Free Republic

The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their...

The statement by Yuriy Buligin, a representative of the Russian chamber of commerce, that the ratification of the natural gas and oil agreement by the Serbian Assembly does not also mean that the construction of South Stream will begin has once more raised the question of what the actual future is of that alternative gas pipeline, which is supposed to be an energy link between Russia and Europe. Buligin's position is interpreted as an effort to occupy a better starting position on the eve of the resumption of Serbia's negotiations with Gazprom concerning the construction of South Stream and the...

Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it. Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend. But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the...

Thus, while Kosovo's status as part of Serbia is unquestionable, South Ossetia and Abkhazia can make a good case they were part of Soviet Georgia but never the current independent state of Georgia. (The same would apply to Transdniestria with respect to Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh with respect to Azerbaijan. When will they follow suit?) In Kosovo, Washington sowed the wind, and now Georgia has reaped the whirlwind. Only a return to the negotiating table to address comprehensively Kosovo, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and similar trouble spots elsewhere can prevent this malignant precedent from spinning further out of control with incalculable consequences...

Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it. Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend. But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the...

THE HAGUE- The former leader of Bosnia's Muslim army, Rasim Delic, was jailed for three years yesterday by the Hague Tribunal for allowing the torture of Bosnian Serb soldiers by a Mujahideen unit in 1995. By majority decision, Delic, who was the chief of staff of the Bosnian Army in 1995, was found guilty of violating customs and laws of war, when he did nothing to prevent cruel treatment of Serb prisoners by a Mujahideen unit under his command. Judge Bakone Justice Moloto, citing the "appalling brutal" mistreatment meted out by Islamic foreign fighters, said that tribunal judges had decided...

Do you think the recent stock market collapse or troubles in the banking system are good news? Well, according to CNN's Candy Crowley, the Obama campaign does. On Monday's "Anderson Cooper 360," after CNN senior political analyst David Gergen said "what happened over the weekend with the economy and the bottom falling out of the financial markets...is the opportunity for Obama to seize the momentum back on his side," Crowley actually said, "[J]ust as foreclosures were showing up on B-17, or in the real estate section, along comes this horrific headline out of Wall Street...I mean, this is what they...

The failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, setting in motion the biggest government bailout/takeover in U.S. history, brings a grim sense of fulfillment to competent economists. After all, what did people expect, that water would flow uphill forever? This financial mega-mess is the same sort of event as the collapse of the USSR’s centrally planned economy, another economically unworkable Rube Goldberg apparatus that was kept going, more or less badly, for decades before it fell apart completely. Along the way, of course, famous (yet actually unsound) economists assured the world that everything was working out splendidly. As late as...

If ever there was a need for an investigation or a special prosecutor, Fannie Gate fits the bill. Politics, Democratic corruption, and a laundry list of Clinton pals have cause Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go belly up. How come no one wants to get to the bottom of this. Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Charles Rangel are up to their ears in potential criminal activity. Where are the calls for an Enron-type investigation?

I'm having trouble finding facts on whether during the Clinton Administration the military and intelligence agencies were subject to spending cuts. I've often heard this and was wanting to know whether it is correct. Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

Another of our youngest presidents, Bill Clinton, was 46 when sworn in and became the first Democrat since FDR to serve two terms.Born in Arkansas, educated at Georgetown University and a graduate of Yale Law School, he was also a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He had weaknesses as well as strengths but was popular with the average man and woman, and especially with minorities. He was a smart politician and a great salesman whose way with words earned him the nickname of Slick Willie when he was governor of Arkansas. The economy was strong during Clinton's term, benefiting in no...

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win...

Serbian government officials insisted Friday that an energy deal with Russia is of the utmost national interest, but the opposition Liberals described it as humiliating. The multibillion-dollar agreement envisages that part of a pan-European gas pipeline will run through Serbia, and that Russia will buy Serbia's state oil monopoly, NIS. Serbia and Russia signed the agreement in January, but it must be approved in parliament before it can be fully implemented. The deal has sparked criticism from some pro-Western officials in Serbia who have said that the price of €400 million (US$580 million) offered by the Russians for the majority...

Washington, D.C. - At a conference in Washington, D.C., this week, a Department of Defense official sounded a startling alarm. "The defense community is critically reliant on a technology that obsoletes itself every 18 months, is made in unsecure locations and over which we have absolutely no market share influence," said Ted J. Glum, director of the DoD's Defense Microelectronics Activity unit. "Other than that," he cracked, "we're good."

Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White...

[C]onsumer credit became so pervasive that paying cash became passé. Want a new $32,530 Dodge Ram Crew pickup? Take a lease. Sick of your old house? Get a 100 percent mortgage and trade up. Face lift? Round-the-world cruise? New PC? Three-hundred dollar sushi dinner at Nobu? Whip out that plastic. It was this behavior—the endless willingness of lenders to lend and borrowers to borrow—that kept the consumer economy humming uninterrupted from the early 1990s, straight through the brief recession of 2001, until the credit meltdown of 2007. But many of the lenders who extended credit recklessly are now acting like...

28 August 2008 Belgrade _ The French Foreign Minister says Serbia has a right to seek a world court ruling on the legality of Kosovo’s independence but warned the EU would not fully accept it. In a statement to Serbia’s state news agency Tanjug in Paris, Bernard Kouchner warned that “if eventually the International Court of Justice will consider the case, something I am not certain about, it would have to take into account all relevant elements.” “Do not forget that are international agreements, the United Nations and international community stand (on the issue)… The court will take all of...

Bill Clinton was front and center for his wife's speech last night, and he's addressing the convention floor himself tonight - but he is expected to be out of Denver before Barack Obama gives his acceptance speech tomorrow. Clinton is expected to leave Denver tomorrow, sources said. The former president has business with his foundation to attend to, the sources said. But given the tenor of the convention so far - the tensions between the Obama and Clinton supporters has overshadowed everything - some were surprised by it. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to be at the speech. Bill...

In that Fox interview that Rich linked to, Ayers preposterously claimed that he and his fellow Weather Underground terrorists did not really intend to harm any people — the fact that no one was killed in their 20 or so bombings was, he said, "by design"; they only wanted to cause property damage: Between October 1969 and September 1973, the Weather Underground claimed credit for some twenty bombings across the country, in which no one was harmed — save the three cell members who perished in a Greenwich Village townhouse in March 1970, when one of their creations detonated prematurely....

DENVER - Hillary Clinton is set to address the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, but the real action started a little bit earlier. Clinton aides brought out on stage several different pantsuits, each of them a different color, to see how the color of each reacted to the lighting and backdrop at the convention site. Presumably this was to help Clinton of New York decide which color of her trademark garment would be best to wear for her big performance. (ABC News reported that Glamour magazine has a spread on Clinton this month with photos of her wearing “a...