Free Republic

If there were any doubt that Eliot “Client 9” Spitzer has spiraled down into further delusion and irrelevance, it was erased Friday afternoon in an embarrassing and bizarre shootout between the disgraced former NY Attorney General and CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo. At issue were allegations that a trove of private emails may exist showing the former purchaser of high-priced prostitutes launched a personally motivated prosecution against former AIG chief Hank Greenberg. Of the eight charges Spitzer brought against Greenberg, six have been dropped, with the last two in the process of being dismissed, according to Greenberg’s lawyer. Still, throughout the interview...

A Democratic effort is underway in at least 16 states to overturn restrictions on mail-in balloting and third-party ballot harvesting. A nationwide effort by Democrats is underway in at least 16 states to overturn restrictions on mail-in voting and third-party ballot harvesting. States where suits have been filed include the swing states of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The effort is being backed by the National Redistricting Foundation, a Democratic group headed by the Obama administration’s Attorney General Eric Holder. The suits appear to be funded by Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC. A Wall Street Journal headline from April read,...

If the Bergdahl uproar feels creepily reminiscent of the Benghazi uproar, or the Syrian "red line" uproar, or the choose-your-own- Obama -foreign-adventure uproar, it's because they all have a common denominator. This is what happens when political hacks formally take over foreign policy. It's the "formal" point that bears some meditation. Barack Obama isn't the first president to make foreign-policy decisions on the basis of domestic political calculations. He does, however, win the distinction of being the first president to utterly disregard—to treat with contempt—the institutions and procedures that were designed to help the commander in chief insulate the serious...

On Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” on Oct. 8, President Donald Trump described Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as a “communist; she’s left of Bernie!” The president went on to cite Sen. Harris’s views, which are indeed even more extreme than Senators Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) or Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.).But there’s much more compelling evidence to indicate that, yes, Kamala Harris may indeed be communist.Communist Parents Harris’s parents, her mother Shyamala Gopalan, an Indian cancer researcher, and Donald Harris, a Jamaican economist, were both hard-core leftists.In the early 1960s, the couple were active in the Berkeley-based Afro-American Association.According...

The gut-wrenching slide of the 2008 stock market crash is unforgettable for those caught in it. In the six weeks from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on Sep. 17, the stock market lost over 40 percent of its value. A quarter of trading days had plunges of 4 percent or more. Investors saw life’s savings dissipate. Traders saw a year’s work and bonus compensation vaporize. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, which had been scrambling to cope with the developing financial crisis, accelerated their efforts to a frenetic pace, developing program after program to stem the panic. A chart of the...

A former hedge fund manager on Friday fought for a chance to get former Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara on the witness stand. David Ganek, founder of Level Global, asked a federal appeals court to keep alive his 2015 lawsuit charging Bharara and the FBI with “fabricating evidence” to raid his $4 billion hedge fund in 2010. Bharara already tried once filed to kill the suit, which a trial judge denied in March. The prosecutor then appealed the ruling. “The notion there is no remedy when an officer of the United States [lies] in an affidavit is extraordinary,” Ganek’s lawyer...

[I begin] with the story of a series of Socialist scholars conferences that Barack Obama attended when he lived in New York City between the years 1983 and 1985. And when I finally reconstructed what had gone on at these Socialist conferences that Barack Obama attended, I truly was amazed because what I saw was a kind of map of Barack Obama’s entire subsequent political career. It was at this Socialist conferences in New York in the mid-’80s that Barack Obama encountered the groups, the strategies, and the mentors who would guide him throughout his entire political career. [T]hese Socialist...

From:hms@sandlerfoundation.org To: ses@sandlerfoundation.org, james@sandlerfoundation.org Date: 2015-06-22 18:26 Subject: FW: PICO: Vatican Visit I thought you might find this of interest. From: Knaebel, Sergio Sent: Monday, June 22, 2015 12:58 PM To: Sandler, Herbert Subject: FW: PICO: Vatican Visit Herb, In case you did not get this from Steve. Sergio Knaebel Grant Director Sandler Foundation sknaebel@sandlerfoundation.org From: Scott Reed [mailto:sreed@piconetwork.org] Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2015 8:39 AM To: Knaebel, Sergio Subject: PICO: Vatican Visit Hi Sergio: I just sent a note to Steve with this summary of our visit to the Vatican. I look forward to talking soon. PICO sent a...

Angelo Mozilo can finally get on with his life. This month the Justice Department told Mr. Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, once the nation’s largest subprime mortgage lender, that he was no longer under investigation in connection with civil mortgage fraud. The government’s criminal inquiry into Mr. Mozilo’s role in the financial crisis was dropped previously, so he is now in the clear. At least that’s the view from Washington. On Main Street, where the pain of Countrywide’s reckless lending and abusive foreclosure practices still throbs, it’s safe to say that Mr. Mozilo is still identified as...

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) on Monday notched a major legal win when a U.S. appeals court overturned a $1.27 billion penalty handed down in a high-profile fraud case tied to mortgages sold by its Countrywide unit prior to the financial crisis of 2008.

Bicycles instead of cars? Dense apartment clusters instead of single homes? Community rituals instead of churches? "Human rights" instead of religious freedom? The UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which met June 3-14 [1996]in Istanbul, painted an alarming picture of the 21st century community. The American ways-free speech, individualism, travel, and Christianity-are out. A new set of economic, environmental, and social guidelines are in. Citizenship, democracy, and education have been redefined. Handpicked civil leaders will implement UN "laws", bypassing state and national representatives to work directly with the UN. And politically correct "tolerance"-meaning "the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism"...