Free Republic

President Barack Obama will donate the roughly $1.4 million award from his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to charity, a White House spokesman said Friday.

Obama may earn millions from taxpayer-funded schools in his new book deal. Five days before taking the oath of office, President-elect Barack Obama signed a book deal with Crown Publishing Group to publish a version of his best-selling book, "Dreams from My Father", aimed at middle school and young adult age groups. Obama would receive a $500,000 advance payment against royalties, plus ongoing royalty payments. Some in the media have questioned the propriety of this deal from the angle that the President might be unduly influenced by Bertelsmann AG, the German based media publishing empire which owns Random House, which...

Just weeks after taking his seat in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama was involved in two questionable business deals, buying stock in companies whose backers included major donors to his political campaigns. In February 2005, Obama bought about $5,000 worth of stock in AVI BioPharma, a drug company working to develop a medicine to treat avian flu victims, according to Senate disclosure statements cited by the New York Times. Less than two weeks later, Sen. Obama began pushing for an increase in federal financing to fight avian flu, a move that eventually helped lead to the Senate’s approval of a...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Hollywood director Rob Reiner denied any wrongdoing Thursday in response to recent scrutiny about the potential misuse of taxpayer funds for a June ballot initiative he is spearheading. Reiner, who heads the state's First 5 California Children and Families Commission he helped create, is now leading a campaign for a ballot initiative that would establish a state constitutional right to preschool for all 4-year-olds and raise income taxes for wealthier households to fund a preschool program. A Los Angeles Times story earlier this week detailed, however, how the commission spent $23 million on ads to...

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

When Howard Dean was governor of Vermont, his administration was taken to task in a 1993 state audit that questioned the involvement of a top Dean aide in the awarding of a contract to a health maintenance organization. The aide, the audit noted, once represented the H.M.O. as a lobbyist. The contract was canceled after the audit was made public. Four years later, a second audit stumbled across a highly critical review of the same H.M.O., then the state's largest. The review had never been made public, as required under state law. The 1993 audit, by Edward S. Flanagan, pointed...