Free Republic

Stuxnet is believed to be the most destructive virus ever devised for attacking major industrial complexes, reactors and infrastructure... and it's hitting Tehran HARD The Islamic Republic of Iran looks to be in the midst of a major ongoing cyber attack upon it's most vital computer systems by the unprecedentedly menacing Stuxnet virus... including nuclear reactors and other sensitive facilities: ____________________________________________ Mahmoud Alyaee, secretary-general of Iran's industrial computer servers, including its nuclear facilities control systems, confirmed Saturday, Sept. 25, that 30,000 computers belonging to classified industrial units had been infected and disabled by the malicious Stuxnet virus. This followed DEBKAfile's...

With the end of the fiscal year looming next week, Congress must pass a Continuing Resolution to fund government activity as the current appropriations levels expire on September 30. While the Majority has yet to introduce their CR, the Republican Study Committee has proposed a CR that cuts spending, prohibits earmarks and aims to shrink the size of government. ATR and CFA sent a letter in support of their bill yesterday. Amongst other things, the RSC CR: Sets spending at their 2008 levels. This ensures “stimulus” and bailout measures aren’t baked into the budgeting baseline for years to come. Does...

...Previously, a majority among all employees, voting or not, was required for the measure to pass. The new standard overturns more than 75 years of precedent, giving unions unheard-of control over a process which is skewing more and more in their favor. Earlier today, the U.S. Senate voted down a motion to proceed to consider S.J. 30, a resolution from Sen. Isakson (R-GA) condemning NMB's overreaching pronouncement. While no Republicans voted against the resolution, Sens. Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), and Lincoln (D-AR) voted with the minority. The final tally was 56-43 against, Murkowski (R-AK) not voting. In a vote that...

...The major items include: The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers. Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases...

Facing an increasingly bleak landscape for the November elections, news has surfaced that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will attempt to bring the campaign finance monstrosity, the DISCLOSE Act, to the floor tomorrow. The bill, a blatant attempt by the majority to tilt the political environment in their favor for the fall elections and beyond, penalizes the speech of businesses and grassroots advocacy groups under the guise of responding to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. We have been adamantly opposed to the DISCLOSE Act when it was first heard in the House and again when it came up...

When members of your local teacher’s union tell you they can teach better if you pay them more, ask them to respond to a new study from Vanderbilt University, not exactly a free market hot bed. “Rewarding teachers with bonus pay, in the absence of any other support programs, does not raise student test scores, according to a new study issued today by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development in partnership with the RAND Corporation,” researchers at Vandy found. “We tested the most basic and foundational question related to performance...

Rather than augment his big government agenda to assuage growing public opposition, President Obama has pivoted to yet another attack on private business, this time getting personal and targeting Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries. Hoping to distract from what was anything but a “recovery summer,” the White House has taken issue with David Koch, who founded the free-market advocacy group Americans for Prosperity several years ago. The group, which works to promote free-market, pro-growth policies, obviously has little interest in supporting the Keynesian agenda of the current White House, a crime the President is using to fashion...

The medical field in New Hampshire is facing a serious crisis; the state is trying to take away their private property. People who fund the Medical Malpractice Joint Underwriting Association (JUA), such as medical doctors, nurses, hospitals, and nursing homes, are plaintiffs in lawsuits against the state of New Hampshire to prevent it from raiding more than $110 million in surplus revenue from the JUA. The state government, who has not contributed any money to the JUA, is determined to raid the fund to fill its own budget shortfalls. In early September the state commissioner, aided by Gov. John Lynch,...

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If that's the case, Congress must be insane when it comes to increasing paperwork burdens on ordinary Americans--particularly paperwork of the 1099-MISC variety. The Obamacare law has over two dozen tax hikes. One of them is a new paperwork burden on small employers. Basically, every small business in America will have to mail a tax form to every single entity they do business with. That means every restaurant, every airline, every gas station, every supply store, etc. The public erupted...

The Universal Service Fund (USF) is the tax on your phone line that subsidizes connections for rural and lower income households, as well as schools and libraries. The USF program has a long history of waste and abuse. However, thankfully Congress is working hard on a bill that would reform the fund. It contains a number of necessary provisions that would reign in wasteful spending, especially by redefining and limiting who exactly is eligible for payments. However, ATR is still concerned that the legislation doesn’t a cap the overall size of the multi-billion dollar fund. The USF rate sits at...

...Overturning more than 75 years of precedent, the three person board unilaterally repealed the "Majority Rule" regulation for unions, whereby a majority of a whole body of workers must approve unionization. Under NMB's new policy, a majority is needed only of the voting members themselves, skewing the process far in favor of the already powerful unions...

Last year I wrote that the Tea Party demonstration in Washington was a "transformative event," and I described it through the eyes of a participant: Sometimes an event occurs which is transformative in a way that everyone who sees it or participates in it instantly is aware of. Yesterday's demonstration in Washington DC is one of those rare happenings in my opinion. The Daily Mail said 2 million Americans participated. My friend Charlie Martin extrapolated from the pictures an attendance figure of 2.3 million. Here is a time lapse of the parade portion of the event so you can get...

...As of today, Gov. Schwarzenegger has yet to take action on any of these bills. Walters, DeVore, and Fleischman are encouraging Schwarzenegger to veto all 20 and will score his actions based on the following metric: If he vetoes 90% or more, the Governor got an "A", 80% - 89% a "B", 70 - 79% a "A", 60 - 69% a "D" and below that, an "F”The list is separated into nine issue areas ranging from health care, to taxes, to bills that grow the nanny-state, and labor. Veto-worthy bills that made the list include a SB 1474, legislation that...

A bill to prohibit already high cell phone taxes from going up even further has cleared its first Congressional hurdle today, passing out of a House Judiciary subcommittee. The Cell Tax Fairness Act places a mandatory five year break on all new, discriminatory state and local wireless taxes. The move is certainly a welcome one. States have increasingly targeted cell phone service for revenue to cover overspending problems, mostly out of fear that broad based tax hikes anger voters. These taxes have spiraled out of control to the point where the average consumer pays 15% in taxes on wireless service......

...This bill is redundant, expense and wasteful. It would authorize $5 billion for various energy retrofit projects, an enterprise the government has little business subsidizing – if these loans were profitable to make, private industry would be making them. Other areas of concern we have with the bill are: The bill is duplicative because there are already many government projects that are supposed to fund energy efficient projectsThe stimulus bill allotted $4.7 billion for weatherization and only $368 million of that has been spent for that purpose after one year, due mainly to illegitimate and inefficient use of the moneyIn...

Corporate America to East Coast Elitists: Take a hike! That’s one way to interpret the fact that business recruiters now rank Penn State, Virginia Tech and Purdue among the top 25 schools that produce the most qualified college graduates, according to a Wall Street Journal study. Asked by the Journal to rate majors and schools that “best prepare students to land jobs that are satisfying, well-paid and have growth potential, . . . recruiters made clear they preferred big state schools over elite liberal arts schools, such as the Ivies.” The results showed that while recruiters still hire Ivy League...

...Cost of Government Day was celebrated nationally on August 19, meaning that the average American had to toil for a full 231 days in order to pay off their burden of government. Nearly a month later, New Jersey doesn’t finish paying off their burden of government until after 257 days of work, a difference of 26 days. This mammoth government is financed by taxes, and New Jersey has done its fair share of tax hikes: in the past eight years, residents of New Jersey have faced an additional $22 billion in taxes—a hideous increase of $2472.86 per man, woman, and...

..."It is painfully clear that excessive spending by government, coupled with the looming threat of a $3.8 trillion tax hike on January 1 that will raise taxes on 56% of all business income -- including on the vast majority of the small businesses that are the engines of job creation -- will further discourage private-sector job creation. If both parties are serious in the pledges we have made to focus on jobs, it is critical that legislators on both sides of the aisle come together and use what time remains in this Congress to enact legislation that removes these harmful...

...The hearing, being held to discuss the anti-tussive ingredient dextromethorphan found in cold medications, could catalyze a rulemaking process that would require any medicine containing dextromethorphan to be restricted by prescription. This move would represent an enormous government intrusion into personal consumer decision based on negligible evidence that dextromethorphan presents any kind of risk. Nanny staters are quick to point to a 70 percent increase between 2004 and 2008 in emergency room visits involving dextromethorphan to justify this intrusion; they fail to acknowledge that this puts dextromethorphan-related visits at a little over 1 percent of all drug-related incidences. Moreover, this...

Complete Title: Retired JAG Officer Says Judge’s Ruling Against Discovery for Lakin Could Derail Case Based on Legal Precedent ### A retired JAG officer with over 23 years of experience, says the military judge who ruled against discovery for a Greeley Army officer may have derailed the government’s case based on precedent from another high profile case involving a military officer. Lt. Col John Eidsmoe, a retired Air Force officer who works for former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore at the Foundation for Moral Law, said Lakin is “raising legitimate constitutional questions” regarding President Obama’s eligibility to be commander-in-chief. Eidsmoe...