Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke returned to his roots as a university professor today, seeking to explain and justify the existence of the central bank ahead of the 100th anniversary of its founding next year.
Bernanke told 30 students at George Washington University that central banks play a key role in the modern monetary system as guardians of economic and financial stability.
His hour-long lecture, followed by questions from the students, is the first o... (more)
CHICAGO (CN) - Three federal complaints of excessive force accuse Chicago police officers of shooting a dog while its owner begged for its life, assaulting a child with a Bible, and running into a man with a squad car, breaking his leg.
In the dog story, Jerome Anderson sued three Chicago police officers and the City of Chicago.
Anderson says that his girlfriend called police for an escort home after she and Anderson had an argument.
Ah, what a weekend, with blue skies, singing birds, budding cherry blossoms and the government's announcement that it has totalitarian control over everything. Wait, what was that last thing? It was an Executive Order released late Friday that no one on the planet seemed to notice until about 30 hours later. It is unnumbered, but called "National Defense Resources Preparedness."
Let's call it NDRP. The first I heard of it was Sunday morning. Something called The Examiner had a wri... (more)
Two NBC journalists were handcuffed and threatened by Chicago police after attempting to report on the murder of a 6-year-old girl yesterday, NBC Chicago reports.
Another NBC journalist was also detained by police outside Mt. Sinai Hospital, where the girl had been taken follow... (more)
OWEGO -- A swarm of uniformed officers escorted Tioga County jail inmate David Coffey into Intake Room 21 at 11:02 a.m. on June 21, 2010.
Within minutes, they dispersed. Surveillance video obtained by this newspaper shows Coffey was left alone in the room -- handcuffed and shackled to a wooden bench with his head down -- when Lt. David Monell, the jail's top official, approached him.
Although video doesn't include audio, an officer who was nearby later told investig... (more)
How shall the world view the apology by President Obama for the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers allegedly by a lone U.S. serviceman in Kandahar Province when the President is himself personally responsible for the extra-judicial killing of hundreds of civilians by means of drone aircraft strikes whose crime he defends? Army Staff Sgt., Robert Bales, of Lake Tapps, Wash., is being held in prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Mr. Obama is free to travel the campaign trail.
My first blog on this is here. I was hoping for reports of forensic evidence, but we do not have new information of that quality. We do not even know if such evidence was even collected. We do not know what sort of investigation of the crime scene was conducted. We have some additional information that is of a different kind.
1. From one report: "The head of the Afghan parliamentary invest... (more)
Anyone who read Dr. Suess's "The Lorax" as a kid might dread the movie version. No one really needs another moralizing, hectoring lecture from environmentalists on the need to save the trees from extinction, especially since that once-fashionable cause seems ridiculously overwrought today. There is no shortage of trees and this is due not to nationalization so much as the privatization and cultivation of forest land.
And yet, even so, the movie is stunning and beautiful in every w... (more)
Thanks to Adult Swim re-airing King of the Hill five nights a week I recently caught an old episode that has expanded my list of approved politicians to now feature two: Ron Paul and Hank Hill. The episode is "Flush with Power" from season four.
It makes sense that the only politician in American history whose integrity would rival Dr. Paul's is a fictional cartoon character.
US Chamber of Commerce building Recently, the US Chamber of Commerce claimed through its spokesman that it supports candidates who support "free enterprise policies that will fuel America's economic recovery." The US Chamber of Commerce has a rather idiosyncratic definition of free-enterprise policies.
The chamber was a major supporter of SOPA, which gives governments the ability to seize private property without a... (more)
The "Billionaire Hedge Fund Index" tracks which stocks are owned by the most billionaires, number eight on the list is GLD, that's the SPDR Gold Trust's ETF, it is owned by 9 out of 39 billionaires tracked.
Number one is Apple, number two Google, and interestingly number three is a natural gas company, El Paso Corporation.
I came up with an ultra-perfect top-secret method for beating the stock market. I saw it right there on the screen after thirty straight hours of computer programming. My heart was beating fast. I was sweating when I went to sleep. I could only sleep for about two or three hours and I had to get up and check my work. I added up all the money I was going to make. I would never work again!
It didn't work.
Every day I get a message that sounds something like this. "Ca... (more)
Radiation firing body scanners are set to be used by events organizers during the Olympics in London as part of a huge security lockdown from 27 July to 12 August.
Event Magazine reports that promotion company Live Nation, organizer of the London Live series of events scheduled during the games, will work in con... (more)
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D.-Ill.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee which has oversight over the Affordable Care Act (AKA "Obamacare"), said Monday that a new Obamacare regulation announced on Friday afternoon that requires all student health insurance plans to offer college women free sterilizations does not mean the government is “promoting sterilization.”
“This isn’t about promoting sterilization,” said Rep. Schakowsky said. “N... (more)
I guess they're not promoting green energy then either, nor student loans, nor any of the other millions of things they subsidize! - Chris
His first memory is an execution. He walked with his mother to a wheat field, where guards had rounded up several thousand prisoners. The boy crawled between legs to the front row, where he saw guards tying a man to a wooden pole.
Shin In Geun was four years old, too young to understand the speech that came before that killing. At dozens of executions in years to come, he would listen to a guard telling the crowd that the prisoner about to die had been offered "redemption" through... (more)
This video was taken in in the spring of 2010 at either O'Hare or Midway Airport.
A toddler in a wheelchair is stopped by the TSA at the Airport in Chicago and forced to into a sequestered area. On his way to a family vacation in Disney, this 3 year old boy is in a body cast for a broken leg. Despite assurances from his father that "everything is ok", he... (more)
Did you know that the federal government claims that it can take away your constitutional rights any time that it wants to? Over the past several decades, there have been an endless parade of laws and executive orders that have been slowly and methodically carving up our rights under the U.S. Constitution. Most Americans are not even aware of the "creeping totalitarianism" that is happening. Most Americans just trust the "authorities" when they tell us that certain things "must... (more)
A new feature story in this month’s Wired blows the lid off plans for a massive new National Security Agency data center in Utah that represents the resurrection of a program that Congress killed in 2003, known as “Total Information Awareness,” targeting literally all electronic communications all over the world — including those made by American citizens.
Remember that battle over SOPA, in which the world's largest websites beat back a congressional threat that would have changed the Internet forever? It was pretty obvious within a day after this Pyrrhic victory that the existing laws in place were enough to give the government the power to wreck the digital world. But how would it happen? How would government end digital freedom?
Well, the excuse is obvious. It is "intellectual property." This phrase serves the same purpose for wo... (more)
