Free Republic

People across the political spectrum, from left to right and back again, seem to revel in perverse delight when comparing the policies of a political foe to those of the Nazis. Sometimes, they will skip the group comparisons and head straight into drawing personal parallels between the individual in question and Adolf Hitler. The practice is so onerous that, in the Dark Ages of the internet (1990), an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation named Mike Godwin coined what has become known as Godwin's Law. It states that, the longer and more involved an argument becomes, the more likely a...

Citing this data as evidence of how many firearms are currently purchased through private sales not subject to background checks is akin to citing data about current seat belt usage that is derived from a limited sample taken years before a mandatory seat belt law went into effect or before cars were even required to have seat belts. We all know that, according to a phrase popularized by Mark Twain, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Citing such limited and outdated data over and over again on a matter of this magnitude, however, is going...

Among comments to my last piece, “Lautenberg gun show bill as bad as expected,” several were from well-meaning gun owners who honestly questioned why S. 843 – ostensibly submitted to close the “gun show loophole” – is really so bad. A typical and knowledgeable comment went like this: “I am a very pro-gun person. I own a couple of rifles and I will never support any [‘assault weapon’ ban]. I don't even support the ‘86 [McClure-Volkmer] automatic ban. But background checks should be required for any and every sale. If that means transferring it at the dealer, then fine. "But...

Gun-control advocates have recently been throwing around an impressive new number. President Obama used it last Wednesday, claiming: “as many as 40 percent of guns are purchased without a background check.” Vice President Biden and everyone from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to USA Today repeatedly use it. That “fact” provided the principal support for his first announced gun-control proposal, “universal background checks.” But unless you include family inheritances and gifts as “purchases,” it is simply false.The Brady Act background checks currently prevent someone who buys from a federally licensed dealer from buying a gun...

In a paper published in 2008, comparing highly regulated Californian gun shows with relatively unregulated Texas gun shows, there was no statistical difference in suicide rates, but the Texas shows, with far less regulation, showed a statistically significant drop in the homicide rate. From the study: "But our results provide little evidence of a gun show-induced increase in mortality in Texas. In fact, we find that in the two weeks following a gun show, the average number of gun homicides declines in the area surrounding the gun show. Aggregating across all gun shows in the state, we find that there...

Of all the gun-control measures touted by President Obama on Wednesday, the one that got top billing was a dramatic tightening of background checks on gun purchasers. Obama himself said the need was urgent because “40 percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check.” But before we make the most sweeping changes in federal firearms law since the 1960s, shouldn’t we at least examine the validity of that figure? It’s about as dubious as they come.The administration is focusing on background checks in an attempt to drive a wedge between staunch anti-gun-control absolutists such as the...

We all know that the U.S. tax code is riddled with "loopholes", exemptions and deductions intended to incentivize certain activities. ... to the technocrats in the federal government, the tax you don't have to pay on the value of rent you don't have to pay because you own your home is a loophole. Read that last sentence again. Its called "The Imputed Net Rental Income on Owner-Occupied Housing" and the feds include it in their annual list of "tax expenditures." That term is how Washington officially refers to credits, deductions and exemptions. Here's how the federal government describes it: Under...

Google avoided about $2 billion in global income taxes last year by shifting $9.8 billion in revenue into a Bermuda shell company, Bloomberg reported. That level is almost double the total from three years ago, Bloomberg said, citing a Nov. 21 regulatory filing by a Google subsidiary in the Netherlands. And it allowed Google to cut its overall tax rate almost in half. Google's action -- moving about 80 percent of its total pretax profit from 2011 to tax-free Bermuda -- isn't illegal. On the contrary, many companies have taken similar steps in recent years to avoid paying steep taxes....

IIRC, there are some loopholes in Obamacare. For example, membership in one of the established health cooperatives like Medi-share would exempt a person from the Buy-Or-Be-Taxed provisions. This might be one way to avoid paying the "abortion tax." Another loophole is membership in an established religion that specifically prohibits participation in insurance schemes. However, since such religions are far and few between (Islam and Amish are the only two such faiths I know of), the law violates the Establishment Clause. The government is essentially favoring the exempted religions based on their religious content. Thus it is "establishing" a particular religion....

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are divided over whether there is a loophole in current law which would permit government agencies to monitor the communications of American citizens without any kind of warrant or other judicial authorization.The dispute was presented but not resolved in a new Senate Intelligence Committee report on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FAA) Sunsets Extension Act, which would renew the provisions of the FISA Amendments Act through June 2017.“We have concluded… that section 702 [of the Act] currently contains a loophole that could be used to circumvent traditional warrant protections and search for...

Nobody mentioned tobacco last week when the U.S. Senate adopted an amendment to the $109 billion federal highway bill. But tucked into the 5,600-word amendment to provide aid for rural schools was a single paragraph that would settle a two-year-old fight between Big Tobacco and a small Ohio company that builds a do-it-yourself machine that allows smokers to get their cigarettes a lot cheaper. The amendment would reclassify tobacco shops that offer the machines as “tobacco manufacturers,” imposing on them new regulations and higher taxes, and it opens a window into the ways of Washington, where the powerful and the...

President Barack Obama's administration has been delaying its planned $53 million arms sale to Bahrain due to human rights concerns and congressional opposition, but this week administration officials told several congressional offices that they will move forward with a new and different package of arms sales -- without any formal notification to the public. The congressional offices that led the charge to oppose the original Bahrain arms sales package are upset that the State Department has decided to move forward with the new package. The opposition to Bahrain arms sales is led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Jim...

(Business Law Currents) A legal loophole in international brokerage regulations means that few, if any, clients of MF Global are likely to get their money back. Although details of the drama are still unfolding, it appears that MF Global and some of its Wall Street counterparts have been actively and aggressively circumventing U.S. securities rules at the expense (quite literally) of their clients. MF Global's bankruptcy revelations concerning missing client money suggest that funds were not inadvertently misplaced or gobbled up in MFÂ’s dying hours, but were instead appropriated as part of a mass Wall St manipulation of brokerage rules...

A legal loophole in international brokerage regulations means that few, if any, clients of MF Global are likely to get their money back. Although details of the drama are still unfolding, it appears that MF Global and some of its Wall Street counterparts have been actively and aggressively circumventing U.S. securities rules at the expense (quite literally) of their clients. MF Global's bankruptcy revelations concerning missing client money suggest that funds were not inadvertently misplaced or gobbled up in MF’s dying hours, but were instead appropriated as part of a mass Wall St manipulation of brokerage rules that allowed for...

The Dec. 6 editorial, "The gun show dilemma," concerning legislation proposed by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, seems to be short on facts. A study conducted by the National Institute of Justice has reported that less than 2 percent of criminals interviewed said they had obtained their weapons at a gun show. The Bureau of Justice statistics for the year of 2001 reported that less than 1 percent of criminals obtained their weapons at a gun show. There is no "gun show loophole." This legislation is only a prerequisite to restriction of private sales of personal firearms. It is obvious, with...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A real estate investment by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's husband went undisclosed for years and has opened a window into a loophole that allows House members to avoid specifying some of their financial assets. In 2010 and 2011, Pelosi voluntarily reported the Sacramento, Calif., land investment as an asset of her multimillionaire husband, Paul. She had not reported the investment for about 10 years previously because it was held by an S corporation her husband had set up, said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for the California congresswoman. Under House financial disclosure rules, lawmakers are not obligated...

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While “new revenue” has triumphed as a euphemism for “tax hikes,” “loophole” has triumphed as a dysphemism for “intentional tax policy.” Our tax code is not really all that riddled with loopholes. Loopholes, properly understood, are unintentional ambiguities in a system that can be exploited to undercut the intent of the system’s designers. What we’re talking about in the tax code is not, for the most part, a collection of loopholes. The mortgage-interest deduction is not a loophole; it is the product of intentionally (and stupidly) constructed public policy, an attempt at social engineering through the tax code. Likewise, most...

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press – 8 mins ago WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed. The change would affect early retirees: A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who make long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.

PHILADELPHIA - This may not sound new because we've been talking about it in Philadelphia in connection with its Deferred Retirement Option Plan, or DROP. That has cost the pension fund millions and been abused by elected officials. But now we're looking at it happening in New Jersey. Several high-ranking political leaders found a loophole allowing them to retire and then go back to work, collecting a pension and salary at the same time. Gov. Chris Christie says he will try to close the loophole. But we don't know how many people or even who is doing this. It comes...