Free Republic

It’s not a “new” treaty, apparently, if they’re rewriting an old treaty that’s already been ratified. Maybe that’s a sneak peek of Obama’s Syria policy too. Instead of asking for a new AUMF against ISIS, he could issue an “addendum” or whatever to the 2001 AUMF against Al Qaeda. Come to think of it, that’s his approach on immigration too. The mega-amnesty he’s getting ready to uncork isn’t being presented as new policy, even though it would legalize five million people or more. It’s being presented as a discretionary application of law that’s already on the books. Turns out every...

Recently, a friend lamented that the liberal left is destroying America, but I disagreed. The left is consistent and transparent in its belief that big government, higher taxes and more regulation serve the greater good. The right espouses a limited government platform of lower taxes, less spending and less regulation, which frees capital resulting in innovation and job creation. But do Georgia Republicans practice what they preach Georgia’s fiscal year 2014 results illustrate the reality vs. the rhetoric. Our revenue jumped $879 million over fiscal year 2013; but $473 million of this increase resulted from the new way cars are...

Warren Buffett may be most famous for the billions of dollars he has made from investing, but he is also well known as a cheerleader for the United States. The Oracle of Omaha routinely exhorts investors to put their money in America, “the mother lode of opportunity,” as he wrote in his annual letter this year. So Buffett’s participation in fast-food chain Burger King Worldwide Inc.’s purchase of coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons Inc.—complete with relocation of Burger King’s domicile to Canada—might at first blush raise questions about his patriotism. Investors and tax experts say Miami-based Burger King’s move...

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister said that now is the time to recognize Israel as a legitimate entity in the Middle East, stressing that the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, terror group Hamas, is responsible for fanning the flames of war between Israelis and Palestinians. Speaking at the world assembly of Islamic scholars in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Saud bin Faisal Al Saud reiterated that the Arab world must also reject Hamas as the representatives of the Palestinian movement, AWDnews reports. Saudi media has consistently been against Hamas in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, according to the Middle East...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, published last week an "advanced notice of proposed rulemaking" on "vehicle-to-vehicle communications." What NHTSA is proposing could begin a transformation in the American transportation system that makes our lives better and freer — or gives government more power over where we go and when.

Capitol Hill insiders widely consider President Obama's rumored plan to unilaterally extend amnesty to as many as five million of illegal aliens to be political suicide, essentially ceding control of the Senate in a single act. But a key question has been whether elite Republicans are willing to deploy the issue in weaponized form. A statement from Brad Dayspring, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, suggests the answer is yes. “Executive amnesty would not only subvert the law, but depress wages, and hurt the poorest Americans most of all – including legal immigrants looking to rise into the middle...

Christine Lagarde, the chief of the International Monetary Fund, was placed under official investigation for negligence in a French corruption probe that dates back to her days as France’s finance minister. In a statement Wednesday after a fourth round of questioning before magistrates, Lagarde said she would return to her work in Washington later in the day and said the decision was “without basis.” She is the third IMF managing director in a decade to face legal troubles. …

WASHINGTON - A bunch of economic numbers from the government this week, which should be taken with a large grain of salt, were expected to show the economy was doing much better in the past three months. Well, we've seen these periodic, fragmentary numbers many times before, only to see the economy continue to slowly slog along at its painfully lackluster, jobs-challenged pace for the past six and a half years now. President Obama will recite the exaggerated economic numbers that his cherry-picking speech writers select to prove that he's brought the economy back from the bring of recession. But...

The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday raised its estimate of the federal government’s budget deficit for the current fiscal year as it slashed its growth forecast, and warned red ink was due to rise in coming years if Washington doesn’t change current laws. In an update of budget and economic projections for 2014 to 2024, the nonpartisan CBO said the U.S. government’s deficit for fiscal 2014 will be $506 billion, or 2.9% of gross domestic product. The new estimate is $14 billion more than the agency’s prior estimate for the year, issued in April. The agency lowered its projection of...

Liu Yunshan (R), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, holds talks with Le Hong Anh, special envoy of General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam(CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong, also a Politburo member and standing secretary of the Secretariat of the CPV Central Committee, in Beijing, capital of China, Aug. 27, 2014. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo) BEIJING, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- China and Vietnam will avoid any actions that might worsen their disputes on maritime issues, Chinese...

A U.S. court on Aug. 25 threw out an order to seize some 1 million barrels of disputed Iraqi Kurdish crude oil from a tanker near Texas, a move that could allow the cargo to be delivered and end a nearly month-long impasse. The United Kalavrvta tanker, carrying about $100 million worth of Kurdish crude, has been anchored in the Gulf of Mexico for weeks, as the Iraqi region of Kurdistan wages a legal battle over ownership with the central government of Iraq. At the request of Baghdad, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in July...

If you’re looking to move from Miami to Canada, as Burger King Worldwide is, chances are excellent that your motive is something other than the weather. The word “inversion” has entered the popular vocabulary, describing a tax-driven corporate merger in which a U.S. firm acquires an overseas company and then relocates its legal domicile to that firm’s home tax jurisdiction. The purpose of this is in no small part to escape the onerous U.S. corporate income tax. That’s what Burger King is looking to do by acquiring beloved Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons, which is based in Ontario. A number...

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said he was filing a lawsuit on Wednesday against the Obama administration over alleged manipulation of grant money to force states to accept Common Core as their school standards. Mr. Jindal is also accusing the White House of manipulating the regulatory process to compel states to take the much-disputed educational program, The Associated Press reported. The U.S. Department of Education used its $4.3 billion grant program and waiver policy to press states into accepting the same educational testing and standards program. Mr. Jindal said that action “effectively forces states down a path toward a national curriculum,”...

CNBC's Susan Li reports China is building its own operating system to compete with companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft... (short vid at link)

It's no surprise Burger King is merging with Tim Hortons and moving its headquarters to Canada. Taxes are much lower there. What's strange is the deal's being financed by someone who believes in higher taxes here. Burger King is buying the Canadian donut chain for just over $11 billion. To seal the deal, legendary investor Warren Buffett — a man whose acumen we very much respect, by the way — is taking a 9% stake in the combined companies for an estimated $3 billion. In effect, he's financing Burger King's tax move. This is richly ironic, given that Buffett has...

Small, medium or large? The amount of outrage over Burger King’s deal to buy a Canadian donut chain could possibly determine whether the deal goes through — and helps Burger King dodge millions of dollars in U.S. taxes.

Thanks, Environmental Protection Agency! You’ve required sewage treatment plants, catalytic converters on cars and other things that made the world cleaner than the world in which I grew up. Good work. Today, America’s waterways are so much cleaner that I swim in New York City’s once-filthy Hudson River – right beside skyscrapers in which millions of people, uh, flush. The air we breathe is also cleaner than it’s been for 60 years. In a rational world, environmental bureaucrats would now say, “Mission accomplished. We set tough standards, so we don’t need to keep doing more. Stick a fork in it!...

Harry Reid is in love with one of the easiest tax dodges out there. He’s been buying –-gasp!!—municipal bonds, which of course every investor knows denies federal income tax from being paid to the patriotic hardworking citizens of the United States via the U.S. Treasury on the income created from the interest rate carried on the debenture. I don’t know how long the government will put up with this loophole whereby the federal government allows some citizens, like Reid, to make really stupid investment choices in the name of tax-free investment, but I can say this: If you have reasonable...

(Chicago) Mayor Emanuel is vowing to phase-in a higher minimum wage in Chicago than Springfield politicians are planning for the entire state. Rahm says he’ll push for a $13 minimum wage in Chicago even if the state enacts its pending ten dollar minimum wage.

Food prices continue to go up and consumers are feeling the pinch. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of food has spiked to its highest rate since September 2011. Consumers are now paying more for such staples as ground beef, chicken and turkey, eggs, bacon, citrus fruit, coffee, peanut butter, and margarine. Normally, politicians would try to alleviate this financial strain on American families. Yet, this administration seems to want to make food more expensive.