Free Republic

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better. Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better. Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not...

Fans of American Idol might be disappointed that the show is being pre-empted for the prime time press conference President Barack Obama will be holding on Tuesday night, but most of us would probably rather hear more about the federal budget. That is, of course, what Obama will be speaking about before reporters start asking questions. The deficit, buying bad bank assets, and energy policies will likely be high on the list of issues he addresses. The press conference will be held Tuesday, March 24 at 5:00 p.m. PST / 8:00 p.m. EST in the East Room of the White...

-gave a box of 25 DVDs to the prime minister of Britain as a gift, and gave the prime minister's children helicopters from the White House gift shop. -had over a dozen executive nominees resign before confirmation on account of tax and other issues. -announce that a "withdrawal" from Iraq meant a "residual" force of about 30,000. - had carried a teleprompter around for every 4-minute introductory speech. I wonder?

1. Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos). After some...

CHICAGO – President-elect Barack Obama braced the country for more tough times Sunday, saying twice in an interview that the nation’s already dismal economy would continue to worsen in the months ahead. Obama, speaking to Tom Brokaw on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” used some of his starkest language yet to underscore the severity of the challenge he’ll face upon taking office next month. “If you look at the unemployment numbers that came out yesterday, if you think about almost 2 million jobs lost so far, if you think about the fragility of the financial system and the fact that it...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Gunfire erupted in the storied Waldorf-Astoria hotel during a brazen robbery attempt Saturday at a lobby jewelry store, wounding a security guard and sending guests diving for cover. An armed gunman tried to rob a jewelry store in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Saturday. An armed gunman tried to rob a jewelry store in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Saturday. The 54-year-old guard, Gregory J. Boyle, was shot in the chest but was expected to survive, and a suspect was arrested on charges including attempted murder and assault.

Last week, Barack Obama revealed his plan to shore up Social Security's shaky finances by raising the income level on which the payroll tax is applied. Currently, incomes above $102,000 are exempt, with that threshold rising every year indexed to wage inflation. Mr. Obama would keep that limit in place, but then assess payroll taxes on incomes above $250,000, which his campaign claims would apply to only the richest 3% of Americans. Mr. Obama angered liberals last year when he admitted that there was a "Social Security crisis." But at least Mr. Obama's base should be appeased now that his...

Families have been warned that the prices of basic foods will rise steeply again because of acute shortages in commodity markets. Experts told The Times yesterday that prices of rice, wheat and vegetable oil would rise further. They also forecast that high prices and shortages — which have caused riots in developing countries such as Bangladesh and Haiti — were here to stay, and that the days of cheap produce would not return. Food-price inflation has already pushed up a typical family’s weekly shopping bill by 15 per cent in a year. A further 15 per cent increase in the...

In the last couple of decades, corporate profits and executive salaries have soared. But for many workers, the only thing that has increased is insecurity. In “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” Steven Greenhouse, a labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times, examines the difficulties faced by workers at companies like FedEx and Wal-Mart, and points to Patagonia and Costco as models for corporate America. The book was published by Knopf on April 15. Chapter One is excerpted here. Excerpted from “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” by Steven Greenhouse (Knopf, 2008)....

<p>The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. Since then, the spectacle of hunger sparking revolutionary violence has been the stuff of Broadway musicals rather than the real world of politics. And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world. Ironically, it may be the very success of capitalism in transforming regions previously restrained by various forms of socialism that has helped create the new crisis.</p>

Judge Charles Elloie, the embattled jurist at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court who was temporarily suspended from the bench eight months ago over his practice of reducing bail bonds for felons accused of violent crimes, is retiring July 1 for health reasons. In two sentences written to the Louisiana Secretary of State in a letter dated Tuesday, Elloie ended both his decade-long, checkered judicial career and the state investigation into his pattern of freeing suspects from the confines of the Orleans Parish Prison -- even one man accused of raping his own 10-year-old sister. Elloie received approval from the Louisiana...

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has suggested that the slow recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina -- which has prevented many black former residents from returning -- is part of a plan to change the racial makeup and political leadership of his and other cities. "Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere," Nagin said at a dinner sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a trade group for newspapers that target black readers. "They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community."...

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Three men, including a former Topeka resident, accused of operating what police described as a sadomasochistic "dungeon" that included castrations have been sentenced to jail time. Richard Peter "Master Rick" Sciara, his partner of 20 years Michael Mendez, and the man they called their slave, Danny Carroll Reeves, pleaded guilty to felony castration and maiming. Sciara had worked as a physician's assistant at the Colmery-O'Neil VA Medical Center in Topeka from February 1976 to June 1999. Superior Court Judge Dennis Winner said it was difficult to call the dungeon's willing patients "victims," but he said six...

WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported. Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral, the newspaper reported on its Web site. "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way," Pace told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview. Pace, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 1967 graduate of...

NEW ORLEANS - A watchdog group says the $14 billion blueprint for rebuilding the city after Hurricane Katrina is a muddled wish-list of projects, and city officials should use the best parts to create a more cohesive, realistic plan. ADVERTISEMENT The recommendation by the New Orleans-based Bureau of Governmental Research comes as the Unified New Orleans Plan — billed as the most comprehensive planning effort to occur in the city since the 2005 storm — makes its way through city government. "If we're going to have a plan, it's very important to get it right," bureau president, Janet Howard, said...

In midwinter in New Orleans' Hollygrove neighborhood, the weeds in some yards along Olive Street are 6 feet tall. A few blocks from the golf links of the New Orleans Country Club, abandoned buildings with open doors and windows face the street like blank skulls. Much of this 17th Ward neighborhood still looks as it did 18 months ago after Hurricane Katrina struck and it was submerged in 9 feet of water. Ronald Jones, 34, who grew up in Hollygrove, comes by several times a week to visit his mother, who is living in a FEMA trailer while her home...

A brief clip of Prosectur Eddie Jordan getting interviewed by Nightline then bristling at criticism by the Feds about New Orleans's criminal justice system's lack of ability to rebound after Katrina. It just amazes me how freaking arrogant this city's leaders are. Also, the "21 convictions out of 30 cases" tried in a YEAR made me laugh out loud. I guess a 30% failure rate is an improvement. TIME reported recently that 93% of all New Orleans arrestees failed to get any kind of prison sentence.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Two members of the Louisiana National Guard sent in to help fight rising crime in storm-ravaged New Orleans have been charged with armed robbery, a National Guard spokesman said on Friday. Sgt. Caleb Wells and specialist Junious Buchanan confessed to taking money out of the wallets of two motorists during a traffic stop on August 12, Lt. Col. Pete Schneider told Reuters. The men were charged with armed robbery because they were carrying weapons but did not use them during the incident, according to a National Guard statement. The Guard did not say how much money...

NEW ORLEANS — Hundreds of displaced public housing residents returned here for the first time since Hurricane Katrina over the last several days, armed with little more than cleaning supplies and frustration, in an attempt to force the city to reopen their storm-damaged apartments. The city, saying the projects are not ready, has refused. And so, outside the largest public housing complex, the St. Bernard Housing Development in the 7th Ward, tenant groups have organized evacuees into a tent city called "Survivors Village." Uptown, at the C.J. Peete Development, elderly residents, mostly women, broke into their old homes and carted...

A routine traffic stop ended in a barrage of gunfire Monday afternoon in quiet Algiers Point, leaving a 25-year-old New Orleans police officer critically wounded. Police arrested Eddie Alan Harrison, 23, of New Orleans, and booked him with attempted first-degree murder. Joshua Hall, 17, of New Orleans, was booked with traffic violations but may be booked with being an accessory to attempted first-degree murder, said New Orleans Police Department spokeswoman Bambi Hall. The shooting was reported at 3:07 p.m. after two officers stopped a car driven by Joshua Hall in the 600 block of Slidell Avenue at Verret Street, police...