Free Republic

Somalis living in the Twin Cities are begging Minnesota’s elected officials to help find a way to safely wire money back to families living in the Horn of Africa after a California bank abruptly ceased wiring cash to the troubled country over the weekend. The decision by Merchants Bank to stop that part of its operations last Friday caught Somalis, who use money service businesses to wire money abroad, off-guard in communities across the United States. Of the more than 30,000 Somali immigrants living in the Twin Cities, 80 percent of them use money service businesses to send money abroad,...

Recently Janet Yellen expressed both concern and puzzlement over the rising wealth inequality in America. I found her speech to be disingenuous and disturbing. Why? Because it is the Fed’s very own policies that are driving the expansion of the wealth gap. Read Yellen’s speech. Either Yellen thinks we cannot be trusted with the truth (worrisome), or the Fed is clueless as to how its own policies operate (scarier). SNIP In a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Yellen said steady growth in inequality over the past several decades represents the most sustained rise since the 19th century....

UPDATE, 7PM: Now there is $5,000 more from 2012. Total now $31,000. And now Reid is playing the aggrieved grandfather. Chutzpah: “My granddaughter has been the target of harassing phone calls, strangers tracking her down and knocking on her door and negative, unwanted attention on the internet. This has gone too far and it needs to stop now. I deeply regret any role I had in creating this situation but now, as a grandparent, I say enough is enough. “As I have already said, I am reimbursing my campaign for the amount spent on thank-you gifts produced by my granddaughter,...

In 1971, Franklin H. Frye was accused of stealing a $20 necklace from a woman on the street, and the court found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to Saint Elizabeths Hospital, where he has spent almost all of the past four decades, The Washington Times reports. His lawyers have been trying to free him for many years. In 2005, his lawyer asserted in a motion that "Mr. Frye has recovered his sanity and no longer suffers from a mental illness as defined by law." It wasn't the first time he's sought release.

Michelle Obama doesn't want jewelry or chocolates for her 50th birthday later this month. She wants to be alone. President Barack Obama returned to Washington Saturday after two weeks of vacationing with his family in Hawaii. He left with daughters Sasha and Malia. Michelle stayed behind. 'As part of her birthday gift from the president, the first lady will remain in Hawaii to spend time with friends ahead of her upcoming 50th birthday,' the White House explained in a statement. The First Lady turns the big 5 - 0 on January 17. The White House did not say how much...

CBS/Reuters January 5, 2014, 8: 26 AM Obama’s birthday gift to his wife? Time off, alone HONOLULU - President Barack Obama is going to give his wife the birthday present that many parents can only dream of - time off, alone, without the children. The White House said on Saturday first lady Michelle Obama would stay in Hawaii, where the family has been on vacation for the last two weeks, rather than return home with her husband and their two girls. "As part of her birthday gift from the president, the first lady will remain in Hawaii to spend time...

Surveillance video...shows a family of nine reportedly stealing from the Toys "R" Us..... young kids were instructed by their parents to undo security devices as the family walked out of the store....

By now, most Americans realize what they have earned, built and own, no longer belongs to them. It will be taken unlawfully in the blink of any eye. Much like Washington, global parasites now want more of your income and wealth. The international elitists are coming for your stuff and many in our government---Democrat and Republican---are entertaining closed-door schemes designed to, once again, relieve Americans of their property. On October 9, 2013, from its perch in Washington D.C., the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a report outlining its recommendations for immediate global wealth confiscation---specifically American wealth---and new capital controls and...

For the three weeks of the ObamaCare exchange rollout debacle, the White House has tried to claim that the issues relate to the overwhelming popularity and web traffic at Heathcare.gov. As late as yesterday, Barack Obama himself claimed that “the number of people who’ve visited the site has been overwhelming, which has aggravated some of these underlying problems,” in a speech that mentioned no other causes to the failure. Last night, the Washington Post reported that the Department of Health and Human Services tested the system just before launch with JUST A FEW HUNDRED concurrent connections — and experienced the...

The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a "capital levy" -- a one off tax on private wealth -- as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair). There have been illustrious supporters, including Pigou, Ricardo, Schumpeter, and, until he changed his mind - Keynes. The conditions for success are strong, but also need to be...

After WND report, propaganda plan droppedThe Obama administration is relaunching a strategy to shift vast quantities of money from the United States to Kenya, even though the African nation was stripped of a propaganda plan that was uncovered in a series of WND reports a year ago. WND reported June 20, 2012, that the Obama administration’s spending in Kenya had become so voluminous that the U.S. Agency for International Development was asking for more contractors to oversee the work. The propaganda plan, an addition to the project, explained “targeted opinion leaders” must be used to exert influence on the ideas......

The Illinois Ag Dept. illegally seized privately owned bees from renowned naturalist, Terrence Ingram, without providing him with a search warrant and before the court hearing on the matter, reports Prairie Advocate News. Behind the obvious violations of his Constitutional rights is Monsanto. Ingram was researching Roundup’s effects on bees, which he’s raised for 58 years. “They ruined 15 years of my research,” he told Prairie Advocate, by stealing most of hisstock.

"The State Department says, “Eligibility for access to classified information, commonly known as a security clearance, is granted only to those for whom an appropriate personnel security background investigation has been completed."

The State Department, under Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, created an arrangement for her longtime aide and confidante Huma Abedin to work for private clients as a consultant while serving as a top adviser in the department. Ms. Abedin did not disclose the arrangement — or how much income she earned — on her financial report. It requires officials to make public any significant sources of income. The disclosure of the agreement that Ms. Abedin made with the State Department comes as her husband, former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat, prepares for a mayoral run in New York City. Politico...

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) accused U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack of knowing that women and minority farmers fraudulently claimed discrimination to receive taxpayer-funded settlements, and they knowingly initiated more programs to facilitate more of these payments. "It is my sense they know what they are doing," King said on "Breitbart News Sunday" on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125. "That's a heavy statement, but they knew what they were doing. They knew these were fraudulent claims." King said as he "watched the actions of the USDA" under Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and the Justice Department under Attorney...

It's not often that I'll write approvingly of an article in The New York Times, but for Sharon LaFraniere's masterful deconstruction of the Pigford Scandal, I'll make an exception. Pigford, you may recall, was first exposed by Andrew Breitbart and because of it he was sued, dismissed and lampooned by the Democrat-Media Complex. The term vindication was invented for situations like this. Ever since the Clinton administration agreed in 1999 to make $50,000 payments to thousands of black farmers, the Hispanics and women had been clamoring in courtrooms and in Congress for the same deal. They argued, as the African-Americans...

Earlier this week in his State of the Union address President Obama made some observations on climate change so brimming with falsehoods I'm surprised his nose didn't fall off. It really doesn't matter where he himself was deliberately lying or whether he was merely lending the gravitas of his office to the deliberate lies of others. The point is that the President of the USA has access to any number of fact checkers and advisers and if he stands up and addresses the nation with a farrago of complete untruths then the buck stops with him. This dissembling and mendacity...

International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that 19 children, who were to be sold to fundamentalist Islamic boarding schools (madrassas), have been rescued. Traffickers lied to the children’s parents, saying they would take the children to Christian boarding schools in Dhaka, when in fact, they were intending to sell the children to various madrassas. Students from Dhaka University discovered the children and rescued them. This is not the first instance of Christian children being trafficked to madrassas, as upwards of 150 children have been rescued from similar situations since July 2012.

Shame on the Interior Department for trying to drum a family-owned enterprise out of business. After a seaside area has been designated as wilderness, when is it considered pristine enough by Washington's standards? Is it after airplanes have been banned from flying over it? After electricity pylons and telephone cables have been removed, cars and bikers prohibited, the roads torn up? When hikers are forbidden access to trails, and kayakers, sailors and snorkelers banished from the water? When eucalyptus trees and other foreign species are eradicated? Or only after Miwok Indians' arrowheads have been excavated and placed in a museum?...

New legislation that jumps the death tax to 55 percent of estates exceeding $1 million threatens 526,421 family farms, of about 25 percent of all farms in America. ... Farm values are largely tied up in non-liquid assets like land, buildings, and livestock. Many farm and ranch families would be forced to sell their assets to satisfy Washington Democrats' insatiable appetite for tax money. Up to 24 percent of America's farm and ranch families could be forced to hand over a large chunk of their heritage to the Internal Revenue Service when a family member dies. This would economically devastate...