Free Republic

Mitt Romney said he will not release his tax returns if he wins the Republican nomination for president, a rare move for a candidate. When asked if he would, Romney, in an unaired segment of an interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, said that he doesn’t “intend to” release the returns. “I doubt it. I will provide all the financial info, which is an extraordinary pile of documents which show investments and so forth,” he said, according to video provided by NBC. When Todd pointed out that Romney had asked Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to release his returns during their 1994...

This past weekend, Attorney General Eric Holder attempted to intimidate his critics by accusing them of racism. Under the Attorney General's watch more than a thousand weapons have been walked across the border by the ATF and more than 300 people are dead as a direct result. Even Holder himself admits that the 'Fast and Furious' guns will be used in more crimes. Innocents on both sides of the border have more to fear. The mixture of fear and intimidation has existed since Holder's first days in office. Who can forget his first major speech after confirmation? In that speech...

A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate. Operation...

Following a pattern established in previous hearings, today's House Judiciary Committee hearing produced fireworks from the Republicans and calls for more gun control from the Democrats. The grilling of Eric Holder climaxed at the very end of the day's proceedings, when Rep. Darrell Issa threatened the attorney general with contempt of Congress for his refusal to produce communications and logs, resulting in the embattled top law enforcement officer shooting back a line reminiscent of the McCarthy hearings: "Have you no shame?" Among some of the surprises: Holder was not sworn in as Issa had requested. Chairman Lamar Smith indicated the...

As if Congress didn’t have enough evidence that the Department of Justice has completely lost its mind, the New York Times is reporting that the Drug Enforcement Agency has helped launder “millions of dollars in drug proceeds” on behalf of Mexican drug cartels, a figure much higher than previously estimated. The Department of Justice has been under investigation by Congress for facilitating gun smuggling during Operation Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious was a gun running scheme on the US-Mexican border that’s resulted in violence and death on both sides of the border including the deaths of federal agents in...

AG Eric Holder attempts to avoid question about lying to congress. Saying that lying depends on one's state of mind. (December 8, 2011)

Wrapping himself in the mantle of Theodore Roosevelt's "National Greatness" agenda, President Obama urged the nation to stand strong and unite behind ... his umpteenth regulatory czar. Nothing symbolizes American strength and vigor more than another unaccountable Washington bureaucrat. If Richard Cordray, the stalled White House nominee to enforce the Dodd-Frank financial bureaucracy, is not approved, the wheedler-in-chief warned in Osawatomie, Kan.: "Every day we go without a consumer watchdog in place is another day when a student or a senior citizen or member of our Armed Forces could be tricked into a loan they can't afford -- something that...

The mainstream media are "protecting" Barack Obama's "unconstitutional" tenure in the White House, refusing to investigate allegations that he fails to meet the Constitution's requirement that a president be a "natural born citizen," according to flamboyant billionaire Donald Trump. In a conference call today with reporters, WND asked Trump why, if he believes defeating Obama is so significant in 2012, doesn't he use his influence to mount a formal investigation into Obama's eligibility. There have been allegations since long before Obama's election in 2008 that he is not a "natural-born citizen," a requirement imposed on no other official. Obama's critics...

It appears the GOP candidates are dropping like flies: first that one crazy guy, then Cain, and now... Mitt Romney? According to a Boston Globe article, paraphrased by Reuters, the GOP frontrunner (or is that second after Gingrich now: nobody really knows any more), spent $100,000, not of his own money but state funds, to "replace computers in his office at the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts in 2007 as part of an unprecedented effort to keep his records secret. When Romney left the governorship of Massachusetts, 11 of his aides bought the hard drives of their...

The first ever GAO(Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke(pictured to the right), Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an...

As expected, the Fed has just bailed out the world once again: FED, ECB, BOJ, BOE, SNB, BANK OF CANADA LOWER SWAP RATES - BBG ECB, FED other major central bank to lower the pricing of existing USD liquidity swaps by 50BPS And as we have been writing every single day, the worldwide dollar crunch is now confirmed: At present, there is no need to offer liquidity in non-domestic currencies other than the U.S. dollar And finally, a promise to bailout Bank of America when it hits $4.00 again: U.S. financial institutions currently do not face difficulty obtaining liquidity in...

Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, has asked The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to review the Obama administration’s award of a $443 million sole-source contract to a company owned by a major Democratic donor. The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this month that the Obama administration has taken unusual steps to procure an experimental smallpox vaccine from a company owned by a major Democratic donor despite concerns from some experts that such a drug was unnecessary and would not be effective. Citing “serious questions” about the contract, the Los Angeles Times reported that McCaskill has asked the...

The Justice Department withheld records about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s role in healthcare reform, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said Tuesday. Smith pressed Attorney General Eric Holder to provide documents and witnesses about Kagan’s time as solicitor general and her role in preparing to defend President Obama’s healthcare reform law in court. Republicans have clamored for Kagan to recuse herself when the Supreme Court takes up a case challenging the law. Smith said in a letter to Holder that the Justice Department has refused to comply with his requests for documents and interviews about Kagan’s involvement. But...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Monday defended his administration’s efforts to cover its electronic tracks with the purchase of hard drives from state computers, saying he had no intention of providing ''opposition research teams'' with electronic communications from his term as governor. Meeting with the editorial board of the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, Mr. Romney was questioned about a Boston Globe story (snip) Last week, Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades accused Mr. Patrick of running a ''dirty tricks''shop for the president’s benefit and requested documents on any contact his administration has had with top Obama White House or campaign operatives.

By Bob Beauprez and Christopher JaardaThe New York Times is reporting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will begin conducting a review of all deportation cases in the immigration courts with the goal of “halting” the deportation “of many illegal immigrants with no criminal record.“  In other words, this is a back door amnesty by a President desperate to score political points with a constituency critical to his reelection. “Many immigration offenses, including being present in the United States without legal status, are civil violations; they are not crimes,” wrote the NY Times citing communications from John Morton, Director...

REP UPTON: Last question though my time is expired. Based on what you know and what’s happened, who is to apologize for the half a billion dollars that has been out the door?

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Tuesday pressed Attorney General Eric Holder for more information about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's involvement with the healthcare reform law after new emails emerged showing her rooting for the law when she was solicitor general. (snip) The emails have rekindled calls for Kagan to recuse herself from ruling on the healthcare reform law next year because of a provision of the U.S. code that calls on justices to disqualify themselves when they have "expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy" while in government service.

President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official. It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out. The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle. Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack...

The Arizona Daily Star's Tim Stellar is reporting the federal case file against illegal Mexican bandits accused of killing Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, has disappeared. The case against the alleged killers of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has disappeared from federal court records, apparently sealed by a federal judge. In May, federal prosecutors won an indictment against Manuel Osorio-Arellanes and others, and they announced it with a press release. Only Osorio-Arellanes’ name was visible in the indictment, but there were blacked-out words where other defendants’ names go. Osorio-Arellanes was charged with second-degree murder and was not considered the likely...

Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac received the biggest federal bailout of the financial crisis. And nearly $100 million of those tax dollars went to lucrative pay packages for top executives, filings show. The top five executives at Fannie Mae received $33.3 million in 2009 and 2010, while the top five at Freddie Mac received $28.1 million. And each company has set pay targets of as much as $17 million for its top managers for 2011. That's a total of $95.4 million, which will essentially be coming from taxpayers, who have been keeping the mortgage finance giants alive...