Free Republic

City Controller Ron Green, Houston's top elected money manager and self-described watchdog, is seeking leniency for a five-time convicted felon and contractor who masterminded an elaborate real estate and forgery scam targeting the city's historically African-American neighborhoods. Green is asking a judge for probation for his friend and former next-door neighbor Dwayne K. Jordon, a rogue developer who pleaded guilty to felony theft. According to indictments, Jordon pilfered 23 Houston properties from different owners and then duped unsuspecting buyers into purchasing homes built on stolen ground. The ex-con contractor and the city controller have known each other about five years,...

The IRS pays out billions in fraudulent tax refunds, and Lansing is at the top of the list. The IRS paid out more than $3 million in refunds to one address in Lansing. The IRS has not disclosed that address, but according to a new report issued by the IRS Inspector General, someone filed more than 2100 separate tax returns using that address, and received $3.3 million in fraudulent refunds. The inspector general says identity thieves filing bogus tax returns got more than $5 billion in refunds last year. The inspector general also says the problem is so rampant., the...

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign team have been waging a coordinated effort against Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney by repeatedly casting aspersion on the length of his tenure at Bain Capital as well as the limited disclosure of his past personal income tax returns...But now the Shark Tank has come into possession of information that has never been publicly disclosed which completely undermines Wasserman Schultz’ credibility as it pertains to her calls for transparency or the claim that she qualifies as “middle class.” ...on the mainland, Newbury, New Hampshire is a quaint little town...

After a lengthy investigation, Wilson was indicted in April on a misdemeanor insurance charge for laundering a total $8,000 in campaign contributions from Missouri Employers Mutual Co., a state-created workers' compensation company based in Columbia, to the Missouri Democratic Party through a St. Louis law firm, Herzog Crebs. Former Herzog Crebs partner Ed Griesedieck III was also indicted.

Object is raised about 10 to 13ft above seabed and curved at the sides like a mushroom. Hole is surrounded by an strange rock formation that expedition team can not explain. Stones are covered in something 'resembling soot' which has baffled experts. Divers say phones and some cameras switch off when close to the object. The divers exploring a 'UFO-shaped' object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea say their equipment stops working when they approach within 200m. Professional diver Stefan Hogerborn, part of the Ocean X team which is exploring the anomaly, said some of the team's cameras and...

Defense attorney Roy Kulcsar disbarred for using inmates to recruit new clients Attorney -- who defended terrorist Ramzi Yousef -- paid prisoners through commissary accounts Renowned defense attorney Roy Kulcsar didn’t chase ambulances — just inmates. And to make sure he caught them, he paid cash. Kulcsar funneled nearly $20,000 in illegal “retainers” to dozens of federal prisoners as compensation for steering fellow felons to his law practice, authorities said. The cash-for-clients deal operated between August 2004 and February 2010, with Kulcsar depositing funds into prison commissary accounts, a federal disciplinary committee reported last month. Kulcsar, who once represented 1993...

As cities and states across the nation take aim at public employee pensions, Boston City Hall is engaged in a very different debate: how much to increase retirees’ checks. Mayor Thomas M. Menino is proposing to boost the annual cost-of-living adjustment for most pensioners from $360 to $390, a $30 increase. City Council president Stephen J. Murphy is pushing for more, seeking a $90 increase over the current rate. Other Massachusetts cities and towns have had similar debates. Last month in Brookline, voters rejected the advice of the Board of Selectmen and approved a pension increase akin to what Menino...

WASHINGTON—Lateisha M. Rollerson, 38, a former assistant to an acting intelligence chief for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was sentenced today to 10 months in prison for taking part in a fraud scheme involving more than $500,000 in government money. The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen, Jr., Charles K. Edwards, Acting Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security; James W. McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; and Timothy Moynihan, Assistant Director of the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility. Rollerson, of Bowie, Maryland, pled...

CHICAGO (AP) — Three activists who travelled to Chicago for a NATO summit were accused Saturday of manufacturing Molotov cocktails in a plot to attack President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's home and other targets. But defense lawyers shot back that Chicago police had trumped up the charges to frighten peaceful protesters away, telling a judge it was undercover officers known by the activists as "Mo" and "Gloves" who brought the firebombs to a South Side apartment where the men were arrested. "This is just propaganda to create a climate of fear," Michael Duetsch said. "My clients came...

[gullible suckers]-- I know this probably isn't the first time you're hearing about this, but chances like this don't come up very often. And the deadline is approaching. Chip in $3 or whatever you can to be automatically entered to go to L.A. and spend an evening with President Obama and George Clooney. We'll cover airfare and hotel for you and whoever you choose to bring with you. All you have to do to be automatically entered is donate what you can to support this campaign: https://donate.barackobama.com/Obama-and-Clooney Thanks, Julianna Julianna Smoot Deputy Campaign Manager Obama for America

We all know that Obama is a poser sack of crap. but who are his foot soldiers? Lets document them in one place. Many of us know the AG, Eric Holder. Some have mentioned the Energy secretary Stephan Chu Does any one know who Lisa Jackson is? Then there are the advisers the inner circle like Valerie Jarrett List them and vet them here Freepers. Let us document them and frame the picture

ROCKVILLE, Md. - There are major flaws with the way the concrete was poured in the $101 million Transit Center in the heart of downtown Silver Spring. During a news conference Monday, Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner outlined the issues, calling the situation a "serious problem." He also hinted at the possibility of legal action against the contractor. "Specifications for the project called for there to be 10 inches of concrete. The analysis that has been done has shown that for significant portions of the second floor and the third floor, there's only eight and a half inches," Berliner...

New independent circulation numbers show a sharp decline in readership of Politico and other left-leaning news websites, an ominous trend for the suburban Virginia-based news outlet and its peers as Americans head into an election year. Recently published and publicly available Web traffic data indicates that “unique visitor” traffic to politico.com in November 2011 was 15 percent lower than in the previous month, and 31 percent lower than in November 2010. The data, from Compete, Inc., also show an overall two-year decline. Political websites gain and lose readers throughout election cycles, with presidential election years trending higher in unique Web...

Most homebuyers will pay an increased fee to finance their mortgage as part of a U.S. Senate compromise approved today to continue a 2 percentage point cut in payroll taxes and extend unemployment benefits until February. In a last-minute compromise reached Friday night, the Senate agreed to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits but only for two months and to pay the estimated $30 billion to $40 billion cost by increasing the fees on new mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The increase is expected to cost a new homebuyer about $17 a month for a...

Members of Congress already get better health insurance and retirement benefits than other Americans. They are about to get better insider trading laws as well. Several academic studies show that the investment portfolios of congressmen and senators consistently outperform stock indices like the Dow and the S&P 500, as well as the portfolios of virtually all professional investors. Congressmen do better to an extent that is statistically significant, according to studies including a 2004 article about "abnormal" Senate returns by Alan J. Ziobrowski, Ping Cheng, James W. Boyd and Brigitte J. Ziobrowski in the Journal of Financial and Qualitative Analysis....

Attorney General Holder being questioned.

The Broward Teacher's Union has a new administrator, amidst a financial investigation. John Tarka has been appointed by the American Federation of Teachers to be the head of the BTU. "Our primary concern with the American Federation of Teachers is to make sure that our children are doing well...

Just like clockwork, the Obama administration never misses an opportunity to unload thousands of records it hopes no one will ever bother sifting through during the holidays. On Black Friday, the White House released more visitor log info — trumpeting disclosures it has fought tooth and nail. I’ve started looking through the data. And you can, too, right here:

Guys like Bill Cellini don't get indicted in Illinois. And the puppet masters don't sit at the defense table in federal court, tapping their fingers, waiting for the jury to pronounce judgment. *snip* They're Democrats, they're Republicans. They're the bosses of the Combine. *snip* All involved should know that their ((prosecutors)) work is appreciated, by every taxpayer in this thoroughly corrupt state who've wondered how the puppet masters of the Combine keep getting away with it. On Tuesday, they didn't get away with it. And Bill Cellini went down.

Hundreds of Long Island Rail Road employees may have cheated their way to big pensions through a $1 billion fraud by paying off doctors to say they were unable to work, authorities said