Free Republic

At the risk of redundancy I'll ask it again: Is he? Is President Obama effin' CRAZY? President Obama blames the continuing global financial crisis for the unmitigated carnage on Monday, when the Dow fell below 7000 and closed down 300 points (or 4.2 percent) at a 12-year low of 6763. Bullspit! The man is in denial. By now we know the economy is ailing. The main thing that has changed: The disturbing details of Obama’s tax-and-spend plans are becoming all too clear. Most of the moves he has made in his first 43 days in office have been bad for...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/4934220/US-banks-may-need-more-bail-outs-says-Ben-Bernanke.html

Tennis great Billie Jean King waves to the crowd after remarks honoring her by former U.S. President Bill Clinton (L) during a tennis match at Madison Square Garden in New York March 2, 2009. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton (R) speaks with other participants about the National Clean Energy Project and building a new smart energy grid for the U.S. following a round-table discussion in Washington, February 23, 2009. Former President Bill Clinton is greeted by neighborhood activist Annie Abrams during a luncheon for former Arkansas Treasurer Jimmie Lou Fisher at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., Tuesday,...

Iran: All Israel nuke sites within range of our missiles Iranian missiles can reach Israeli nuclear sites, Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic republic's Revolutionary Guards, said Wednesday. "All the nuclear facilities in different parts of the land under the occupation of the Zionist regime are in the reach of Iran's missile defenses," Jafari was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said Wednesday that its Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant would definitely become active in the summer of 2009. Speaking in parliament in Teheran, Mottaki said it was the government's...

The U.S. dollar is rallying against both the Japanese yen and the euro -- up about 7% against the yen and 9% against the euro this year -- despite a steady drumbeat of bad news. What seems puzzling at first is perfectly understandable if you remember that a currency doesn't have to be perfect or even particularly solid to gain value. All it has to do is be less bad than the alternatives. And right now the U.S. dollar is the least-bad currency in the world. The comparative superiority of the dollar won't last forever, but I'd give it at...

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced today in his speech to a Joint Meeting of Congress that Sen. Ted Kennedy has been given an honory "Knighthood" by Queen Elizabeth II. Here is a brief report . . . . (Watch Video)

President Obama's drive to change Washington's free-spending ways is running into a buzz saw of opposition from his party, as another top congressional Democrat on Tuesday bucked the president's plan to curb pork projects. Mr. Obama also drew criticism from his party for his call to raise taxes on high earners, especially his plan to limit some taxpayers' itemized deductions for charitable donations. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer became the second leading congressional Democrat in a week to push back against Mr. Obama's drive to curb member-directed earmarks on spending bills. Saying he was open to the president's "suggestions"...

Ya don't say. But you knew what you were getting into when you voted for this guy. The American Idol, Entertainment Tonight, People Magazine YouTube crowd knowingly voted for a man who campaigned on the idea of our tax code being based on "fairness." Or on "neighborliness." Or "spreading the wealth around." And it looks like Obama's Treasury Secretary is of the same mindset. Yesterday, administration officials had to defend Barack Obama's budget. This is the same budget bill that spend an initial $634 million on healthcare reform, which is to be paid for by increasing taxes on evil, filthy,...

Stock markets across the world suffered a second day of turbulence as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve warned that the US Government may have to pour even more cash into the twin bail-outs of its financial and economic systems.

You probably know about the lead content restrictions that went into effect on February 10; because of them, dirtbikes and associated parts designed for those 12 years old and younger currently can't be sold. But have you heard about Senate Bill 22 (S. 22)? Well get familiar, because 2.1 million acres of land in nine states — California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia — are about to be declared Wilderness areas and thus off-limits to motorcycles. That's 2.1 million acres, or about 3,281 square miles, nearly the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

An abortion clinic owner accused of delivering a live baby during a botched procedure and then throwing the infant away was arrested Tuesday, authorities said. Belkis Gonzalez, 42, was charged with practicing medicine without a license and tampering with evidence, both felonies, said Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office. If found guilty, Gonzalez would face at least a year in prison and up to 15 years. The teenage mother, Sycloria Williams, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Gonzalez knocked the infant off the chair where she had given birth, and then scooped the baby, placenta and...

During the current crisis we have several times heard invoked the wisdom of Milton Friedman about the unfeasibility of the euro as a currency surviving a recession. In an interview not long before his death three years ago, Friedman said: "The euro is going to be a big source of problems, not a source of help. The euro has no precedent. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states. There have been unions based on gold or silver, but not on fiat money – money tempted...

Then the question which remains is, What ought Some-of-us to do for Others-of-us?" The Case of the Forgotten Man Farther Considered There is a beautiful notion afloat in our literature and in the minds of our people that men are born to certain "natural rights." If that were true, there would be something on earth which was got for nothing, and this world would not be the place it is at all. The fact is that there is no right whatever inherited by man which has not an equivalent and corresponding duty by the side of it, as the...

When big media companies lose big money, the public gets unnerved. Some people wondered, for example, whether the New York Times would fold after it racked up $400 million in debt and was forced to borrow against its own office building to stay solvent a few months ago. The paper is still publishing. Now it is the moment of truth for CC Media Holdings - parent company to Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest radio conglomerate. The company announced that it lost $5 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, following a layoff of 1,800 employees in January. Among its...

Speech delivered at a People's Weekly World event in Cleveland, Ohio (1/31/2009). I was standing on the Washington Mall on Inauguration Day, alongside nearly two million other people on Inauguration Day, and proudly watched the first African American take the oath of office in our nation’s history. That alone made the day deeply memorable, joyful, and historic. But I couldn’t help but think – and I’m sure that millions of others had the same thought – that the transfer of power from Bush to President Obama not only tore down a barrier that once was thought near impenetrable, but also...

Police Tuesday captured the second of two teens they said escaped a south Fulton County group home after kidnapping a counselor and taking his car. The 16-year-old fugitive, a 6-foot-1, 438-pound male, was captured by Athens-Clarke County police around 3 p.m. Tuesday, authorities said. His name was not released because of his age. ... “Two of the juveniles overpowered the counselor … and had fled in his vehicle.” Charges against the teens are pending, she said. But police will first need to talk to the counselor, James Green, who went into surgery earlier today for non-life-threatening injuries. “The counselor wasn’t...

March 4, 2009"Going Galt": America's Wealth Producers Vs. Wealth Redistributors Michelle Malkin Enough. In a word, that is the message of disgusted taxpayers fed up with the confiscatory policies of both parties in Washington. George Bush pre-socialized the economy with billion-dollar bailouts of the financial and auto industries. Barack Obama is pouring billions more down those sinkholes. It isn't just the camel's back that's broken. His neck and four legs have all snapped, too. Enough. Last Friday, thousands of Americans turned out to protest reckless government spending in the pork-laden stimulus package, the earmark-clogged budget bill, the massive mortgage-entitlement...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. private companies hemorrhaged nearly 700,000 jobs in February and the service sector slump deepened as the year-old recession showed little sign of abating, according to data released on Wednesday. The private sector cut 697,000 jobs versus 614,000 in January, according to an ADP Employer Services report that suggested hefty employment declines are on the way in the government's more comprehensive payrolls data on Friday. The service sector's decline accelerated in February, according to the Institute for Supply Management, whose employment gauge also remained at a depressed level despite its improvement from the previous month. "This...

CONCORD, N.H. -- The New Hampshire House killed a resolution affirming state sovereignty on Wednesday, dashing the hopes of conservatives who say the federal government should quit meddling in local affairs.

A small software company on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against open source distributor Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and several vendors that sell Red Hat products, claiming that Red Hat's JBoss middleware violates one of its patents. In court papers filed in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, Software Tree claims that JBoss infringes its patent on database systems and methods "for exchanging data and commands between an object-oriented system and a relational system." Software Tree claims the patent in question, U.S. Patent No. 6,163,776, was awarded in December of 2000. Red Hat acquired open source developer JBoss in 2006 for...