Free Republic

President Barack Obama signed a bill Friday evening that would exempt some senior-level presidential appointees from Senate confirmation. Sponsored by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and cosponsored by Republicans and Democrats, the bill, now law, weakens the power of the legislature and strengthens the executive branch, critics have warned. The bill skated through the Senate three months after being introduced in 2011 and was passed by the Republican-controlled House 216-116 in July. The law now allows Obama and future presidents to name appointees to senior positions in every branch of the administration, from the Department of the Treasury to the Department...

When governments get in the business of business, there's no enormity they won't engage in. Say you want to attract more movie businesses to your country. So, hey, why not! Subsidize a movie or two or three. After the "Lord of the Rings" success, though -- you know, Peter Jackson's trilogy of films based on Tolkien's trilogy of books -- you might've thought that New Zealand's government would sit back and just wait for more films to be filmed down under. Talk about getting all the publicity they could hope for. So why give $25 million to Peter Jackson to...