Free Republic

Subprime Scandal: What's the Congo have to do with financial overhaul? Absolutely nothing. But Democrats have sneaked it into the final bill, along with a host of other race-related oddities. Tucked away under Title XIV — "Misc. Provisions" — and attracting zero media attention is yet another stealthily omnibus aspect of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The provision requires manufacturers to hire independent auditors to certify with the SEC that their products use "conflict free" minerals — that is, minerals that aren't mined in the Congo or adjoining countries. CEOs using such minerals will be dutifully...

May 25, 2010 Arizona and Our National Self-Abasement When the president of Mexico condemned Arizona’s immigration law, Democrats thrilled to his disparagement of their countrymen. The Arizona immigration law has become the occasion for a sorry exercise in national self-abasement. When Mexican president Felipe Calderón addressed a joint session of Congress last week, he rapped Arizonans — ignorantly and unfairly — for using “racial profiling as the basis for law enforcement.” If Democrats felt any residual reflex to stand up for their fellow Americans in Arizona, who are grappling with a hellish problem partly caused by the misgovernment of the...

What went wrong in Iraq? We are about to start withdrawing our troops from the country and turn the fighting over to Nuri al-Maliki's government even though nobody but Bush, and a few of his die-hard worshipers, believe that the Iraqi military can control the country. Although, Bush isn't calling it "Iraqization", it is, none the less, the equivalent of "Vietnamization" and will produce the same result. But, how did we get to this point? How did, what should have been a relatively easy victory go so very wrong? To answer that question one must look at the planning for...

While the invasion of our nation through the southern border continues unabated, our fearless leaders are once again busy cooking up cures that are worse than the disease. The latest scheme is a form of de facto amnesty euphemistically called the “Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act.” And if it passes, it could be America’s final act. Authored by Ted Kennedy and John McCain and poised to emerge from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill has many elements, the most troubling of which is that it offers people here illegally “a path to citizenship.” Here’s how it works: creating a...

Baghdad, 6 July (AKI) - The latest audio message, purporting to be from Jordanian militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has called of Muslim women to play a more active role in the Jihad or Holy War. The one-hour-long speech, posted on Islamist Internet forums, is entitled 'Religion declines and I am still alive'. "What have you done for this nation?" asks al-Zarqawi referring to Muslim women, "don't you see that men get astride their horses and take up arms for the Jihad. Why do you not incite your husbands to fight in the Jihad against the infidels?". "I make an...

<p>Congress is set to impose new restrictions on the use of Special Operations Forces that for the first time will require a presidential order before deploying commandos in routine but hidden activities.</p> <p>The restrictions are contained in the classified Senate report accompanying the current version of the intelligence authorization bill for fiscal 2004.</p>