Free Republic

Russia signaled concern on Wednesday at Estonia's treatment of its large ethnic Russian minority, comparing language policy in the Baltic state with what it said was a call in Ukraine to prevent the use of Russian. ... The text of the Russian remarks, echoing long-standing complaints over Estonia's insistence that the large Russian minority in the east of the country should be able to speak Estonian, was not immediately available. ... U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is currently in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius as part of a trip to reassure the three countries, all European Union and NATO members, of...

Airplane travelers will soon be able to watch videos and play games with their electronic devices throughout their entire flight -- and not just above a certain altitude -- the Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday in a long anticipated announcement. But don't expect to be chatting on your cell phone. A ban on using cell phones for voice communication remains in effect. The FAA, following months of study by a group of aviation experts, said that airlines can soon allow passengers to use portable electronic devices such as tablets, laptop computers, e-readers and cell phones in airplane mode throughout the...

Troubled Staples just realized its stores need more in the aisles than employees and unsold inventory, and that alienating millions of customers is an unprofitable marketing tack. Angry reactions following its disallowing a gun retailer to enter its small business contest has resulted in office supply chain Staples ending the discriminatory practice, Deena Winter of Nebraska Watchdog revealed in a report updated yesterday. “Maple Creek Gunsmithing, a gun retailer in Fremont, tried to enter a Staples small business ‘Push it Forward’ contest for a shot at winning a $50,000 marketing campaign,” Winter related. “Instead, the owners got an email from...

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible" Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D) Minn. "Know Your Lawmakers" Guns (magazine),...

What purpose does an AR-15 serve to a sportsman that a more standard hunting rifle does not serve? Let’s see – does it fire more rounds without reload? Yes. Does it fire farther and more accurately? Yes. Does it accommodate a more lethal payload? Yes. So basically, the purpose of an assault style weapon is to kill more stuff, more fully, faster and from further away. To achieve maximum lethality.... These people believe that the US government is eventually going to go street by street and enslave our citizens. Now as long as that is only happening to liberals, homosexuals...

Do you know why candidates for office tend to be reluctant to propose detailed plans? Because they know the plans will be flyspecked and picked apart by just about everyone. Inviting criticism doesn't help you to get votes. But fear of criticism prevents you from conceiving solutions to problems. So even if avoidance of criticism helps in propelling you to an election victory, how are you supposed to effectively govern? How are you supposed to fix the problems you told everyone you were going to fix? That's why I'm happy to see so much criticism of the 9-9-9 plan I've...

BLITZER: All right. Let's talk about gun control. Do you support any gun control? CAIN: I support the Second Amendment. BLITZER: So you don't -- so what's the answer on gun control? CAIN: The answer on gun control is I support strong -- strongly support the Second Amendment. I don't support, you know, onerous legislation that's going to restrict people's rights in order to be able to protect themselves as guaranteed by the Second Amendment. BLITZER: Should states or local governments be allowed to control the gun situation? Or should... CAIN: Yes. BLITZER: The answer is yes? CAIN: The answer...

Bloomberg can't be posted. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-05/gold-climbs-a-3rd-day-as-u-s-europe-economic-concerns-drive-haven-demand.html

PRINCETON, NJ -- Thirty-four percent of Americans say gold is the best long-term investment, more than say so about four other types of investments. Real estate (19%) and stocks (17%) are distant second choices. The Aug. 11-14 Gallup poll was conducted at the end of a tumultuous week on Wall Street that sent the price of gold soaring. Gallup asked a similar question from 2002 to 2010, but that question did not include gold. Real estate, savings accounts, and stocks jockeyed for the top spot during that time. Americans' faith in real estate and stocks suffered amid the 2008 economic...

The year 2013 might go down in the annals of numismatics as significant as 1933 when gold coinage was suspended or 1965, the year copper-nickel began to displace the former silver coinage. That’s the opinion of Deputy Mint Director Richard Peterson, who has been the top executive at the U.S. Mint since Ed Moy resigned the directorship at the end of last year. He was speaking at his Aug. 19 press conference at the American Numismatic Association’s World’s Fair of Money held in Rosemont, Ill. It will be in 2013 that Peterson will have to go back to Congress with...

After soaring to nearly $1900/oz. and dropping to near $1700/oz. in the past week, gold recovered to close the week at $1829. This means that the recent "correction" has been two-thirds undone in the recent rise. Gold's close exceeds the new record set just 6 trading days ago. Platinum closed at the same price, and the parity in pricing is a rarity that attracts some gold investors to convert some gold holdings into platinum, with the expectation that platinum will return to its traditional position as the more expensive metal, at time by more than a factor of two.

Gold hit a fresh high at $1616.89 an ounce on Monday on growing worries over talks to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and avert default. Markets are on edge with politicians nearing an August 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling.

There are three things on this chart...the U.S. Debt, the increasing debt limit...and the gold price. One has to wonder how high the new U.S. debt ceiling will drive the gold price.

Gold futures rallied above $1,600 an ounce in electronic trading on Monday, as concerns about the euro-zone debt crisis and the lack of agreement on raising the U.S. debt ceiling prompted investors to seek a safe haven in the precious metal. Gold for August delivery GC1Q +0.54% rose $7.90, or 0.5%, to $1,598 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange in very early morning U.S. trading. Earlier in the day, the contract surged as high as $1,601.20 an ounce, according to data from FactSet. Gold futures finished last week at a record nominal settlement price...

Comex gold futures prices are trading higher Wednesday and scored a fresh all-time record high of $1,579.70, basis August futures, as of this writing. Safe-haven demand is once again featured amid the European Union sovereign debt crisis. The gold market has also seen its near-term technical posture become more bullish. A weaker U.S. dollar index Wednesday morning is also a bullish factor for the precious metals. August gold last traded up $11.20 at $1,573.50 an ounce. Spot gold last traded up $5.90 an ounce at $1,573.75. December Comex silver last traded up $1.04 at $36.69 an ounce.

Chinese counterfeiters are minting U.S. rare coins that appear to be more than a hundred years old. In late April, U.S. customs investigators in Chicago intercepted a shipment of hundreds of fake coins from China with dates between 1873 and 1878. Some of the worthless coins would have been sold for more than $2000 a piece according to federal officials. "Once I buy a counterfeit it gets retired in my collection," said Paul Rigby who owns a coin shop in Multnomah Village. It's a collection Rigby would rather not have, but he says it's no longer uncommon for customers to...

It is kind of the fine folks who compile the Case Shiller index to finally "definitively" tell us that home prices have now officially double-dipped (or is that quadruple dipped when one adjusted for the pro forma impact of QE1 and 2?). Well, below is a chart that cuts right through the noise and semantics, and shows that when expressed in a currency that has not been battered and diluted endlessly, the true normalized value of housing is really down 80% not just since the housing peak but since the turn of the millennium. Median home price priced in gold.

How low can the market go? For real estate, some economists say, an end to the seemingly endless decline in housing values might be in sight. Not immediately. At the moment, prices are still dropping. In 20 large cities, prices fell 0.8 percent in March from the previous month, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index released Tuesday. That pushed the closely watched index below its level of two years ago to a new post-bubble low, and put it 33.1 percent under its July 2006 peak. Few analysts expect housing prices to rebound anytime soon. But quite...