Free Republic

No officials offer to return bank's blood moneyThe fallout from the HSBC money laundering scandal continues to reverberate around the globe, but U.S. Congress members apparently are in no hurry to return millions of dollars they have received from the scandal-plagued bank. WND, which originally broke the story on the HSBC debacle, conducted an analysis of Federal Election Commission records specific to the company political action committee’s generosity toward Congress. The investigation centered upon two congressional panels with primary oversight of the industry: The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs, and the House Committee on Financial Services. Since...

Two New Jersey lawmakers tasked with federal oversight of the banking industry are keeping quiet about whether they will return “blood money” donated to their campaign war chests. HSBC executives already have appeared before the U.S. Senate for the bank’s global role in a drug-gang and terrorist money laundering scandal. However, The Revered Review is now pressing Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J) and Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J./5th District) about what they plan on doing with the tens of thousands of combined dollars that the scandal-plagued bank’s political action committee has given them... TRR analyzed Federal Election Commission records specific to the...

Democrats think your money is theirs to give to other people, while Republicans believe your money is your money to do with as you please. Yes, that is a tired, old political cliché, but all clichés are born out of some level of truth. President Obama seems to be both a Democrat and Perpetuator-in-Chief of political clichés by coming up with a novel, yet oh-so-liberal, way of raising money for his re-election campaign. In the true fashion of someone who believes wholeheartedly that he can put your money to better use than you can, President Obama has set up an...

The Romney campaign announced today that it raised $106.1 million in June, its best fundraising month to date. The money was raised by Romney for President, Romney Victory and the Republican National Committee. The campaign reported having $160 million on hand at the end of the month. June’s loot far exceeds May’s total of more than $76 million, out-raising the Obama campaign by $16 million. The Obama campaign has not yet released its own fundraising numbers for the month of June.

When people say Thursday's Supreme Court ruling was a big win for President Obama, the Romney Campaign must shake their heads just a little bit. Since the ruling, Team Romney has raked in $5.5 million. That money isn't coming from big time donors at fundraisers, but is made up of 55,000 separate donations, with 65 percent of those people donating for the first time. These numbers come after Romney outraised President Obama in May, spent less and Obama seems to be draining his war chest quickly. Just one month after the start of the general election campaign, Mr. Obama has...

What are the tax implications of the zombie apocalypse? The only certainties in life are death and taxes, but how do you handle the taxes when death doesn't go quite as planned? Law professor Adam Chodorow takes a stab at estate planning for the undead in perhaps the only legal paper to cite both the Internal Revenue Code and Weekend at Bernie's II. Chodorow, a professor at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, authored the paper "Death and Taxes...and Zombies," which will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Iowa Law Review. Chodorow notes that, while the...

 Our Debt to the Catholic Churchby Sebastian R. Fama Attacks on the Catholic Church have never been in short supply. The Church’s critics have been maligning her and predicting her demise for centuries. While those same critics fade off into history one by one, the Church continues on in her mission, sometimes shaken but never defeated. Whenever scandals arise in the Church gleeful detractors try to portray the aberration as the norm. Starting with Judas, the Church has always had within its walls those who would betray Christ. However, to focus on such individuals while ignoring those who take their...

Today the Journal Sentinel is launching an interactive page that will allow you to explore contributions to candidates and political action committees in the gubernatorial recall election on June 5. With it, you can compare campaign contributions to any of the candidates or PACs that have raised money in the recall election through January, which was the last filing deadline. We will update the data as committees submit additional filings. After you choose two committees you would like to compare, interactive maps will show how much money each candidate received from each state. For instance, if you choose the political...

Sometimes, good intentions bring bad results. Such is the case with the so-called Stop Special Interest Money Now initiative – a promise to fix what ails California politics by unconstitutionally muzzling someone else's freedom of speech. What could go wrong? . . . The Stop Special Interest Money Now initiative is another well-intentioned infringement of Americans' basic rights. There is a reason freedom of speech was part of the first amendment to the Constitution. The freedom to speak on political matters, especially when offensive to those in power, was one of the basic rights American revolutionaries fought and died for....

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson contributed another $5.5 million to Winning Our Future, the super-PAC supporting Newt Gingrich, according to Federal Election Commission documents filed Tuesday. The former House Speaker has vowed to stay in the race until the Tampa, Fla., convention in August, and denies that he’s only being kept afloat by the large donations from Adelson. “I have 176,000 supporters at newt.org — they want me to stay in the race. I really represent their interests as individuals," he told CBS last week, claiming that "95 percent have given less than $250" — meaning they haven't hit their legal...

"Obama for America can accept contributions from an individual of up to $2,500 per federal election (the primary and general are separate elections). " How is it, then, that Vince Carter can host 40 people at his home for a $30k per plate dinner to ' support the Barack Obama Victory Fund"? That's $1.2 mil. What allows him to donate one sum and I am legally bound in the limits of what I can give? Is this 'bundling' and, if not, what is it and what's the difference, please?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court rejected on Monday a free-speech challenge to the longtime ban on campaign contributions by foreign citizens who temporarily live and work in the United States. The justices affirmed a ruling by a three-judge federal panel that upheld the ban adopted by Congress to keep foreigners from financially influencing U.S. elections. The court's last federal campaign finance law ruling was in January 2010, when it gave corporations the free-speech right to spend freely to support or oppose candidates. PresidentBarack Obama and fellow Democrats in Congress criticized that ruling while Republicans praised it. The new challenge...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee have returned more than $70,000 in contributions from former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine following the collapse of MF Global, Corzine's financial firm, officials said Friday. Obama's campaign and the DNC returned contributions of $35,800 from Corzine and his wife, Sharon Elghanayan, said Democratic officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. They were not authorized to speak publicly. Corzine was among Obama's top fundraisers, raising at least $500,000 for Obama's re-election campaign since April, according to records released by the campaign. The former Goldman Sachs chief held...

Mr. Cain raised more than $5 million through September. Information on the financial activity since that time won’t be disclosed until January, but the campaign said it raised $9 million over a few weeks alone. The funds allowed Mr. Cain and associates to dine and travel in style, using $350,000 on private chartered air in a few weeks, spending thousands at hotels such as the Ritz-Carlton and the Four Seasons, and eating largely steak dinners, records show. One of the campaign’s top recipients was T.H.E New Voice, a company set up to sell Mr. Cain’s books and motivational talks, which...

Cain campaign spokesman JD Gordon said Friday the campaign was projecting close to $5 million in contributions for the month of October alone. That compares to $2.8 million in three months ending in September, the last quarterly period that Cain's campaign filed fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission

I met Utah’s Governor Jon Huntsman and his wife Mary Kaye at an event in Las Vegas. My wife Sandie Tillotson had arranged for us to sit in the VIP section with them. Huntsman was a good friend of NuSkin, and helped open the lucrative Chinese market when he was a Trade Representative ... for the Bush Administration. MLM companies had tried to get into China for years, but NuSkin was the first, and Sandie said it was because of Hunstman. Of course it went both ways, and NuSkin was a good friend to Hunstman, and Sandie said she sent...

Over the past couple of months I’ve exchanged e-mails with a gentleman (let’s call him John) who was a bundler in 2008 for Barack Obama. He’s begged off this time around and is searching for a presidential candidate. He’s Jewish and says that over the years he has shifted back and forth between support for Republican and Democratic candidates. No longer. Now, it’s not Israel that pushed him over the edge. He told me, “Although I felt Obama has grossly mishandled Israel (perhaps more in form than actual substance), I cannot honestly say that this was a major factor.”

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on today's Neil Cavuto show states he is unsatisfied with politicians ability to run the country and wants all corporations to withhold campaign contributions to both parties. Already many companies have decided to withhold their contributions.

Top 10 Industry Contributors to Super Committee Members Industry Totals Lawyers/Law Firms $31,529,149 Securities & Investment         $11,221,416 Democratic/Liberal $9,647,264 Health Professionals $9,321,588 Real Estate $8,793,350 Education $8,568,460 Misc. Business $7,902,021 Business Services $6,563,524 Women's Issues $6,396,728 Insurance $5,693,595

<p>John Edwards' 2008 presidential campaign must repay $2.3 million in federal campaign funds, the Federal Election Commission ruled Thursday.</p> <p>The funds had been paid to Edwards' campaign committee by the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, which matches funds privately raised by a campaign. An FEC audit found that the Edwards campaign received more than it should have because of accounting errors.</p>