Free Republic

Estleman is best known for his hard-boiled Amos Walker detective series, all set in Detroit—of which, I heartily recommend the first, Motor City Blue. (Most of these were written when Detroit was still a city.) He also straps on the Yeehaw! and pumps out a lot of pretty good cowboy stories. Now Estleman moves as far West as he can go with his Hollywood series starring Valentino. Val, to his pals, is a film archivist—he calls himself a movie detective—and professor at a well known Los Angeles-based university. His wise-cracking older next-door-office neighbor Broadhead, who by the grace of tenure...

Awoke this moring at 7:30 to a ad was running on 104.9 The River here in Memphis, asking the public to FIGHT this Radio Performance Tax...seems most of the money would go to foreign owners. More of Bambi's wealth spereading.

When the Congressional Black Caucus wanted to pay off the mortgage on its foundation’s stately 1930s redbrick headquarters on Embassy Row, it turned to a familiar roster of friends: corporate backers like Wal-Mart, AT&T, General Motors, Coca-Cola and Altria, the nation’s largest tobacco company. Soon enough, in 2008, a jazz band was playing at what amounted to a mortgage-burning party for the $4 million town house... From 2004 to 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus’s political and charitable wings took in at least $55 million in corporate and union contributions, according to an analysis by The New York Times, an impressive...

After declaring that “being President can drive you crazy,” Barack Obama is determined to return to what he says he does best—campaign for office. His first stop was in Ohio. In a speech to cheering supporters, Obama alternately blamed former President George Bush and Congress for the failure of his proposed government overhaul of the health industry. “Mr. Bush made the country sick, but Drs. Pelosi and Reid couldn’t get their act together behind my cure,” Obama complained. Despite these difficulties, he pledged to “stay the course for hope and change.” One idea said to be under consideration is for...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congressional Democrats are "very close" to reaching final agreement on healthcare reform legislation and could have a deal in days, House of Representatives Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer said on Friday. "I would certainly hope that within the next 24, 48, 72 hours, that we have a general agreement between the Senate and the House," Hoyer said in an interview with U.S. cable network CNBC. Reform of the $2.5 trillion healthcare sector is the top legislative priority for President Barack Obama. The House and Senate versions of the overhaul must be melded into one bill and passed again...

In a closely watched matter, applicants are accusing multinationals such as IBM, Daimler, General Motors and Rheinemetall of supporting South Africa's erstwhile racist rulers Apartheid victims' class action suit against a number of multi-national companies is back in the New York courts next week when the South Africa Apartheid Litigation (SAAL) will appeal their grounds to be heard. Should Judge Shira A Scheindlin give them the green light, they will then begin the process of gathering the hard evidence to substantiate their claims that Ford, IBM, General Motors, Daimler and Rheinemetall each propped up the apartheid regime in various ways...

More than eight years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, New York City authorities are demanding that developer Larry Silverstein fork over almost $35m in commercial rent taxes on the Twin Towers and two other buildings that no longer exist. The city's reasoning is that Silverstein continued to pay rent to the Port Authority after the towers fell. That, city officials claim, subjects his transactions to the 3.9 percent commercial rent tax ... On May 27, 2007, the city's finance department sent Silverstein a bill for $34,866,549 - including penalties and interest - on his four trade center buildings. City...

Liberal arrogance was on full display when Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), in an appearance on CBS, described the $1.2 Billion of the taxpayers money that Harry Reid used to bribe his fellow Democrat Senators to buy their votes on the health care bill as “small stuff.”

Many experts have pointed to tort reform as a key element of any effort to hold down the costs of health care: Old Democratic presidential aspirant John Edwards won $175 million in judgments over a 12-year period suing doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, everyone but the candy stripers, over infant cerebral palsy cases allegedly caused by mishandled deliveries. As the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists noted in a study in 2003, cerebral palsy could not be blamed on delivery trouble in the “vast majority” of cases. Using bad science, Edwards enriched himself by bankrupting innocent physicians. The effect is...

<p>A federal lawsuit has been filed against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago alleging that church officials discriminated against African-American victims of sexual abuse by trying to silence their claims and proposing smaller settlements than those offered to white victims.</p>

I can not post anything from this news organization. Read the article. The teacher's union is about to get their heads handed to them. They have a bad choice and a worse choice to make. They will make the worst choice. Unions meet reality. http://detnews.com/article/20091207/SCHOOLS/912070343/Detroit-teachers-cry-out-against-contract

Seeking to deflect a rising frequency of calls for his resignation, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner suggested that “the root source of our current troubles can be traced back to the Reagan Administration. Remember, it was the tax cuts and deregulation pushed by President Reagan that unleashed an abnormal expansion of economic growth. The American people became accustomed to an unhealthy pace of increasing material prosperity that is incompatible with the more socially conscious restraint President Obama is trying to bring to this country.” “Rising home values, rising investment values, rising salaries all stimulate a sense of greed that is...

President Barack Obama is expected to inform Asian leaders that they should not count on American consumers to supply the demand that will help pull the global economy out of its current recession. “The era of material greed must come to an end,” Obama declared. “I can’t directly affect the phenomenon of avarice in other countries, but I can try to set an example in my own.” The President acknowledged that the unemployment rate in the United States “has already taken a bite out of the consumer gluttony traditionally manifested in American life. But we must not lose what we...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says selling a prison in the state's rural northwest is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create jobs...

Lest we forget, Reverend Wright reminds us that a presidential acorn doesn't fall too far from its anti-Semitic, hate America, Marxist preacher.

AMERICAN.COM A Magazine of Ideas Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism By Jay W. RichardsThursday, October 15, 2009 Filed under: Big Ideas, Culture, Economic Policy, Public Square Capitalism doesn’t need greed. What capitalism does need is human creativity and initiative. After months of hearing the media and pundits pronounce the untimely death of capitalism, it did my heart good to see a recent Newsweek cover story challenge the familiar trope. The author, Fareed Zakaria, noted that this pessimistic pronouncement gets air time in the wake of every financial downturn. But in reality, capitalism, over the long haul, has...

If you pressed a rifle into the hand of the man in the street and asked him to choose between two targets – an MP or a banker – who do you think would get the bullet? Tricky, eh? It is hard to know which of these two formerly respectable professions has fallen further in public esteem. Some people might hesitate, like Buridan's ass, the rifle barrel weaving indecisively between two such luscious hate-objects. Most people would simply call for two bullets. But then let me ask you a slightly different question. Which of the two species has managed to...

Inevitably, the crisis on Wall Street has revived the never-ending notion that markets undermine morality. Oliver Stone, ever restless to recapture the days of former glory, has begun production on a sequel to the 1987 movie Wall Street, which immortalized Gordon Gekko as the symbol of markets and greed. But the debate on how markets affect morality has not always been a slam dunk for capitalism's naysayers. Matthew Arnold, especially in his influential 1868 book, Culture and Anarchy, might have been spectacularly critical, but Voltaire's passionate defense of markets, most eloquently stated in his 1734 Philosophical Letters, made him the...

The answer may be greed. The AARP has been a strong supporter of Obamacare for the last several months. This position is not held by most of their membership. Many AARP members have resigned over the leaderships position. So, why is the AARP supporting the Democrat's health care overhaul? It isn't concern for providing coverage to their membership. Most seniors have insurance or are covered under Medicare. The reason the AARP supports Obamcare appears to be money. Under the Democrats health care reform plan, $162 billion in payments to privately-administered Medicare Advantage will be cut. This will force many seniors...

As read on “The Rush Limbaugh Show”: So far CNN has only reported on the breaking story on blatant ACORN CORRUPTION from angles that attempt to extricate the government funded “community organizing” enterprise from the extreme crime we caught on videotape. First CNN pushed the false ACORN line that “[t]his film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed.” To set that record straight please check the Washington D.C. tape we dropped today at BigGovernment.com, which is also being aired on your cable news competitor with curiously higher ratings. Now that ACORN lied to you, Jonathan Klein,...