Free Republic

12/31/2010 9,390,476,088,043.35 4,634,739,130,665.17 14,025,215,218,708.52

by John HillStand With ArizonaMore than 50,000 Americans have been killed by illegal aliens since 9/11.Think about that. More than 6,000 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since that same date. But nearly ten times that number have been killed right here at home as a consequence of the Federal government's failure to secure our borders and protect its citizens, in direct violation of the Constitution's Article IV Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application...

The desperate search for an acceptable Republican Party presidential candidate continues. Republican leaders apparently are pushing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who previously said no, to jump into the race. The GOP's frustration is palpable. Mitt Romney has been running for four years but generates little enthusiasm. Rick Perry was an instant front-runner before losing much of his support after unimpressive debate performances. Michelle Bachmann briefly streaked across the political firmament but now barely registers in the polls. Newt Gingrich committed political seppuku shortly after announcing his candidacy. Ron Paul's support is fervent but limited. However, the real Republican problem...

An internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security document indicates that a controversial program designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already being tested on some members of the public voluntarily, CNET has learned. If this sounds a bit like the Tom Cruise movie called "Minority Report," or the CBS drama "Person of Interest," it is. But where "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict crimes, DHS is betting on algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues...

The next three months in Iraq will look like a veritable fire sale, as 45,000 U.S. forces prepare to leave by the Dec. 31 deadline. Rather than ship home valuable military hardware, incurring excessive shipping costs, the Pentagon is simply going to leave millions of pieces of equipment behind, including everything from vehicles and body armor to trailers and air conditioners. When all is said and done, Pentagon planners estimate 3.47 million pieces of equipment worth $313 million will be handed over to the Iraqi government, which still has not asked U.S. forces to stay beyond the December deadline.

Self-proclaimed "conservatives" love to tout themselves as ardent supporters of the "free enterprise" system. In the name of "capitalism," they support any and every piece of legislation or governmental decision that caters to business — especially Big Business. Favorite policies of these folks include anything and everything that calls itself "free trade." Furthermore, these same "conservatives" will support just about anything and everything that is said to advance the so-called "global economy." Needless to say, in the name of "free trade" millions of American jobs and thousands of American manufacturing plants have been outsourced to foreign countries and interests. And...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, like most of the other the GOP presidential hopefuls, says his campaign is about undoing the decisions of President Obama. But Perry also presents a stark alternative to the last Republican to occupy the White House, his fellow Texan George W. Bush. In his writings and speeches before he entered the race, Perry shared the view, widely held among conservatives, that Bush’s government spending habits in office were a betrayal of the GOP’s core fiscal principles. But Perry went further, dismissing “compassionate conservatism,” the central tenet of Bush’s domestic policy, as just more overreach by the...

Pat Buchanan regularly serves as Morning Joe's lone conservative in the show's self-described 10:1 ratio of lib to conservative guests. But Buchanan this morning demonstrated that he is anything but a Republican partisan. Sounding more like Barney Frank after a bad night's sleep, Buchanan blasted President George W. Bush, claiming 43 "broke the Republican party and frankly he broke the United States as a superpower." View the video here.

The front page of last Tuesday's Times-Dispatch carried a startling photo: Richmond police officers taking a suspect into custody. What was startling was the display of force. The officers, accompanied by a robot and decked out in full riot gear with shield and combat helmets, could have been mistaken for American soldiers on patrol in Iraq. Yet they were going up against a single man — and they were not even sure was armed. Regrettably, this is not a new development. In recent years police forces across the country have become increasingly militarized. To a small degree, that trend represents...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush warned the Republican presidential hopefuls against ideological intransigence and knee-jerk opposition to President Barack Obama on Tuesday, saying they risk turning off middle-of-the-road voters. Asked by Fox News host Neil Cavuto if some Republicans go too far in their criticism of Obama, Bush said flatly, “I do. I think when you start ascribing bad motives to the guy, that’s wrong. It turns off people who want solutions.

Government critics deserve their day in court. You wouldn't think Aaron Tobey and Donald Rumsfeld have much in common. Tobey is the guy who stripped down to his shorts at the Richmond, Virginia airport last December. Rumsfeld is the former Defense Secretary under George W. Bush. Tobey, who was protesting the invasive airport screening practices that have outraged a good portion of the traveling public, is a stickler for constitutional rights. Rumsfeld? Not so much. The two of them, however, are united by a common case: Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. The other day a federal appeals court said...

In a clip from his interview with WSJ's Simon Constable, Dr. Nouriel Roubini insists that it was the policies of George W. Bush that caused the current U.S. economic crisis.

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SHANGHAI — China, the largest foreign holder of United States debt, said Saturday that Washington needed to “cure its addiction to debts” and “live within its means,” just hours after the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s long-term debt. The harshly worded commentary, which was released by China’s official Xinhua news agency, was Beijing’s latest effort to express its displeasure with Washington. (snip) “The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” read the...

As federal criminal statutes have ballooned, it has become increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side of the law. Many of the new federal laws also set a lower bar for conviction than in the past: Prosecutors don't necessarily need to show that the defendant had criminal intent.

Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say they think the economy is in permanent decline, a new polls shows as deep pessimism about the economy becomes more widespread. Thirty-nine percent of those surveyed for a New York Times/CBS News poll released late Wednesday say they see the economy headed on a downward path - significantly worse than when the question was last asked in October and 28 percent of Americans said the economy was in permanent decline.

June 10, 2011 Mexicans Blast Execution of Criminal Alien Murderer In Texas Jim Kouri, CPP Mexicans on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border are protesting the upcoming execution of a criminal alien rapist and murderer scheduled for July 7, 2011, in Texas. Because the convicted killer is a Mexican citizen, the Calderon government is questioning the procedures that were utilized in sentencing the death row prisoner, Humberto Leal Garcia. The Mexican ambassador to the United States requested this week that Texas Governor Rick Perry delay the execution until a review is completed of the sentencing procedures. The 38-year old Garcia...

MEXICO CITY — Once praised lavishly by the United States for waging a war on drugs, Mexico's last two presidents now say legalizing them may be the best way to end the rising violence the U.S.-backed campaign has unleashed. Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox led efforts to crush drug trafficking gangs in Mexico between 1994 and 2006 but the rapid escalation of violence over the past four years under President Felipe Calderon has convinced them a change of tack is needed. "As a country, we are going through problems due to the fact that the United States consumes too many...

It is a truism of political dynasties that there is a chosen heir - the one who should or would or could have been next. It is certainly apt of the Bush family. Jeb Bush is the son who was groomed for the presidency. He was the one most Republicans expected to succeed his father into the Oval Office. And today, looking at their, let's be frank, lacklustre field, many Republicans still wish he would do just that. "It's very flattering to be asked that regularly," Jeb tells me in his office at the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel. "I don't...

NEW ORLEANS — Republicans head into 2012 united in their disdain for an unpopular, Big Government-loving, internationalist president. The name of that president: George W. Bush. From Capitol Hill to the statehouses to the presidential primary, Republicans are turning their back on almost every important accomplishment of the Bush administration.