent of his lie hits at a major policy promise Obama...

PHOENIX, Arizona -- Behind a Dunkin' Donuts in a shopping center on East Cactus Road, J.D. Hayworth's Senate campaign headquarters has a low-budget look. Near the front door, pinned to a cubicle wall, is a campaign T-shirt proclaiming Hayworth "The Consistent Conservative," offered for sale at $15 each. Volunteers are stuffing envelopes at a folding table that holds seven telephones, the phone lines dangling down from the ceiling. A large bulletin board is festooned with letters from supporters, including a woman from Dewey, Arizona, who wrote to say, "Sock it to him, please!" The "him" is, of course, Sen. John...

President Obama says its obvious, anybody who would dare fight his Obamacare measures are on the leash of the special interests. Funny how he never mentions the special interests that he is beholden to, like the unions who were exempted from "the Cadillac tax." Or the real reason there is no tort reform, the President's ties to the Legal industry. At Open Secrets you can pull up campaign contributions by candidate and industry. The are calculated from PAC contributions and contributions from individuals giving more than $200, as reported to the FEC. Individual contributions are generally categorized based on the...

AS Sen. Max Baucus tries to squeeze a health-care bill out of the Senate Finance Committee, and as Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry race to meet their latest deadline to introduce a bill to reduce carbon dioxide, some Democrats wonder whether their congressional leaders and the president who has deferred to them have sought only limited changes rather than more fundamental reform on both health insurance and carbon emissions. On health care, the House committees and Baucus and Christopher Dodd in the Senate health committee, decided to build a makeshift addition to the health-insurance system that grew out of...

This was supposed to be the cleanest congress and the most transparent administration in history. The Democrats promised that. By now you may have realized this is an empty promise. This whole cap and tax plan being pushed by the President and written by Congressman Waxman is being ghost written by lobbyists. That promise that then President-Elect Obama made at the beginning of his administration that their would be no lobbyist influence on his presidency was just a "Media Moment. But the use of lobbyists in preparing the cap and tax plan goes right at the heart of government "corruption"...

In the vernacular preferred by most men I know, Obamacare could be called the "Screw-You" plan. Just about every special interest in this Country will make out like bandits, while you and I will be...well yes, I hate to say it, but here goes: we taxpayers will be royally screwed. We pay; they play. The special interests that elected this president are conducting multi-million dollar ad campaigns to seal the deal on Obamacare. Every one of them has had a very cushy seat at the power table where the bill was written, not on C-SPAN as candidate Obama promised, but...