Free Republic

-- Obama Campaign Lacks the Industry-Standard Level Of Credit Card Security For Donations, But Uses It For Merchandise Purchases: To purchase Obama campaign merchandise, the campaign requires buyers to enter their credit card CVV security code, but does not require the credit card security code to be entered when making an online campaign donation. By GAI's estimates, the Obama campaign's failure to utilize industry-standard protections potentially costs the campaign millions in extra processing fees.

For those who only hear about these failing companies one by one, the following is a list of all the clean energy companies supported by President Obama’s stimulus that are now failing or have filed for bankruptcy. The liberal media hopes you’ve forgotten about all of them except Solyndra, but we haven’t. Evergreen Solar SpectraWatt Solyndra (received $535 million) Beacon Power (received $43 million) AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million) SunPower (received $1.5 billion) First Solar (received $1.46 billion) Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million) Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million) Amonix (received...

. . At last summer’s Blagojevich retrial, prosecutors had a distinct way to refer to the wealthy businessman: He was “the bribe guy,” who in 2008 allegedly offered millions of dollars to Rod Blagojevich’s brother in exchange for appointing Jackson Jr. (D-Ill) to Obama’s vacant Senate seat. . . For the last several years, Nayak had been the aching thorn in Jackson’s side after Blagojevich was heard on tape saying that Jackson’s emissary — Nayak — offered what Blagojevich believed was a $1.5 million offer in exchange for the Senate seat. Jackson has repeatedly and vehemently denied he authorized anyone...

In a 1200 word feature piece titled "Race Issues Return with Rev. Wright," written by Jonathan Martin and James Hohamann, MSNBC's unofficial web-partners at Politico go into excruciating detail charting the return of Obama's former pastor and 20-year mentor. Naturally, the article is all about race-race-race and racism-racism-racism, and how by some unholy act of MSM witchcraft Wright is a bigger problem for Romney than for the man who spent two decades at his knee. What Politico glaringly chose to leave out of its in-depth and oh-so detailed reporting, though, is the primary reason Reverend Wright is back in the...

Millions of illegal immigrants are getting a bigger tax refund than you. Eyewitness News shows a massive tax loophole that provides billions of dollars in tax credits to undocumented workers and, in many cases, people who have never stepped foot in the United States. And you are paying for it! Note: This is part one in a two-part series. Read part two here. INDIANAPOLIS - Inside his central Indiana office, a longtime tax consultant sits at his desk, shaking his head in disbelief. "There is not a doubt in my mind there's huge fraud taking place here," he said, slowly...

The House passed the administration’s offshore wind power bill Friday amid accusations Gov. Martin O’Malley secured votes on the House Economic Matters Committee with disparity grants to committee members’ districts. “Those of you who have been here longer than two weeks know there’s a lot of complicated pressures that go into making a bill pass or fail,” said House Minority Leader Anthony O’Donnell. “Sometimes it takes a little nudge, sometimes it takes a carrot, and sometimes it takes a stick.” The disparity grant program in Maryland provides subsidies to jurisdictions with income tax receipts that fall below 75% of the...

Brooklyn Senator Expected to Plead Guilty in Corruption CaseBy WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and BENJAMIN WEISER Published: December 19, 2011 State Senator Carl Kruger was expected to plead guilty on Tuesday to federal corruption charges that he accepted at least $1 million in bribes to finance a lavish lifestyle, including a large home in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, where he lived with two gynecologist brothers and their mother, according to several people briefed on the case. One of the brothers, Michael Turano, who was also charged in the corruption case unveiled in the spring, was expected to plead guilty along with Mr....

Members of the House and the Senate attempted to pack hundreds of special spending provisions into at least 10 bills in the summer and fall, less than a year after congressional leaders declared a moratorium on earmarks, congressional records show. The moratorium, announced last November in the House and in February in the Senate, is a verbal commitment by the Republican leadership to prohibit lawmakers from directing federal funds to handpicked projects and groups in their districts. Lawmakers have tried to get around the moratorium by promising to allow other groups to compete for the funds. But the legislative language...

A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.” Doug Ross spotted the relevant excerpt of Schweizer’s book (h/t Ben Domenech’s Transom): When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about...

WASHINGTON — A Republican Utah senator and Democratic senator from New York introduced an immigration reform bill Thursday aimed at encouraging foreign travel and housing investment in the U.S. Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Charles Schumer, D-New York, say the legislation would reduce barriers for Canadian and Chinese visitors, expedite priority visa applications, use videoconferencing to screen foreign nationals and change visa procedures for U.S. allies fighting al Qaeda. It would also provide a three-year visa for foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in residential real estate, including half for a home in which they must live for six months...

COMPLETE TITLE: STEVE WYNN Goes On Big Rant About Occupy Wall Street, Obama, Deficits, And Anger At The Government ### Classic. On the conference call for Wynn Resorts, CEO Steve Wynn went on a big rant on Occupy Wall Street, Obama, and deficits. Here are our notes in raw form. It's all mostly paraphrased. In a nutshell, he says: Deficits are killing us, our dollars are worthless, and the Democrats are bankrupting the country and vilifying anyone who's successful. So naturally, people are protesting. *snip* You're seeing it taken to the next level in Greece. People are trying to break...

The son of a former Los Angeles fire chief was charged Monday with bribing a federal Transportation Security Administration officer at Los Angeles International Airport to help him smuggle marijuana past security on nine separate trips. Millage Peaks IV admitted to FBI agents that he and his associates made the trips with the aid of a TSA officer, whom they paid $5,000 to $6,000 in bribes to avoid detection... Peaks and TSA Officer Dianne Perez were arrested on bribery charges Sunday following what the FBI said was his most recent attempt ... Perez, a TSA officer for seven and a...

Here's a novel idea: Have Congress create a "bank" that could borrow huge sums with only a small federal outlay and would be independent of any political interference. If you believe in this miracle, you probably thought Fannie Mae was a private company that wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime. We're referring to Washington's latest marketing tool to sell spending to a skeptical public, a new federal "infrastructure bank." For the low, low price of $30 billion or so, President Obama says Congress can conjure hundreds of billions in new "grants and loans" to rebuild "roads, bridges, and ports and broadband...

When congressional leaders earlier this month named six lawmakers from each party to a debt reduction “supercommittee,” investing unprecedented power in a tiny cadre to slash funding, they set off a wild scramble among special interest groups to gain access and protect their interests. Yet many groups with the most at stake didn’t have to change their plans. Some members of the supercommittee received more campaign contributions in July from political action committees controlled by corporations, unions and other lawmakers than anyone else in Congress, disclosures filed this weekend show. Rep. Dave Camp, Michigan Republican who chairs the tax-writing House...

AT&T is lining up support for its acquisition of T-Mobile from a slew of liberal groups with no obvious interest in telecom deals — except that they’ve received big piles of AT&T’s cash. In recent weeks, the NAACP, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance, and the National Education Association have each issued public statements in support of the deal. The groups all say their public positions have nothing to do with the money they received from AT&T.

FBI Video Shows Detroit City Council Aide Accepting Bribes Gus Lubin Jun. 9, 2011, 6:39 AM FBI survellance videos obtained by The Detroit News show city corruption in action. In one video, former aide John Clark is handed a wad of cash from James Rosendall Jr., vice president of sludge-hauling firm Synagro Technologies Inc., which was awarded a $1.2 billion sludge-hauling contract. Rosendall tells Clark: "I'm going to be gone for a few weeks and I wanted to swing by and give you a little advance on helping us with that tax stuff. Whatever you can do I'd appreciate. You...

The cost of stealing from passengers...former supervisor with the Transportation Security Administration has been sentenced to more than two years in prison after pleading guilty to taking bribes from a TSA officer who was stealing from passengers. ... Raimi stole between $10,000 and $30,000 in cash from travelers going through a Terminal B checkpoint at Newark Liberty International Airport last Fall.

Days after two city inspectors were arrested by the FBI on suspicion of taking bribes, officials at the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety called Tuesday for the agency to electronically track the whereabouts of its employees. Building and Safety spokesman David Lara said his department sent a series of recommendations to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, including a move to activate the GPS tracking devices contained within each inspector’s cellphone and laptop computer. “For us, it’s mostly about making sure our inspectors are where they’re supposed to be,” Lara said. “With the latest turn of events, it’s too bad that...

The single-sentence email from a frustrated state worker hit our inbox this morning: "This is what SEIU does to attract attendees, and my fees go to this!" It came with a scan of this flier promoting a series of 30-minute Local 1000 meetings at CDCR headquarters this Wednesday promising, "$5 Subway Cards will be given to all who attend." All employees represented by the union are welcomed and, presumably, will get a Subway card. The flier reminded us of an SEIU protest at the Capitol a few years ago that offered free lunch to participants. At the time we thought...

President Obama is laughing off lingering doubts about his birth certificate. The commander-in-chief cracked wise at a fund-raiser in Boston, poking fun at the so-called "birther" movement, which insists he is not a natural-born citizen. "There's no weakness in us trying to reach out and seeing if we can find common ground," he said Tuesday. "Now, there are going to be times where we can't. I was born in Hawaii. What can I say? I mean, I just ... I can't change those facts."