Free Republic

Sen. Barbara Boxer is urging the U.S. to ratify a United Nations measure meant to expand the rights of children, a move critics are calling a gross assault on parental rights that could rob the U.S. of sovereignty. The California Democrat is pushing the Obama administration to review the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a nearly 20-year-old international agreement that has been foundering on American shores since it was signed by the Clinton administration in 1995 but never ratified. Critics say the treaty, which creates "the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion"...

When marriages get difficult, people “bail out” by divorcing, and flippantly propose that the kids will be fine. When school children are failing classes, the tendency in American education is to drop standards on performance examinations, drop the tests altogether, or punish the hard-working children by eliminating valedictorian status. When folks decide that their business or financial situation isn’t paying off, they declare bankruptcy and ultimately give the bird to those who trusted them enough to do business with them. When the auto industry makes cars that aren’t popular, Congress votes to bail them out financially. When mortgage companies and...

Earnings inflated by inadequate reserves for loan losses. Appraisers pressured to deliver home values to justify making shaky loans. A loan portfolio stuffed with risky mortgages written mainly for the higher interest rate and fee income they could generate. Stock sales by a top executive ahead of bad news. Misleading and false disclosures to investors. A "toothless" risk-management operation.Federal investigators looking into the decline and fall of Washington Mutual Bank as an independent company won't have to go far for a wealth of allegations as to the causes, or source material on those accusations. Three class-action lawsuits -- each a...

California first lady Maria Shriver - whose father, Sargent Shriver, ran for both president and vice president - said she finds it "unbelievable, jaw-dropping" that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin so far has managed to sidestep news conferences and Sunday TV talk shows.Shriver, a prominent veteran broadcast journalist and bestselling author who is married to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is preparing to interview and talk with dozens of international newsmakers, politicians and celebrities at her popular Women's Conference on Oct. 21 and 22 at the Long Beach Convention Center. She quizzed Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama last year at the...

Alan Fishman, named CEO of Washington Mutual just 18 days before federal regulators seized it, will not accept a multimillion-dollar severance payment even if he is entitled to it, a spokesman representing him said Wednesday. "It is doubtful that Mr. Fishman would be entitled to severance payments under his contract because of FDIC regulations, but in any event, he would not accept severance under these circumstances," the spokesman said Wednesday in an interview. He would not comment on whether Fishman would keep a $7.5 million signing bonus or whether he is still employed at WaMu. Fishman's employment contract made him...

Subject: The Birk Economic Recovery Plan Hi Pals, I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG. Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve It Dividend. To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+. Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up.. So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.. My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We Deserve It Dividend. Of course, it would...

Washington Mutual paid former CEO Kerry Killinger $14.4 million in 2007 and over $54 million from 2002-07, Forbes reports. In return, the nearly 120-year-old firm was led into the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.

Washington Mutual CEO Kerry Killinger stood before a Wall Street investors' conference last September and declared that his company — the company he had led since 1990 and built into the nation's sixth-largest bank and one of its biggest home lenders — not only would survive the collapse of the mortgage bubble but would prosper. Despite what Killinger called "a near-perfect storm" in the U.S. housing market, he said, "We have appropriate capital and sources of liquidity (i.e., cash) to weather the storm." Killinger declared that WaMu would add billions in new mortgages to its books, in a bid to...