Free Republic

The International Monetary Fund isnÂ’t my least-favorite international bureaucracy. That special honor belongs to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, largely because of its efforts to undermine tax competition and protect the interests of the political class (it also tried to have me arrested, but I donÂ’t hold that against them). But the IMF deserves its share of disdain. ItÂ’s the Doctor Kevorkian of global economic policy, regularly advocating higher taxes and easy money even though thatÂ’s never been a recipe for national prosperity.And it turns out that the IMF also is schizophrenic. The international bureaucracyÂ’s latest big idea,...

The Secret Service is scandal prone. It spends excessively on foreign presidential trips, and it has agents who get in trouble with prostitutes and liquor bottles. The recent White House fence-jumping incident was a stunning failure. Despite the Service spending $1.9 billion a year, a guy with a knife jumped the fence, sprinted across the lawn, pushed open the front door, galloped through the Entrance Hall, danced across the East Room, and almost had time to sit down for a cup of tea in the Green Room. In the wake of the incident, the head of the Secret Service resigned....

There is a “moral bankruptcy” that’s settled into leadership of America in the White House and throughout Washington, D.C., Dr. Alveda King—the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.—said in an interview Friday morning. “All of our leaders—or many of our leaders—are just morally bankrupt right now,” King said when asked if President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have helped or hurt the black community in America. “They’re not calling on God. We still stay ‘In God We Trust’ and ‘One Nation Under God’ but we’re not practicing that. We need to call on God. There’s a moral bankruptcy in...

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution is crystal clear in meaning. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. FBI Director, James Comey, an Obama appointment, does not give a damn what the Constitution says. In a recent speech, Comey warns If Apple and Google Won't Decrypt Phones, We'll Force Them To Everyone...

Randy Barnett has an excellent post at the Volokh Conspiracy about his recent amicus brief requesting the D.C. Circuit grant en banc review of Sissel v. HHS. (Sound familiar?) Sissel challenges the constitutionality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate – which the Supreme Court ruled could only be constitutional if imposed under Congress’ taxing power – on the grounds that this, ahem, tax originated in the Senate rather than the House, as the Constitution’s Origination Clause requires. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled against Sissel. The panel’s rationale was that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was not the...

Troh plans to partially recover financially with a book written about her life, from growing up in Liberia, meeting Duncan in a refugee camp in Ivory Coast, Duncan's years-long quest to come to America to be reunited with his girlfriend and their 19-year-old son, and his death in an isolation ward. "It will be a love story," she said.

Episode 115 of “Seinfeld” featured a gruff entrepreneur who ran a soup stand offering the best soup in New York City. “You can’t eat this soup standing up, your knees buckle,” Jerry Seinfeld explained to Elaine. “There’s only one caveat — the guy who runs the place is a little temperamental, especially about the ordering procedure,” Jerry said. “He’s secretly referred to as the Soup Nazi” because if you don’t order right, “He yells and you don’t get your soup.” No one liked the Soup Nazi — but everyone loved his soup! Despite his grumpy, rude and domineering demeanor, the...

As a nervous nation watches the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola crisis, many Americans have concluded that the country’s top health officials seem more concerned with stopping the spread of panic than stopping the spread of the virus. But Americans’ fear is only growing, and one reason is that too few people believe what the president of the United States says anymore. A recent poll asked Americans this question: “How often does Barack Obama lie to the country on important matters?” Not about sex. Not about whether he really likes baseball. Not whether he still cadges an occasional cigarette...

This past week saw upside reversals across the board coming out with prices holding steady in spite of the hammering we had over the past month or two.  [click pix to enlarge]The October metals rally held on to its gains, in fact market prices show gold's just about clawed back to break-even for 2014.  That's said, metals' role in price trends ahead is become increasingly controversial (re Gold And Silver - Financial World: House Of Cards Built On Sand) even while many see a bright tomorrow with other commodities (We Maintain Our Outlook For Higher Prices For Commodities).  Stocks.  OK,...

Corrupt federal prosecutors presenting false evidence in order to shake down a blameless corporation and bring in tens of millions of dollars seems like a pretty dramatic story. Especially when former prosecutors support the charge and a chief judge acts on the allegations and takes dramatic action. Yet the media silence is deafening. Eric Holder’s Justice Department is implicated in a dramatic and shocking case of alleged corruption that is so bad that the Chief Judge of the Eastern District of California has taken what can rightly be called the “nuclear option” and recused all the judges in the district...

DENVER The president of Frontier Airlines says a nurse who was on flights between Dallas and Cleveland and who later tested positive for Ebola may have been at a more advanced stage of the illness than previously thought.Barry Biffle emailed employees Friday about the findings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He said the CDC has assured the Denver-based airline that crewmembers on the flights are at a very low risk of exposure.The airline put the pilots and flight attendants on leave for 21 days, which health experts consider the outer limit of how long it would take someone...

As he prepares to leave office, Governor Deval Patrick is quietly transferring 500 of his managers into the state public employee union, a move that will qualify them for a series of 3 percent raises and insulate them from firing when the next governor takes over. Rolling the managers into the 22,000-member union will effectively protect them from any house-cleaning that might occur when the next governor takes office in January — a particular likelihood if Republican Charlie Baker were to take over after eight years of Democratic leadership. Union employees generally have to be removed “for cause,” while managers...

Republican challenger Tom Foley still leads Democratic incumbent Dan Malloy in their Connecticut gubernatorial rematch as voters continue to grumble about the job Malloy has done over the past four years. Foley now picks up 50% of the vote to Malloy’s 43% in a new statewide telephone survey of Likely Connecticut Voters. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

You might think that with the scandal surrounding the IRS and the resulting budget cuts that have hampered their activities that the organization might become more aware of its procedures and adjust them to appear more customer friendly. If what happened this past week is any indication then they are still living somewhere in the ozone. Most Americans think of April 15th as the final day for filing their personal income tax return. That is so for most people, but a large part of the population files an extension that allows them to file their return by October 15th as...

Unbelievable. Troops from the 101st Airborne Division will not receive full protective Hazmat suits for their mission in West Africa. They’re being sent to West Africa – but won’t get full protective Hazmat suits.

America’s top infectious disease expert on Sunday again acknowledged that the safety protocols used for the nation’s first Ebola patient were inadequate, and that the Obama administration overstated the country’s readiness for the deadly virus, amid concern that Americans have already lost faith in the government. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told “Fox News Sunday” that the adopted World Health Organization protocol for handling an Ebola patient was better suited for field work than confined hospital care. -snip- Murphy also said the so-called Ebola czar that the president appointed to oversee the...

To maintain, as does Dr. Frieden, that stopping travel to the U.S. from the few countries where Ebola is running rampant would somehow harm us is illogical to the point of absurdity. And it is now clear to every other sentient being that Ebola is far more contagious, and deadly, than AIDS, to which Dr. Frieden compared Ebola. The latest nugget is that Amber Vinson, the second Dallas nurse diagnosed with Ebola, called the CDC numerous times before boarding her flight from Cleveland back to Dallas and was told it was OK for her to fly because her fever did...

Nobody credits newly-minted Ebola czar (for the sake of rhyme, shouldn’t it be “Ebola Ayatollah”) Ron Klain with any scientific credibility, but his embrace of warmist doctrine is nonetheless interesting. Back in 2011, when he was coming off his gig as Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Klain went on MSNBC to spout his scientific wisdom. Politico took notice:

A top official at the National Institutes of Health on Sunday said a travel ban on flights to and from West Africa would only make things worse in the fight against Ebola, pushing back against calls from lawmakers to institute one. “The fact is it would be very, very difficult if we lost control of easily tracking people,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN’s “State of the Union." Fauci said roughly 36,000 people tried to get on flights out of one of the three West African countries hit hardest...

The military now has female soldiers escorting former CIA captives around Guantánamo’s high-value prison, an apparent personnel change that defense lawyers say is causing an uproar over religious insensitivity. When one captive — who had just finished meeting with his attorney — refused to be touched by a female soldier, the military called in a special unit to move him using the detention center’s tackle-and-shackle technique, a Forced Cell Extraction. Female U.S. troops are still excluded from detainee groin searches and showers, the detention center’s cultural advisor said Thursday. “These are male-female issues; it has nothing to do with culture...