Free Republic

....that I quit lurking and signed up as a poster on Free Republic. Thank you Jim, you are a true patriot. A moments silence for those who have gone on. A hearty thank you to everyone for making this the best site there is. God bless you each and every one.

Sensational reports of Russian government spies hacking into the Democrat party’s computers weren’t the usual anti-Moscow smear job. Republican presidential contender Donald Trump also took a hit in the double whammy. The abrasive business tycoon may have a popular following among grass roots voters, but he has managed to garner powerful enemies within the American establishment. Not least large sections of the corporate news media, the military and foreign policy arms of US government.

When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they established a system of communal property. Within three years they had scrapped it, instituting private property instead. Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell tells the story. There are three configurations of property rights: state, communal, and private property. Within a family, many goods are in effect communally owned. But when the number of communal members exceeds normal family size, as happens in tribes and communes, serious and intractable problems arise. It becomes costly to police the activities of the members, all of whom are entitled to their share of the total product of the...

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made several decrees Thursday that will shape the country’s constitution and, he says, safeguard its “revolutionary” future. They include a ruling that none of his decisions can be overturned by any authority. Morsi gave the Constituent Assembly a two month deadline to finish drafting a new constitution, ruling that no authority may dissolve it until the country's defining document is completed. He further ruled that no authority may dissolve the Shura Council, the upper house of Egypt's parliament. In a move likely to bring criticism that the Egyptian president is inappropriately expanding his powers, he also...

As eviction-related suicides continue to rise in Spain, protests are becoming more frequent with the public outraged at the government’s lack of action to combat social ills. Evictions are a “humanitarian concern,” the national bank chief has said. The governor of the Bank of Spain, Luis Maria Linde, said that the increasing number of evictions related to financial woes should be combated through “social initiatives.” The evictions have driven over 100 people to commit suicide, and mass protests on the issue have become a regular occurrence in Spain. “We must urgently address and social humanitarian issues, this will have to...

While some will spend Thanksgiving and days after it feasting on turkeys, 13 percent of Americans will rely on food stamps to avoid going to sleep hungry this holiday season. About 42.2 million Americans will eat on a budget of $1 to $1.25 per meal this Thanksgiving as the number of people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program remains high, found a new report by The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit government watchdog group. The number of Americans relying on food stamps this Thanksgiving is equal to the populations of California and Connecticut combined. The latest data from the US...

The city of Detroit, facing a serious cash crisis, is set to go bankrupt by the end of this year and would put city workers on furlough unless it strikes a deal with the city council that would bring in $30 million before Dec. 14. Detroit has been in financial turmoil for years, losing a quarter of its population in the past decade and facing a shrinking auto industry that has reduced tax revenues. The Detroit City Council gave the mayor the option to hire a financial advisor and in return receive $30 million by the end of the year....

The National Security Agency has shot down a Freedom of Information Act request for details about an elusive presidential order that may allow the government to deploy the military within the United States for the supposed sake of cybersecurity. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reports on Tuesday that their recent FOIA request for information about a top-secret memo signed last month by US President Barack Obama has been rejected [PDF]. Now attorneys for EPIC say they plan to file an appeal to get to the bottom of Presidential Policy Directive 20. Although the executive order has been on the...

In a single second, law enforcement agents can match a suspect against millions upon millions of profiles in vast detailed databases stored on the cloud. It’s all done using facial recognition, and in Southern California it’s already occurring. Imagine the police taking a picture: any picture of a person, anywhere, and matching it on the spot in less than a second to a personalized profile, scanning millions upon millions of entries from within vast, intricate databases stored on the cloud. It’s done with state of the art facial recognition technology, and in Southern California it’s already happening. At least one...

In 10 days the United States will have a balanced budget. August 2,2011 is the projected date (although some sources now say it is August 10th) the United States government will reach its debt limit. After that date, there will be no more sales of T-bills and U.S. Bonds (the sale of which creates more debt), in other words, the government can no longer borrow money, until it pays down some of its current debt. The government faces the same situation we do when we have reached the borrowing limit of a credit card, we can no longer use the...

Predict the date and time (eastern) of the announcement of the republican collapse in the debt ceiling "crisis." For bonus points, name the republican who makes the announcement. Winner gets .... screwed just like the rest of us.

The pyramid of aluminum shown in the photograph figures greatly in our nation’s history. This once rare metal was so prized that it was placed into a national monument by a grateful nation. Can you guess where? Now, aluminum is so common, thanks to an electrical refining process and plentiful, cheap electricity, that we throw it away in soda cans. Two seemingly unrelated events on opposite sides of the globe occurred this past week. One was the closure of an aluminum plant in Montana, and the other is the president of a European metals association threatened to move production overseas...

Sneaky: Current credit bailout bill contains carbon tax provisions! If you look at page 180 of the 451-page monster bailout bill that easily passed the Senate yesterday (PDF here), you will see that it includes at Section 116 language about the tax treatment of “industrial source carbon dioxide.” It also provides, at Section 117, for a “carbon audit of the tax code.” What could a provision about the tax treatment of “industrial source carbon dioxide” and another provision about doing a “carbon audit” of the tax code possibly have to do with restoring confidence in Wall Street’s troubled credit and...

Four scientists, four scenarios, four more or less similar conclusions without actually saying it outright -- the global warming trend is done, and a cooling trend is about to kick in. The implication: Future energy price response is likely to be significant. Late last month, some leading climatologists and meteorologists met in New York at the Energy Business Watch Climate and Hurricane Forum. The theme of the forum strongly suggested that a period of global cooling is about emerge, though possible concerns for a political backlash kept it from being spelled out. However, the message was loud and clear, a...

Interview by Wang Yongchen On May 27, 2008, one of China’s most celebrated radio journalists and founder of the environmental organization, Green Earth Volunteers, Wang Yongchen interviewed Fan Xiao, chief engineer of the Regional Geology Investigation Team of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau about the possibility that the Zipingpu dam induced China’s deadly May 12 earthquake. Wang Yongchen: Now, two weeks after the powerful Wenchuan earthquake, what are your thoughts? Fan Xiao: This earthquake was a Richter scale magnitude 8 and, strictly speaking, it is very unusual for this area. The historic records show that the highest recorded earthquake...

He’ll be our president, too: the person who gets himself (or, herself) elected, south of the border. For the U.S. president has at least as much power to influence the destiny of every Canadian as any prime minister we elect. Both for those who do, and for those who don’t still think of Canada as a western country, that president is at least the captain of an alliance—formalized in NATO, but informally knitted together with a million historical strings. We can’t vote in U.S. elections, but we reserve the right to comment. And I haven’t been commenting, much, only because...

May 16, 2007 The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: The Risks Outweigh the Benefits by Edwin Meese, III, Baker Spring and Brett D. Schaefer WebMemo #1459 The Bush Administration has renewed its 2004 request that the Senate ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). While UNCLOS contains provisions that would be marginally beneficial to the U.S. Navy, other provisions of the treaty, such as those regarding the settlement of disputes, royalties on the exploitation of resources on the deep seabed, and the empowering of an additional U.N.-affiliated international bureaucracy, pose far...

Should U.N. Broker Return of Alaska to Russia? By Cliff Kincaid | June 29, 2007 At a recent Heritage Foundation symposium on the Law of the Sea Treaty....Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy calmly and methodologically delineated the problems with the treaty, and how U.S. national security could be adversely affected... Gaffney had complained about the treaty, formally known as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), creating a global tax mechanism. Under UNCLOS, now before the Senate, U.S. corporations would be required to pay taxes to an International Seabed Authority for the right to...

“I’ve had an idea” “Whassat then?” “Well you know that worldwide, Muslims go on a violence fest every Ramadan?” “Yyyeeeeeess.” (and they do: Religion of Peace recorded 245 attacks last month, 45 in Thailand alone, and look at Paris, apparently every year now – Brussels too this year). “So why not get a calendar converter for the Muslim calendar/our calendar, a list of their celebration dates throughout the Muslim year, and check against crime figures based on our year, then do a calendar conversion to see if there are any bumps in the crime stats coinciding with those celebrations? Any...

3/22/2007 Florida: City to Seize Homes Over a $5 Parking Ticket Brooksville, Florida proposes to foreclose homes and seize cars over less than $20 in parking tickets. The city council in Brooksville, Florida voted this week to advance a proposal granting city officials the authority to place liens and foreclose on the homes of motorists accused of failing to pay a single $5 parking ticket. Non-homeowners face having their vehicles seized if accused of not paying three parking offenses. According to the proposed ordinance, a vehicle owner must pay a parking fine within 72 hours if a meter maid claims...