Free Republic

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells CNN's John King that he's concerned about President Obama's spending.

Caption This... July 4 Tea Party Preparation————————————————–Following on the heels of the highly successful Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Parties, conservatives are again gearing up for a larger national set of Tea Party demonstrations set for July 4.   CBS and CNN are of course preparing to ignore it. After working so hard to extort more income from working Americans, Democrats will be on vacation that holiday weekend resting up for the next round of spending.   The effort to spend trillions of dollars to ruin American health care will be front and center over the next two weeks which should give CNN...

In San Luis Obispo County, a 20-year-old drug abuser who was the sole caretaker for his seriously disabled father provided such poor care that, according to the grand jury in that county, the father frequently had bedsores, he was not properly cleaned, adult protective services had to be called in and, ultimately, he died before he was 60 years old. Incredibly, the son was being paid by the state, through the In-Home Supportive Services Program, for this substandard care. Though this kind of abuse of taxpayer dollars is not rampant, we know it exists. So how could the Legislature in...

Goldman Sachs bankers in line for record bonuses Bankers at Goldman Sachs could be in line for record bonuses as compensation on Wall Street looks set to rebound in spite of problems in the wider economy. By James Quinn, Wall Street Correspondent Published: 5:21PM BST 02 Jul 2009 The headquarters of Goldman Sachs. The bank is reportedly on course to produce a total compensation pot of $20bn this year for its bankers Photo: Getty Images Goldman, which continues to attract the very best investment bankers and is chaired by Lloyd Blankfein, is on track to pay staff more than it...

As many people across the nation enjoy a day off for July 4th, the grills will be fired up and the fireworks will light up the night sky. It is a time for celebrating our nation’s freedom from the British government’s tyranny and control over a group of independent patriots, determined to build a nation based upon individual freedoms and rights. While the current trend in Washington is to move toward the oppressive, suffocating monstrosity of big government (which is spawning TEA Parties across the nation), it is a time for my family and me to reflect, not only on...

What a fortnight this has been for observing the human animal in his natural habitat. We're reminded daily of the clay feet, the wounded psyches, the angst of the exploiters and the anger of the exploitees. Their behavior runs the table, from naive foibles to deep, tragic flaws, linking the venal with the vulnerable. All is writ large in headlines about money, sex and power. Like the beat-beat-beat of the tom-tom, like the tick-tick-tock of the stately clock, the drip-drip-drip of the raindrops (with apologies to Cole Porter), a voice within keeps repeating, "Why, why, why?" We want reasons why...

"This is the closest you're going to get to patting the animal," said excavation leader Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Britain's University of Manchester... Advanced imaging and chemical techniques revealed that the 66-million-year-old "mummified" duckbilled dinosaur had two layers of skin, as do modern vertebrates, including humans. Such a discovery was possible because the dinosaur's skin fossilized before bacteria had a chance to eat up the tissue. It is "absolutely amazing to be able to identify organic molecules from soft tissue that belonged to a beast that died over 66 million years ago," said Manning, whose work with the fossil...

If you listen to the blabbers and gossipers, the Huffington Post is the talk of the town. It is claimed that Arianna Huffington's "success" is the "new journalism," the future of the news. TechNewsWorld proclaimed it "appropriate" that Huffington appeared in the YouTube series on journalism apparently because she personifies it. The New York Times celebrated HuffPo as "hybrid journalism" for its Iran coverage. Jeff Jarvis of The Guardian claims that Arianna is "saving journalism." She was even just awarded the Fred Dressler Lifetime Achievement Award in journalism from Syracuse University. She even testified before a Congressional committee on journalism....

The Supreme Court's decision this week in the New Haven firefighters case may cause problems for its newest prospective member, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The court found in favor of a group of white and Hispanic firefighters who were denied promotions despite having passed the city's promotion exams with flying colors. The city threw out the test results because no black firefighters scored high enough to win promotions, and Judge Sotomayor sided with the city when the case came to her on the Second Circuit. Appellate judges often get reversed by the Supreme Court, but this reversal could prove more troublesome...

Last week, at age 50, Michael Jackson transferred to another dimension. He will be missed. The celebrity/side-show-attraction was the perfect metaphor for what America has become – the U.S. of Freak. ...... This is not to cast aspersions. America has become a freak show – where 15-year-olds have body-piercing, newly elected officials are assigned a personal parole officer, and celebrity is a synonym for nauseating. ......We have celebrity freaks, political freaks, freaky athletes who torture pit bulls and freaks with a short shelf-life (like the women who kill their children so they can party). ...... Toleration is hardly enough. We...

Ruth Madoff was booted from her Upper East Side penthouse yesterday -- walking out with nothing but her purse and "the clothes on her back" ......... Six US marshals showed up armed with a court order to seize the residence she had shared for years with swindler Madoff -- and all of the contents inside. "Technically, everything in there is restitution for victims." A source said Ruth looked grim and "stone-faced" as she left the apartment clutching her purse. Marshals changed the locks as soon as she was gone. The feds will retain a real-estate agent to market the penthouse...

Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown. What is really behind the mushrooming rate of mortgage foreclosures since 2007? The evidence from a huge national database containing millions of individual loans strongly suggests that the single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in a house -- that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater than the value of the house. This means that most government policies being discussed to remedy woes in the housing market are misdirected. Many policy makers and ordinary people blame the rise of foreclosures squarely on subprime...

<p>WASHINGTON -- It may seem strange to Americans, so close to our independence celebration, that Iraqis should break out the fireworks when our troops withdraw. We are not accustomed to being cast in the British role. In Iraq, nearly every achievement seems colored by ambiguity. But we are seeing achievement nonetheless.</p>

(Ephesians 2:10; Acts 4:12 ) King Obama became the first President to celebrate GAY PRIDE MONTH at the White House Monday night, warmly welcoming more 250 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans "to your White House." As I told you prior to the election, this would be the most gay friendly President ever, a man who will help to advance the radical homosexual agenda in this nation. During his 18 minute talk, he spoke openly of his full support to help the radical homosexual movement gain all of the special rights they are seeking as they force society to accept...

It's the July Fourth weekend. You could grill salmon or lamb kabobs, but you know what you want: the perfect burger. Recently, barbecue chef extraordinaire Adam Perry Lang taught NPR's David Greene how to make that perfect burger while toiling over a George Foreman Grill in NPR's mail loading dock. "You know when you hit a good burger," says Lang, who wrote Serious Barbecue: Smoke, Char, Baste, & Brush Your Way to Great Outdoor Cooking. "This really makes the ultimate burger." But the ultimate burger takes a lot more than throwing a few beef patties on the grill and toasting...

.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says a homosexual activist who is attacked following a Christian minister's sermon about homosexuality would be protected by a proposed new federal law, but a minister attacked by a homosexual wouldn't be. The revelations come from Holder's recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was taking comments on the so-called "hate crimes" proposal. It also was the subject of discussion on talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh's show today. "This is the question," Limbaugh said. "[Sen.] Jeff Sessions [R-Ala.] presents a hypothetical where a minister gives a sermon, quotes the Bible about homosexuality and is...

"Bon" or "Non" Appétit? “Kill the umpire,” the fan cried to open the 1996 baseball season in Cincinnati, and eight pitches later, the man behind the plate, John McSherry, was dead, all 320 pounds of him screaming for more and more oxygen to feed his spastic heart. He’d been killed by a billion molecules of sink-clogging, Drano-resistant cholesterol that fed on his coronary artery and sucked up his life’s blood like a vampire in the heat of the night. The next day Howard Stern had characteristically railed that the antidote was obvious. It was the same for all fat people:...

The year 2010 is about money and power. In the Rio Grande Valley, local officials are focusing their efforts on ensuring tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants are included in the count. The census seeks to count not just citizens but residents. With big money and political clout both depending on those numbers, governments are hoping that not a single person falls through the cracks. For local governments, the stakes are high. Census data are used to help make decisions about how the federal government distributes $300 billion to state and local governments for schools, senior programs, libraries, infrastructure and...

Now Barack Obama and his family plan to spend some time next month on the glamorous island. Just off Cape Cod in New England, the island is where America's Democratic elite comes to let its hair down each summer, enjoying "clambakes" on the beach, garden parties, sailing and golf. It has long been a favourite haunt of Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, who is now the US secretary of state.

As we officially enter the second half of 2009, some stock-taking is in order. Has the economy hit bottom, and is the recovery about to begin? Is it safe to get back into the stock market? Is it time for businesses to stop cutting and start investing? Can the government begin letting up on monetary and fiscal stimulus? The right answer to all of these questions is probably "no." Certainly the economy and the financial system are in much better shape than almost any of us would have predicted as the year began. The midterm outlook is nowhere near as...