Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Senate on Tuesday rejected a Republican attempt to repeal ethanol subsidies. The motion to cut off debate on Sen. Tom Coburn's ethanol amendment was defeated by a vote of 40-59. Thirty-four of the Senate's 47 Republicans favored ending the ethanol tax credit and tariff. “The Senate’s refusal to save taxpayers $3 billion by ending an ethanol subsidy the beneficiaries themselves don’t want highlights the incompetence and dysfunction of this body," Coburn (R-Okla.) said. "Instead of protecting taxpayers by reducing our deficit and lowering food prices, many senators chose to protect the desire of Senate leaders to...

Washington (CNSNews.com) – Christy Romero, the acting Special Inspector General for the TARP bank bailout program, told the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday that the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law may not end the “too big to fail” policy and the moral hazard surrounding it. Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee’s Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee, Romero said that as far as the market is concerned, too big to fail is not dead. “The mere enactment of the Dodd-Frank act did not end the concept of ‘too big to fail’ in the market’s eyes,” Romero said. “So long...

(CNSNews.com) – Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), co-chairman of President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, said Tuesday that he agreed with his fellow co-chairman, former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, that the United States faces “the most predictable economic crisis in history” within the next two years. Simpson added that the tipping point "will come when the rating agencies find out we have no plan" to seriously address federal spending and the national debt. At the Capitol Hill Club on Tuesday, CNSNews asked Simpson, “Erskine Bowles told the Senate Budget Committee that America faces the ‘most predictable...

(CNSNews.com) – If the United States is not more assertive in responding to China’s handling of deepening territorial disputes in the South China Sea, it will have no credibility with countries in the region that are at odds with their giant neighbor, a U.S. senator has warned. China wants to handle the various disputes in the potentially oil-rich area – with Vietnam, the Philippines and others – bilaterally, and says the U.S. should keep out. Beijing advised Tuesday against “attempts to internationalize and complicate the South China Sea issue” while at the same time saying it was committed to reaching...

(CNSNews.com) – A European-led initiative to secure U.N. Security Council condemnation of Syria is faltering, as opposition from Russia and China is bolstered by the stance of three emerging powers that want permanent seats on the Security Council. Brazil, India and South Africa are not convinced of the need for a resolution censuring Syria’s violent suppression of anti-government protests, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told parliament in Paris on Tuesday. To pass, a resolution needs nine votes in the 15-member council. A “no” vote from any of the permanent members (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China) would also kill the...

(CNSNews.com) - Five of the seven Republican presidential candidates participating in a debate in New Hampshire last night said they would favor a constitutional amendment to define marriage in the United States as between a man and a woman. Only businessman Herman Cain and Rep. Ron Paul said they did not favor an amendment. New Hampshire Union Leader reporter John DiStaso raised the marriage issue by asking Rep. Michele Bachmann whether she would come into the state of New Hampshire as president and campaign to overturn the state's law allowing same-sex marriage.

(CNSNews.com) - As the United States Postal Service looks at ways to cut budgets and deal with declining revenue, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers is going against the grain by suggesting the agency should be increasing the services offered, including thwarting terrorists. President of The National Association of Letter Carriers Fredric Rolando, has several ideas to increase the responsibility of some postal workers. Among them is to outfit postal trucks with sensors so letter carriers can thwart biological terrorist attacks, according to recent reports.

(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama said yesterday that you would want Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D.-Fla.) “on your side” because “she’s got a cute smile,” and you would want her “in your foxhole” because “not only is she charming” but she has a “dazzling smile,” and is “tough as nails.” Obama spoke of Wasserman Schultz, who also chairs the Democratic National Committee, at two separate fundraising events in Miami on Monday. Wasserman Schultz’s congressional district includes parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties. “To Debbie Wasserman Schultz, thank you for letting me in your district,” the president said at a fundraiser...

(CNSNews.com) – Twenty-eight months after Congress passed President Obama’s signature economic stimulus law, and nearly one year after he declared the summer of 2010 to be “Recovery Summer,” 1.9 million fewer people are employed. In February 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that 141.7 million people were employed. By the end of May 2011 – the last month for which data are available – that number had fallen to 139.8 million, a difference of 1.9 million. While the number of people with jobs has increased slightly from its low point during the recession – 137.9 million in December...

(CNSNews.com) - Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) drew a sharp distinction between himself and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) in the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire Monday night when he firmly endorsed House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R.-Wis.) Medicare reform plan immediately after Gingrich reiterated his reservations about the plan. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said he will have his own Medicare reform plan. After Gingrich said Republicans should “slow down” on Medicare reform and that there were “certain things” he would do differently than Ryan in reforming Medicare, debate moderator John King of CNN asked Santorum if...

(CNSNews.com) - CIA Director Leon Panetta, who President Barack Obama has nominated to be secretary of Defense, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that he believes the president can unilaterally use military force, without congressional authorization to “protect our national interests.” Panetta’s claim of broad unilateral presidential power to initiate U.S. military action absent an attack or imminent threat to the United States came in response to a question from Sen. John McCain—who said he agreed with Panetta. The U.S. is now involved militarily in Libya even though Congress has never authorized that involvement.

(CNSNews.com) – Senate Republicans are moving to repeal all subsidies, mandates and tariffs on ethanol, the corn-based fuel additive. A vote is expected Tuesday afternoon on Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) amendment repealing the ethanol subsidy. In addition, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) announced that he will introduce an amendment to repeal the renewable fuels standard that requires ethanol to be blended with gasoline.

(CNSNews.com) – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), whose foreign policies have troubled some Western officials, sailed to a third term victor in elections Sunday, as expected. But voters did not hand Erdogan the majority he sought to push ahead with plans for a new constitution without the support of opposition parties. The Islamist-leaning AKP’s 49.9 percent of the vote translates into 325 seats in the 550-seat parliament, down from 331 in the last parliament. That result is well short of the two-thirds needed to replace the constitution without consulting other parties or Turkish citizens...

(CNSNews.com) - Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, an Obama appointee, told CNSNews.com that the FCC does not want to regulate Internet content but it does want to regulate the Internet's “on/off ramps.” At the National Association of Broadcasters Service Awards on Monday, CNSNews.com asked Clyburn to what extent the federal government should regulate the Internet.

(CNSNews.com) – Five months after the Obama administration sent a new envoy to Damascus, Ambassador Robert Ford’s lack of access to Syrian leaders shows the limitations of Obama’s policy of seeking to engage hostile regimes. For the past couple of weeks, attempts by Ford to meet with government officials to discuss the deepening political crisis have been blocked, according to the State Department. “He continues to request meetings with the Syrian government, and those continue to be denied,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Friday.

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) says the Republicans’ energy legislation is the same as what the Bush administration offered, and that those failed policies contributed to high gas prices. “We’ve seen this roadmap before,” Waxman said at a hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Friday. “This is a recycled version of the plan developed by the secretive Bush-Cheney Energy Task Force and pushed through Congress by Republicans while they were in office.” Waxman said during the eight years Bush was in office, his administration “pushed oil and gas drilling, onshore and offshore” and “expedited permits...

(CNSNews.com) – The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the real cost of the federal government guaranteeing the business of failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is $317 billion -- not the $130 billion normally claimed by the Obama administration. In a report delivered to the House Budget Committee on June 2, the CBO said a “fair value” accounting of guaranteeing the two defunct mortgage companies – known as Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) – was more than twice as high as the Office of Management and Budget had accounted for. “Specifically, CBO treats the mortgages guaranteed each year by...

(CNSNews.com) – Amid reports that the Obama administration may be considering an accelerated troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday highlighted his views on the timing and nature of the coming reduction. Paying a farewell visit to U.S. forces in Afghanistan before he leaves his post late this month, Gates said that if it were up to him, he would favor withdrawing support troops first and leaving the combat component – “the shooters” – in place for as long as possible. “I would look for support people that we no longer need,” he said during a...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Labor Department is distributing almost $12 million to ten organizations "to help ensure the success of adult offenders returning to work.” The grants of $1,170,000 each will provide training, employment and support services to adult former inmates returning to their communities after serving time in what the Labor Department calls "justice facilities." "The grants announced today are an investment not just in the futures of former inmates, but also in the communities and families to which they are returning," said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis.

(CNSNews.com) – John Bryson, President Obama’s nominee to head the Commerce Department, told a UN energy conference in 2009 that a global wealth redistribution program was needed to keep poor people in developing countries from using their own forest resources. “What we’ve got to do is find ways to map out the affected lands, to develop plans for addressing them, find economic models in which the people who are driven to do these things to try to raise the livelihoods of their families, find alternative means,” Bryson said in laying out his vision for stopping people in poor countries from...