Free Republic

Michelle Obama wants the federal government to tell us what kind of food to eat. I actually wouldn’t object if she merely used a bully pulpit to encourage healthier eating. But the busy-body crowd in Washington has a hard time distinguishing between giving advice and engaging in coercion. So we now have legislation that gives Washington the power to interfere with food in local schools. But not everybody is rolling over, particularly when federal rules are coercing states into banning bake sales. The National Journal reports on growing resistance to this absurd example of nanny statism from Washington. Here are...

A federal judge handed a landmark victory to Kane County and the state of Utah on Wednesday in a years-long dispute with the federal government over whether some rural routes should remain in use as roads, or if they should be closed to the public. In two decisions, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups found he had jurisdiction to hear Kane County's claim, gave parameters for "reasonable" right-of-way widths on some routes and determined that 12 of 15 routes in dispute were roads and therefore accessible by the public. The distinction hinged on an 1866 law through which Congress sought to...

Britain’s Farnborough Air Show wrapped up last week after seven ear-splitting days. To impress the excited kids and jaded dealers in attendance, the U.S. sent an F-8, an F-15, and a pair of F-16s. But the much anticipated F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter was a no-show. After a runway fire grounded the fleet earlier this month, the Department of Defense suspended negotiations to purchase the next batch of the planes. The troubled fighter is only the latest in a growing number of cases where the DOD has bought poorly designed and massively overpriced equipment for the nation’s armed forces....

There is good and there is evil. Good is the healthy state, functioning optimally according to its design. Evil can be defined as a conscious state of disorder, a parasite that thrives on conquering the good. Humans are creatures of a magnificent design. They start out innocent enough, generally attracted to good. But all people seem to be subject to the attentions of evil, sometimes as a victim and sometimes as a participant. The vast majority of humans are kind and interesting, regardless of their culture, religion, race, or party affiliation. And right about the age of six, they are...

As the Obama administration weans the U.S. off dirty fuels blamed for global warming, energy companies have been sending more of America's unwanted energy leftovers to other parts of the world where they could create even more pollution. This fossil fuel trade threatens to undermine President Barack Obama's strategy for reducing the gases blamed for climate change and reveals a little-discussed side effect of countries acting alone on a global problem. The contribution of this exported pollution to global warming is not something the administration wants to measure, or even talk about.

The Washington Times and the Washington Redskins announced a unique partnership that will make the newspaper a content and marketing partner of the team. Under the partnership, the Redskins and the Times will collaborate on unique content offerings throughout the year designed to provide Redskins fans with compelling, timely and unique coverage. The offerings will include a weekly “Redskins Weekend Game Guide,” which will wrap the front page of the Times’ print edition each Friday during the NFL season and a new free digital magazine called “The Redskins Report,” which will showcase exclusive content about the Redskins. Both features are...

Illegal immigrants are a minor annoyance; America’s shift towards European fertility is a catastrophe from which we may never recover. The demographic crisis isn’t at our borders but at home. It’s easy to blow off steam about illegals on the border, and tough to address the fundamentals. I’ve tried to do so in the past, for example here, but the real problems and prospective solutions don’t make easy sound-bites.Just to make things clear: I want super-tough, restrictive immigration laws. I’d prefer a Canadian-style system that favors highly-educated immigrants with capital to invest. But I don’t think the best immigration...

A leading air transport industry body has called for a top-level meeting with the Venezuelan president to discuss ways to restore over $4 billion of airlines' money that is trapped in the country due to its currency controls. President Nicolas Maduro's government requires airlines to sell tickets in the bolivar currency but has been slow to allow them to repatriate the earnings. IATA said on Monday that international capacity on routes to Venezuela is down 36 percent year-on-year, or down 49 percent from 2013 peaks. "Confidence in the market is falling sharply," Tyler said. "Venezuela risks becoming disconnected from the...

The high-rise at 500 N. Lake Shore Drive is the second-most expensive in the city, with rents for a one-bedroom apartment approaching $3,000 a month, well beyond the reach of most Chicago residents. But that's not too much for the Chicago Housing Authority, which has used federal tax dollars to pick up most of the tab for four lucky residents in the year-old building, with its sweeping views of Lake Michigan, a concierge and a dog-grooming center. The tenants moved in over the past two years as part of a push by the CHA to expand its housing voucher program...

Who is Shaun Donovan? Recently confirmed by the Senate to head the White House’s budget office, Donovan at first appears to be a typical bureaucrat. He has held the position of Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) since 2009, and has now been promoted to one of the highest offices in the U.S. bureaucracy. However, a look at Donovan’s tenure at HUD and his lack of knowledge about America’s fiscal circumstances shows that the Senate should have opposed his nomination. Instead, a majority of Republicans and every voting Democrat ignored Donovan’s ignorance about the federal budget...

The “Iron Maiden." She was the staunch and sturdy leader of Great Britain who once held up F. A. Hayek’s masterwork “Road to Serfdom” and declared “This is what we believe in.” Hayek’s work is a road map for what could go wrong when individual freedoms are lost and central planning becomes the answer for every ill. When truth is bent to meet the moment and government decision making is the proposed cure all, “serfdom” is the destination. Margaret, in believing Hayek’s cautionary, also declared that Socialism cannot sustain itself. Socialism can not last because eventually “you run out of...

The global warming fear mongers are at it again. Twice recently they’ve been caught in the act-- not only are they lying, they're so desperate that they're starting to look ridiculous. “Three years of observations show that the Antarctic ice sheet is now losing 159 billion tonnes of ice each year,” reports the UK’s University of Leeds, “twice as much as when it was last surveyed. A team of scientists from the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, led by researchers at the University of Leeds, have produced the first complete assessment of Antarctic ice sheet elevation change.” Like...

UNKNOWN QUESTIONER:“Um, you mentioned the Health Insurance Exchanges for the States. And it’s my understanding that if the States don’t provide them, that the Federal Government will provide them.”M.I.T. economics Prof. Jonathan Gruber:“Yeah, so these Health Insurance Exchanges —once you go on MA-HealthConnect.org and CRS [is] in Massachusetts—will be these new shopping places. And they’ll be the place that people go to get their subsidies for health insurance. “In the law it says [that] if States don’t provide them, the federal backstop will. The Federal Government has been sort-of slow in putting in this backstop, I think partially, because they...

President Barack Obama, who in his political dotage is enthusiastically getting in touch with his inner Otto von Bismarck to such an extent that we half expect him to start sporting a walrus mustache and a pickelhaube, on Saturday treated the ailing republic to another lecture on the theme of “economic patriotism,” by which he means an arrangement under which companies adopt tax strategies that maximize the amount of money they send to President Obama and his colleagues to dispose of as they see fit. He demanded that companies “embrace an economic patriotism,” presumably one defined by Barack Obama, rather...

SIX YEARS AGO, Jeanne Shaheen was quick to attack then-Sen. John Sununu on the cost of gasoline. This was a time when New Hampshire consumers were paying around $4 a gallon. In television ads and on the stump, Shaheen argued that the senator deserved blame for not doing more to bring prices down. Her supporters even held protests at his offices to highlight her position. One of her supporters went so far as to dress up as a gas pump to follow Sen. Sununu around at events claiming he wasn’t doing enough to “help the middle-class” deal with fuel prices....

Here's the question, not of the day, but of the month: Who's Winning the War in Ukraine? That may sound like a simple question, but it isn't. That question leads to a second question "In whose eyes?" It also depends on the definition of "war". And it also depends on the definition of "win". And finally it depends on which media source you believe. Military Aspect From a military aspect, I have seen reports from both sides. The Western media portrays Ukraine on the march with the rebels surrounded, and losing ground. Is that accurate reporting? I will let you...

This week, in the aftermath of the Q1 -2.9% GDP disaster, the biggest "non-recessionary" drop in 67 years which was blamed on harsh weather (because there have never been harsh winters in the past 67 years), we get the first glimpse of what Q2 GDP was in the US economy. It is expected to print just shy of 3%. However, one person disagrees: Gary Shilling believes that not only will Q2 GDP be closer to 1% than to 3%, there is a fairly good chance it could be negative, which of course would mean that the US economy has officially...

British lawyers are getting ready to hit Russian President Vladimir Putin with a multi-million pound class action suit for his alleged role in the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine this month, an English daily reported. According to British daily The Sunday Telegraph, senior Russian military commanders and politicians closely-linked to Putin will likely be also included in the suit, set to take place in American courts. “There has been talk of civil suits against Malaysia Airlines, but those immediately responsible are not only the separatists who are alleged to have fired the rocket at Flight MH17,...

The state of Arizona executed double murderer Joseph Wood this week. The convicted killer was injected with a combination of lethal drugs that eventually caused his death; however, it took too long according to some observers. After being administered the drugs, Wood lingered for almost two hours before dying. Witnesses included reporter Troy Hayden who said the execution was “botched” and that Wood’s last words were similar to “a fish on shore gulping for air.” While Hayden complained that the execution was “very disturbing to watch,” U.S. Senator John McCain noted that it was “terrible” and amounted to “torture.” During...

You won’t know whether to laugh or cry after perusing these stories that will be added to our “great moments in government” collection. For instance, did you realize that American taxpayers were saddled with the responsibility to micro-manage agriculture in Afghanistan? You’re probably surprised the answer is yes. But I bet you’re not surprised that the money was flushed down a toilet. Here are some excerpts from a report on how $34 million was wasted. American agricultural experts who consider soybeans a superfood…have invested tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to try to change the way Afghans eat. The...