Free Republic

The Obama administration targeted sole proprietors and small businesses in the real estate industry after the crash of 2008, while letting the big banks off the hook with bailouts. One of most horrific cases involved Republican real estate broker Tony Viola, who served nine and a half years in prison as a juicy target of Ohio Democratic prosecutor Dan Kasaris. He was convicted of supposedly tricking banks into offering mortgages with no money down. But in reality, the banks were knowingly offering those loans — evidence the prosecution withheld from him. Viola only got out of prison due to an...

Viola Davis has one person in mind when it comes to improving race relations in the country -- and she's a new, young face in politics who could soon be in congress. We got the 'How to Get Away with Murder' star Sunday at LAX and asked who she thought might be the next champion of our time, especially when it comes to easing racial tensions ... which seem to be at a bit of a boiling point lately. She nominates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who just won the Democratic primary in New York and earned a spot on the midterm election...

For a brief moment, as tears filled Todd Pletcher’s steel-blue eyes, the normally dispassionate trainer let the world see how it felt for him to cast aside the weight of so many Kentucky Derby disappointments. Pletcher knows the narrative all too well. Despite winning a record seven Eclipse Awards for Top Trainer and ranking as the leading purse winner in history at age 49, he’s the guy who’s saddled almost 50 horses for the Derby and won just once.

President Trump's nominee for Army secretary, Vincent Viola, withdrew his name for the position late Friday. Viola said he backed out because he was not able to navigate Defense Department rules regarding his family businesses. The nominee is the first Trump nominee back out after being named. "I appreciate the confidence President Trump showed in me," Viola said. "I offer my continued support for President Trump and his administration, and look forward to redoubling my efforts to support the Army and its veterans as private citizens," he told the Military Times. Trump nominated Viola to the post in mid-December. Since...

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated as his Army secretary Vincent Viola, an Army veteran who became a billionaire after founding an electronic trading firm and went on to buy the Florida Panthers hockey team. Viola is a 1977 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and funded the creation of its highly regarded Combating Terrorism Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A former infantry officer and Ranger School graduate, he has pressed for innovation in cyber warfare, saying at a conference five years ago that the Army of the future will be built on a “gestalt...

It looks and plays like a piano, but it sounds like a string quartet — and it took 500 years before anyone built it. Leonardo da Vinci’s flight of fancy in designing a hammerless piano, called a “viola organista,” has come to life half a millenium after da Vinci designed it, thanks to a Polish concert pianist and musical engineer. It couldn’t have sounded any better in da Vinci’s head (via Brad Thor and Dan Gainor): A bizarre instrument combining a piano and cello has finally been played to an audience more than 500 years after it was dreamt up...