Free Republic

Dare one call it treason? by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD July 18, 2014 The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see - Ayn Rand Many Americans believe that the US Government, the Democrat and Republican Parties and the media are deliberately misleading the American people, hiding the most heinous fraud and Constitutional crisis in the history of the United States. Individuals at the highest levels of the federal government may have aided and abetted a deception, which included willful ignorance, misinformation, false interpretations of the Constitution, outright lies and the creation of fraudulent...

The White House budget office launched USASpending.gov in 2007 to track federal spending after scores of lawmakers, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, successfully pushed through a bipartisan bill to ensure greater transparency with the funding. At last check, less than 8 percent of the site’s spending information was accurate, and federal agencies had failed to report nearly $620 billion in grants, loans and other forms of assistance awards, according to a recent report from Congress’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.

Chaka Fattah Jr., the son of U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), turned himself in to federal authorities Tuesday as prosecutors unsealed a 23-count indictment charging him with bank and tax fraud. Prosecutors said the 31-year-old consultant swindled at least seven banks by constructing a fraudulent picture of his own financial status and that of several companies he created in order to secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in business loans. He used much of the money, they said, to pay personal expenses including gambling debts, car payments, and tabs at restaurants and night clubs and then attempted to take...

Whether you’re a skilled technology worker or a poor laborer, it’s getting harder to become a U.S. citizen. But for those with $500,000 to buy their way in, it’s a different matter. That’s just the beginning of the problem. On Nov. 15, 2012, about 100 people gathered in a parking lot near O’Hare Airport in Chicago for a ceremonial occasion: the demolition of a fleabag motel to make way for what was intended to be a world-changing construction project. Next door to a Hooters restaurant, just off the Kennedy Expressway, was to rise a commercial and environmental wonder—the “World’s First...

In February 2013, Move America Forward announced an ambitious fundraising goal. The charity, launched in part by one of the most prominent figures in the Tea Party movement, had adopted the 800 Marines in a battalion fighting in Afghanistan and wanted to send them all care packages. ......................................................... Yet an examination of its fundraising appeals, tax records and other documents shows that Move America Forward has repeatedly misled donors and inflated its charitable accomplishments, while funneling millions of dollars in revenue to the men behind the group and their political consulting firms.

From But Now You Know. There is most certainly a pattern to climate change…but it’s not what you may think: For at least 114 120 years, climate “scientists” have been claiming that the climate was going to kill us…but they have kept switching whether it was a coming ice age, or global warming. (A timeline of claims follows, updated to 2014)

Each new climate-change study seems more pessimistic than the last. This May and June, for example, were the hottest ones on record for the planet. Effective countermeasures now could actually ward off many of these threats at relatively modest cost. Yet despite a robust scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are at the root of the problem, legislation to curb them has gone nowhere in Congress. In response, President Obama has proposed stricter regulations on electric utilities, which some scientists warn may be too little, too late. Why aren’t we demanding more forceful action? One reason may be the frequent...

At his best Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., made short work of a Democrat-friendly law professor testifying before Congress, even offering him some “free litigation advice.” The former prosecutor turned congressman was surgical in his questioning of Professor Charles Tiefer, who was brought before the House Judiciary Committee as an expert witness by Democrats — Tiefer has a history of being of service to the Democratic Party, according to The Blaze. “Professor Tiefer, would you seat a juror who referred to your client as an obscene body part?” Gowdy asked in his opening question.

I was watching Obama's medicine show the other day - the jive, gesturing and smirk. As usual he was surrounded by an obliging audience planted behind him to smile, laugh and cheer for the cameras. Again he goaded Congress, the GOP, the "haters" - saying he'd have to do his job because they wouldn't. His medicine show is flat, forced and fake. The American people know it. The world knows it. Is it possible that the Congress sees it too?

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Even though L.A. City Councilman Richard Alarcon was convicted of four felonies this week, he’ll continue to receive his $116,000 annual pension, a newspaper reported Friday. There are some California jurisdictions that prohibit city employees convicted of felonies from receiving pensions. That’s not the case in Los Angeles, a worker in the city’s civilian retirement division told Los Angeles Daily News. Alarcon, 60, was convicted Wednesday of four counts of perjury and voter fraud for living outside Council District 7 and lying about his address on official documents. The councilman’s wife, Flora, was convicted of three...

Demonstrating more lawlessness by the Obama administration, the Government Accountability Office has issued a report in which it claims that it undertook a sting operation to see whether or not the Affordable Care Act's eligibility verification system actually works or not. Their conclusion was that the majority of fake insurance applications submitted were approved. According to testimony by Seto Bagdoyan, who directs GAO's Forensic Audits and Investigative Service, "The federal marketplace approved coverage for 11 of our 12 fictitious applicants who initially applied online, or by telephone." Of course, Americans will be relieved to know that six applications were blocked,...

Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin’s legal foundation is asking a federal judge to sanction the Environmental Protection Agency for destroying public records. The Landmark Legal Foundation asked federal District Judge Royce Lamberth to sanction the EPA for the destruction of emails and text messages concerning the delay of large new environmental regulations until after the 2012 election.

Paul Farhi of The Washington Post writes today about a trend at the White House—and throughout journalism—that threatens the quality and credibility of news-gathering: Public-relations "minders" are injecting themselves into our interviews with politicians, CEOs, and other policymakers. Minder madness joins the surge of "background briefings" and the decline of access to decision-makers as evidence that the White House—and other big instititutions—are manipulating the press. It's that, but it's also something worse: It's evidence that journalists are ceding control when they should be seizing it, accepting canned news rather than breaking it. Farhi writes, "Almost every officially sanctioned exchange between...

Health Reform: An undercover operation disclosed on Wednesday shows just how easy it is to defraud ObamaCare. This is your health care on government. To test administration claims that it had strict controls in place to verify eligibility and subsidy amounts for ObamaCare applicants, the Government Accountability Office sent a dozen people out to try enrolling with made-up identities. All but one of the 12 succeeded in enrolling in a subsidized ObamaCare plan. [snip] The scale of the problem is potentially massive. According to the GAO, 4.3 million ObamaCare applications have known "inconsistencies" — most of which involve questions about...

An explosive video posted online on Sunday shows two U.S. Marines confronting a man who they accuse of impersonating a military veteran at a funeral in Florida. The Marines first suspected the man was likely an imposer because his uniform featured a mix of mismatched medals and ribbons. After the service they approached the man, who identified himself as a ‘sergeant major’. His name badge states his surname as Davis. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2702355/Is-fraud-U-S-marines-confront-fake-sergeant-major-military-funeral-Florida.html#ixzz38K3eVdDH Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Climate change skeptics have suggested a recent slowdown in the warming of the Earth is evidence that global warming is a farce and that climate models can't be trusted, but new research suggests the slowdown, or "pause," was not a significant disruption of larger trends. The planet has been slowly warming over the last century or more. But in the last 15 years, that rate of warming has slowed. Temperatures are still high by historical standards; but between 1998 and 2013 they were slightly below what climate models had predicted. A small number of scientists and policy makers have pointed...

For years, homeowners have been battling Wall Street in an attempt to recover some portion of their massive losses from the housing Ponzi scheme. But progress has been slow, as they have been outgunned and out-spent by the banking titans. In June, however, the banks may have met their match, as some equally powerful titans strode onto the stage. Investors led by BlackRock, the worldÂ’s largest asset manager, and PIMCO, the worldÂ’s largest bond-fund manager, have sued some of the worldÂ’s largest banks for breach of fiduciary duty as trustees of their investment funds. The investors are seeking damages for...

Another day, another VA tragedy. An Albany nurse claims dying New York Veterans were denied painkillers. Instead they were given salt water mixtures. Valerie Riviello, a nurse at the Albany Stratton VA medical center, claims that fellow employees had reported to her that dying veterans were denied painkillers such as morphine to ease their pain. Instead, they were given salt water mixtures. Riviello told the Times Union: Among stories that nurse Valerie Riviello has heard from other employees at the Albany VA is one about dying patients who were supposed to receive morphine to alleviate pain, but instead got a...

"As Senior White House Advisor Defies Congressional Subpoena, Committee Releases Audio Recording of Cabinet Secretary Making Illegal Campaign Solicitation" Then Labor Secretary: “Off-the-record here—Wanted to ask you if you could help us get folks organized to come to a fundraiser that we’re doing for Organizing for America for Obama campaign” As Director of the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, David Simas, in defiance of a congressional subpoena, failed to appear today to testify before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on taxpayer-funded political campaign activity by government officials, the Committee released an audio recording of...

Approximately 2,000 eighth graders in the Rialto, CA, school district received a shocking in-class essay assignment in May, which led to an outcry from the community and a public apology from district administrators. The assignment asked students to discuss whether the Holocaust “was an actual event in history,” or whether it was “merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain,” the San Bernadino Sun reports. After the justified outrage ensued, district administrators insisted that not one single student had argued against the reality of the Holocaust. But the San Bernadino Sun, after sifting through hundreds of student...