Free Republic

Within the past year DC residents have faced tax hikes on their smokes, plastic bags, and now it looks like the DC Council is after their Coca-Cola too. Yes, Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) has proposed a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on bottled and canned soda along with other sugary drinks to pay for her healthy schools initiative. If Cheh’s proposal is successful, beverages classified as soda or sugary drinks would cost $0.68 more per 2-liter and $1.44 more per 12 pack – a more than 30% tax increase in some instances! The council is slated to take a final...

...and I always try so hard to hate all politicians! Gov. Christie makes it hard: "I came here to govern, not to worry about re-election." New Jersey Governor Chris Christie contrasts his beliefs in "less government and less taxes" with his opponents in the legislature. This was removed from Youtube, but we have it up.

SNIPPET: "Abu Baseer al-Wuhayshi, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), encouraged support for Anwar al-Awlaki in an audio message..." SNIPPET: "AQAP threatens attacks in US if any harm comes to Awlaki."

The ICC v. The U.S. Constitution Spencer Irvine, May 17, 2010 The implications of President Barack Obama’s review of American policy towards the International Criminal Court (ICC) could have large and dangerous future results, argued three panelists during a Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom lecture. A former advisor under President George W. Bush, Lee A. Baker, pointed out that prior to the Obama administration; the U.S. Congress passed the American Serviceman Protection Act in order to protect American servicemen and women from the prosecution of the ICC. Baker reasoned that American constitutional law prevents the United States from “divesting” power...

Early last week, the stock market cheered a $1 trillion bailout package to contain Europe’s debt crisis. The Dow Jones Industrials went up more than 400 points on Monday. By the end of the week, however, worries returned that European austerity plans would slow economic growth. The euro sank to a four-year low. Just a while ago, the euro was being touted as the world’s primary currency in-waiting. On Friday, the Dow dropped 1.5% to trim the week’s gain to just 240 points. The S&P 500 snapped a two-week decline to close +2.2%. So far in 2010, both the S&P...

We're going to do a final PA-12 poll over the weekend. There are a lot of reasons, from our last poll of the district, why Republicans should win this race: 1) Barack Obama's approval rating there is just 33% 2) The district has a very low minority population and nonwhite voters have been sticking with the Democratic Party to a much greater extent than white voters over the last year. 3) Only 24% of voters there have a favorable opinion of Nancy Pelosi. 4) Republican voters in the district are more excited about voting than the Democrats. But there's also...

...Nearly every page of Senator Dodd's 1400 page financial regulation bill aims to increase the scope of government. Section 1013 ((b)(2)), on page 1213 establishes guidelines for the creation of ACORN-type organizations to recruit risky loan applicants. Title 10 creates a new agency, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection that will "use the data on branches and [individual and personal] deposit accounts...for any purpose." Never before has the federal government actively sought to aggregate data on every single personal and business financial transaction in the U.S. until now. This new Bureau will use data collected by their agency and the...

Eye on MSI Bethany Stotts, May 14, 2010 Discussing President Obama’s goal that America would “once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world,” an Education Department official recently argued that increased funding for minority-serving institutions—and historically-black colleges and universities, in particular—was the key to increasing the number of American graduates. “We are going to educate our way back to greatness by the year 2020 and as a nation we know we can’t do that without MSIs, minority-serving institutions, and HBCUs,” argued John S. Wilson, executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs at the April...

Court-Martial Military Defense Under UCMJ LTC LAKIN (A work in progress)Note, there are some areas of Article 32, UCMJ, practice where I am rooting for LTC Lakin. a. Production of evidence in accordance with R.C.M. 405(f)(10). Recently I had an interesting experience of both the IO and GR cheerfully IMHO admitting that they’d done nothing in response to my request for information from NCIS basing that on the fact it couldn’t be done. Although they cheerfully IMHO admitted that they’d not asked. The NCIS agent testified it would have taken a “couple of days” to provide the information. And the...

...Sen. Durbin wishes to give the Federal Reserve power to issue new rules regulating debit and credit card interchange fees. Fees set for credit and debit card transactions should be negotiated by the merchant and the credit/debit companies based on their individual contractual agreements. Setting a blanket, national standard completely interferes with any free market negotiating power both sides currently enjoy. It is not the job or role of the federal government to regulate the fees set by private companies in any matter. This is simply another attempt by Senate Democrats to regulate each and every aspect of our financial...

Due to higher annual temperatures, more ice melts each year near the Arctic, in northern Canada. The location, which was inhabited by humans centuries ago, is currently beginning to reveal numerous artifacts and other signs of civilization, that are exposed by the melting ice patches. The tools were generally encased in large blocks of ice, but excessive melting is currently laying them bare on the ground, for researchers to collect. The ice patches on the mountains of the Canadian High Arctic have been undisturbed for thousands of years, but they are currently melting more during the summer. “We're just like...

SNIPPET: "And thus ends the saga of "Shiekh Umar Rabie, Emir of al Qaeda in the UK". I haven't commented publicly on this for some time because I was involved in the case. I testified at Ishaq Kanmi's terrorism trial last year and was asked not to comment publicly, but now that he's plead guilty that commitment has passed. I don't think I'm giving away too much when I say that long before UK authorities had "The Blackburn Resistance " under surveillance, they were on our radar screens. Why? Because a year before the "Emir of al Qaeda in the...

...[C]heck out the latest project launched by the Economic Recovery Working Group headed up by Republican Whip Eric Cantor: YouCut allows you to vote on spending cuts you want the House of Representatives to enact. Until the end of the year, votes can be cast online or via text message, and the spending cut to receive the most votes will be announced on a weekly basis.

Am looking for a Java Guru to explain a few Java programming issues to me.

...One of the most Orwellian of these nineteen new tax hikes is something called the "codification of the economic substance doctrine." This new law gives blanket authority to the IRS to deny to taxpayers perfectly-legal tax deductions and tactics. The only standard the IRS must assert is that the action was done merely to lower the tax burden (as if that's a bad thing), and not for any economically-substantial reason...Now, the IRS has developed a new tax form ("Form UTP") which compels companies to disclose tax positions which are or might be red flags in an audit. Yes, you read...

After legislative Democrats in Minnesota got what they wished for in terms of a Supreme Court decision undermining Gov. Tim Pawlenty's unallotment authority, they are now scrambling to plug a budget hole approaching $3 billion. Their first instinct? A $400 million job-killing income tax increase, of course...This will be an epic battle with a Democratic majority hell-bent on raising taxes by arguing that they've spent themselves so deeply into the red that the only solution is higher taxes. Gov. Pawlenty has pledged to stand firm and call them on that bluff...

Senator Nelson recently violated his pledge by voting for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (12/24/09)

TUESDAY, MAY 04, 2010 "U.S. Treasury Site Compromise Linked to the NetworkSolutions Mass WordPress Blogs Compromise" SNIPPET: "UPDATED: Saturday, May 08, 2010: 5 new domains have been introduced by the same gang, once again parked at 217.23.14.14, AS49981, WorldStream."

With the very real possibility of a sovreign debt default in Greece, and the instability it has caused global financial markets, many have asked what it would take the USA to lose its AAA credit rating. After all, any downgrade would have devastating effects on the markets, not to mention sharply increasing the interest rate taxpayers pay on our national debt...

Here we go again! Once again Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) are left out of the new 1,400 page Financial Reform bill currently before the U. S. Senate...