Free Republic

With passage of sweeping health care reform finally in view, House Democratic leaders are launching an all-out assault to win over the final pockets of resistance within their rank and file. The marketing campaign is reaching full tilt even before leaders unveil the final package and finish taking the temperature of the Caucus on it. And the offensive already has all the hallmarks of a historic effort — with President Barack Obama delivering a campaign-style stem-winder on Monday to make a final public pitch for his plan, while House Democratic leadership began the more tedious work of privately buttonholing wavering...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that she is considering a maneuver that would allow her Members to avoid a direct vote on the Senate health care bill later this week, sparking outrage from Republicans who accused her of trying to avoid accountability. Pelosi said Monday that she is considering a rule that would automatically enact the Senate bill without a separate vote when the reconciliation bill containing a series of “fixes” is passed on the House floor. That would allow Democrats to avoid taking a difficult, separate vote on a Senate bill many dislike because it contains special deals...

TWO government advertisements that use nursery rhymes to warn people of the dangers of climate change have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for exaggerating the potential harm. The adverts, commissioned by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, used the rhymes to suggest that Britain faces an inevitable increase in storms, floods and heat waves unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control. The ASA has ruled that the claims made in the newspaper adverts were not supported by solid science and has told the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that they should not be published again....

Even as predictions about the possible effects of climate change get more troubling by the day, Americans are increasingly skeptical of the science. The latest evidence is this concerning Gallup poll: A majority of Americans still agree that global warming is real, as 53% say the effects of the problem have already begun or will do so in a few years. That percentage is dwindling, however. The average American is now less convinced than at any time since 1997 that global warming's effects have already begun or will begin shortly. Meanwhile, 35% say that the effects of global warming either...

PRESIDENT OBAMA wants to double U.S. exports between now and 2015, and it's a worthy goal. It won't be easy: Exports fell from $1.8 trillion in 2008 to $1.5 trillion in 2009, due to the global recession. But, as the president suggested in a speech Thursday, a big boost in sales of U.S. goods and services abroad would support 2 million American jobs. And some of his ideas could help that happen: an additional $2 billion in Export-Import Bank credit; streamlining the review process for sensitive technology exports; high-level support from the President's Export Council. Still, we're impressed by the...

I'm really surprised that the opposing view the Journal picked to match up against Andy's op-ed was so weak. It's not weak because it's bad, per se. It's just irrelevant to most of the issues. Stephen Jones argues that lawyers should be willing to take on unpopular criminal defendants as clients. Okay, nobody I know disagrees with that, and he makes an entirely adequate case for it. But that's not what the debate is about. The debate is about, among other things: Whether DOJ should be able to hide the history of appointed lawyers from Congress and the public; Whether...

An American seized in Yemen in a sweep of suspected al-Qaida members had been a laborer at six U.S. nuclear power plants, and authorities are investigating whether he had access to sensitive information or materials that would be useful to terrorists. Sharif Mobley, 26, worked for contractors at plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland from 2002 to 2008, mostly hauling materials and setting up scaffolding, plant officials said. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said Friday that investigations are under way into which areas Mobley entered. But he noted that areas containing nuclear fuel are tightly controlled, and that...

Attorney General Eric Holder failed to tell the Senate about seven legal briefs he signed when lawmakers considered his nomination to his current job, according to a letter released on Friday.Two of the briefs involved appeals to the Supreme Court for Jose Padilla, who sought release from a military prison in South Carolina where he was being held after then-President George W. Bush designated him an "enemy combatant." Padilla was held in a military brig for three years before his case was moved to a criminal court in Miami, where he was convicted on charges of offering his services to...

California is likely to see modest job losses in the near term from its aggressive climate change policy due to higher energy costs and other factors, the state's independent Legislative Analyst's Office said. Skip related contentThe budget watchdog was responding to a request by Republican state Senator Dave Cogdill to study the effects of California's 2006 climate change law, which mandates changes to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. California's environmental vanguard approach is being hotly debated in the state ahead of a November gubernatorial race and in the midst of an economic downturn that has pushed...

WEDNESDAY’S health care rally was one of President Obama’s finest hours. It was so fine it couldn’t be blighted even by his preposterous backdrop, a cohort of white-jacketed medical workers large enough to staff a hospital in one of the daytime soaps that refused to be pre-empted by the White House show. Obama’s urgent script didn’t need such cheesy theatrics. At last he took ownership of what he called “my proposal,” stating concisely three concrete ways the bill would improve America’s broken health care system. At last he pushed for a majority-rule, up-or-down vote in Congress. At last he conceded...

Friday's better-than-expected jobs report, while cheering stock investors, hasn't taken the threat of a double-dip recession off the table. What's Next? Even as the jobless rate held steady at 9.7 percent and the 36,000 workers laid off in February was much less than expected, economists and investment analysts said it's still too early to discount the economy's chances of revisiting recession. "Eight months into the much-touted recovery, the economy should be adding jobs not just losing jobs at a slower pace," University of Maryland economist Peter Morici wrote in an analysis. "No study of economic history could yield a conclusion...

The ground of debate shifts when a prominent figure says that a contentious topic is a matter of morality, not politics. President Obama should remember that precept in these final days of the health-care debate. The best recent example of the power of moral argument was Adm. Mike Mullen’s frank statement to Congress last month about the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military: “No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who...

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) has warned that he and other pro-life Democrats are ready to kill health-care legislation unless the pro-abortion provisions enacted by the Senate are removed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must win their votes to pass her bill. To do so she will have to promise two things: first, to fix the provisions they oppose in a reconciliation bill; and second to get an iron-clad commitment from Senate Democrats they will vote to sustain whatever deal she makes.The problem for Stupak and his allies is that such a guarantee is not enough to ensure their position prevails --...

Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the police chief of Dubai, certainly knows how to milk a good story for all it’s worth. It’s now been six weeks since Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his room in an airport hotel, and most of the world long ago concluded that Israel’s Mossad spy agency was responsible. Yet day after day Tamim continues to make headlines, dribbling out more details of the clumsy and not-so-clandestine operation and issuing grandiose pronouncements. Today, for example, he was quoted as saying Dubai would issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu...

President Obama's endorsement Wednesday of a risky legislative maneuver to complete health-care legislation sent Democratic leaders scrambling to settle policy disputes and assemble the votes necessary for passage in the coming weeks. In a speech at the White House, Obama urged Congress to "finish its work" on health care and indicated support for a strategy that includes the budget maneuver known as reconciliation, which would protect the final product from a Republican filibuster in the Senate. Obama told an audience of medical professionals that Congress "owes the American people a final vote on health-care reform." But completing the job would...

President Obama declared for the first time yesterday that he was prepared to steamroller his troubled health reform legislation through Congress with only Democratic support; a move Republicans denounced as the “nuclear option”. Signalling that his patience had snapped after a year-long fight, Mr Obama laid the ground for Democrats in Congress to muscle the Bill through using a high-risk legislative manoeuvre known as reconciliation, which overrides a Republican filibuster. Although he did not use the word “reconciliation”, Mr Obama made it clear that that was the route he intended to take. Democrats will, as a result, be able to...

Democrats want to ruin a system that's the envy of the worldPresident Obama and congressional Democrats are ramping up efforts to ram through a government takeover of the health care system. The vast majority of Americans are opposed to this bureaucratic power grab because they know government will do what it always does, which is increase cost while lowering efficiency and service. In case there's any doubt, all you have to do is look to our neighbor to the north for tales of doom and gloom that come with nationalized health care. Canada provides a clear warning about government involvement...

The integrity of climate change research is in doubt after the disclosure of e-mails that attempt to suppress data, a leading scientific institute has said. The Institute of Physics said that e-mails sent by Professor Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, had broken “honourable scientific traditions” about disclosing raw data and methods and allowing them to be checked by critics. Professor Jones admitted to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee yesterday that he had “written some very awful e-mails”, including one in which he rejected a request for information on...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will offer changes to his healthcare overhaul this week, the White House said on Monday, and a leading Democrat said the president was preparing a smaller version of his broad bid to revamp the $2.5 trillion industry.After a healthcare "summit" last week failed to win Republican converts, Obama and his fellow Democrats have been expected to launch a final push for an overhaul using a process known as reconciliation to get the measure through the Senate without opposition support. "The president will speak on this later in the week, likely on Wednesday," said White...

Research by hurricane scientists may force the UN’s climate panel to reconsider its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms. The benchmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that a worldwide increase in hurricane-force storms since 1970 was probably linked to global warming. It followed some of the most damaging storms in history such as Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans and Hurricane Dennis which hit Cuba, both in 2005. The IPCC added that humanity could expect a big increase in such storms over the 21st century unless...