Free Republic

The Internal Revenue Service is used to being universally disliked every April 15. But this year, the widespread denunciations have started early, and for good reason. In November, the agency issued proposed new rules that are supposed to keep social welfare organizations from abusing their legal privileges by engaging in excessive electioneering. The effort came in response to complaints from Democrats about a 2012 surge in political spending by such tax-exempt groups, by the conservative Koch brothers and others to influence elections. The IRS wants to curb such efforts, and it doesn't display much concern about the likely effect on...

(Pictured: Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino with President Obama) You may have your suspicions about what’s going on behind closed doors at the White House. But according to one of President Obama’s former body guards it’s much worse than we can even imagine. Dan Bongino has protected numerous Presidents over his career, including President Obama. He has been within ear-shot of many a discussion in the Oval Office, but up until this administration has stayed out of the lime light. Apparently, however, the activities of this administration are so abhorrent that he could no longer keep quiet. Bongino is so...

And so it begins – the plentiful coverage of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy. The date itself is weeks away and there will be countless commemorative programs, specials and copious punditry on TV. JFK: The Smoking Gun (Sunday, Discovery, 8 p.m.) is one of the most controversial of the bunch. Made for the tiny U.S. cable channel Reelz, it’s a two-hour docudrama based on the book of the same name by former Australian police detective Colin McLaren. He claims to have spent years on “the forensic cold-case investigation of JFK’s assassination” and says...

Liberal TV host Bob Beckel on Wednesday claimed he was “bludgeoned” by a White House official over the phone after he criticized the Obamacare rollout and suggested the law’s implementation should be delayed for 6 months to a year. “I said, ‘look, you can’t do this thing — yes it’s true, [Obamacare is] not a website, but it’s a portal to get through to get insurance,’” Beckel said. Beckel’s claim line up with other media personalities that have made the same type of allegations against the Obama administration. CNN’s Carol Costello on Wednesday morning said “President Obama’s people can be...

Graham Colson, an area resident for 15+ years who has been to Keene Pumpkin Fest for just as long, said the presence of snipers was unprecedented. He was able to take the above image of a two person sniper team on the rooftop of the Keene Apartments building overlooking Roxbury & Central Square earlier today. KPD Confirms: "The pictures you put on your website were police officers."

Dear Carrie, I'm turning 65 next year and plan to work for a couple more years. Should I apply for Medicare even though I have coverage through my employer? --A ReaderDear Reader, This is an important question that affects a growing number of workers. In fact, data from the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Study (2006 to 2010) sponsored by the National Institute on Aging shows some eye-popping trends. According to the study, 79.5 percent of respondents expect to work past age 65, with 65.2 percent expecting to retire by age 80 -- and 22.4 percent planning never to...

BERLIN (AP) — A top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children lied to American immigration officials to get into the United States and has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War II, according to evidence uncovered by The Associated Press. Michael Karkoc, 94, told American authorities in 1949 that he had performed no military service during World War II, concealing his work as an officer and founding member of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion and later as an officer in the SS Galician Division, according to records obtained...

After you read this- you will wonder what country we are in. Tom Francois is an outspoken critic of Barack Hussein Obama- and has a robust Twitter presence. He also likes to dabble with his "paint" program to create funny cartoons. He has never threatened the President in any way, manner or form. On April 11, 2013, he heard relentless pounding on his door shouts of "Police!" The officers introduced themselves as members of The Secret Service and asked if they could "take a look around." Since Tom had nothing to hide (and he didn't want any return visits) -...

Two prominent civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency over its program that reportedly collects the telephone records of millions of American customers of Verizon. The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union say in a lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday that the program violates First Amendment rights of free speech and association. It also alleges the program violates Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. The lawsuit additionally alleges the government's program exceeds Congress' authority.

President Obama has said the outrage over the federal government’s decision to monitor citizens’ phone activity is all “hype.” He might want to share his opinion with the Air Force, which is ordering members of the service not to look at news stories about it. WND has received an unclassified NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that warns airmen not to look at news stories related to the data-mining scandal. The notice applies to users of the Air Force NIPRNET (Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network), which is the only way that many troops stationed overseas and on bases in the U.S. are...

President Hollande of France recently got a whiff of what is coming from an open letter addressed to him by a 20-year old student named Clara G. “This will probably shock you, but it is mainly for fiscal reasons,… simply because I do not feel like working all my life to pay taxes, a large part of which will only service the 1.9 trillion Euros of debt that your generation has kindly left us. If these borrowings had at least been invested to prepare the future of the country, if I was getting a small benefit from them, it would...

What do Presidents Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. all have in common? None of them cut Social Security to reduce the deficit – but President Obama's new budget proposal will do just that. His plan would especially slash benefits for future retirees, and the cuts just keep getting worse year over year. President Obama included these cuts, known as the chained CPI, in his "grand bargain." He released his budget today, and he needs to hear that these cuts are completely unacceptable.

The Secret Service is investigating a suspicious vehicle parked near the White House. Streets around the White House were shut down Wednesday morning, and Metro says one entrance to the McPherson Square subway station is closed while authorities investigate.

Social Security Official Presents Plan B: Raid The Retirement Fund Bruce Krasting, My Take On Financial EventsMarch 20, 2013Stephan Goss, the chief actuary for Social Security (SS) provided a detailed report on the status of the SS Disability Fund (DI) to the House of Representitives. The short story is that DI is going bust in a few years. The options to fix this problem were spelled out in the report. The extremes of the required “fix” range from an immediate cut in DI benefits of 16%, or an increase in DI payroll taxes of 20%. Nothing new there. But, there...

The Internal Revenue Service typically distributes withholding tables to employers at the end of November that reflect changes to the federal income-tax rate, but no tables have been sent for the New Year, said Mark Betts, payroll director for ASAP Accounting & Payroll Services Inc. in Durango. **SNIP** Employees should be prepared to take home 2 percent less pay in their checks this year as the Social Security payroll tax cut expires. President Barack Obama initially included the tax cut extension in his fiscal cliff negotiations, but it has not been included in recent proposals. The tax cut was intended...

WASHINGTON (AP) — For nearly six years, a senior Secret Service agent kept his extramarital affair with a Mexican woman a secret from the agency responsible for protecting the president. But in the wake of an embarrassing prostitution scandal involving 13 agents and officers, Rafael Prieto’s secret was revealed by a fellow employee amid concerns the Secret Service wasn’t enforcing its rules consistently. With an internal investigation ongoing, Prieto apparently committed suicide last week, people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. Prieto, a married father assigned to the security detail for President Barack Obama, admitted the years-long relationship...

If The Right Gets Its Way, The 'Fiscal Cliff' Will Kill Social Security And Medicare Linda McKissack Beale A Taxing MatterNov. 22, 2012, 9:52 AMIn several posts recently I have discussed the harmful demands the right is engaging in related to the so-called "fiscal cliff" created by the original Bush tax cuts (set to sunset en masse), the artificial debt ceiling (used by the GOP to exact promises of spending cuts during a recession along with extension of unneeded tax cuts for the rich), and the ill-conceived notion that the U.S. military should continue to be funded at dangerously high...

In 1962, then President of Cuba, Fidel Castro recruited two former Nazi SS soldiers to help train his military at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to declassified documents released by Germany's secret intelligence agency, the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst). Castro invited four SS officers to Havana, where he offered them quadruple the average salary a German made at that time in exchange for their expertise. Two of the four accepted his offer, the documents, dated October 26, 1962, reveal. The men served in Adolf Hitler's Waffen-SS, a force separate from the army and known as the armed wing of...

The Social Security Administration Is Buying 174,000 Rounds Of High-Powered Ammunition Robert Johnson Aug. 15, 2012, 11:47 AM First the DHS needed 450 million rounds of ammunition, then the NOAA requested 46,000 rounds, now we've discovered an online request at FBO.Gov calling for 174,000 rounds of ammunition for the Social Security Administration. The request actually calls for 174K .357 hollow points that arguably have as much stopping power as any bullet out there, and hollow point to do as much damage to soft tissue as possible on top of that. R.K. Campbel at Gun Blast mentions his experience with .357...

If Barack Obama has an immediate eligibility problem, it is more likely to derive from the Social Security Number he has been using for the last 25 years than from his birth certificate. Ohio private investigator Susan Daniels has seen to that. On Monday, July 2, she filed suit in Geauga County (Ohio) Common Pleas Court demanding that Jon Husted, Ohio secretary of state, remove ObamaÂ’s name from the ballot until Obama can prove the validity of his Social Security Number. Daniels, who has vetted thousands of Social Security Numbers for numerous other clients, has done her homework. In her...