Barbara Hollingsworth

Poll: Public wants to rein-in the Fed

There is a growing public consensus that the highly secretive Federal Reserve System, which controls the nation’s money supply and sets interest rates, needs to do business out in the open. A new Rasmussen poll finds that a large majority of Americans (75 percent) want Congress to audit the Fed, which has not accounted for the trillions of public dollars it spent over the last year and a half in an attempt to shore up failing financial institutions. More than half of the members of the House of Representatives have co-sponsored a bill introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX, to require a public accounting of the Fed’s activities. The Obama administration wants to give the private...

Continued...

 

Is America really over?

Think you still live in the last, best hope of mankind? Get over yourself. That's the basic message of National Journal correspondent Paul Starobin's new book, "After America," which can only be classified as a clarion call to Americans to downsize their expectations for the future. The Falls Church resident acknowledges in his book that "optimism stands out as a signature trait of the American mind-set," but his outlook for the future of the United States is anything but. "America has reached the end of its political and economic cultural ascendancy," he told me in an interview from Los Angeles. In his view, there's nowhere for us to go but down. The...

Continued...

 

FAA fudges FOIA on glider safety

Attorney General Eric Holder issued new guidelines March 19 regarding release of non-classified information to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. That statute, better known as the FOIA when it was first approved in 1966, says all federal documents should be made public on request unless there are strong grounds – which are described in detail in the law - for keeping them behind closed doors. Holder’s memo to executive branch departments and agencies rescinded more restrictive rules issued by his predecessor, John Ashcroft in 2001. Holder said he wanted to restore “the presumption of disclosure that is at the heart of the Freedom of Information...

Continued...

 

Commentary: The continuing foster care fiasco

Despite evidence that removing children from their homes traumatizes them, millions are still being forced to live with strangers or adopted out like shelter pets. One activist recently told Congress that many children are sent to “clearly inadequate families” just so social service agencies “can ‘succeed’ by boosting their numbers.” Children like 13-year-old Alexis "Lexie" Agyepong-Glover, who was dumped, still alive, into an icy creek in Prince William County and left to die. Lexie was never removed from adopted mother Alfreedia Gregg-Glover’s home despite numerous reports of abuse. She ran away three times in the weeks prior to her...

Continued...