Free Republic

And, of course, an over reaching government agrees...

There are many ways to lose freedom -- conquering armies, surrendering without a fight. Unfortunately, we are currently surrendering our freedom, not to a foreign power, but to our own government. The growth, reach, and cost of big government is happening before our eyes and eroding our liberty, largely because too many Americans are not familiar with the brilliant system of government our Founders established. Progressives prefer a "living Constitution," which is constantly changing to conform to their ideology. What it is not is the Constitution established by the Founders. In a comprehensive publication, "The Roots of Liberty: Unlocking...

Americans' confidence in all three branches of the U.S. government has fallen, reaching record lows for the Supreme Court (30%) and Congress (7%), and a six-year low for the presidency (29%). The presidency had the largest drop of the three branches this year, down seven percentage points from its previous rating of 36%.

A new Gallup survey finds that Americans’ confidence in all three branches of the U.S. government has fallen dramatically, reaching record lows for Congress (7 percent), the Supreme Court (30 percent), and a six-year low for the presidency (29 percent). Survey results were based on telephone interviews conducted June 5-8, with a random sample of 1,027 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. The presidency, currently with Barack Obama in power, has experienced the largest...

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has proposed a three-month transportation bill. Three more months, he says, will give Congress a chance to figure out a long-term solution. The only problem is that Congress had three months three months ago and did nothing. Meanwhile, Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., have proposed to increase gas taxes by 12 cents a gallon. Considering that the gas tax hasn’t been increased in more than 20 inflation-filled years, this would seem to make sense.It doesn’t, however, because a gas tax increase assumes there is a shortage of funds for transportation. Instead, the real...

The U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s cancelation of federal trademark registration for the name Washington “Redskins,” after ruling it disparages Native Americans, puts pressure on team owner Daniel Snyder and the National Football League (NFL) to change the name but falls far short of settling the issue. The split, 2-1, decision by unelected trademark board members shows the increasingly heavy hand that politics is playing in the activities of the private sector, since the ruling followed recent public calls for a name change from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. The team counters that the long-standing “Redskins” name...

Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter, running to be Louisiana's next governor, is leaving the door open to a possible expansion of the state's Medicaid program to cover more of the working poor, as allowed under the federal health care law. Vitter said Monday that he's not opposed to the expansion if Louisiana can improve the performance of its Medicaid program and if the expansion doesn't draw state resources away from other spending priorities like higher education.

From school board races to Senate primaries, the education reform package known as Common Core is proving uncommonly divisive this campaign season, popping up as an issue in primary elections all over the country. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican, cites opposition to Common Core as a key reason for her endorsement of state Rep. Chris McDaniel over incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi’s hotly contested Republican Senate primary. Former Oklahoma state House Speaker T.W. Shannon, a Republican, says Obama administration pressure on states to adopt Common Core “is a prime example of why I’m running for the Senate.”

A lot of attention was generated by last week's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcement of a proposed regulation to cut carbon emissions from existing coal-fired power plants by 30 percent from 2005 levels — all by 2030. Aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the effort is being billed as flexible, far-reaching and even a money-saver for American citizens. The policy is a homerun for the Obama administration, improving everything from our skies to our pocketbooks, right? Not so fast. To truly understand the implications of the EPA's announcement, it's worth sifting through the hype and asking a few clarifying questions.

The Commerce Department reports that first quarter GDP contracted by one percent. The Wall Street Journal notes that a contraction of GDP during a time not in recession is rare. So we continue in the slowest economic recovery since the end of World War II, with unemployment, in the 6th year of the Obama regime, at 6.3 percent, still well above its historic average. According to a recent Gallup poll, the economy is the number issue on the minds of Americans. Ninety one percent of Republicans and 87 percent of Democrats say it is the most important issue facing the...

Less than a year after revelations that thousands of child abuse and neglect reports in Arizona had gone uninvestigated, the state has overhauled its child welfare agency, funding it with tens of millions more than in the past. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday signed into law two bills that created and funded a new child welfare agency, now known as the Department of Child Safety. […] Brewer proposed the overhaul after revelations late last year that more than 6,500 abuse and neglect reports were closed without investigation by the old Child Protective Services department. The governor set up a...

One government agency has decided that the results of employee ratings are too discriminatory, and eliminated the process entirely. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced on Monday that it will now award all employees the highest rating regardless of performance reviews. The CFPB, which oversees transactions in the financial sector for the federal government, decided to no longer conduct employee reviews because there were just too many apparent “significant disparities” between the races, ages, and locations of its employees. According to American Banker, this new policy is set to cost over $5 million dollars, as it will now pay employees...

Combat veteran Kryn Miner, 44, served 11 deployments in seven years. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury after a bomb blast in Afghanistan in 2010 threw him into a wall. It was one of 19 blasts he endured over two decades of service to his country. On April 29, Kryn died after being shot by his teenage son, who was acting in defense of himself, his mother and his siblings because Kryn had threatened to kill them and pulled out a gun. Prosecutors ruled that it was a justified shooting, absolving the teen from facing...

House conservatives will press their leaders this week to move on an ObamaCare replacement bill before the August recess. But it’s unclear if there are enough votes to pass it. According to several GOP lawmakers, members of the conservative-leaning Republican Study Committee (RSC) plan to wear lapel pins to the weekly conference meeting that state, “HR 3121, There’s a Better Way” as a sign of support for moving a bill that is co-sponsored by 130 House Republicans. Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) the lead sponsor of H.R. 3121, the “American Health Care Reform Act of 2013,” told The Hill that RSC...

You gotta hear this - in context, he was advocating for "slow speed" rail in California (the biggest boondoggle I have ever seen in my life). But then he stumbled into what liberals want us all to do, always, so that we can fit into their communist scheme. LISTEN:

Recently, Republican leaders in Congress unveiled a "tax reform" plan that they claimed would provide the American people with a simpler, fairer, and more efficient tax system. While this plan does lower some tax rates and contains some other changes that may make next April a little less painful for Americans, there is little in it to excite supporters of liberty. Taxes may even increase under this plan for some Americans, as it eliminates some of those tax deductions labeled “loopholes.” When I served in Congress I opposed bills that “closed loopholes” because closing loopholes is just a fancy way...

Plan of Action for U.S. - SPEND SPEND SPEND Under the guise of Recovery - Bust the Government - Blame the Capitalists for the failure - Junk the Constitution and declare a dictatorship Deplete the Resources of the Soundest Government in the World!

It’s no secret that university graduates are becoming more intellectually lazy with each passing year. It is also undeniable that they are becoming more arrogant, in spite of the fact that they are less capable of forming solid opinions and defending them with well-reasoned arguments. A letter written to me (by a recent UNC-Wilmington graduate) is illustrative. I've reproduced it below with my usual angry and fearful rhetoric interspersed at appropriate intervals: Dear Dr. Adams: I was perhaps struck most by the tone of your rhetoric, which was both angry and fearful. (By way of background information, this newly-minted graduate...

MOSCOW, May 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has instructed the Finance Ministry to prepare and submit proposals by July 1, 2014 to lay off 10% of public servants, said the government official website which posted Medvedev’s instructions upon results of his annual report on government’s working results in 2013 at the State Duma. The Prime Minister delivered the annual government report on April 22. The premier stated particularly to ponder another 10% cuts of public servants in regions and at the federal level, because Russia needs “a modern, compact and effective state personnel oriented at people’s requests.” Meanwhile,...

The white-marble Rayburn House Office Building, in Washington DC, looks like a giant courts building or a central bank, fully intimidating and imposing in its hulking stony blockiness. And the US Congress, of course, is an institution best known for its tedium, albeit a tedium that is regularly punctuated by fiery partisan combat. On a typical day, the Rayburn building--acronymed as RHOB--is a place where politicos and bureaucrats struggle for and against some special interest, yea or nay, on regulation or appropriation. And the biggest single activity in RHOB, or in any of the other five office edifices on Capitol...