Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is advancing federal regulations that require federally funded organizations caring for illegal alien minors who are in the United States without their parents (Unaccompanied Children or UC) and who may have been sexually abused access to “emergency contraception” services. “Emergency contraception” includes abortion-inducing drugs. These care providers currently include Catholic and other faith-based organizations that oppose abortion, according to the Center for Family and Human Rights or C-FAM, a Catholic advocacy group. The Interim Final Rule was published in the Federal Register on Dec. 24,...

Federal overreach isn’t just a catchy talking point. It has real consequences that I see and experience every day in Alaska. Alaska has been the victim of countless actions by the Obama Administration to unilaterally close off areas in Alaska to energy development. In the past two months, President Obama has used his executive authority to close areas in Bristol Bay, the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea from energy leasing – all without congressional oversight or thorough consultation with Alaskan officials. Then, on a Sunday morning last month we awoke to the news the president would attempt to permanently...

Pressure is building on the Obama administration to give uninsured people a second chance to sign up for ObamaCare before they are slapped with a fine. People without insurance in 2015 will pay a fine of $325 or 2 percent of their income, whichever is greater, during next year’s tax season. Democrats and several advocacy groups argue that people without insurance don’t realize they’re in danger of taking a significant economic hit. “Millions upon millions of people are unaware about these penalties,” Ron Pollack, the executive director of the nonprofit group Families USA, said in a briefing Wednesday. This year’s...

In the grand scheme of things, the most important development in health policy is the pending Supreme Court case revolving around whether subsidies can be provided to people obtaining health insurance from the federal exchange, even though the law explicitly says handouts are only available to people getting policies via state exchanges.If the Court rules correctly (unlike, ahem, the last time the Justices dealt with Obamacare), it will then be very important that congressional reformers use the resulting mess to unwind as much of the law as possible.That will be a challenge because statists already are arguing that the “only” solution...

A state-level bureaucrat is standing up to the the central government planners is a most unusual way. Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction, Diane Douglas, has informed all school districts in the Grand Canyon State that they have blanket authority to ignore all federal nutrition mandates regulating school fundraisers. "Forcing parents and other supporters of schools to only offer federally approved food and snacks at fundraisers is a perfect example of the overreach of government and intrusion into local control," Douglas said in a statement. "I have ordered effective immediately, that the ADE Health and Nutrition Services division grant exemptions for...

Ever heard of the Agriculture Risk Coverage program? How about the Price Loss Coverage program? You’re paying for them. Along with the Conservation Technical Assistance program, the Biological and Environmental Research program, and the USDA Catfish Inspection program. The list goes on, but why have I highlighted these particular entries? Because of the millions we can save annually by eliminating their federal funding. Not that these are the only programs worth targeting, of course. There are many other specific steps we can take to finally put the government on the diet it should have been put on years ago. I...

Correction: February 15, 2015 An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated that teacher layoffs in Milwaukee in 2010 happened because Gov. Scott Walker “cut state aid to education.” The layoffs were made by the city’s school system because of a budget shortfall, before Mr. Walker took office in 2011.

In 1973, National Lampoon put a dog on its cover with a gun to the animal’s head. The tongue-in-cheek headline was: “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.” In the same vein, President Obama might as well be preparing a new cover, with a frightened elderly lady, and a headline saying, “Raise the debt limit again or we’ll kill this woman.” Mr. Obama threatens to withhold Social Security checks each time the debt limit deadline nears, ignoring the fact that even if the limit were met, the government could pay its debt obligation and all Social Security...

During a heated discussion over gay marriage, CNN morning Anchor Chris Cuomo opined that the unalienable rights endowed to all Americans do not come from God. Cuomo was debating Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Near the end of the back-and-forth and after Moore argued that rights cannot be handed down by men, Cuomo blurted out:“Our rights do not come from God, your honor, and you know that. They come from man... That’s your faith, that’s my faith, but that’s not our country. Our laws come from collective agreement and compromise.”

19-year-old Alecia Faith Pennington has spent her life so sheltered by her Christian fundamentalist parents that now, as a young adult, she is finding it almost impossible to prove to the government that she actually exists. In a video uploaded to YouTube and quickly going viral, Pennington documents the various ways her parents have managed to prevent leaving even a single speck of evidence to help her gain an official identity or to prove that she is a United States citizen. For starters, they gave birth to her at home, and declined to get a birth certificate or social security...

With a few strategic policy proposals, King George encouraged Americans to sign a document that later became known as the “Declaration of Independence”… Indirectly, of course. In the year of 1765, the King of England managed to do the Obama equivalent of signing Obamacare. With a stunning amount of short-sighted arrogance, the Kingly gentleman from England thrust America into a frenzy of anti-English sentiment. (Racist colonists!) On November 1st, in the year 1765, Britain implemented the Stamp Act. Defending the American colonies during the French and Indian War, as well as the Pontiac’s Rebellion (no-one liked Pontiac then either, apparently),...

The Swiss arm of HSBC Holdings Plc private banking division has been accused of helping wealthy international customers avoid taxes and conceal millions of dollars from local revenuers… So, when I make my millions, remind me to bank with HSBC.Information leaked (read: stolen) by a former IT employee of HSBC’s private banking division in Switzerland has already been used by authorities to track down potential tax dodgers; and now it is being used to cast partial blame on the financial giant. France is anxiously combing through the illegally obtained information, and has even forwarded the information on to other countries… The...

John Judis, co-author of the book "The Emerging Democratic Majority," now says in an article in National Journal that that majority has disappeared. His title: "The Emerging Republican Advantage." The original book, published in the Republican year of 2002, forecast accurately the groups that would make up the Democratic majority coalition that emerged in the 2006 and 2008 elections: blacks, Hispanics, gentry liberals, single women, young voters. But as Judis writes now, that coalition has come apart. That's partly because of diminished support from millennials and Hispanics, but mostly because of additional white working-class defections and erosion among suburbanites unhappy...

Last month, I posted “the cartoon argument” for Social Security reform. My main goal, as an American, is to achieve this important reform in the United States. And I’ve tried to bolster the argument by citing lots of hard data, including the fact that “funded” accounts already exist in nations such as Australia, Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands. In this spirit, I wrote an article for the most recent issue of Cayman Financial Review, and I looked at the issue from a global perspective. I first explained thatdemographics are destiny.

Americans are addicted to living beyond their means, at least when it comes to the functions of government. That's why the federal debt tripled over the past decade and under President Barack Obama's budget plan would keep growing indefinitely. Why not? If you don't have to pay for all you get, you're likely to take more than you need. The problem is hardly confined to Washington. State and local governments can't get away with endless budget deficits because of restrictions on their authority to borrow money. But if you think that keeps them from piling up obligations on future taxpayers,...

This week, controversy broke out over whether state governments have the power to require parents to have their children vaccinated. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, no stranger to compelling his citizens to stay off the roads during blizzards, announced that he had some sympathy for the anti-vaccination position: "I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that's the balance the government has to decide." Kentucky Senator Rand Paul doubled down on Christie's remarks, stating, "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound...

Politicians and lawyers pretend that they are important people doing important work. But often they're important because they are parasites. They feed off others, while creating no wealth of their own. We all complain about businesses we don't like, but because business is voluntary, every merchant must offer us something we want in order to get our money. But that's not true for politicians and their businessman cronies. They get to use government force to grab our money. Those people who take instead of producing things make up "the parasite economy," says Cato Institute Vice President David Boaz. It's my...

The Huffington Post is beside itself with indignant rage over companies moving their headquarters overseas to avoid paying the highest corporate income tax in the industrialized world. Feeling that Secretary Jack Lew was onto something when he accused companies of being economic traitors for reducing their tax burden, the HuffPo let loose a string of economic illiterate ramblings about the indecency of corporate profits.…the drug firm Mylan stomped on the Stars and Stripes as it ditched America for the Netherlands. Then, the drug company AbbVie similarly renounced America. For 30 pieces of silver, it will become Irish. Medical device maker...

"......Asked about Democrat Hillary Clinton's possible presidential run, Walker said she represents the past: "I think people want to look to the future. They don't want to go back in time, they don't want to repeat what we've had in the past. We need a candidate not of the 20th century, but of the 21st century." Walker said Clinton is a Washington insider: "She lives here, she's worked here, she's been part of the Washington structure for years. Not just as a Democrat, but across the spectrum. I think Washington represents the top-down, government knows best, go along to get...

It takes a very specialized economic ignorance in order to come up with some of the policy prescriptions proposed by the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In what I can only assume is a plan to continue his pattern of proposing budgets that get soundly rejected by Congress, Barack Obama is proposing a slew of new business taxes to fund (a portion) of his $4 trillion budget.Concerned over the rate at which businesses have been fleeing high US corporate tax rates, Obama has proposed a plan: Tax companies a little more. (Only a Democrat would think we could solve the...