Free Republic

The Internal Revenue Service, which claims to be so understaffed that it can’t bother to collect unpaid taxes, or search backup tapes for Lois Lerner’s “missing” emails, apparently has plenty of time to read the comment threads on conservative blogs that have been critical of the agency (Hi there, IRS agents!). William Jacobson, one of the best-informed and most effective critics of the agency, writes on Legal Insurrection: Hey, remember the Reader Poll we did about whether it was okay to follow and try to interview Lois Lerner in her neighborhood? Do you approve of media confronting Lois Lerner in...

If only George Orwell could see us today. When he wrote “1984” back in 1948, he probably never imagined that the “totalitarian, bureaucratic world” that he imagined would ever actually become a reality. But that is precisely what is happening. We live at a time when the government monitors billions of our phone calls and emails and hardly anyone gets upset about it. We live at a time when corporations systematically collect our voiceprints and our televisions watch us. We live at a time when reporters that try to dig into the misdeeds of the government have their computers hacked,...

I just bought a new TV. The old one had a good run, but after the volume got stuck on 63, I decided it was time to replace it. I am now the owner of a new “smart” TV, which promises to deliver streaming multimedia content, games, apps, social media, and Internet browsing. Oh, and TV too. The only problem is that I’m now afraid to use it. You would be too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy. The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how, and for how long you...

The federal government has become a vast cornucopia for people who know how to play the system. If you do, you can enjoy showers of money for doing things that few if any Americans would willingly pay for. Just to point to a recent instance that made headlines, after Democrats griped that the Center for Disease Control had been crippled in its ability to deal with Ebola because of budget cuts, quite a few writers scrutinized the research that the CDC had been paying for. As Michael Tanner of Cato Institute showed in this column, CDC bureaucrats have been funding...

If you take to Twitter to express your views on a hot-button issue, does the government have an interest in deciding whether you are spreading "misinformation"? If you tweet your support for a candidate in the November elections, should taxpayer money be used to monitor your speech and evaluate your "partisanship"? My guess is that most Americans would answer those questions with a resounding no. But the federal government seems to disagree. The National Science Foundation, a federal agency whose mission is to "promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the...

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) came to prominence and notoriety when he famously shouted, ‘You Lie’ at Barack Obama during the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress. If ever there was a prime opportunity for a reprise, it occurred during an exchange between Wilson and Secretary of State John Kerry.Wilson asked Kerry if the U.S. was at war. If Kerry’s response had been a yes or no, the clip below would be no more than five seconds. As it was, Kerry took a more circuitous route to his answer, which was beyond ridiculous. After several seconds of hemming and...

A surge in atmospheric CO2 saw levels of greenhouse gases reach record levels in 2013, according to new figures. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 2012 and 2013 grew at their fastest rate since 1984. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says that it highlights the need for a global climate treaty. But the UK's energy secretary Ed Davey said that any such agreement might not contain legally binding emissions cuts, as has been previously envisaged. The WMO's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin doesn't measure emissions from power station smokestacks but instead records how much of the warming gases remain...

The EU’s justice commissioner has accused internet giant Google of leading a campaign to shoot down data protection reforms. Speaking in Lyon, France on Monday (18 August), the commissioner, Martine Reicherts, said: “Google and other affected companies who complain loudly” about a recent EU court verdict on personal data are “detractors … attempting to throw a new spanner in the works”. The Luxembourg-based EU court in May ruled that Google must remove links to any content that is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” or face a fine.The ruling was based on the bloc’s 1995 data protection law, which are...

Tuesday night the Houston Chronicle published a story about the grand jury that indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Those grand jurors who spoke with the Chronicle broke the law to do so, and they knew that they were breaking the law. They claimed that they were speaking to the newspaper to counter Gov. Perry’s “spin” on the case. That’s not the job of a grand jury, by the way. One of them is a woman named Rho Chalmers. Chalmers tried to get around her lawbreaking by attempting to build this wall of implausible deniability. Rho Chalmers, who name matches that...

An in-flight magazine for travelers to Thailand offers some friendly advice on how to win friends and influence people in a country led by military junta. "Despite being under miliary control, Thailand is very safe for tourists," chirps the magazine copy, shared by Twitter user @joe_black317 this week. But for "good measure" you might want to take a few minor precautions, such as avoiding the color red, refraining from taking selfies with soldiers sans their consent, and for godssakes ditching your dystopian novels on the plane. "Don't carry George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984," the Philippine Airlines magazine warns in tip...

Jonathan Alter at the Daily Beast has an idea that will infuse the president’s “economic patriotism” rhetoric with some bite: Compel companies to take “loyalty oaths” to prove their patriotism. You may find this suggestion a little creepy, maybe even a little fascistic; but Alter says that “it’s time for red-blooded Americans to take matters into our own hands.” And by taking the matter into “our” hands, Alter means that President Obama would unilaterally bar any company that practices “inversion” – corporate merging with foreign firms to save on U.S. tax bills – from doing business with the federal government....

<p>Everything we are told about illegal immigration is mostly a lie, and a self-serving one at that. Remember that fact, and the current debate over the border becomes comprehensible.</p> <p>Fleeing to an Oppressive Society?</p> <p>How odd that almost no advocate ever says, “We want amnesty so that our kinsmen have a shot, as we have had a shot, at an independent judiciary, equality under the law, the rule of law, true democracy, free speech, protection of human rights, free-market capitalism, and protection of private property. For all that, millions risk their lives.” But instead there is either nothing, or a continual critique of the U.S. If we were to take a newly arrived illegal alien, and enroll him in a typical Chicano Studies course, he would logically wish to return across the border as soon as possible.</p>

The National Science Foundation has committed $10 million to build robots that will act as “personal trainers” for children, in an effort to influence their behavior and eating habits. The government has spent $2.15 million so far for the five-year project, which is being led by Yale University. The project, “Robots Helping Kids,” will ultimately “deploy” robots into homes and schools to teach English as a second language, and encourage kids to exercise.

A Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple is appealing a "re-education" order from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.The order requires cake artist Jack Phillips to create wedding cakes for gay couples and to re-educate his staff that the state's Anti-Discrimination Act means artists must endorse all views.It also requires him to file quarterly compliance reports for two years.According to Phillips' attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom, the reports must include the number of patrons that Phillips declines to serve, along with the reason.The order stems from a 2012 incident in which Phillips refused a...

By now we know that every purchase a consumer makes is added to a list detailing one’s spending and life-style habit, which is used to target people for marketing campaigns and other services. But how would you feel if that information was used by your doctors to keep tabs on your health? A new report from Bloomberg details how hospitals are using our habits such as buying cigarettes or skipping the gym to create patient profiles in order to identify those who are most likely to get sick.

<p>The Justice Department is resurrecting a program designed to thwart domestic threats to the United States, and Attorney General Eric Holder says those threats include individuals the government deems anti-government or racially prejudiced.</p>

A new documentary makes the controversial case that a political cocktail of big corporate money and racially charged sentiments has helped fuel the rise of the tea party. And squarely behind that movement, the film argues, are the Koch brothers. Co-Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin sat down with “Top Line” to discuss their film, “Citizen Koch,” and why they say the GOP’s deep-pocketed donors, the Koch brothers, are such figures in American politics today. “Money – $100 billion now,” Deal said in explaining the Kochs’ influence. “When we started out making this film, their net worth was about $68...

<p>How well can you predict your next mood swing? How well can anyone? It’s an existential dilemma for many of us but for the military, the ability to treat anxiety, depression, memory loss and the symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder has become one of the most important battles of the post-war period.</p>

The food industry should be regulated like the tobacco industry as obesity poses a greater global health risk than cigarettes, say international groups. Consumers International and the World Obesity Federation are calling for the adoption of more stringent rules. These could include pictures on food packaging of damage caused by obesity, similar to those on cigarette packets. The new rules could include reducing the levels of salt, saturated fat and sugar in food, improving food served in hospitals and schools, imposing stricter advertising controls, and educating the public about healthy eating. Artificial trans-fats should be removed from all food and...

They haven’t – yet – succeeded in “controlling” guns. Taking them out of our control, that is. One reason for this is the ferocious pushback from gun owners, who are numerous and take the threat posed by even innocuous-seeming schemes such as “background checks” and bans of “high capacity” magazines (and so on) very seriously.dodge ad It’s been the same – so far – with regard to their so-far-unsuccessful efforts to outlaw old cars. Or to enact legislation that would amount to the same thing via various end-runs. It is still “legal” to own and operate a vehicle built without...