Free Republic

Looks like Sen. Robert Byrd is smoking the competition when it comes to bringing home the bacon. Of the nearly $7.7 billion in earmarks included in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill proposed for next year, no senator was more aggressive than the Democrat from West Virginia. Byrd scored a whopping 60 earmarks for his state at a cost of nearly $123 million, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group who tallied the earmarks. The Top 20 list features 12 Democrats and eight Republicans. Byrd was nearly eclipsed by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the...

I remember years ago when I was telling people that while some Muslims might be coming into the West to assimilate, there were more than enough of them coming in who had other ideas, ideas of taking over. Many people did not agree with me and now Muslims are not even hiding their agenda. Recently we have seen Muslims in the UK and Russia freely admitting that they are not in non-Islamic countries to assimilate.

The race between Republicans and Democrats has once again tightened up in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. For the third time in the last four weeks, Republicans have pulled to within two points of the Democrats.

When Barack Obama delivered his 44-minute acceptance speech in August among the majestic columns of Denver, it was apparent his would be an expansive presidency. Some wondered whether his solutions for a very long list of problems was too ambitious. On Tuesday, before Congress, he made clear across 52 minutes that the economic downturn would not deflect him from his Denver vision...

Continuing the newfound theme of liberals proclaiming Rush Limbaugh the leader of the GOP (more on that here), activist group Americans United for Change has announced it will begin airing a TV ad dedicated, almost solely, to making that claim, calling on Republicans to reject Limbaugh's politics.

The San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing occurred on February 16, 1970, when a pipe bomb filled with shrapnel detonated on the ledge of a window at the San Francisco Police Department's Golden Gate Park station. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Investigators in the early '70s said the bombing likely was the work of the Weather Underground, and not the Black Liberation Army,"but the crime was never solved. Brian V. McDonnell, a police sergeant, was fatally wounded in its blast; Robert Fogarty, another police officer, was severely wounded in his face and legs and was partially blinded. No...

A Risky 'Systemic' WatchdogBy Sebastian Mallaby Monday, March 2, 2009; Page A17 Barney Frank, the thoughtful chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, wants to create a new "systemic risk regulator." This general concept has been endorsed by some extremely distinguished economists. Nevertheless, the Frank proposal is dubious. Frank and his allies begin with the accurate insight that existing regulation is inadequate. We have a set of overseers who evaluate financial institutions one by one, but "systemic risk" is created by the interactions between institutions. A bank or hedge fund can take what looks like a reasonable bet on its...

This is what is going to happen, as I noted in BlogTalkRadio yesterday afternoon, if "The Bezzle" is not removed from our system NOW. Take a look at that folks. That's a snapshot of today's volume for June GE $2.50 PUTs. That's over 52,000 contracts traded today, controlling 5.2 million shares. They were purchased for about 30 cents, which means that the price has to be under $2.20 for them to go "in the money". This is a bankruptcy bet on General Electric by the third week of June. That's right - General Electric. --snip-- General Electric is a stalwart...

You'd think the children of the world's richest man could get anything they wanted. But Bill Gates' kids aren't allowed to have any Apple products, the Microsoft founder's wife tells Vogue magazine. "There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household," Melinda Gates, a Microsoft millionaire in her own right, tells interviewer Michael Specter. "But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids." It's pretty clear Bill Gates is familiar with Apple products — after all, Microsoft Word was first written for the original Mac. Yet the silken tentacles of Steve...

MARCH 3--Angered that her local McDonald's was out of Chicken McNuggets, a Florida woman called 911 three times to report the fast food "emergency." Latreasa Goodman, 27, last Saturday called police to complain that a cashier--citing a McDonald's all sales are final policy--would not give her a refund. [To listen to Goodman's 911 calls, click here, here, and here.] When cops responded to the restaurant, Goodman told them, "This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want...

After the Rocky Mountain News closed on Friday, local congressman Jared Polis (a Democrat) told a gathering of netrootsers, "I have to say, that when we say, 'Who killed the Rocky Mountain News?' we are all part of that, we truly are. For better or worse, and I argue that it's mostly for better," the Denver Post reported. Woohoo.And: "The media is dead, and long live the new media, which is all of us." Who killed the newspaper? This time it was the left, according to the left. No surprise, Polis apologized on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, it was reported that U.S. President Barack Obama had written a “secret letter” last month to Russian “president” Dmitri Medvedev. The letter seemed to propose that the U.S. would back away from its planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Russia would force Iran to shut down its long-range missile program. When asked about the document, Obama stated: "What I said in the letter was that obviously to the extent that we are lessening Iran’s commitment to nuclear weapons, then that reduces the pressure for or the need for a missile defense system. In no way does...

President Obama issued his budget proposal last week, and I haven't yet been able to clean up all the coffee that I spit all over my keyboard when I saw that he presented it as a model of fiscal responsibility. Never in my life have I ever seen responsibility defined to include tripling an annual budget deficit. But I digress. One thing that jumps out of the budget are the numbers associated with the President's Health Care plan. Over the ten year period, the President identifies over $600 billion in revenue to fund his health care priorities by repealing the...

I think he’s worked up here but I can’t tell for sure: Much like Glenn Beck, because his default state is one of unnerving intensity, it’s hard to tell when he feels passionately about something from when he’s behaving normally. But here he is on last night’s show, teetering between Hayekian wisdom and madness in laying blame for the Dow’s downturn at the feet of Zeus’s Olympian throne. These aren’t the comments that caused Gibbs to take a shot at him at today’s White House presser, incidentally; those came on the Today show this morning, but were really just a...

I can’t get into names, but if a crafty business journalist got on the phone to the biggest billionaires and financial wizards who support the Democratic Party and Barack Obama, he or she would find a large passel of very frustrated economic elites who think that Obama’s stimulus package and spending priorities are not going to either restore confidence and economic growth or reinvest in the backbone of the US economy in a way that can help generate recurring returns for future generations of citizens. [snip] Wealthy donors on the outside of the political process probably should not be able...

Poll: Obama's rating at all-time high NBC/WSJ poll shows gap between popularity of president and his policies WASHINGTON - After Barack Obama's first six weeks as president, the American public's attitudes about the two political parties couldn't be more different, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds. Despite the country's struggling economy and vocal opposition to some of his policies, President Obama's favorability rating is at an all-time high. Two-thirds feel hopeful about his leadership and six in 10 approve of the job he's doing in the White House. "What is amazing here is how much political capital Obama...

By more than a two-to-one margin, Americans believe the Democratic Party is better suited to getting the country out of a recession over the Republican Party, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll to be released today. Almost half of all respondents, 48%, identified the Democratic Party, while just one in five, or 20%, said the Republican Party. Some 8% said both parties were equally qualified, while 16% said neither party was qualified. Comparatively, in December 1990 when the U.S. economy was also going through a recession, the Democratic and Republican parties tied at 33% when asked who...

Eve of Justice Candlelight Demonstrations Planned for Prop 8 This Wednesday, March 4th, Eve of Justice will hold candlelight demonstrations in cities across the state of California in solidarity against the passing of Proposition 8. The event will fall on the evening before the California Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the validity of Prop 8. In Los Angeles, the demonstration will be held at 5:30 PM on Olvera Street, Downtown LA. MC’s will be Alec Mapa (Ugly Betty) and Lisa Powell. Also expected to attend is Jenny Pizer of Lambda Legal, who will be arguing before the Supreme Court...

URBANA – School reform activist, education scholar and former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers will be a Unit One/Allen Hall guest-in-residence next week. He will speak each night of his residency. All events are open to the public and take place in the Main Lounge of Allen Hall, 1005 W. Gregory St., U. Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is founder of the Center for Youth and Society and founder and co-director of the Small Schools Workshop. He has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education...

In February, in the build up to the ultimate passage of President Barack Obama's $787-billion stimulus package, there was a lot of discussion about how much the stimulus was going to help the ailing economy. And to promote the bill, Obama visited a Caterpillar plant in Peoria, Ill. Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., who represents the 18th Congressional District of Illinois, where the Caterpillar plant is located, described Obama's visit and how he used it to lobby him to vote for the bill. It was another side of the story that went unreported by the media. Obama singled out Schock in...