Free Republic

There’s no candy-coating the truth: Obamacare has had a very terrible, horrible, crappy, none-too-happy year. What it really means is that the victims of Obamacare — taxpayers, health-care consumers, health-care providers, employers, and employees — have had a hellish, nightmarish 2014. Let’s start with premiums. President Candy Land promised that he’d “lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.” But premiums for people in the individual market for health insurance have spiked over the past year. In fact, Forbes health policy journalist Avik Roy and the Manhattan Institute analyzed 3,137 counties and found that individual-market premiums...

They look like High School playing college team in the Bowl game. Stoops looks like a deer-in-the-headlights on the sideline

He has been called the “superman pope”, and it would be hard to deny that Pope Francis has had a good December. Cited by President Barack Obama as a key player in the thawing relations between the US and Cuba, the Argentinian pontiff followed that by lecturing his cardinals on the need to clean up Vatican politics. But can Francis achieve a feat that has so far eluded secular powers and inspire decisive action on climate change? It looks as if he will give it a go. In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to...

The inimitable Howie Carr, Boston Herald columnist and syndicated talk show host, is on the case of MIT economist/Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, and has written a priceless column outlining what may lie ahead for the man who considers American voters stupid. You see, Gruber, in billing various states and the feds millions of dollars in consulting fees, included substantial time billed to research assistants. Perhaps you recall Gruber’s appearance before a Congressional committee last month. Whenever he was asked about providing back-up documentation for his multi-million-dollar bills, Goober would squeak: “You’ll have to take that up with my attorney.” Not...

This week, Tennessee became the 25th state to join a lawsuit against the president’s executive amnesty order. The lawsuit may work, but there’s another, more direct, and considerably more interesting redress against executive overreach. Proposed in 1798 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were signed into law by President John Adams. The A&S Acts comprised four bills that increased the federal government’s power to shut up dissenters; most noxious was a provision that permitted the prosecution of anyone who said anything about the government that the government considered “seditious.” Fourteen...

The administration warned a federal judge Monday to stay out of the debate over President Obama’s deportation amnesty, saying decisions about whom to deport fall squarely within the executive’s job description, “which this court lacks authority to review. In its first extended legal filing in one of the court challenges to the new amnesty, the Justice Department says courts have long held that an agency’s decision whether or not to prosecute someone or to enforce the law is entitled to “absolute discretion.”“Federal courts sit to decide cases and controversies, not to resolve disagreements about policy or politics,” said Joyce R....

We all know that the American energy revolution, led by the new technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, has created a flood of new shale-oil and natural-gas production that has overwhelmed world markets and driven prices down by roughly 40 percent. End-of-week crude oil closed near $57 a barrel, and the national average gasoline price finished at $2.60. No matter what the naysayers are trying to sell, the new energy reality is unambiguously good for the U.S. and global economies. There may be some dislocations among countries, sectors, or companies, but the overwhelming impact is positive. In fact, the...

Call it the mysterious case of the Incredible Shrinking GOP. Barely one month ago, the party sailed to victory in one of the biggest rout election waves of the past century. They ran the board and took control of the U.S. Senate. They grew to historic levels in the U.S. House. The Democratic Party was left in tatters in state, local, and governor races across the country. But today, just a few weeks later, before GOPers even take hold of their new reins of power, the party is crying poverty. They are stricken with paralysis. House Speaker John A. Boehner,...

<p>Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike threw a wrench Wednesday into congressional leaders’ hopes of quickly passing a newly struck budget deal, with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi demanding that certain provisions be stripped.</p> <p>The California Democrat had been coy for days over whether she would support the plan being hammered out in closed-door negotiations to fund the government past a Thursday-at-midnight deadline.</p>

Several players on both the Cleveland Cavaliers and Brooklyn Nets, including LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Kyrie Irving and Deron Williams, wore black "I Can't Breathe" T-shirts during pregame warm-ups Monday, following in the footsteps of Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose who wore the same shirt in a game Saturday to show support for the family of Eric Garner. Of his T-shirt, LeBron James said: "It's not a Cavs thing. It's a worldly thing." "It's not a Cavs thing," James said before the game. "It's a worldly thing." On several occasions in the past couple weeks, James has spoken out about...

In a lengthy interview on Friday afternoon, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) exposed how House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise strengthened President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty with procedural trickery former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber would envy—and they did it all in the name of pushing a bill that they told Republicans would block Obama’s executive amnesty. What’s more is that a series of interviews and recent developments indicate that Boehner’s gambit here is placing several of his top lieutenants—including at least two committee chairmen—at political risk of serious primary challenges...

President Barack Obama, who had medical tests on Saturday after complaining of a sore throat, is suffering from acid reflux, the president's physician said. "The president's symptoms are consistent with soft tissue inflammation related to acid reflux and will be treated accordingly," Obama's doctor, Captain Ronny Jackson, said in a statement. Acid reflux is a condition in which the stomach contents flow back up from the stomach into the esophagus, causing such symptoms as heartburn and sore throat. Special: Nursing Home Nightmare, 3 Ways to Live In Your Home Forever Obama, 53, went to Walter Reed military hospital for a...

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has taken the U.S. by storm, and as is the case with most industries that boost the economy, the federal government is seeking to crack down on the industry and regulate it out of existence. Nicolas Loris, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, weighs in on how fracking is faring across the country, and how the government is influencing the energy industry: What is the status of hydraulic fracturing across the country? I know that it’s a very controversial issue in many states, and that Texas recently issued a municipal...

House Speaker John Boehner’s top committee chairman says he wants an immigration bill that would allow millions of foreign migrants to stay and work jobs sought by Americans. “I’m going to use my assets and resources in the new year to work with this Congress… to have a well-understood agreement about what the law should be, and how we as communities, and farm communities, and tech communities, create circumstances where we can have people be in this country and work, and where not one person is quote ‘thrown out’ or ‘deported,’” said Rep. Pete Sessions, the chairman of the powerful...

The federal courts would never uphold a law requiring people to show “good cause” before they could speak in public or march in a parade. It would be a violation of our First Amendment rights. Yet an ongoing court battle examines whether similar rules regarding the carrying of firearms is an equally outrageous violation of the Second Amendment. The case started in 2008 in San Diego County, when Edward Peruta and other gun owners challenged San Diego County’s process for issuing concealed-carry permits. State law gives sheriffs the power to determine “good cause” – and San Diego County required documentation...

Update: After the following column appeared on FoxNews.com, Disney issued the following statement on Tuesday, December 2: “Disney employs word filtering technology to prevent profanity from appearing on our websites. Unfortunately, because so many people attempt to abuse the system and use the word “God” in conjunction with profanity, in an abundance of caution our system is forced to catch and prevent any use of the word on our websites. The company would have been happy to explain our filtering technology to the inquiring family had they contacted us.” It turns out you can give thanks for a lot of...

Conservative Republicans are pushing back hard against House Speaker John Boehner's plan to effectively push off the battle over President Obama's immigration plan to next year in order to pass a spending bill, increasing the likelihood he'll need help from Democrats to get it through the House and Senate. The speaker on Tuesday had put forward a plan to address two tricky issues: letting Republicans vent over the president's controversial immigration executive actions, while also backing a spending bill to keep the government running past Dec. 11, when current funding runs out. Boehner's solution is to call a vote on...

David Ruenzel knew, better than most, about the white privilege that killed him. As a writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of this favorite topics was rooting out racism. And how white racism is permanent. White racism is everywhere. And white racism explains everything. This mantra of the Critical Race Theory and the Southern Poverty Law Center applied to all white people because, even if they were not personally cracking the whips, or breaking the skulls, white people benefitted from a racist system that did all that — and a lot more. Ruenzel was writing about white privilege...

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest is warning that President Barack Obama would veto any spending bill that prohibits federal funds from being spent to enact Obama's executive amnesty. That means Obama is willing to shut down the government to preserve his executive amnesty. When asked if Obama would veto a bill that prohibits federal funds from being spent to enact his executive amnesty, Earnest simply replied: "yes." When asked if that would mean Obama is willing to shut down the government if Congress passes a funding bill that would "tie the president's hands" on executive amnesty, Earnest spun and...

Chris Rock explained in a lengthy interview Sunday that he believes part of healing racial relations in America is by white people “owning” the actions of their ancestors. The black comedian told New York magazine’s Frank Rich that racial progress in America is “nonsense” and that the only thing that’s changed is white people aren’t as crazy as they used to be. “When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense,” Mr. Rock said. “There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made...