Free Republic

My younger sister has often complained to me that, during their working careers, she and her husband had difficulty making ends meet, financially. In response, I’ve tried to convince her that those who have a little money… or even a lot of money… have a far more difficult problem: i.e., holding onto what they have. No man has done more to prove my point than Bernard Madoff, the head of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC, a Wall Street investment advisor admired and trusted by some of America’s wealthiest individuals and foundations. No man has done more to destroy the...

What I've been tying to discern about the Clinton Foundation is why -- aside from the annual fancy party in New York -- foreign governments, other foundations and charities have given money to fund what they already do themselves. There were four United Way contributions, one from the national outfit, three from local branches. Since when is the Clinton Foundation one of the approved charities of the United Way? Then there are more serious questions about operating charities. What was the purpose of a contribution by the National Opera of Paris? Or of hospitals themselves in strained circumstances, like Maimonides...

How impostors like Clark Rockefeller capture our trust instantly - and why we're so eager to give it to them. Lots of people trusted Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. At least two women married him - though they each knew him by a different name. The members of elite social clubs in San Marino, Calif.; Greenwich, Conn.; and here in Boston embraced him and vouched for him. A series of investment firms offered him jobs as a stockbroker and bond salesman, even a vice president, despite his lack of credentials, experience, and, as quickly became clear, his at best rudimentary knowledge of...

Updated Monday, June 25, 2007The recycle of abuse continues at Baptist churches By Greg Warner Associated Baptist Press JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Secrecy about clergy sexual abuse may protect an abuser's current church from embarrassment but often comes at the expense of his next church - and its children. Like many small, rural congregations that find themselves without a pastor, East Bonne Terre Baptist Church had a small budget and few options. So when church members heard there was a new preacher in the area who was seeking a pulpit, it looked like God's timing. "When somebody comes along who has...

Here's what a master con man Joe Greenblatt is.He persuades Selma and Jack Winston to invest $3.5 million over five years in a series of real estate deals run out of his Paramus office. Within months of Jack's death in 2002, "interest" checks to the grieving widow start to bounce. With more than $800,000 in worthless checks, Selma finally blows the whistle, leading to Greenblatt's arrest. But it's too late. The big loss will force her to sell her beloved lakeside home in Bloomfield, Mich. A year later, Greenblatt is facing serious jail time. He calls Selma, now 88. Could...

CIA Director Porter Goss abruptly resigned yesterday amid allegations that he and a top aide may have attended Watergate poker parties where bribes and prostitutes were provided to a corrupt congressman.

Egyptian forces say they are fighting the “Tora Bora Battle of Sinai” against a new al Qaeda mountain stronghold. Our military sources reveal the battle is raging on Jebel Magharah, 22km SW of El Arish and west of a former al Qaeda base on Jebel Hilal (alt. 654 meters). The fortified al Qaeda stronghold on Jebel Magharah is beating back an Egyptian assault on the mountain site. Signals passed among the troops describe the operation as the “Tora Bora of Sinai,” naming it after the fierce epic US-al Qaeda engagement in Afghanistan three years ago. Both sides have sustained casualties....

There's bad news and there's more bad news for paralysis victims hoping that some variety of stem cell will soon help them walk again. Adult stem cell paralysis treatment has just suffered a major setback, on the one hand. On the other, these victims are being mercilessly exploited by those desperate to convince us that embryonic stem cells (ESCs) -- yet to be tested in a human -- are a miracle cure desperately needing massive infusions of taxpayer funds. There have been many claims of improvements for quadriplegics using adult stem cells -- those found throughout the human body as...

The Denver Post Penis-enlargement firms sued By Kris Hudson Denver Post Business Writer Friday, February 06, 2004 - A California man on Thursday sued a slew of international companies, including a Greeley distributor, alleging the penis-enlargement products they market and distribute do not work. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, seeks class-action status to represent an estimated 1 million people who ordered the products in response to advertisements on television, radio and spam e-mail. "I was wondering for a long time why no one has gotten around to suing these penis-enlargement guys, because it seems like a...

I honestly believe that the threat of lawsuits against individual downloaders was and is bogus. I have not seen one shred of evidence to the contrary. I've downloaded tons of songs beginning back with Napster. It never hurt the recording industry one ounce. What hurts them is when there is no interest. Luckily for them, Napster and Kazza kept the interest alive. When Napster first came out everyone loved it and there was no talk of lawsuits. The recording industry was booming. Sales were up and I remember news pundits and other talking heads say that the reason sales of...

<p>Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, published in the New York Times a truly rare article last Friday: an op-ed capable of genuinely shocking even world-weary cynics in a jaded world. He announced that, over the last dozen years: "I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard - awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."</p>

I'm trying to compile a list of history's greatest con artists -- people who cheated nations out of prime land, famous people out of their money, or who even faked their own death. So far I've got: *'Count' Victor Lustig who sold the Eiffel tower to greedy steel dealers -- twice. *Joseph 'Yellow Kid' Weil, who once set up a fake bank in Muncie, Ind., staffed by prostitutes, and conned a rich man into depositing $50,000. *Elmyr de Hory- art forger extraordinaire, whose bio was authored by Clifford Irving, who faked a biography of Howard Hughes. Some think Hory faked...

I DON'T care about Cherie Blair's rubbish friends and her attempts to mislead. She wasn't elected, she's not publicly accountable, and if Downing Street press officers are stupid enough to mislead on her behalf then our fight should be with them and not her. Curiously, what I do care about is being forced by the media to judge the connecting parts of this woman's life, and I care because she is currently being held up as an example of 'perfect' working motherhood found flawed and wanting only by being too 'protective' of her family...(snip) For Complete Article, Please Click Here.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds111.html The Industrious Homeless by Brad Edmonds My recent article on the homeless drew a few amusing responses from readers whose experiences confirmed one of my assertions – that many, perhaps most, of those who remain homeless for any significant length of time do so because they are simply averse to work. Given the natural disutility of labor, most of us are averse to work, and fortunate indeed are those who find jobs they love, or find they can be happy in any job. Most of us recognize that we must take the bitter with the sweet, and we toil...