Free Republic

Quietly on Christmas Eve, the Obama administration changed the rules on handling refugee children who enter the country without their parents and report being victims of sexual assault. All refugee aid groups, including Catholic and other Christian groups, will now be required to refer those girls to facilities that provide abortions. Religious groups that work with refugees are concerned that the new rules may require them to give up federal funding. Dr. Susan Yoshihara of the New York and Washington DC-based Center for Family & Human Rights (C-Fam) first reported the change last week: “Faith-based groups say this is a...

Two powerful House Republicans late Tuesday warned D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser not to move forward with legalizing marijuana in the nation’s capital and they warned of stiff federal retribution if the city’s chief executive did not yield. The letter came on the same day that Bowser declared that a voter-approved measure to legalize pot would become law in the city at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday and the letter set the stage for a dramatic final 24 hours before that deadline. “If you decide to move forward tomorrow with the legalization of marijuana in the District, you will be doing...

There’s no shortage of dire predictions about what would happen if the Supreme Court strikes down the system for awarding subsidies to people seeking insurance under the 2010 health care law. Millions more could be added to the ranks of the uninsured, the cost of coverage could rise dramatically and insurance markets could be thrown into chaos, or at least temporary instability. For all those hypotheticals, though, the only thing that’s certain is the country will be more divided than ever over President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, with many states forced to quickly decide what new steps, if any,...

President Obama would veto the House Republican plan to overhaul the controversial No Child Left Behind law, his administration said Wednesday. The GOP plan, known as the Student Success Act, “represents a significant step backwards in the efforts to help all of the nation's children and their families prepare for their futures,” said the Office of Management and Budget in a statement of administration policy. The bill “abdicates the historic federal role in elementary and secondary education of ensuring the educational progress of all of America's students, including students from low-income families, students with disabilities, English learners and students of...

Lots of people sure hate the Koch brothers. The Kochs get death threats like this: "If I had a chance to murder a Koch brother in cold blood, I would surely take it." Jim Dean doesn't want to kill the Kochs, but he does want new laws to limit their influence. Dean's brother Howard was a Democratic presidential candidate, and Dean chairs a group called Democracy for America. "Get money out of politics," Dean says on my show this week. But Dean's not just unhappy because the Kochs have money to throw around. He doesn't like their politics. "The Koch...

Government’s involvement in healthcare has been such a rousing success, Obama is now thinking about getting more involved in regulating the retirement of Middle Class America. Hooray… Proposing new executive regulatory rules (because going through Congress is too cumbersome and democratic), the President has claimed that he is riding to the rescue of average American investors with the heavy hand of government oversight. According to theState.com:The proposed rule, which Obama can put in place without congressional approval, would impose a requirement on some financial advisers to act as what the law calls “fiduciaries” for their clients, meaning that when they recommend...

(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.