Free Republic

In a videotaped address to the NARAL pro-abortion group last night, President Barack Obama told the organization that he celebrates the Roe v. Wade decision, that has resulted in well over 55 million abortions.“Tonight we celebrate the historic Roe v. Wade decision handed down 40 years ago, but we also gather to recommit ourselves to the decision’s guiding principle: that women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and their health care,” Obama said in the videotaped message.“Tonight we celebrate the historic Roe v. Wade decision handed down 40 years ago, but we also gather to...

With less than a month left to replace the $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts scheduled for March. Republicans revealed Wednesday their party is divided over what is more important: protecting the Department of Defense or pushing spending cuts no matter the cost. Republican Sens. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona continue to speak out about how devastating across-the-board spending cuts would be to the Pentagon, while their GOP colleagues in the House say sequestration, no matter the cost, may be the only way to force...

Tiny nation rich in oil, gold led by alleged killer, drug-traffickerThe Obama administration will pump upwards of $110 million into a new U.S. Embassy compound in Suriname, a South American nation whose population of 580,000 is equivalent to that of Wyoming, the least-populated U.S. state. Jay Anania, U.S. ambassador to Suriname, said last year during his Senate confirmation hearing, “It is very much in the United States’ interest that Suriname remains a stable democratic partner.”

Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist says that large-scale immigration is good for America and the Republican Party — and that critics of easy immigration should get out of the way. “There are a whole bunch of people who are listening to loud voices, some of whom claim to be Republican … talking about [employers] who didn’t fill out the paperwork, about going after [an immigrant's] aunt,” said Norquist, whose opposition to tax increases has made him popular among Republicans and a hate-figure among progressives. Once advocates for tighter immigration are sidelined, the GOP will be able to win...

Wahington - As the US Congress kicked off hearings on comprehensive immigration reforms, two well-known Indian-American experts made a compelling case for urgent steps to reverse its existing policies that “chase away” foreign talents graduating from American universities instead of capitalising on them. “We need the world’s best and brightest more than ever before. Yet, as the research of my team at Stanford, Duke and UC-Berkeley has shown, our visa policies are doing the opposite: chasing away this talent,” said Vivek Wadhwa, Director of Research at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering. While Wadhwa and Puneet Arora, Vice-President of Immigration...

Giant numbers, like Graham's number, are so huge that they are bafflingly hard to grasp. A trillion. A googol. A centillion. TREE(3). Somewhere between zero and infinity is a host of finite, but mind-bogglingly huge numbers. But while mathematicians have dreamed up large numbers for ages and they pop up frequently in physics and math, gigantic numbers are bafflingly hard to fathom. "Really big numbers are in every piece of technology we look at, in every organism we look at," said John Borwein, an applied mathematician at the University of Newcastle in Australia. And yet, "These are enormous numbers that...

This is worrisome because corporate insiders — officers, directors and the largest shareholders — presumably know more about their companies’ prospects than the rest of us do. If they were confident that the shares of their companies would soon be trading markedly higher, they wouldn’t be selling them now. Yet selling they are — at an alarming pace. snip To be sure, insiders have been selling heavily for several weeks now, and the market has continued to rise — including the Dow’s eclipsing of the 14,000 level in recent sessions. This surprising strength in the face of insider selling has...

Just a little midweek, midday roundup of a few of the most recent ways in which the Affordable Care Act is just not going according to plan. “Unexpectedly,” of course.The House Ways and Means, Education and Workforce, and Energy and Commerce Committees have teamed up on a new report called the “ObamaCare Burden Tracker,” meant to function as “a real-time online resource to help the public keep track of all of the new government mandates, rules, and red tape as a result of ObamaCare.” Every hour and dollar spent complying with the Democrats’ health care law are time and resources...

SUNNYVALE -- A prominent Silicon Valley clean-energy startup has been ordered to pay back wages and penalties for bringing in workers from Mexico and paying them about $2.66 an hour in pesos, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Tuesday. Sunnyvale-based Bloom Energy, which makes fuel cells and sells energy to clients including AT&T, Adobe, Coca-Cola, eBay, Google and Wal-Mart, was ordered by a judge to pay $31,922 in back wages and an equal amount in damages to 14 welders who were brought in to work alongside domestic workers refurbishing power generators. It followed a federal investigation that inspected records from...

The usual suspects pushing immigration reform have a new ally in the fight this time — the religious right. Ralph Reed’s group, the Faith and Freedom Coalition. released a letter Tuesday that outlines broad goals for reform, like keeping families together, reforming the visa system and securing the border. High profile leaders are also weighing in. Mathew Staver, vice president of Liberty University, the college started by former TV minister Jerry Falwell, is on board. Focus on the Family is supporting immigration reform for the first time in its history — even using its radio broadcast that reaches millions to...

The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service announced Wednesday that it plans to stop delivering mail on Saturdays starting Aug. 1 — but will continue delivering packages. Unless forbidden to do so by Congress, which has moved in the past to prohibit five-day-a-week delivery, the agency for the first time will delivery mail only Monday through Friday. The move will save about $2 billion a year for the Postal Service, which has suffered tens of billions of dollars in losses in recent years with the advent of the Internet and e-commerce, officials said. “The American public understands the financial challenges of...

Jewell has served as the outdoor retailer's CEO since 2005. She started her career as a petroleum engineer working in the oil fields of Oklahoma and Colorado for Mobil Oil Corp. She then moved to the banking industry, before joining the REI board in 1996 and becoming chief operations officer four years later.

Ronald Reagan was born Feb 6, 1911. This week marks the 102nd anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday. It provides a time to reflect on the leader and on his vision for America. A former Democrat turned Republican, he had led a labor union and as an actor was an unlikely Presidential candidate when he first ran for President in 1976 against then-President Ford. He was not the typical Republican and frankly rocked the Republican establishment. But he eloquently articulated optimism for our country and a vision which garnered the support of voters from both parties as well as citizens who...

The Gallup Job Creation Index averaged +16 in January, the lowest monthly index level in 11 months, after one-percentage-point declines each month since November 2012. Despite this, the index remains fairly high relative to the past four years. January's results are based on 32% of U.S. adult workers saying their employers are hiring and expanding the size of their workforces, and 16% saying their employers are letting workers go and reducing the size of their workforces. Both components of the index are down slightly from December. However, the two-point decline in hiring, from 34%, exceeded the one-point decline in workers'...

Except for one thing: On the glass door - under a green cross signaling that cannabis can be bought there for medical purposes - is a sticker for the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), the nation's largest retail union. The dispensary, the Venice Beach Care Center, is one of three medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles that are staffed by dues-paying union members. Another 49 in the city plan to enter into labor agreements with the UFCW this year, the union says. Together, the dispensaries are a symbol of the growing bond between the nascent medical marijuana industry...

WASHINGTON – The Baltimore city government is on a path to financial ruin and must enact major reforms to stave off bankruptcy, according to a 10-year forecast the city commissioned from an outside firm. The forecast, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its release to the public and the City Council on Wednesday, shows that the city will accumulate $745 million in budget deficits over the next decade because of a widening gap between projected revenues and expenditures. If the city's infrastructure needs and its liability for retiree health care benefits are included, the total shortfall reaches $2 billion...

Dick Morris is gone from Fox News. Meanwhile, Karl Rove has been given a new multiyear contract. But why? A Fox News spokesman said only that the network chose not to renew Morris' contract. It's not hard to figure out why. Morris was glaringly wrong on the outcome of the 2012 presidential contest, predicting often and loudly that Mitt Romney would win in a romp. Funny thing is that Karl Rove was conspicuously wrong about the presidential results, too. Rove just wasn't as vociferous as Morris, except on Election Night. Even respected conservative elections analyst and commentator Michael Barone called...

Not long after President Obama proclaimed in his second inaugural that “an economic recovery has begun,” we learned that the U.S. economy actually shrank in the last quarter. Many economists believe this is a temporary setback. This recovery may be the weakest in American history, but the economy isn’t cratering either. Still, you can bet that if the economy continues to contract, Obama will propose the same remedy he always has: more “investments” in education, infrastructure, and various industries of the future. It seems that whatever the ailment, Dr. Obama always writes the same prescription. This is hardly shocking: Building...

People on both sides of tax issues often speak of such things as a “$300 billion tax increase” or a “$500 billion tax decrease.” That is fine if they are looking back at something that has already happened. But it can be sheer nonsense if they are talking about a proposed increase or decrease in the tax rate. The government can only raise or lower the tax rate. Whether the actual tax revenues that the government will collect as a result will go up or down is a matter of prophecy. And these prophecies have been wrong far too often...

A recent Bloomberg article stated this: _______________________ The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is weighing whether it should take on a role in helping Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings, a move that would be the agency’s first foray into consumer investments. “That’s one of the things we’ve been exploring and are interested in in terms of whether and what authority we have,” bureau director Richard Cordray said in an interview. He didn’t provide additional details. The bureau’s core concern is that many Americans, notably those from the retiring Baby Boom generation, may fall prey...