Free Republic

Education: In their rush to spend, the Democratic Congress and White House are funding everything from mice to miscreants. Yet they refuse to fund the futures of underprivileged kids in the capital.Is this a political payoff to the teachers unions, the groups most threatened by vouchers? How else can the Democrats justify shutting off funds to the only federal school voucher program? For five years, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program has helped low-income students attend the schools of their choice rather than the poorly run, low-performing public schools in the District of Columbia. The program expires in June and will...

Franklin D. Raines, the former chief executive of Fannie Mae, used a special program at mortgage lender Countrywide Financial to receive a below-market rate on a home loan, contrary to sworn testimony he made to Congress in December, according to the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government. Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) released documents yesterday that he said show Raines received discounts and waivers of fees on a June 2003 home loan through the "Friends of Angelo" program, named after Countrywide's then-chief executive, Angelo R. Mozilo.

President Hugo Chavez is tightening state control over Venezuela's food supply, setting quotas for food staples which are to be sold at government-imposed prices. Venezuela's public finances are unravelling, with oil prices at $40 a barrel, while the national budget is calculated at $60 a barrel. Inflation is running at over 30 per cent, yet with the new measures Mr Chavez is seeking to ensure that his core support, the poor, can still fill their shopping baskets with food. "If any industry wants to ride roughshod over the consumers, with a view to getting better dividends, we are going to...

PHOENIX (AP) — Kurt Warner is staying with the Arizona Cardinals, agreeing to a two-year, $23 million contract and ready to play after a season in which he led his team to the Super Bowl. "I'm excited about building on what we started last year, the last couple of years," the 37-year-old quarterback said at a news conference Wednesday. "I'm looking forward to getting back to football. I'm glad this is over with, but I'm extremely excited to be a Cardinal." Warner made a highly publicized visit to the San Francisco 49ers on Monday but had made clear he wanted...

Cat Credited With Waking Up Bremerton Woman Amid Fire By Derek Sheppard (Contact) Monday, March 2, 2009   BREMERTON — In a rare role reversal, it was the cat who helped out the firefighters.More importantly, it was a cat who saved a woman's life with what would normally be a routine annoyance for cat owners — the early-morning face pawing.Around 6:45 a.m. Saturday, an elderly Bremerton woman's Veldee Avenue home filled with smoke billowing through the vents from the home's heater.The smoke alarm was going off, but she didn't hear it.Good thing she has a cat.The feline, whose name...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Switzerland's largest bank held its ground on Wednesday in a dispute with the U.S. government, refusing to disclose the names of tens of thousands of rich American clients suspected by U.S. authorities of using secret Swiss bank accounts to dodge U.S. taxes. A senior executive for UBS AG said at a Senate hearing that the bank regrets breaking U.S. tax laws, but it does not intend to hand over the client names being sought in a U.S. Internal Revenue Service lawsuit. "UBS has now complied ... to the fullest extent possible without subjecting its employees to criminal...

Why don't you circulate the following Louisiana statute among a few of the churches that you get your precinct walkers from, and see what they have to say? "No negro who is not in the military service shall be allowed to carry fire-arms, or any kind of weapons, within the parish, without the special written permission of his employers, approved and endorsed by the nearest and most convenient chief of patrol." If that doesn't make an impression, why not try the following offering from Mississippi?

Veterans groups are warning President Barack Obama against going ahead with a possible administration move to charge veterans' private health care for service-related injuries. In a letter sent by 11 of the most prominent veterans organizations, the groups warned that the idea "is wholly unacceptable and a total abrogation of our government's moral and legal responsibility to the men and women who have sacrificed so much." CNN obtained a copy of the letter sent to the White House last Friday by groups including The American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Veterans of Foreign Wars of...

Spending: The stimulus provides for the creation of a federal health care bureaucracy not unlike Hillarycare. Decisions that should be made by doctors and patients will belong to bureaucrats deciding cost-effectiveness.The stimulus bill commits $19 billion to accelerate adoption of Health Information Technology (HIT) systems by doctors and hospitals. It involves the creation of electronic medical records to be stored in a central database. This is said to be for reducing treatment errors and increasing efficiency in the delivery of medical care. It also authorizes the creation of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology — and...

Unless you've been living under a rock (and it's okay to admit if you have, I'm told rent is cheap), you probably heard that President Barack Obama sat courtside at D.C.'s Verizon Center Friday night, watching his hometown Chicago Bulls take on the Washington Wizards. The First Fan drank beer, read the game program and left early (with four minutes left) during a blowout. "All common American activity," as Tom Ziller put it, "except most of us don't sit courtside, nor are we important enough that the NBA will hold up a tip-off until we get to our seats." (Speak...

HAVANA – The ouster of Cuba's two most prominent younger leaders leaves more doubt than ever about who will guide the country once the Castro brothers and their gray-haired revolutionary contemporaries are gone. President Raul Castro is 77. His hand-picked No. 2, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, is a year his senior. And there are no obvious next-generation successors in the ranks of mostly obscure communist party officials, military officers and bureaucrats who were suddenly promoted this week in Cuba's largest leadership shake-up in decades. "This is the old guard, most of them are very traditional hard-liners," said Uva de Aragon,...

It was some years ago, but I believe it was on my 11th birthday that I told my parents that I wished to give a dozen red roses to Draper Tappermann's wife. Ever since we were both quite small, my parents had my younger brother and I, on our respective birthdays, select a "poor old person" for whom we would present a gift marking the day. As soon as we were old enough to absorb the concept, we learned it was not a lesson in pity or charity, but rather something to be given in respect and gratitude for those...

Normally I give press interviews to just about anybody who asks - even Pravda and MSNBC. But when a pesky little guy from Al Jazeera kept trying to get me to talk to him, I drew the line. This week a producer from Osama bin Laden's favorite propaganda outlet called and emailed me at my office, and again at my magazine. I ignored him. He tracked down some of my friends and associates, some of whom frantically called me: "Al Jazeera wants to talk to you." Something about Blackwater. Phinney heaped praise on an article I'd written about Blackwater's great...

Financial System: Banks, it seems, are everyone's favorite villains these days. Blamed for much of the financial crisis by everyone from the president to the media, they are routinely vilified. But do they deserve it?For banks, news in recent days hasn't been very favorable. One in five mortgages reportedly is now underwater. And the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., founded during the Depression, announced Wednesday it will go bust by the end of 2009. As banks and other financial services companies report ever-widening losses, their stocks have plunged to record lows. Things are so bad the S&P 500 may soon remove...

WASHINGTON - Israel is seriously considering taking unilateral military action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, according to a report by top US political figures and experts released Wednesday. The report also says Israel's time frame for action is growing shorter, not only because of Iranian advances, but because Teheran might soon acquire upgraded air defenses and disperse its nuclear program to additional locations. The report, "Preventing a Cascade of Instability," was put out by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). It also argues that international sanctions against Iran need to be intensified urgently for the engagement...

Glenn Beck: Who said it? March 4, 2009 - 12:01 ET The Obama National Anthem... GLENN: Our new National Anthem and we bought it for a pair of Michelle Obama's earrings which, you know, under $600. What are you going to do with it? Write a song or buy some earrings? Welcome to the program. You know, I was just talking to Stu when we first did this and we actually couldn't get a professional singer in New York to record that. We couldn't get one in Philadelphia to record that, either. No professional singer would do it because they...

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy released a chilling report about Iranian Nukes that said in part: Whatever Americans may think, Israeli leaders seem convinced that at least for now, they have a military option. However, Israelis see the option fading over the next one to two years, not only because of Iran’s nuclear progress and dispersion of its program but also because improved Iranian air defenses, especially the expected delivery of the S-300 surface-to-air missile system from Russia, are seen by Israel as seriously limiting its military options. Israel therefore may feel compelled to act before the option...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Wednesday promised to save American taxpayers 40 billion dollars a year by slashing waste in government contracting, with a special eye on bloated spending on defense. "I reject the false choice between securing this nation and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars," Obama said on a day when he signed a presidential memorandum reforming the contracting system across the entire government. "In this time of great challenges, I recognize the real choice between investments that are designed to keep the American people safe and those that are designed to make a defense contractor rich,"...

Economy: IBD readers don't need to be told there's a little more to the stock market than President Obama led on Tuesday. But if no one else is going to correct the record, we'll give it a shot.Fielding questions during an Oval Office meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the president downplayed the market's continued weakness. "What I am looking for," he said, "is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market . . . but the long term." The stock market, he continued, "is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. It bobs up and down every...

The Freeper Canteen Honors The 67th Anniversary Of The Seabees The Seabees are the Construction Battalions (CBs) of the United States Navy. The Seabees have a history of building bases, bulldozing and paving thousands of miles of roadway and airstrips, and accomplishing myriad other construction projects in a wide variety of military theatres dating back to World War II. On March 5 1942, all Construction Battalion personnel were officially named Seabees by the Navy Department. The official motto of the Seabees is "Construimus, Batuimus" – translated into English as "We Build, We Fight." The Seabees have several unofficial mottos...