Free Republic

The bill doles out almost a trillion dollars worth of grants (aka "bribes") with the government acting as middleman between citizens and businesses. Here are just a few examples:         • On page 45: All of California's housing standards must be imposed on every American community         • On page 92: Make sure buildings have a place to plug-in an electric-hybrid vehicle         • On page 112: Additional credit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac housing goals for energy-efficient and location efficient mortgages There's even establishment of something called "green banking" centers. What's that? Good question — wish I could...

Welcome to Shreveport: Your rights are now suspended. According to Cedric Glover, mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, his cops "have a power that [. . .] the President of these Unites States does not have": His cops can take away your rights. And would you like to guess which rights he has in mind? Just ask Shreveport resident Robert Baillio, who got pulled over for having two pro-gun bumper stickers on the back of his truck -- and had his gun confiscated. While the officer who pulled him over says Baillio failed to use his turn signal, the only questions he...

Tea Party at Lakewood Ranch Florida - great time, great patriots and conseratives in action!Lloyd Marcus and his wife after visiting the Freeper TentName the Freeper!!Veterans joined to bring out our flagLloyd Marcus tribute to veteransLakewood Ranch - Sarasota Tea Party June 28, 2009

Leave it to the Germans..

Video of NYS Senate Democrats sitting defiantly through the Pledge of Allegiance in protest after losing political control of the Chamber to Republicans. Only one courageous Senator tried to stand to honor the flag, but he was immedaietly pulled down into his seat by fellow Democrats. The video is from WCBS-2 TV on 6/23/09, taped during a "special session" of the Senate called by Democrat Gov. David Paterson in an effort to end a three-week walkout by Democrats that has brought government to a screeching halt. Grim-faced Democrats refused to acknowledge even their presence in the Chamber, failing to answer...

A Muslim teacher was barred from a Roman Catholic college after refusing to remove her full-face veil so staff could identify her. The woman, who works at an Islamic school, opted to leave instead and now the college could face a claim of religious discrimination. The teacher was at an open day at the sixth-form college with two female pupils, all of them wearing niqabs showing only their eyes. After they were asked to remove them to comply with college policy, the girls, thought to be aged 15, agreed but their teacher refused and left. The incident in Justice Secretary...

Ruthless, half mad, he stoned Christians to death. He also founded modern civilisation. And until yesterday, his fate was one of history's great mysteries...Deeply moved, the Pope delivered the news on Sunday that fragments of bones found in the tomb traditionally considered to be that of Saint Paul did indeed date from the first or second century. Which means that, in all likelihood, they are the bones of the Apostle Paul - bones that have lain there for 1,950 years yet, astonishingly, have only been discovered in our time. You might say, so what? Aren't Roman Catholics always making claims...

DALLAS - Buckner International is temporarily suspending travel of mission groups to the Central American country of Honduras in the wake of that country's coup yesterday that removed President Manuel Zelaya from office. Officials with the Dallas-based orphan care ministry announced today they are halting travel to Honduras indefinitely and are either canceling or redirecting planned trips until the situation can be evaluated by Buckner's Honduran staff. Randy Daniels, vice president of International Operations for Buckner, said the last of the Buckner groups in Honduras left the country Saturday ahead of the turmoil. He said the Buckner staff, all Hondurans,...

(WXYZ) - By her own admission, Councilwoman Monica Conyers pocketed cash just before she changed her position on an important issue before the council. Tonight, others are questioning why her husband, Congressman John Conyers, changed his position on another issue.

LUMBERLAND – A 64-year-old man, said to be impatient after Friday’s storm because the power had not been restored to his home, took a demolition saw and tried to cut through downed wires and was electrocuted. A witness told the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office Mieczyskaw Mil of 1160 Route 97 in Pond Eddy had been drinking and attempted to cut through the cable which turned out to be a 4,800 volt feeder line that was hanging off a pole. Just after midnight on Saturday morning, the Lumberland Fire Department requested the police to the scene for a disorderly person. A...

The Supreme Court yesterday restricted how far employers may go in considering race in hiring and promotion decisions, a ruling that puts workplaces across the nation on notice that efforts to combat potential discrimination against one group can amount to actual discrimination against another. The court ruled for white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said city officials violated their rights when it threw out the results of a promotions test on which few minorities scored well. The case drew outsize attention because President Obama's nominee for the high court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, had been part of a unanimous panel...

ACORN, which played a starring role in creating the subprime mortgage crisis, plans to add insult to injury by harassing lenders across the nation with protests tomorrow in an effort to coerce them into supporting President Obama's Affordable foreclosure-avoidance program. The four companies targeted are Goldman Sachs, HomEq Servicing, American Home Mortgage, and OneWest. ACORN plans to hit Dallas, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New York City, Wilmington (Del.), Columbus (Ohio), Houston, Little Rock, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Seattle. But let's not forget that ACORN helped to cause the mortgage bubble by strongarming banks into making loans they...

Speaking of the situation in Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama said June 26, “We don’t yet know how any potential dialogue will have been affected until we see what has happened inside of Iran.” On the surface that is a strange statement, since we know that with minor exceptions, the demonstrations in Tehran lost steam after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for them to end and security forces asserted themselves. By the conventional wisdom, events in Iran represent an oppressive regime crushing a popular rising. If so, it is odd that the U.S. president would raise the question...

NYDN: Former presidential candidate John Edwards is out of luck if he hoped that the extramarital affairs of Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign would take people's minds off his own cheating scandal.

The California Senate on Monday approved a Democratic budget-balancing plan that faced a certain veto from Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as the state headed toward issuing IOUs for the first time since the 1990s. The plan would use a combination of spending cuts and tax and fee increases to eliminate a $24.3 billion budget deficit, but Schwarzenegger repeated his vow to veto it. "I think that they know I will never sign those kinds of things so why waste the time, why run out of time and then all of a sudden we have to hand out IOUs?" Schwarzenegger told...

Earlier this month Iranians took to the streets to protest what they saw as being fraudulent elections perpetrated by the repressive Iranian regime. In response, the regime worked to squash the protests by beating and killing Iranians in the street. America's president Barack Obama would not stand up and support real democracy in Iran. It took him days to say anything, and when Obama finally said something, it was so milquetoast it was embarrassing. It took him two or three more times to actually show any kind of backbone toward the Mullahs and Ahmadinejad, and even then it was obviously...

Bermuda and Palau may not be the only beautiful tropical islands to host illegal Islamist combatants being released from US custody at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. If a Hawaii County Councilman and a Kauai County activist get their way, some would get a new home—and complete freedom--on two of Hawaii’s most beautiful islands. Robert Greenwell represents the North Kona district where activists recently protested against training US military personnel at Pohakuloa Training Area. They may not want US soldiers and marines, but al-Qaeda fighters are welcome.

Apart from several reports on FNC, and a few on CNN, the mainstream television news media have ignored the controversial firing of former Inspector General Gerald Walpin, who had recently battled for tougher penalties against Obama friend and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson after an investigation by Walpin found Johnson had misused hundreds of thousands of tax dollars granted by the AmeriCorps program to the Johnson-founded St. Hope charity. Over the past weeks, there have been a number of developments, including the opening of an FBI investigation into the St. Hope charity, further casting doubt on the White House's decisions and...

BAGHDAD – Iraqi forces assumed formal control of Baghdad and other cities Tuesday after American troops handed over security in urban areas in a defining step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country. A countdown clock broadcast on Iraqi TV ticked to zero as the midnight deadline passed for U.S. combat troops to finish their pullback to bases outside cities. "The withdrawal of American troops is completed now from all cities after everything they sacrificed for the sake of security," said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "We are now celebrating the restoration of...

The man accused of trying to gut a cat that belongs to a South Seattle church has changed his plea. Tracy Clark originally entered a not guilty plea to a first-degree animal cruelty charge in May for the April 20 attack that left Scat the cat with multiple stab wounds, including a 7-inch gash on its side. But on Monday Clark changed his stance and entered a guilty plea. The injured cat had been the pet therapy cat at the Cross Church & Discipleship Center for the past eight years. Clark, 47, said he had enrolled in rehabilitation at the...