Free Republic

The Democratic National Committee has narrowly edged its Republican rival in fundraising for the first time all year. In a Sunday release, the Republican National Committee reported raising $7.1 million in September. Democrats on Friday reported a cash haul of nearly $7.4 million in September, while finishing the month with more than $5 million on hand.

Buried inside the budget deal brokered by Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid: a payout to the millionaire widow of the late Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg. There is appropriated for payment to Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg, widow of Frank R. Lautenberg, late a Senator from New Jersey, $174,000.” Agreed to by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate. Lautenberg’s networth $56.8 million last year

Fifteen years after tobacco companies agreed to pay billions of dollars in fines in what is still the largest civil litigation settlement in U.S. history, it's unclear how state governments are using much of that money. So far tobacco companies have paid more than $100 billion to state governments as part of the 25-year, $246 billion settlement. Among many state governments receiving money, Orange County, Calif., is an outlier. Voters mandated that 80 percent of money from tobacco companies be spent on smoking-related programs, like a cessation class taught in the basement of Anaheim Regional Medical Center. "So go ahead...

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe was one of dozens of investors with a Rhode Island estate planner charged with defrauding insurers by using the stolen identities of terminally ill people, according to court documents filed Wednesday by federal prosecutors in Providence. McAuliffe’s name appeared on a lengthy list of investors with Joseph A. Caramadre, an attorney and accountant who obtained the identities of dying people to set up annuities that ultimately cost insurance companies millions of dollars, the documents say.

McAuliffe to donate funds from convicted Rhode Island businessman to charity Terry McAuliffe's name popped up today on a list of investors who bought annuities from a Rhode Island businessman who pleaded guilty in 2012 to stealing the identities of terminally ill patients. The convicted businessman, Joseph Caramadre, was also a donor to McAuliffe's failed 2009 bid for the Democratic nomination for governor of Virginia. Caramadre donated more than $26 thousand to McAuliffe and hosted a fundraiser for the candidate. Caramadre(Court sketch of Caramadre courtesy of WJAR) According to our NBC affiliate in Providence WJAR, there is no evidence that...

LOS ANGELES – Funding for clinical cancer trials and other life-saving research under the National Institutes of Health was cut off in response to the government slimdown, but it looks like the cookie monster will still be knee-deep in chocolate chips (or is it carrots now?) According to the Daily Treasury Statement and first reported by CNS News, the administration dished out $445 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) on the first day of the slimdown, which means funds for the likes of PBS Newshour, NPR and “Sesame Street” are being spent before cancer research.

Well isn’t this special… The ad opens by pointing out the hundreds of decisions that women make each day, from picking groceries to buying homes. “And we make them ourselves,” says the narrator, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Votes. “But Ken Cuccinelli is intruding on our most personal decisions.” Richards lists off some of Cuccinelli’s stances, including his call for a ban on all abortions, “even when a woman’s health is in danger.” “Cuccinelli doesn’t trust women,” Richards says at the end of the ad. “So how can we trust him to be governor?” Because going to the abortion...

How did the Republican Party become so splintered and so infused with hard-line conservatives? Don't blame redistricting. Don't chalk it up to anti-Obama fervor.Republicans have become an unruly bunch of scorched-earth conservatives because the Tea Party smashed the business lobby's monopoly on GOP fundraising.Here's a story of where the GOP used to be:Back in 2006, I asked a couple of conservative Republican congressmen to give blurbs for my book on corporate welfare. “My boss loves the book,” one of their top aides said, “but we’re not going to put his name on it." Why not, I asked. "Who do you...

A striking aspect of the new Pew survey on Jewish Americans is how liberal Jews are. Is it good for the Democrats? You bet.Why do people vote the way to do? For swing voters, the answer is usually the state of the economy. For most, however, voting patterns are surprisingly fixed. People tend to vote for one party consistently over time. For Jewish American voters, the party of choice has been the Democratic party. Conservatives have been trying to crack the code for a number of years on how to get Jewish voters over to their side. Based on the...

As a blogger, I subscribe to the email lists of some organizations whose goals I do not, shall we say, necessarily embrace. Among them is Organizing For Action, the successor to the 2012 Obama campaign. As you can imagine, although I read OFA's messages with interest, I don't succumb to its frequent appeals for funds. You might think OFA might let me loaf along on its list, but no. Just now arrived an email I'd call kind of creepy. Start with the subject line [emphasis added throughout]: "Mark: Not an OFA donor". Whoah: so this is not just a generic...

NEW YORK – Billionaire political activist George Soros is the primary patron of New York mayoral frontrunner Bill de Blasio, WND has learned. Last month, the New York news media reported Soros had endorsed De Blasio’s mayoral bid but failed to disclose the billionaire’s major financial donation to the candidate’s nonprofit as well as De Blasio’s cozy working relationship with Soros-funded activist groups. “I am endorsing Bill de Blasio for Mayor because I believe he has the talent, vision and ability to lead New York City,” Soros said in a statement released by the de Blasio campaign in early August....

Tax cheat and crook Charlie Rangel is back in the news again for not disclosing funds. In 2010, Rangel lost his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee because of an investigation into 2 corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean. Later that year, the House of Representatives formally censured him after he was found guilty of 11 ethics violations. Violations included failure to disclose over $600,000 in assets on a financial disclosure report as well as short changing the IRS for 17 years on rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic. He also raided his PAC for $393,000 to...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Food stamp fraud is a “significant problem” in Rhode Island. That was the message U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha sent Thursday when he announced that nine people are facing criminal charges for allegedly defrauding the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program out of more than $3 million. During a two-year undercover investigation, Neronha said eight Rhode Island residents and one New York man were found to be illegally allowing food stamp recipients to use their EBT cards to obtain cash in exchange for a large surcharge at five Providence convenience stores. ... Six people were charged by...

Plutocrat and former third party presidential candidate Ross Perot donated $1 million to Planned Parenthood of Texas, to help fill the gap left by the state’s defunding of the Women’s Health Program. “For nearly 100 years Planned Parenthood has helped to educate men and women regarding family planning and general family health,” said Margot Perot, speaking for the Perot Foundation of Dallas. “Our family has supported this nonprofit for many years because we are impressed with the work they do—providing birth control; scientifically based education; breast health exams; and basic, life-saving healthcare for women who cannot afford services otherwise.” In...

Bill Clinton's foundation reportedly has racked up more than $50 million in travel costs over the past decade, in the latest detail to emerge about the high-flying former president's operation. The New York Post reports that, based on internal tax documents covering the period since 2003, the foundation logged a $4.2 million travel bill in 2011 alone (together, all the foundations Clinton runs spent $12.1 million on travel that year).

There's only one week until LGBT phone bank night! And I need your help. I need you to come out to make some phone calls to help ensure that there will be an LGBT friendly administration in the Governor's Mansion next year. Register here! It's time for the LGBT community and its allies to flex a little gay muscle and demonstrate to politicians the importance of supporting equality. Virginia is still a place where saying things like, "Homosexuality brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul," will earn you votes. I need you to come out next...

Environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer is testing his influence in the Virginia gubernatorial election in support of Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, with his political group preparing to spend a large amount of money in the race. Steyer is a San Francisco billionaire who used to work as a hedge fund manager, and is using his super PAC "NextGen Climate Action" to launch television ads to mobilize environmentalist voters to turn out in the gubernatorial race in support of McAuliffe in the Old Dominion, Politco reports. Steyer told Politico that he hopes to send a message to the country about the power...

The Federal Reserve Bank, with a capitalization of $62 billion, has recently lost $192 billion, as interest rates have risen, according to ETF Guide and Scott Minerd, the Global Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Partners. This, despite attempts by the central bank of the United States to keep interest rates much, much lower "Our estimate shows that the spike in bond yields since the first quarter of this year,” writes Minerd, “has caused a mark-to-market loss of $192 billion on the Fed’s holding assets, equivalent to approximately all of the unrealized gains that the Fed had accumulated since it began...

The big revelation in the GAO’s Obama Stimulus “Green Jobs” audit is that much of the 500 million dollars set aside for Green Jobs was really handed over to allied liberal non-profits and labor unions.

BOSTON (AP) — She's yet to say whether she'll run, but a group working to support Hillary Rodham Clinton's prospective presidential bid raised more than $1 million in June alone. The Ready for Hillary super PAC has accepted donations exceeding $1.25 million since beginning to raise money in earnest this spring, an official with the group confirmed Tuesday. The figure includes more than $1 million last month as the operation begins to ramp up.