Free Republic

Honda’s new Accord 2.2 i-CTDi Sport has this week set no fewer than 19 world speed records and achieved 3.07 litres / 100 km (92 mpg) fuel economy to boot. British racing driver Robin Liddell and freelance journalist Iain Robertson were part of the European record-setting team. Amongst the speed records set, which were all achieved in Production Car Class B (2000 – 2500 cc), were 133.04 mph (1 mile flying start), 84.25 mph (1 mile standing start) and an average speed of 130.38 mph over a 24-hour endurance period. These records were all set at Papenburg high-speed oval test...

Once-secret documents obtained by The Associated Press show a disaster supply management company went unpunished for Sept. 11 thefts after the government discovered FBI agents and other government officials had stolen artifacts from New York's ground zero. ....... The two whistleblowers eventually lost their jobs, received death threats and were blackballed in the disaster relief industry. But they remained convinced their sacrifice was worth seeing justice done. They were wrong. ........ Federal prosecutors eventually charged KEI and some executives with fraud, including overbilling the government in several disasters, but excluded the Sept. 11 thefts. Officially, the government can't fully explain...

New laws allow some states to tax drivers annually -- even if they live in another state -- simply because they received a speeding ticket. One Connecticut motorist, who asked that his name not be used, discovered this after driving in October in Niagara Falls, New York. Despite being caught in what he considered a brazen speed trap -- the speed limit was 45 MPH where he was caught, but 55 MPH at the same location in the opposite direction -- he accepted the $155 fine for driving 72 MPH thinking by paying the matter would be settled. Last week,...

BOSTON – Isaac Berzin is a big fan of algae. The tiny, single-celled plant, he says, could transform the world's energy needs and cut global warming. Overshadowed by a multibillion-dollar push into other "clean-coal" technologies, a handful of tiny companies are racing to create an even cleaner, greener process using the same slimy stuff that thrives in the world's oceans. Enter Dr. Berzin, a rocket scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. About three years ago, while working on an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station, he came up with the idea for using it to clean up...

The discussion about the Supreme Court’s Raich decision has principally centered on the scope of federalism and the Commerce Clause. There is, however, another issue that needs to be examined: stare decisis, the longstanding policy of common law courts to adhere to precedent irrespective of its merits. .............. The conflict between stare decisis, a legacy of the uncodified English constitution, and the American constitutional system (which originated with the pre-1787 state constitutions), was discussed by Thomas Paine in his 1792 treatise, Rights of Man: ...................Government by precedent, without any regard to the principle of the precedent, is one of the...

Let me be circumspect: Government accounting is vile garbage. It understates the true federal budget deficit by a staggering $2.3 trillion, an amount equal to the total market value of the 10 largest companies in America. ............. The $427 billion deficit, however, is a massive understatement of our true deficit. The real deficit is $2.3 trillion larger. That's more than five times the publicly discussed figure, but it never enters public discussion. (I'll tell you where this information is buried in a minute.) If the executive branch of government were held to the standards of Sarbanes-Oxley, it would be on...

“…man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan We’ve all heard the words democracy and freedom used countless times, especially in the context of our invasion of Iraq. They are used interchangeably in modern political discourse, yet their true meanings are very different. George Orwell wrote about “meaningless words” that are endlessly repeated in the political arena*. Words like “freedom,” “democracy,” and “justice,” Orwell explained, have been abused so long that their original meanings have...

<p>May 14, 2002 -- HARDLY anyone noticed but the Federal budget deficit rose to more than a half-trillion dollars last year.</p> <p>That's not a typo. My typing is just fine.</p> <p>And that incredible figure comes from no less an authority than U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.</p>

In some ways we may be SHORT-CHANGING OUR NEXT GENERATION, but blaming it on others will not make it better. Acquiring knowledge and taking action is an individual responsibility. This is a collection of easy-to-understand picture-reports to increase awareness of certain threats to the economic future & freedom of families and their children, compared to the past - - on family income, debt, savings, government spending, education quality, social security, regulations, taxes, inflation, energy, foreign trade and exchange, voter turnout, trust, national security, and health care. There are so many great & positive things about our beloved America to celebrate. ...

I thought it might be helpful to many of the discussions that keep coming up about cannabis to offer some actual medical information and end the childish rhetoric that is so prevalent in these threads. I will forgo the legality issue as it is obvious that cannabis is illegal because congress says so. At least that was the finding from the SCOTUS a few months back. When they weighed the medical necessity defense, Clarence Thomas wrote "It is clear from the text of the Act that Congress has made a determination that marijuana has no medical benefits worthy of an ...

The Defense Department cannot account for $1.1 trillion that seems to have vanished within the tangled system of financial accounting put in place by private contractors. Every year trillions of dollars are unaccounted for by federal agencies, and every year these same agencies are called before congressional oversight committees to explain this mismanagement of taxpayers’ funds. Year after year the bureaucratic mea culpas are longer on process and shorter on substance, leaving overseers with little or no information that is useful to correct the gross mismanagement. Take, for instance, the financial mess at the Department of Defense (DOD). In May, ...