Free Republic

The clock struck 2 AM on Jan 21, 2025. In Treasury's basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting. "We're in," Akash Bobba messaged the team. "All of it." Edward Coristine's code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor's algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran's analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn't even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about...

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel signaled on Monday that she plans to run for reelection as party chair, which would set her up to lead the RNC through the 2024 presidential election.The announcement came on a Monday call with RNC members, following a disappointing midterm election for Republicans, who had hoped to win control of both chambers of Congress but are instead caught in a post-election blame game. Democrats have maintained their hold on the Senate, and it remains unclear which party will be in the House majority, though the GOP has the inside track.

On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg TV’s “Wall Street Week,” economist Larry Summers stated that “we’re going to entrench inflation way above 2%, perhaps in the 4% or even higher range, unless something happens to break the current mood,” and the Build Back Better reconciliation bill will increase inflation over the next two years, but it could be offset by the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy.

Kasich: "We believe that an open convention is the best way for the Republican Party to win" http://cnn.it/1pzz0Ig

George W. Bush-era energy policy wonks are finding a new home with Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor can count on support from a who’s who of former Bush officials willing to raise money, brainstorm policy ideas and generally help spread the word among the ranks of like-minded GOP energy experts. Already on board the Romney train are Jim Connaughton, who ran Bush’s White House Council on Environmental Quality for all eight years; former Assistant Energy Secretary Andy Karsner; former EPA air chief Jeff Holmstead; and former EPA congressional affairs liaison Edward Krenik. The former Bush officials all told POLITICO...

When Sen. Barbara Mikulski squelched rumors of her impending retirement by announcing she's ready for a fifth term, she also put a damper on the career aspirations of ambitious Maryland politicians. "The only people who want Mikulski out more than Republicans are elected Democrats for whom she is posing a logjam in upward mobility," said Don Murphy, a former Maryland delegate and GOP strategist who advises Republican Mikulski challenger Eric Wargotz.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda has become entrenched in a remote corner of Pakistan, and the United States fears a military strike could spawn new militant activity in the country, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Top intelligence analysts, appearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said the militant network led by Osama bin Laden has become increasingly active in ungoverned sections of Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, where bin Laden himself is believed to be protected by local tribal leaders. "They seem to be fairly well settled into the safe haven in the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan....

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows. And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view. Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered. The results were announced today. "We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What...

“Memory n. 1. The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience; the ability to remember. 2. An act or instance of remembrance; a recollection… see smer in Appendix.” “smer – to remember. In Germanic murnon, to remember sorrowfully, in Old English murnan, to mourn.” I remember Chuck Meerholz and the day I was supposed to drive. After four months with B Company, 1st Battalion, 69th Armor; four months of on-the-job-training for a guy trained as an infantrymen, I was being taught to drive our tank. B Company was to participate in a big operation centered on the village of...