Free Republic

Fiscal Policy: The $787 billion "stimulus" was supposed to stimulate all of America equally, right? As it turns out, as in George Orwell's "Animal Farm," all areas may be equal, but some are politically more equal than others.A report in USA Today says that "billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year's presidential election." Got that? Money that's supposed to "stimulate" our economy is in fact lining the pockets of Democratic Party supporters. In 2008, 872 counties supported Obama...

CHICAGO (AFP) — Grave robbers stripped at least 300 plots at a historic black cemetery outside Chicago, dumped many of the bodies and then resold the plots for a profit, officials said Thursday. The years-long scheme was carried out by the cemetery's manager and three gravediggers who sold the "used" graves so they could pocket the fees rather than pass them along to the Arizona-based owners. "This was not done in a very delicate way," Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart said at a press conference. "They would excavate a grave, excavate the entire site and then they would proceed to...

Here is video of Fox News' Stuart Varney having a heated debate with liberal Democrat Congressman Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania today on the Neil Cavuto Show. Varney confronted Fattah over the Obama Administration's use of Stimulus and Bailout funds to essentially buy votes in congressional districts. Fattah repeatedly attacked Fox News in the interview, saying "I know you all at Fox are used to talking to each other" without an opposing viewpoint. Varney would not let him get by however with the notion the stimulus money was being well-used. Varney called "immoral" the Democrats use of the funds to make...

Columnist Margaret Carlson says Sarah Palin is "very good at stringing words together" that make "no sense."

National Security: If CIA Director Leon Panetta really has claimed to his old friends in Congress that the agency was lying to them, the impact will be unprecedented. Do we have a mole running Langley?Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee on June 26 fired off a nasty letter to CIA head and former high-ranking Democratic Rep. Leon Panetta. The thrust was that their former House Democratic colleague is a liar. Signed by Reps. Anna Eshoo, Alcee Hastings, Rush Holt, Jan Schakowsky, Adam Smith, Mike Thompson and John Tierney, the curt message said: "Recently you have testified that you have...

Plans for a new coal-fired power plant in central Utah were canceled after the city of Los Angeles -- the plant's biggest power purchaser -- signaled its intention to be "coal free" by 2020. The Intermountain Power Agency -- a political subdivision of the state of Utah co-owned by municipal and rural electric cooperatives -- has dropped plans to build a proposed third 900-megawatt coal-fired generating unit at the Intermountain Power Plant near Delta, Utah. "The project has been abandoned," IPA spokesman John Ward said yesterday. The decision came after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced last week that the...

...A video was produced to promote Gay Day at the Movies featuring a pair of "Bumblebee Boys" in Camaro-branded briefs washing the Bowtie brand's pony car revival. The cheeky (pardon the pun) video is clearly targeted at the gay community and uses beefcake car washers to that effect in a not-so-subtle way.

Yesterday we mentioned that poll out of Ohio showing Obama's support collapsing in the uber-important swing state. Turns out that's not a one-state phenomenon. Both Gallup and Rasmussen have new polls out showing big slippage in support for the administration Everything seems to have changed since that last jobs report, since it viciously undercut the green shoots claims. Here's Rasmussen: The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 32% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential...

Some distant day, many scientists believe, the earth will be devoid of human life due to some cosmic catastrophe or - ultimately - due to our depleted sun transforming into a red giant. The truly good news about such an otherwise bleak future is that the Obama administration will presumably no longer be able to blame Republicans for the economy that they "inherited." Biden: We 'Misread the Economy' July 05, 2009 Big admission from Vice President Joe Biden today. "The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy," Biden told me during our exclusive "This Week" interview in Iraq....

Health Care: President Obama says a new public insurance plan is needed to keep private companies "honest." Well, to be honest, there's already a public plan, and it's hurtling toward insolvency.The administration and congressional Democrats tell us they're working to reform health care in America. We'd be more inclined to believe them if they started by reforming a program that badly needs it. Instead, Medicare is the elephant in the room: Everybody knows it has huge problems, but few Democrats want to mention them. We can see why. Medicare's performance puts the lie to Obama's claim that a public plan...

Now that we've got the buy-side managers for the Obama adminstrations Public Private Investment Program lined up, the question is whether there will be anyone on the sell-side. With the buy-side guys saying that the P-PIP will allow them to pay between 5% and 10% more for toxic assets, you might think banks would be all over this thing. But that's not how its shaping up. The P-PIP is still stumbling. Many are now wondering whether bankers will sell into the program. We suspended mark-to-market. "A month after the PPIP program was announced, under pressure from banks and Congress, the...

Liquid nitrogen, vegetable steamers, Macintosh workstations and old, refrigerator-size tape drives. These are just some of the tools a new breed of Space Age archeologists is using to sift through the digital debris from the early days of NASA, mining the information in ways unimaginable when it was first gathered four decades ago. At stake is data that could show Earth's risk of an asteroid strike, shed light on global warming and -- perhaps -- even satisfy those who think the moon landings were a hoax. The most visible of the archeologists is arguably Dennis Wingo, head of Skycorp Inc.,...

Is America a Christian Nation? Many people don't think so today. The truth is, however, that our great nation was founded on principles that are all throughout the Bible. Author and historian David Barton highlights our christian heritage in this eye opening message.

KINGSTON (Reuters) – Jamaican reggae and dance hall star Bounty Killa was arrested on assault and other charges on Thursday for an altercation with an off-duty policeman nearly two years ago. Police said Bounty Killa, whose real name is Rodney Pryce, could face a sentence of 15 years in prison if convicted. Pryce was charged after a lengthy probe into the beating of a police officer on September 27, 2007, by members of the DJ's entourage. Investigators said a vehicle belonging to Pryce was being used to block a road while the music star stopped to acknowledge some fans. When...

Is is just me, or is it a bit unsettling to have these two stories break on the same day? First came this story from the New York Post: During the first five months of this year, with the Senate under the control of its first African-American majority leader, Smith, top Democrats bemoaned the lack of minority Senate staffers. But instead of trying to recruit new hires, they fired nearly 200 almost exclusively white workers and replaced them with a large number of minority employees, many of whom were seen by their fellow workers to be unskilled at their new...

One thing that both Conservatives and liberals alike need to acknowledge is that we have a health care system that is on the verge of not merely falling apart but ready to take the entire country down with it. There are so many problems with the system that it's difficult to unravel them all. For instance, there are far too many different entities that are dependent on the health care system: lawyers, doctors, patients, insurance companies, medical records, etc. By the time everyone gets their piece of the pie, the whole thing becomes too expensive for everyone.

A leading Republican on Thursday said lawmakers should be forced to take lie detector tests before receiving classified briefings, as debate intensified over lying between the intelligence community and Congress. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a member of the Intelligence Committee and the ranking Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said requiring polygraph tests would safeguard the information and clear up who is being told what. This comes as Democrats have accused the CIA of lying to members of Congress over the years, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has faced her own questions about what she knew about...

First lady Michelle Obama thought about sending her daughters away to summer camp, she said recently, but instead decided on another program -- the "Camp Obama" world tour. "This has been such a, you know, busy year for them," she said, "We're having 'Camp Obama' and, you know, they're going to travel a little more with us, and we're going to do some historic things." It's not your everyday sleepaway camp, but a world-class adventure: This week, the first tweens have toured Rome's Coliseum and Russia's Kremlin -- exotic locations for sure, but the president said his daughters haven't skipped...

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The uber-establishment Council on Foreign Relations said Wednesday it favors granting legal status to many of the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., creating a guest worker program for low-skilled foreign workers to come and work in the U.S and opposes local police getting to conduct immigration raids. The CFR issued an immigration policy report Wednesday that looks to lift caps on foreign university students in the U.S. and allow skilled foreign graduates to get more work visas. The international policy group also wants to create legal paths to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already...