Free Republic

By Tuesday night about 90 million Americans will have cast ballots in an election that’s almost certain to create greater partisan divisions, increase gridlock and render governance of our complex nation even more difficult. Ninety million sounds like a lot, but that means that less than 40 percent of the electorate will bother to vote... The main impact of the midterm election in the modern era has been to weaken the president, the only government official (other than the powerless vice president) elected by the entire nation. Since the end of World War II, the president’s party has on average...

Attention, parents: Have your little ones been subjected to "TS Gold" in school yet? If you care about student privacy, data mining and classroom intrusions, you might want to start asking questions and protecting your children now before it's too late. What's happening here in Colorado with this onerous testing regime is happening everywhere. Informed families and teachers from all parts of the political spectrum agree: It's a Big Government/Big Business "gold" rush you don't want to join.... Last spring, parent Lauren Coker discovered that TS Gold assessors in her son's Aurora, Colo., public preschool had recorded information about his...

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have required police to obtain warrants for surveillance by drone, making California the latest state to weigh on an issue that is dividing lawmakers across the country. Mr. Brown's decision comes as the nation grapples with how to balance concerns over privacy and civil liberties with a technology that police departments say can serve as a powerful law-enforcement tool.

It's not often that the press exposes its own bias. But a Washington Post story this week reveals both the Obama administration's attempts to censor the news and the media's complicity in that effort.

A quarter-century after the Berlin Wall crumbled, an election this weekend may show whether Germany is ready for its first state governor from the party descended from East Germany’s communist rulers. The opposition Left Party hopes to end the 24-year grip of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives on the governor's office in eastern Thuringia state Sunday. While his party emerged from the old communist guard, Left Party candidate Bodo Ramelow is anything but a throwback to Soviet times. The 58-year-old, a practicing Protestant and West German native, went east when Germany reunited in 1990 as a labor union official and later...

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is urging consumers to boycott Burger King over reports that the fast food chain is eyeing a tax-cutting move to Canada. Brown, an outspoken corporate critic, said people hankering for a burger should head to Wendy’s or White Castle, two Ohio-based chains that aren’t looking to shrink their tax bill via a so-called “corporate inversion.” “Burger King’s decision to abandon the United States means consumers should turn to Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers or White Castle sliders,” he said in a statement. “Burger King has always said ‘Have it Your Way’; well my way is to support...

MADISON, Wis. – Conservative targets of a Democrat-launched John Doe investigation have described the secret probe as a witch hunt. That might not be a big enough descriptor, based on records released Friday by a federal appeals court as part of a massive document dump. Attorneys for conservative activist Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth point to subpoenas requested by John Doe prosecutors that sought records from “at least eight phone companies” believed to serve the targets of the investigation. O’Keefe and the club have filed a civil rights lawsuit against John Doe prosecutors, alleging they violated conservatives’...

President Obama doesn't have the authority to simply stop the companies he calls “corporate deserters” from taking up legal residency in low-tax countries. The Obama administration began examining its ability to take executive action to address corporate inversions without Congress because it lacks the support of Republicans. "Unless the U.S. corporate tax rate is reduced to 10 percent or less," Harvey told the Examiner, "it will still be beneficial for U.S. [multinational corporations] to invert."

A rather exasperated President Barack Obama pressed Congress to find a solution to the looming Highway Trust Fund crisis, arguing "it's not socialism" to want to build new highways and bridges in the country. "It's not crazy. It's not socialism. It's not the imperial presidency," -SNIP- "It's not like they've been busy with other stuff! No, seriously," Obama said. Republicans and Democrats in Congress are still divided on both a short-term solution to finance highway projects through the rest of the year and a long-term fix for the shortfall. Two senators introduced a bipartisan plan to incrementally raise the 18.4...

Here at SteynOnline every cutting-edge pop culture reference has to be at least three-quarters of a century old. So, watching the IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, I found him a dead ringer for Guy Kibbee, the beaming befuddled sugar daddy who was a mainstay at Warner Brothers in the early Thirties. Mr Koskinen is a Democrat sugar daddy who has given generously to his party since the Seventies: He's not the kind of sober civil servant you'd appoint if you were looking to signal to America that King Barack's revenue collectors are cleaning house and returning, chastened, to their previous role...

Researchers estimate that 25 years of financial support flowing from the former West into East Germany has cost just under €2 trillion ($2.8 trillion). In a study commissioned by the Welt am Sonntag, economists at the Berlin-based research association SED-Staat added up all transfers to East German states and individuals since reunification to come up with the astronomical figure. The difference between the social benefits collected by East Germans and their tax contributions made up the bulk of the price tag at about 60-65 percent of the total, the study showed. …

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lives-Others-Martina-Gedeck/dp/B000OVLBGC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376090994&sr=8-1&keywords=the+lives+of+others

She denies she was close to the Communist rulers in East Germany, where she grew up. So this 1972 photo of her in military-style uniform has left German Chancellor Angela Merkel ‘not amused’. Then called Angela Kasner and aged 17, she is shown happily involved in a civil defence exercise under the gaze of an East German officer. Snip Sonja Felssberg, now 58 and an old school comrade, found the photo and handed it to a national German newspaper. Mrs Merkel will hope the row doesn't undermine her bid for a third term in office Mrs Merkel will hope the...

I immediately though of this movie about the E. German Stasi when these scandals broke a week or so ago, The Lives of Others. Has anyone seen it? Do you agree? http://youtu.be/KOdn9Yelxwo

A new biography covering Chancellor Angela Merkel’s life in East Germany has caused a stir by suggesting she was closer to the communist apparatus and its ideology than previously thought. Published this week and written by journalists Günther Lachmann and Ralf Georg Reuth, the book quotes Gunter Walther, a former colleague of hers at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin, as saying she had been secretary for “Agitation and Propaganda” in the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) youth organization at the institute. Merkel, a trained physicist, worked at the academy from 1978 until 1989. … Merkel has said in the...

Magdeburg waterworks keeps crocodile mascot Nearly 40 years ago, the African nation of Mali gave former East Germany a baby crocodile as a gift. Now, Theophila is over three metres long and lives in Magdeburg's water treatment plant where she has become a local legend. Theophila, a nile crocodile, arrived in the communist country as a thank you from the Malian town of Kayes for building its waterworks some four decades ago. Just 22 centimetres long, the boss of the Colbitz water plant at the time, Gunter Hellmann, never imagined she would still be paddling around today. “The African mentality...

Sweden really is annoying. We've made both Germany and Russia look like fools on battle fields. We haven't experienced war for two centuries by now, but we're prepared for the next one. We once were poor, but today, we enjoy a standard of living that clearly is better than that of the average American or any other country on Earth for that sake. Few Americans could afford a car like the Volvo V70 (best selling car in Sweden) and only a small percentage of the American population own second homes (very common in Sweden). Furthermore, my Sweden is more technologically...

East Germany's secret police sold citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials • Tens of thousands tested with experimental drugs not approved in the West • One study of a drug for heart conditions saw six out of 17 patients die • Sinister practice exposed in disturbing new Germany documentary Former Communist East Germany secretly sold its citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials. Tens of thousands of sick people in the former German Democratic Republic were treated with medicines not approved in the West to...

The most striking proof that the Arab anti-Israel cause is a common meeting ground for both Nazis and Communists --and that the Arabs welcomed supporters of both ilks-- lies in the friendship of Carlos, the notorious master terrorist who served the PLO, with Fran*ois Genoud, an old Nazi, one of the leading Nazis in pre-War Switzerland, later a financier who provided funds for Habash's faction of the PLO. "Carlos" (his nom de guerre) was what is called a "red diaper baby." His fabulously rich father, a Venezuelan lawyer and owner of estates, gave "Carlos" the name Ilich, Lenin's patronymic, as...