Free Republic

Regulators close six Illinois banks and one Texas bank, setting the FDIC back a total of $314.3 million. DID YOUR BANK FAIL? For more information visit www.fdic.gov Don’t panic – your savings are insured Keep paying your loans – the terms remain the same. The FDIC will notify you by mail about your accounts/loans. Contact the FDIC with any questions until further notice If your bank is purchased, you will be contacted by your new bank. Bailout tracker The government is engaged in a far-reaching - and expensive - effort to rescue the economy. Here's how you can keep tabs...

California's such an easy target these days that even The Gray Lady is drawing a bead on the eighth-largest economy in the world. The New York Times is running a piece Sunday in its magazine on our fair state, titled "On the coast of crazy." The teaser uses words like "cataclysm" and "fiasco." It doesn't stop there: California always seems to produce more spectacle than anywhere else in the country, and that goes for its meltdowns too. Calamity is just part of the equation here, as if God gave California so much glamour and grandeur and great weather that he...

<p>NEW YORK -- When the United Football League debuts in October, Michael Vick could be one of its players.</p>

<p>ELK GROVE, Calif. — A Northern California elementary school teacher sent her students home for the summer with a video of class memories, only the DVD included six seconds of her having sex on a couch.</p> <p>Officials at the Elk Grove Unified School District asked families of the teacher's 24 students to get rid of the DVD after the unintended clip was found spliced in a scene where children were sharing stories in class.</p>

Now private equity is an eager if frustrated buyer of troubled banks in the US and one of the few sources of fresh equity for a sector that desperately needs capital. US authorities are as paranoid as their Japanese peers of these would be owners’ intentions and intend to impose onerous requirements, (which may or may not prove very burdensome) on private equity. At the same time, regulators also intend to impose all sorts of constraint on the banks and limit the degree of leverage all banks are allowed, which will likely lead to lower profitability. Given all the new...

In response to Joe Feuerherd’s question about whether the president might “write off the bishops,” President Obama had this to say. He said that he would not “write off the bishops,” and gave his reasons. “Number one, one of the strengths of our democracy is that everybody is free to express their political opinions, and I take people’s opinions seriously. I’m the President of all Americans, not just the Americans who happen to agree with me,” said the president. “The American bishops have a profound influence in their communities, in the church, and beyond,” he continued. “What I will...

As California's fiscal crisis careened out of control with Thursday's issuance of IOUs, Democrats and Republicans remained deadlocked, largely over one of the state's biggest responsibilities: providing a safety net for poor and sick residents.At the center of the dispute is a question over how deeply the state should cut spending on health care for poor children, welfare payments to single mothers and in-home services for the elderly and the disabled.Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger initially wanted to eliminate such programs. But in the past week, the governor softened his stand, instead demanding deep cuts, the rooting out of fraud in the...

WASHINGTON, July 3, 2009 – U.S. Marines and Afghan security forces are continuing Operation Khanjar in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, NATO officials said today. Almost 4,000 personnel from the Marine Expeditionary Brigade Afghanistan have moved into cities and towns along the Helmand River and are digging in for the long haul. The addition of nearly 22,000 American personnel in Afghanistan will allow the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force to institute a “clear, hold, build” counterinsurgency strategy. Before, small numbers of coalition forces would enter an area and clear it of Taliban, but the shortage of forces meant that when they pulled...

President Obama wrapped up his interview with the Catholic press with a question on the Middle East and how his administration plans to address the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “We have been very clear that we think settlements should stop ...,” said the president. “On the other hand, it’s not just the problem of Israeli settlements. The Palestinians have a set of obligations, some of which the Palestinian Authority have met, some of which they have not been as strong on. We want to encourage them to clamp down on violence, to end the incitement that you still hear, unfortunately, in...

Beijing on Friday joined a growing clamour of complaint about US plans for a carbon tax on imports from countries without their own emission caps, warning it could set off a global trade war. The warning follows the passage of a cap-and-trade bill in the US House of Representatives last weekend, which contained tough provisions to impose carbon tariffs to ensure that American companies would not lose competitive advantage. A recent report by the World Trade Organisation and the UN said such taxes could in theory be crafted to be compatible with WTO law, but it would be hard to...

Or so claims Newt Gingrich about Sen. Jim DeMint's new book, "Saving Freedom: We can stop America's slide into socialism." We'll see. I bought the book a few days back, but then this Sanford and Jacko thing one-two'ed me into a state of delirious punch-drunkeness and I just stumbled from screen to screen until I was down for the count. (Wow, that sentence didn't make a lick of sense. You'd think I was offering some kind of explanation about my love of the Appalachian Trail.) On Friday July 3, the DeMinted one will be in Chucktown to sign copies of...

In response to a question about statements made by those affiliated with the president’s administration, President Obama offered his position on homosexual rights with regard to the Church. “For the gay and lesbian community in this country, I think it’s clear that they feel victimized in fairly powerful ways and they’re often hurt by not just certain teachings of the Catholic Church, but the Christian faith generally,” said the president. “And as a Christian, I’m constantly wrestling with my faith and my solicitude and regard and concern for gays and lesbians.” “To the extent that I weighed into these debates,...

For one who was born and grew up in the small towns of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about the Fourth of July. I remember it as a day almost as long anticipated as Christmas. This was helped along by the appearance in store windows of all kinds of fireworks and colorful posters advertising them with vivid pictures. No later than the third of July - sometimes earlier - Dad would bring home what he felt he could afford to see go up in smoke and flame. We'd count and recount the number of firecrackers, display...

Hey just thought some of you might enjoy. Happy Independence Day guys and gals.

Ms. Nisreen Abdul Raoof plays with an orphan at the Deep Strike farewell to the children of the Kut orphanage at the Rehanah Al-Haydaryah Family Park, June 26. Nisreen said they came up with the idea to have a farewell in the park so the American forces could say goodbye to the children. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Joe Thompson. FORWARD OPERATING BASE DELTA — Children from the Kut orphanage were treated to an evening of games, gifts and entertainment at the Rehanah Al-Haydaryah Family Park by 2nd Battalion, 20th Field Artillery Regiment, 41st Fires Brigade, June 26."It was an...

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is accusing President Barack Obama and the Organization of American States of undermining the democratic processes in Honduras, saying the military coup last week that deposed José Manuel Zelaya as president was constitutional and reflected the will of the Honduran people. "The people of Honduras have struggled too long to have their hard-won democracy stolen from them by a Chavez-style dictator," DeMint, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, said in a statement. "The Honduran Congress, the Honduran Supreme Court, and the Honduran military...

We reported earlier on the president’s meeting with the Catholic press and his promise regarding conscience-clause protection. For his exact words on the subject, read on. “I think that the only reason that my position may appear unclear is because it came in the wake of a last-minute, 11th-hour change in conscience clause provisions that were pushed forward by the previous administration that we chose to reverse,” said President Obama. “But my underlying position has always been consistent, which is I’m a believer in conscience clauses. I was a supporter of a robust conscience clause in Illinois for Catholic hospitals...

Are Union members to blame for for California's budget crisis or is the Union leadership?

In response to a question from The Washington Post regarding finding a home church, President Obama had this to say: “Michelle and I decided that we would wait a few months after arriving before we made a decision on this, partly — let’s be blunt: I mean, we were pretty affected by what happened at Trinity and the controversy surrounding Reverend Wright,” said the president. “That was deeply disturbing to us, and it was disappointing for us personally. It made us very sensitive to the fact that as president the church we attend can end up being interpreted as speaking...

Sarah Palin’s announcement today that she is stepping down from her position as governor of Alaska, effective in two weeks, took the political world by surprise. Alaska’s lieutenant governor will be sworn in soon as that state’s chief executive in Pioneer Park. This will all be very orderly, but both the MSM outlets and the new media — the ones who are not out of town, taking mini-vacations for the Fourth of July — are oddly off-balance about the whole episode. To be sure, part of Mrs. Palin’s announcement was expected. Most people anticipated that she would let us in...