Free Republic

New documents obtained by Judicial Watch, proves that the Obama administration continued to fund ACORN after all funding was banned for that organization. ACORN Housing changed their name to Affordable Housing Centers of America. All the top officials at ACORN Housing retained the same positions at AHCOA. They also retained the same tax number. Snip Since there was a federal ban on public funding of ACORN by the federal government, they should not have received a federal grant. NeighborWorks America, a public/private entity, funded by the taxpayers of the United States, determined that was a violation of federal law. Judicial...

Speaker John Boehner strongly hinted on a conference call with rank-and-file House Republicans that the upcoming continuing resolution will not be a do-or-die fight over Obamacare spending. “Our intent is to move quickly on a short-term continuing resolution [CR] that keeps the government running and maintains current sequester spending levels,” Boehner told members, according to a person on the call. While Boehner did not explicitly rule out using the CR for an Obamacare fight, other sources on the call said it was clear he preferred not to use the spending bill to draw a line in the sand. “He didn’t...

US Govt In Turmoil Over ‘Big New Al-Qaeda Plot’ While Obama Funds Them Anthony Gucciardi by Anthony Gucciardi August 4th, 2013 Updated 08/04/2013 at 5:17 pm The mainstream media is reporting on the latest ‘big terror’ threat from al-Qaeda that is apparently the ‘most significant’ threat in years, yet they simultaneously fail to mention that the Obama administration is all the while funding al-Qaeda through arming and financing Syrian rebels that have major ties to the group. obama-funding-al-qaedaSurely this essential point is at least worth mentioning when you consider the fact that Obama even initiated the large-scale arming of the...

The Hamas terror group, which rules Gaza, has been holding meetings with representatives from Iran and Hizbullah after months of tension between the two sides, it was reported Sunday. The Arabic language daily Asharq Al-Awsat reported that two Hamas representatives met last month with members of Hizbullah at the Iranian embassy in Beirut. The meeting was attended by senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk, the report said. During the meeting, the sides discussed a number of issues, including Iranian aid to Hamas—which has been reduced significantly in recent years. Asharq al-Awsat quoted Hamas official Ahmed Yusuf as saying that the...

There's a movement among Capitol Hill Republicans to defund Obamacare. With the president's hugely expensive national health care scheme set to take effect Jan. 1, many of the law's opponents view this fall's battles over spending and the debt as the last chance to stop it, specifically by cutting off funds for its implementation. But Republicans will not stop Obamacare. They won't defund it. Their last chance to put an end to it was the 2012 election. They lost, and the chance is gone. On Thursday, Republican Sen. Mike Lee made public a letter pledging to "not support any continuing...

And they should. CBS reoprts that NSA Director Keith Alexander made an “emergency visit” to Capitol Hill to head off a potentially embarrassing vote to defund his agency’s trawling of phone and Internet records. House Republican leaders allowed a vote on an amendment by Rep. Justin Amash to use the power of the purse to rein in the NSA, and the panic shows that the effort might well succeed in the Senate when the budget comes to the upper chamber: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO With a high-stakes showdown vote looming in the House, White House press secretary Jay...

The head of the National Security Agency made an urgent visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to try to dissuade lawmakers from voting for an amendment that would rein in their mass collection of phone records. Gen. Keith Alexander met privately with Republicans, and later Democrats, to voice the agency's concerns about an amendment to a major defense bill that would halt the blanket collection of records, including telephone call records, for people not already subject to an investigation. Part of the concern is that even entertaining the amendment on the floor could expose certain programs. snip The amendment folds...

Media outlets across the state have pounced on a comment by State Superintendent Mike Flanagan, who said this week there are a record 55 school districts now in deficit. But downplayed in much of the reporting is that 10 school districts are projected to come out of deficit, which if confirmed in November by audits, would mean there actually are four fewer districts in deficit in 2012-13 than the previous year. Michigan had 49 districts in deficit in 2011-12. Michigan Department of Education Spokeswoman Jan Ellis said this was the first year that the state did forecasts on deficits. "The...

Add the executive director of the Michigan Association of School Boards to those in the education lobby pounding the drums about a "crisis" in funding for public education. In a column in MLive, the MASB's Kathy Hayes talked about the number of schools in deficit at the end of fiscal year 2012 and asked: "Are we really talking about financial mismanagement or is this predominantly a case of a steady disinvestment in education?" Her question is easy to answer. When Jennifer Granholm was governor, the state foundation allowance was increased six consecutive years from 2002-03 to 2008-09. The result? The...

The British Daily Telegraph reports that Hamas, which rules Gaza, is paying a heavy price in lost aid over its assistance to the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Iran has made a meaningful cut in its aid to Hamas, which had previously reached amounts as large as 15 million Australian dollars per month. .....

Today I want to talk about The Troubles. I previously talked about Operation Banner An Analysis of British Operations in North Ireland.That is worth reading though it is a bit dry. So here we go. For a brief recap the problems between England and Ireland probably go back 900 years or so. We will focus a bit more on current history. The Anglo- Irish war from roughly (start and stop points are hard for guerrilla wars) 1919 to 1922 ended up partitioning Ireland into 2 entities. The 26 counties that make up the majority of Ireland were granted Dominion...

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama urged Congress on Thursday to fund upgrades to US embassy security around the world, as a way of truly honouring the memory of four Americans killed in Benghazi. Obama made the call in his latest bid to regain the initiative after Republicans accused his administration of covering up details of the September 11 attack to safeguard his re-election hopes last year. The president said he was committed to improving security at US posts abroad as recommended by a State Department review board set up to probe the attack on the US mission in the eastern Libyan...

While MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry has created a controversy over her comments about children not belonging to their parents, there is another comment Harris-Perry made that deserves a closer look. In a promotion for the cable news channel, Harris-Perry said: We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong...

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration on Wednesday renewed its request for Congress to let it restore funding to the first United Nations agency to grant full membership to “Palestine,” arguing that defunding runs contrary to U.S. interests. Complying with U.S. laws dating back more than a decade, the administration in late 2011 reluctantly cut funding to the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), depriving the Paris-based agency of 22 percent of its operating budget. UNESCO head Irina Bokova described the resulting financial crisis as the “worst ever” in the agency’s history, but rather than urge member-states to reconsider the...

David Arsen, a self-described “school finance specialist” and professor at Michigan State University, recently published an open letter to Gov. Rick Snyder. He devoted much of this letter to criticizing legislation from last year’s session (specifically House Bill 5923) and a rough draft of proposed modifications to Michigan’s school funding laws. But Arsen also makes the claim that “[b]etween 2002 and 2011, real per-pupil funding of Michigan’s public schools fell by $2,643 or 24.5 percent,” suggesting that there has been a “collapse” in revenues for public schools. This is incorrect. Michigan schools actually received more total per-pupil revenue in 2011...

If Congress does not act to prevent $85 billion in spending cuts scheduled to begin March 1, Catholic Charities of Baltimore may be among the impacted institutions, said its executive director William J. McCarthy Jr. “It concerns me, and it concerns Archbishop (William E.) Lori,” he said. “A budget is a moral document. It sets forth our priorities as a society and as a people – what do we value, and what do we think is most important? By cutting aid to the poor, whether it’s the children, whether it’s seniors or others living in poverty at the expense of...

It’s really simple, folks. Everything boils down to Obamacare. Do we really believe that Obamacare will make private health insurance unaffordable? Do we really believe Obamacare will bankrupt the nation and relegate the next generation of Americans to a dimmer future of less freedom and opportunity? Do we really believe Obamacare will create incorrigible dependency? Do we really believe that Obamacare will lead to a deterioration of healthcare services and rationed care? Are we really serious about balancing the budget and reforming entitlements? If the answer to the aforementioned questions is a resounding yes, which is presumably the case for...

In 2011, when Gov. Rick Snyder proposed cutting $300 per student for K-12 public education, Michigan School Business Officials Executive Director Dave Martell said as many as 160 schools could go into deficit if the cuts stood. In 2010-11, the year before Gov. Snyder's first budget, there were 48 schools in deficit. If Martell's claim were accurate, that means the number of districts losing money would have more than tripled. However, nearly two years later the Michigan Department of Education's report shows that fewer schools fell into deficit in 2011-12. The MDE report stated 46 districts were in deficit last...

Earlier this month NGO Monitor released its report on foreign government funding of radical political Israeli NGOs which work to undermine Israel's international standing and subvert Israeli society. Along with the usual European suspects who give millions of shekels (or Euros or pounds) to Israeli groups like this, it works out that the US government is also funding extremely radical organizations, courtesy of American taxpayers. Notably, the three groups that reported receiving funding from the US are all in the business of waging political warfare campaigns directed at the Israeli public. According to the report, in accordance with the NGO...

In The Detroit News, the presidents of the University Research Corridor schools argue that a dollar of state appropriations for their institutions returns $17 in economic benefits. But this analysis, regardless of accuracy, does not justify the appropriation. These multiplier analyses are meant to show the economic impact of spending in one area compared to another. For instance, this 17-times spending multiplier is awfully close to the returns promised from spending on early childhood education, where advocates argue that spending a dollar generates $16 in economic activity, despite evidence to the contrary. An even greater claim, using the same form...