Free Republic

Show trial of Swiss whistleblower Elmer now in 9th year "Ex-Swiss Banker Charged With Giving Data to WikiLeaks" (prohibited Bloomberg article, find in Search) …a Swiss court fought back against efforts by the United States to tackle criminal activity and tax its wealthy citizens properly. As Worldwide Tax Daily reports:“A Swiss court on January 6 held that Switzerland’s Federal Tax Administration (FTA) “unlawfully granted” a U.S. request for client data from private banking group Julius Baer, saying it did not meet the requirements for an administrative assistance request under the Switzerland-U.S. income tax treaty.”This is the latest episode in a...

Hillary Clinton on Friday defended her six-figure speaking fees, saying she's donated all the money earned from colleges over the past year to her family's foundation. “All of the fees have been donated to the Clinton Foundation for it to continue its life-changing and life-saving work. So it goes from a foundation at a university to another foundation,” she told ABC News on Friday. The former secretary of State and potential 2016 presidential contender reportedly charges about $200,000 for speaking engagements. Clinton recently drew fire from University of Nevada Las Vegas students who threatened to protest an upcoming fundraiser she's...

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin will have to pay the government more than $501,000 as a result of his conviction on bribery and other charges, a federal judge said Tuesday. Nagin was convicted in February on 20 counts including bribery, fraud, money laundering and conspiracy during his two terms as mayor. The Democrat served from 2002 to 2010 and was known his impassioned pleas for help for the city after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. …

The Sinaloa Cartel, headquartered on Mexico's northern Pacific Coast, is constantly exploring new ways to launder its gargantuan profits. The State Department reports that Mexican trafficking organizations earn between $19 and $29 billion every year from selling marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines on the streets of American cities. And Sinaloa is reportedly the richest, most powerful of them all, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The capture last month of the Mexican druglord Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman has cast a spotlight on the smuggling empire he built. One key to the Sinaloa Cartel's success has been to use the global banking...

Funding ‘snapshot’ details nearly $40 million in Alliance support for 20 groups this year A secretive dark money group backed by George Soros and other liberal mega-donors is looking to steer nearly $40 million to left-wing groups in 2014 to support high-profile political and policy efforts, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The documents reveal for the first time the Democracy Alliance’s full portfolio of supported organizations, a large network of powerful liberal groups looking to win key electoral and legislative victories. The Democracy Alliance connects major Democratic donors with some of the largest and most influential...

CHICAGO — The daughter of President Barack Obama's former pastor was convicted on Friday of laundering thousands of dollars from a state grant for a Chicago-area job-training program, federal prosecutors said. A federal jury took less than two hours to find Jeri Wright, 48, the daughter of Jeremiah Wright, guilty on all counts for her part in a fraud scheme led by a former suburban police chief and the chief's husband, according to the U.S. Attorney's office for the Central District of Illinois in Springfield. The $1.25 million state grant was for a not-for-profit work and education program called We...

SHAMOKIN DAN — The plant in Shamokin Dam once produced enough electricity to power a city three times the size of Scranton. It is 65 years old, but few here thought the facility known as the Sunbury Steam Plant would be forced into retirement. “It’s sad to see it close down,” said Robert Hoffman of Sunbury. “The plant`s been there since I can remember. As a matter of fact when i was in high school we toured that plant.” “Since they put stack reclaimers on it, its been a fairly clean plant,” added Ed Quiggle of Shamokin Dam Sunbury Generation...

An effort by Washington to build housing for Haitians in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake has fallen short and exceeded costs, a U.S. government report said Tuesday. The audit by the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Agency for International Development said the project to build 4,000 houses outside Haiti's capital resulted in the construction of only 816. The U.S. plan also sought to provide "home sites" on which others would pay for the construction of houses. This, too, fell short, with USAID completing engineering and design services for only 2,300 home sites out of a projected...

Former Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino (D) — he stepped down a couple of weeks ago — has pleaded guilty today to federal charges of money laundering, according to the McAllen Monitor. Just 17 days after stepping down as sheriff and three days after his former chief of staff entered a related plea, Treviño stood before U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez and pleaded guilty for his part in laundering campaign contributions that were tied to a convicted drug trafficker. Testimony in court this morning suggested that the amount of money laundered could be anywhere between $70,000 and $120,000. Treviño was...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience in New York that the news media has a “double standard” against women in powerful position, and offered advice to younger women on how to overcome it. “There is a double standard,” Clinton said, according to Politico. “We have all experienced it.” Clinton was speaking on a panel at the “Women in the World” conference in New York Thursday, along with International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde and moderated by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “The double standard is alive and well, and I think in many respects the media...

IG report reveals incomplete, lost contract files worth $6B The State Department misplaced and lost some $6 billion due to the improper filing of contracts during the past six years, mainly during the tenure of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, according to a newly released Inspector General report. The $6 billion in unaccounted funds poses a “significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions,” according to the report. The alert, originally sent on March 20 and just released this week, warns that the missing contracting funds “could expose the department to substantial...

<p>The State Department has no idea what happened to $6 billion used to pay its contractors.</p>

During the “polar vortex,” some of us taunted frostbitten global warming alarmists who snapped back that isolated extreme weather events don’t indicate long-term trends. Good. Because if they can remember that during heat waves and storms, we can actually look at long-term trends. Really long. Geologically long. Back to when simple animals appeared in the “Cambrian explosion” about 542 million years ago. Google it and you’ll find a chart of global temperature and carbon dioxide in the air from which two things will jump out at you right away. First, atmospheric CO2 does not drive temperature. It hit 7000 ppm...

But Gina McCarthy tells GOP lawmakers she can't answer climate-change questions: 

“I just look at what the climate scientists tell me."

Scientists say the world’s climate is warming faster than feared because previous predictions were too “optimistic” and overestimated the cooling impact of clouds. As the planet marked its fourth hottest year on record, a study published in the journal Nature found increasing levels of carbon dioxide will lead to thinner ocean clouds and reduce their cooling impact, causing temperature rises of at least 5.6F (3C) over the course of the century. The team of scientists said the findings show some climate models have been too “optimistic” and previous estimates of a minimum temperature rise of only 2.7F (1.5C) could now...

Policies surrounding climate change are poised to heat up in 2014 as major aspects of President Obama's climate plan come to fruition. The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce historic final standards aimed at curbing carbon emissions from the nation's power plants in June, but not before lawmakers and industry groups give their two cents on the issue. Next year, Republicans are expected to continue the crusade against the administration's climate regulations, which they have dubbed the "war on coal." Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who sits on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), and Rep. Lamar Smith...

Former Durham, NC district attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred for withholding evidence from the defense and lying to the court in the trumped-up Duke lacrosse team rape case. Ex-Boston crime lab technician Annie Dookhan was prosecuted for faking test results and contaminating drug samples, to get accused dealers convicted. In both cases, charges against their victims were dismissed or are under review. So how should we handle federal officials who’ve become unethical researchers and prosecutors – determined to get convictions, basing their cases on esoteric circumstantial evidence, allowing tainted and fraudulent evidence, hiding exculpatory information, rewriting the law, and...

The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors. John C. Beale, who pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade, will be sentenced in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Wednesday. In a newly filed sentencing memo, prosecutors said that his “historic” lies are “offensive” to those who...

Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), asked scientists at a climate change conference on Thursday in Arlington, Va., to explain the science of climate change. She also said that the EPA looks at climate change as an opportunity to grow the economy and create jobs. […] Obama referenced climate change in his State of the Union address while talking about “cleaner energy.” “The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way,” Obama said. “But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s...

The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors. Follow @NBCInvestigates John C. Beale, who pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade, will be sentenced in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Wednesday. In a newly filed sentencing memo, prosecutors said that his lies were a "crime of...