Free Republic

Guy Molinari, the Republican power broker and former Staten Island Beep, ripped Newt Gingrich as unfit to be president yesterday — a day before the front-running GOP candidate was set to attend a Tea Party rally in the borough. At least 600 people are expected to pack the Staten Island Hilton Garden Inn today to hear Gingrich speak at a 2 p.m. town-hall meeting. But Molinari, who served with Gingrich in Congress and supports Mitt Romney, rained on the former House speaker’s parade. “God help us if Newt Gingrich is elected president. I won’t vote for him. I love my...

As speculation brews about a possible Chris Christie bid for the White House, several big names are joining a chorus to persuade him. Among them is former First Lady Barbara Bush, who recently phoned the New Jersey governor's wife Mary to convince her that the Christie family would be just fine in the White House despite the intense attention, a source told the New York Post. Mrs Bush joins political heavyweights like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in asking that he give the presidency a shot. Despite insisting he won't run, Governor Christie is making the most of the...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers. Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama's 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama's campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama's campaign, and Axelrod's son Michael...

Below Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck explains the Apollo Alliance on his July 28 show. Beck mentions the Obama administration’s “stimulus” blueprint, “The New Apollo Program: Clean Energy, Good Jobs,” which you can read here.

Conventional wisdom holds that the social rate of return to R&D significantly exceeds the private rate of return and, therefore, R&D should be subsidized. In the U.S., the government has directly funded a large fraction of total R&D spending. This paper shows that there is a serious problem with such government efforts to increase inventive activity. The majority of R&D spending is actually just salary payments for R&D workers. Their labor supply, however, is quite inelastic so when the government funds R&D, a significant fraction of the increased spending goes directly into higher wages. Using CPS data on wages of...

MBTA Takes A Hit In Court On Marijuana Ads Case The MBTA violated the free speech rights of a group that wants to legalize marijuana by refusing to display its advertisements throughout the transit system, a federal appeals court has ruled. In a decision that came after the T waged an $800,000 court battle, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals found officials improperly rejected the ads because they disapproved of their message. ``As a taxpayer I would be outraged by . . . what they spent on a losing case,'' said Joe White, executive director of Change the Climate, the...