Free Republic

Two senators unveiled a bipartisan plan Wednesday to raise federal gasoline and diesel taxes for the first time in more than two decades, pitching the proposal as a solution to Congress’ struggle to pay for highway and transit programs. The plan offered by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., would raise the 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gas tax and 24.4-cents-a-gallon diesel tax by 12 cents each over the next two years, and then index the taxes to keep pace with inflation. The plan also calls for offsetting the tax increases with other taxes cuts. …

Ex-CFO Dawn Schlegel Two women who were once top executives at DHB Industries were arrested yesterday on charges they made millions in ill-gotten gains by cooking the books of the company, which supplies body armor to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dawn Schlegel, DHB's chief financial officer until she resigned early this year, and Sandra Hatfield, the company's chief operating officer before she stepped down late last year, turned themselves in to FBI agents in Melville, L.I., early yesterday. U.S. prosecutors in Brooklyn said they're still investigating DHB, which last month reached a $35 million settlement with irate...

After the bombs in Bali and Kenya, and the attempt to use a missile to shoot down a passenger airliner, there is a growing sense that it is merely a matter of time before America suffers a new attack: one that could be even more destructive than what happened on September 11, 2001. Is there anything which can be done to prevent an impending catastrophe? It seems that there is. Only last week, the Intelligence Committee of the US Congress concluded that, had the FBI and the CIA actually responded effectively and efficiently to the information in their possession, they...