Free Republic

As if Greece didn't have enough economic market woes, last week foreign investment funds managed to take control of four of the country's largest banks — Alpha Bank, Eurobank, National Bank of Greece and Piraeus Bank — through $6.42 billion worth of capital increases and a complex set of legal manipulations. As a result, bank shares sold like penny stocks, diluting state ownership in these important institutions that have assets totaling $358 billion. The country's stake in the National Bank of Greece dropped to 24 percent from 57 percent, and in Eurobank it fell to 2.4 percent from 35 percent,...

It’s the same party with 2 wings. The Washington Crony Party. If one can fleece the taxpayer it will be done, Republican, Democrat, whatever, so long as money is funneled to the narrow interests which fund your campaigns. The Republican Party, though it has a free market wing which is young and growing is still dominated by the older big government crony Republicans. How long that generation can hold on, and how much damage they will create to the economy is anyone’s guess. (From The Surge) "Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) just can’t help himself. He is intent on using the...

The situation in Athens seems to have calmed down, but former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke thinks Europe has an even bigger issue to worry about: Germany. In a blog post on Friday, Bernanke wrote that the failure of the eurozone as a whole is very much related to the "highly asymmetric outcomes" among member nations. In other words, Bernanke is attributing Europe's woes to the fact that countries like Germany are benefiting at the expense of the monetary union's weaker members, like Greece, Spain, and Italy. Bernanke points to unemployment rates as a clear sign of the disparity in...

The Iraqi government and army officials have sent a plea to United States officials in Baghdad, asking for military support as soon as possible to prevent Ramadi, the largest city in Anbar Province, from falling to Islamic State (IS). At a meeting held in Baghdad on Sunday to discuss the latest advances of IS in Anbar, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi warned that the jihadists may take the western Iraqi province. The meeting was attended by Iraqi army commanders, the Parliament Speaker, US Ambassador Stuart Jones and a number of Iraqi political leaders. They discussed a plan to repel the IS...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top Republicans predicted on Sunday that both chambers of Congress would muster the votes to pass the "fast-track" authority sought by President Barack Obama to negotiate major trade deals, despite opposition from Obama's fellow Democrats. "Yes, we’ll pass it. We'll pass it later this week," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in an interview with ABC. Republican U.S. Representative Paul Ryan said on CNN's "State of the Union" that he was confident the measure would also pass the House of Representatives. "We will have the votes," said Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "We're...

Jeb Bush has an explanation for his Iraq war flub - it's that he has a 'hard time' criticizing his family. Bush made the admission on Thursday at the Republican National Committee's spring meeting, held this year in Flagstaff, Arizona, according to ABC News. Acknowledging that 'there's a lot of interest out there' from press in determining how he's different from his ex-president brother George W. Bush, the White House hopeful and son of former president George H.W. Bush said: 'I'm not going to go out of my way to say that, you know, my brother did this wrong or...

Greg Nash National Organization for Women (NOW) president Terry O'Neill on Wednesday called President Obama's critique of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sexist. O'Neill told The Hill she took issue with Obama calling Warren by her first name during an interview with Yahoo News published Saturday. "Yes, I think it is sexist," O'Neill said. "I think the president was trying to build up his own trustworthiness on this issue by convincing us that Senator Warren's concerns are not to be taken seriously. But he did it in a sexist way."

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of the top Democratic opponents of President Barack Obama’s trade agenda, criticized Obama on Tuesday for what the senator saw as “disrespectful” comments toward Sen. Elizabeth Warren and indicated that Warren’s gender may have played a role. “I think by just calling her ‘another politician’,” Brown told reporters Tuesday when asked how Obama was being disrespectful to Warren. “I’m not going to get into more details. I think referring to her as first name, when he might not have done that for a male senator, perhaps? I’ve said enough.”

A full-fledged Democratic trade war has broken out."I love Elizabeth. We're allies on a whole host of issues, but she's wrong on this," President Obama said Tuesday night in an interview on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, referring to liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.Warren and the progressive left, scarred by trade deals past like the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, have launched a vocal fight against granting the president so-called "fast-track" authority to negotiate a 12-country Pacific trade deal. "Are you ready to fight?" Warren said at a rally April 15 with labor leaders and Vermont liberal Sen....

National Organization for Women (NOW) president Terry O’Neill on Wednesday called President Obama’s critique of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sexist. O’Neill told The Hill she took issue with Obama calling Warren by her first name during an interview with Yahoo News published Saturday. “Yes, I think it is sexist,” O’Neill said. “I think the president was trying to build up his own trustworthiness on this issue by convincing us that Senator Warren’s concerns are not to be taken seriously. But he did it in a sexist way.” …

The Patriots are concerned that quarterback Tom Brady could face a suspension ranging from six and eight games, according to a report from CSN New England. Any punishment from the NFL would result from the recent Ted Wells report, which stated "it is more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware" that footballs were deflated below the league's minimum requirement against the Colts in the AFC Championship. Following the AFC Championship and leading up to the Super Bowl, Brady told reporters he was confident that no one in the Patriots organization broke any rules. Footballs must...

The second day of the New Hampshire Republican Party’s “First in the Nation” leadership summit kicked off Saturday morning with a speech from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman. As you might expect, the reception was lukewarm at first — especially when he tried to land a series of fratboy-ish jokes — but became much warmer when he talked actual policy and tried to stir the crowd into rallying around conservative principles for the 2016 election. But let’s run through his awkward jokes: Scarborough approached the stage to noticeably tepid applause (though, to be fair, this was the first...

Jefferson, a member of the gentry of Old Virginia, was always regarded as one of the best and brightest of his generation, a gentleman of the finest intellect, taste, and manners. Although Jefferson loved and was loyal to the Union, he was a Virginian first and an American second; Virginia, Jefferson avowed, was his “country.” This order of allegiance – State over Union, or “Society” over “the State” – was firmly rooted in the Old South. Accordingly, in the emerging conflict between the North and the South, Jefferson sided with his own country. “It is true that we are completely...

NASA has just finished building a $350 million test facility in Gulfsport, La., despite the program it was designed for having been canceled nearly four years ago.

A black Mississippi pastor has emerged to claim Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-MS) campaign paid “thousands” of Democrats $15 each to vote in the June 24 GOP runoff – and that he was part of the scheme. Rev. Stevie Fielder, an associate pastor at First Union Missionary Baptist Church in Meridan, Mississippi, says Cochran's campaign “told me to offer blacks $15 each and to vote for Thad.” Fielder, who was paid by freelance journalist Charles C. Johnson for the story, provided a new outlet launched by Johnson—GotNews.com—with four text messages from a person purporting to be Cochran campaign staffer Saleem Baird....

It’s hard to believe how much things have changed in less than 20 years. There are several reasons for this. First, many conservatives have dropped out of the fight. It’s not hard to understand why. Our two-party system does not give us many options. While there are differences between the Democrats and Republicans, the differences aren’t great enough. Second, as Lord Acton (1834–1902) observed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Consider Republican congressman Peter King from New York. Republicans can’t allow the primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor...

I’ve just written Faithless Execution, a book positing that there is such a solid legal case of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the president that the time is ripe to build a political case for his impeachment. I have argued, moreover, that the president’s policy of appeasing and empowering Islamic supremacists has been a national-security catastrophe, catalyzing a jihadist resurgence across the Middle East. It is pretty safe to say I am no fan of Barack Obama’s. But it is just as safe to say that for Beltway Republicans to blame Obama alone for the implosion of Iraq —...

In a statement released Thursday, John McCain called Hillary Clinton "my friend" and praised her public service career. ... According to a news release, Clinton is scheduled to "participate in a conversation" with McCain. This year's forum will focus on "Crisis in the Middle East: Values, Strategy and Options," and will include a session on Russia and Ukraine and on combating human trafficking.

Well, this is going to be a heartbreaker for the hysterical global warming crowd. According to a new study, emissions from burning corn are worse for the environment and produce more CO2 or 'global warming' gases than the burning of traditional gasoline. Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration's conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change. A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal...

Watching congressional Democrats and Republicans wrestle over the budget is a little like watching Thelma and Louise. Democrats want to stomp on the gas pedal and race to the edge of the cliff at top speed, while Republicans want merely to set the cruise control. Neither approach addresses the fiscal realities of the situation. America has a debt of $17 trillion. That’s more than $54,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. It is unsustainable and has to stop. Failure to do so will leave generations of Americans strapped with a crushing load of debt that jeopardizes...