Free Republic

LECANTO — When Florida lawmakers signed off this year on a bill creating more than 300 miles of toll roads, they did so with scant evidence the project was needed. More than five months later, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law and the project has been vetted in two rounds of public hearings, local officials are growing frustrated by the persistent lack of details about what would be the largest expansion of Florida’s toll system in decades. “We’re beating a dead horse right now before it’s even born,” said Dixie County Commissioner Mark Hatch, who sits on a...

Brace opened the Newsboys Lodging House at 9 Duane St., in the building then owned by the New York Sun. At this location, he would do much more than provide a clean bed. He opened savings accounts for the kids, gave them books and healthy food — all part of a larger vision. “Those who have much to do with plans of human improvement,” he wrote, “see how superficial and comparatively useless all assistance or organization is which does not touch . . . the inner forces which form character.” Many of his charges (including girls, housed in their own “industrial school”)...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said Monday that he believes all commercial gun sales should be subject to a background check and signaled he's open to supporting bipartisan legislation from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). "It certainly should be applied to commercial sales and finding a more comprehensive way to make sure that people are in the system that ought to be in the system," Romney told reporters when asked about expanding background checks.

The Department of Energy announced this week that it’s withdrawing the Obama administration’s energy-rationing mandate for certain lightbulbs. Opponents criticized the rule change, arguing that the move would be bad for consumers and the climate. The reality, however, is that families and businesses will be better off, and the change will have a negligible impact on the environment. The Energy Department’s decision to withdraw energy-efficiency standards for candle-shaped, globe-shaped, three-way and reflector lightbulbs is a victory for consumer choice. Whether it’s buying a lightbulb or a new car, families have different preferences and needs. They consider the various trade-offs in...

There is an exceptional amount of lying in Washington these days, and our media and politicians are entranced by it. Lies must achieve extraordinary bulk and quality to impress the sport’s most ardent practitioners: Only a particularly nasty outbreak of mendacity could draw Washington’s attention to a subject it knows with such intimacy and depth. Most Americans are unsurprised. Long ago, they learned lies are the oxygen of the political world. They know the phrase “political deception” is a redundancy, like “false pretense,” “free gift,” or “foreign imports.” Most electoral lies, they’ve found, are dandruff on the body politic, pedestrian...

Former House Speaker John Boehner and former Rep. Joe Crowley are joining forces in a bipartisan effort to combat a looming pension crisis affecting nearly 1.3 million American retirees Opens a New Window. Boehner, the Ohio Republican who retired in 2015, is part of the Retirement Security Coalition, a leading force that is raising awareness to the underfunded multiemployer benefit plans. “The job Joe and I have taken on is to try to elevate the seriousness of this problem," he told FOX Business’ Neil Cavuto Opens a New Window. on Thursday. "And Congress really does in fact need to act."...

Jennifer Zeng grew up admiring the Communist Party of China and adhering to its stringent rules. But her life changed forever when she embraced religion and was swept up in a government crackdown on Falun Gong. Arrested four times as a young adult and held in as a prisoner in a labor camp, she quickly woke up to the horrors of living in a socialist state. After being subject to brutal torture, Zeng managed to escape China and now tells about the evils of socialism and communism. At a time when more Americans are embracing Karl Marx’s teachings, Chris Wright...

Once upon a time, long, long ago they actually taught this stuff in grade school along with reading, writing, arithmetic--and--history, basic economics, the Constitution, patriotism, and other useful subjects to help youngsters learn a trade, etc. And then the left took control and decided indoctrination was more useful (to them) than educating the next generation. Why? Ronald Reagan summed it up: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Big government/socialism destroys free-markets, productivity, the economy, private property, wealth (capital), individual liberty, national sovereignty and your country. Why is the UK no longer a superpower? The Labour Party...

Ever since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, Democrats and a few Republicans have decried how the law’s $10,000 cap of the state and local tax deduction harms schools, local communities, home values, first responders, and middle-class families. Fast forward almost two years later and these false claims are not going away. House Democrats recently announced a hearing scheduled for Tuesday where many of the common myths are likely to be repeated. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions. Myth #1: The Cap Hurts Middle-Class Taxpayers Before the 2017 tax cut capped the state...

President Donald Trump is trying to take an ax to federal advisory committees, ordering that their numbers be slashed. Trump signed an executive order Friday that directs every federal agency to evaluate the need for all of its advisory committees created under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. And it gives agency heads until September to terminate at least one-third of current committees created by agency heads. Federal advisory committees are typically made up of private citizens who offer advice and assistance to the executive branch. The White House did not immediately provide any justification for the order. But it appears...

Democratic congressional leaders said they held a constructive meeting with President Trump on Monday at which they agreed to seek a deal on a $2 trillion infrastructure bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) left the meeting at noon sounding a decidedly positive note, calling the meeting with Trump at the White House constructive and good. They said they had not agreed on how to pay for a $2 trillion bill to improve the nation's roads, bridges, waterways and broadband, but that they had agreed to meet in another three weeks. And they said the...

Travelers may have to take a trip to the DMV if they’re looking to fly, even domestically, after October 1, 2020. The Transportation Security Administration details on their website that they won’t be accepting standard driver’s license as form of identification to board domestic flights. TSA says that travelers will be required to present a REAL ID compliant license in order to travel within the U.S. Drivers can tell the difference between a REAL ID and a standard license by a gold star generally marked in the upper portion of the card. If there’s no gold star, then it’s a...

Who will investigate the investigators?” The Mueller Nothing Burger Report vindicated President Trump, but our attention now must turn to investigating the last days of the Obama Administration. Targets of the Special Counsel were persecuted by aggressive prosecutorial practices designed to win capitulations. Mueller team members threatened “suspects” with separate investigations of family members and others risked being buried by legal briefs from lawyers who possessed unlimited government budgets. The reckless machinations of the Special Counsel Office again validates the virtues of limited government: in this case, not to attract and nurture those seeking personal aggrandizement and consolidation of power...

Leftist Democrats, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., introduced a revised government-funded Medicare for All Act on Wednesday as Republicans ready their opposition and Democratic presidential hopefuls face questions about what Medicare for All could mean and the role government should have in setting rates for private insurers. Jayapal’s bill largely mirrors a 2017 proposal by Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., but the heart of every “Medicare for all” proposal to date has been the same: government price controls for private health coverage. The price controls question could be one of the major policy issues of the 2020 Democratic primary and...

The national debt hit $22 trillion this week. You won’t find many in either major party who think this is a healthy development. But isn’t part of the reason people vote Republican because that party presents itself as fiscally responsible compared to Democrats? For as long as the debt has grown, Republicans have been promising to stop it. Yet, in 1981 the national debt topped $1 trillion after former President Ronald Reagan’s first year. When former President George H.W. Bush left office in 1993, it was more than $4 trillion. His son, former President George W. Bush, would push it...

Civil and criminal crackdowns on polluters dropped sharply in the second year of the Trump administration, according to 2018 enforcement figures released Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency. The Trump administration EPA says the agency is taking a new tack with polluters, giving states more of a role in regulation and enforcement and stressing education and voluntary compliance with offenders as well as fines and criminal prosecution. […] The EPA has been one of the most active agencies overall in carrying out the deregulatory goals of President Donald Trump. Environmental and public-health groups say the business-friendly rollbacks place public health...

The Green New Deal (GND) outline released today by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey calls for a total overhaul of the U.S. transportation system. Specifically, the GND states that over the next decade America must “build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”The GND proposal released today came in a couple of different packages. There is an actual resolution which proposes a transportation overhaul “as much as is technologically feasible.” overhauling transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically...

With trust in governments taking a hit since the global financial crisis, people around the world view their employer as the most trusted institution in their lives, according to a survey published Monday. In a survey of trust in institutions that public relations firm Edelman releases each year on the eve of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the firm found that 75 percent of respondents trusted their employer. That’s a hefty 19 percentage points more than the equivalent trust in business as a whole and 27 points more than governments. …

Has Trump suckered the Democrats and deep state into a trap

Several Republican senators introduced legislation Friday to permanently end government shutdowns by creating an automatic continuing resolution for any appropriations bill, allowing the federal government to remain open even when budget agreements break down. Currently, when Congress fails to meet a deadline to pass a government funding bill, the agencies which remain unfunded shut down. Often, Congress chooses to pass what's called a continuing resolution (CR) to delay and extend the deadline to pass funding bills, which keeps funding operations at their current levels. CR funding would be reduced by 1 percent after 120 days, and would be reduced by...