Free Republic

Their signs may have read “united for students” but little about the recent teachers’ strikes in Chicago and Detroit public schools actually benefited the city’s children. That’s because teachers in both cities have staged “sickouts,” forcing schools to close and sending roughly 450,000 students into the streets of two of America’s most dangerous cities. At the helm of these protests are unions that use collective bargaining disputes to call on teachers to leave the classroom and block traffic during rush hour. These strikes are just the latest example of how unions can manipulate workers and taxpayers to advance their own...

Nine GOP committee chairmen lined up behind presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump Friday, just a day after the billionaire businessmen met with key party leaders on Capitol Hill. In a statement released announcing the endorsement, the chairmen said that it was important for Republicans to unite around Trump since America cannot deal with another Democrat in the White House nor can Republicans to lose their hold on Congress. “Any other outcome is a danger to economic growth, puts our national security in peril, enshrines ObamaCare as the law of the land, entraps Americans in a cycle of poverty and dependence,...

Nearly every 12 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies of a drug overdose. People in communities across America are abusing both prescription pain killers and heroin. It is an epidemic. No one is immune; it is a sad reality that is playing out across the country, including in my own district in Southwest Michigan. There were 13 suspected overdoses in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the first quarter of 2013, up from 9 in the first quarter of 2012. Behind these numbers are real folks, and their families, suffering. In 2008, we lost Amy Bousfield, an 18 year-old graduate of Portage Central...

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce will use its Select Investigative Panel to investigate late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart. Public reports show at least almost half-a-dozen women have been hospitalized since December while seeking an abortion at his Germantown, Md., abortion clinic. The clinic is one of the few in the country that performs abortions during the third trimester. "Reports regarding the Germantown clinic are deeply troubling, both for the sake of babies whose lives are ended so close to — and possibly even after — birth and for the sake of the women who have been rushed from that...

A Republican congressman has introduced legislation that would block the District of Columbia government from spending its local tax dollars without approval by Congress. Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee on government operations, introduced the bill Thursday, according to a copy of the legislation. It seeks to clarify the requirement that the District submit its local budget to Congress, as it has during more than 40 years of self-rule. …

See UNBELIEVABLE VIDEO below of Cubans and Africans in an uprising, because Costa Rica won’t let them through to come to the US. Panama and Costa Rican Officials have a MESS on their hands with illegal aliens from everywhere trying to get across their borders, all headed for the USA. A recent report from the Center For Immigration Studies states “the Costa Rican authorities have reported the presence of people of 14 different nationalities at that border.” The whole world has heard that America’s borders are open, and they are coming. In addition to the thousands of Cubans (who the...

Federal court to Obama: Sorry, champ, you can't spend money on ObamaCare if Congress didn't allocate it It seemed an astoundly obvious case. The power of the purse belongs to Congress, and the executive branch can’t just spend money if Congress never passed a bill allocating the money. But ths is the presidency of Barack Obama, where things like the Constitution and balances of power are mere puzzles to be solved by a power-crazed executive. Remember, this is the guy who regularly declares, “If Congress won’t act, I will!” No, champ. If Congress won’t act, you can’t. That’s how the...

Beyond the larger context of Globalists VS Nationalists, the internal opposition to Common Sense economic conservatism/nationalism can be fundamentally broken down into two categories: ♦  The first group are those who are fundamentally naive about large and historic economic issues; and how the economy was changed, forced to change, through the past forty years by financial interests who created a second, “false“, paper economy. This first group is generally young, pseudo-intellectual, and their only reference has been while formally educated within the last thirty years (they’re under 50).   Most of the oppositional (conservative) punditry falls into this category.  Important to note, this...

An anonymous congressman has dropped a bombshell election-year book that confirms why Americans hate their national government and have rallied to anti-establishment presidential candidates like Donald Trump. The veteran politician lays bare a rotten and corrupt Congress enslaved by lobbyists and interested only in re-election in an anonymous, 65-page manifesto called “The Confessions of Congressman X.” “Like most of my colleagues, I promise my constituents a lot of stuff I can never deliver,” he admits. “But what the hell? It makes them happy hearing it . . . My main job is to keep my job.” The House member —...

It seems that federal officials have worked overtime to undermine public trust. Benghazi, the IRS abuses, the “fast and furious” gun-running fiasco, the solar power boondoggles, and the seemingly endless implementation problems of the Affordable Care Act—all these scandals have common themes: arrogant and abusive bureaucracy, double dealing, lame excuses, and legal hairsplitting. The outrages listed above can be placed squarely at the doorstep of the White House. But one scandal is truly bipartisan: How key administration and congressional officials connived to create, under cover of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, special health insurance subsidies for members...

Did a key official in the ObamaCare chain of command lie to Congress about funds recouped from state-based exchanges? Andy Slavitt, acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) testified in a House Energy and Commerce hearing last December that CMS had recouped over $200 million from state-based exchanges (SBEs) that have failed. Further investigation, however, shows that Slavitt’s claim was false — that the actual grant dollars recovered was about a tenth of what he claimed, and that even those dollars were not “recouped,” but just never transmitted in the first place. The executive summary lays...

Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's vice-presidential running mate, sold stock in US banks on the same day he attended a confidential meeting where top level officials disclosed the sector was heading for a deep crisis. The congressman on Monday denied profiting from information gleaned from the meeting on 18 September 2008 when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, then treasury secretary Hank Paulson and others outlined their fears for the banking sector.

Never one to hold back, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader and bane of the Koch brothers and Mitt Romney, made clear on Thursday that he intended to spend much of the rest of the year savaging Donald J. Trump. In a conference call with reporters from his home in Las Vegas, Mr. Reid lit into Mr. Trump, calling him anti-woman, anti-Hispanic, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-President Obama and anti-working people, to name a few. “It is a sad day for Republicans when they decide to bow to Trump,” said Mr. Reid, who is not running for re-election, potentially freeing...

The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer,” speaking exclusively with Fox News, claimed he easily – and repeatedly – breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013. "For me, it was easy ... easy for me, for everybody," Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News from a Virginia jail where he is being held.

The United States has informed Pakistan it will have to pay for eight American F-16 fighter jets itself after members of Congress raised objections to the proposed deal that would have seen the U.S sponsoring part of the purchase. The deal, estimated to be worth about $699 million USD, was approved by the U.S in February whereby the U.S would assist Pakistan with $430 million USD in aid to help finance the purchase. The deal involved up to eight F-16 fighter jets, along with radar and other equipment. However, this week, members of Congress voiced their unhappiness over the deal...

A few years back I asked a number of people how long does a Supreme Court Justice serve. Almost unanimously the response was until death or resignation. No one’s response was constitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution that says a Supreme Court Justice or any other federal judge serves for life or until they resign. Here is what the Constitution says about the term of office of a Supreme Court Justice or federal judge: “Article III. Section. 1. The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the...

Politicians describe Social Security as "the third rail," meaning that enacting any benefit cuts will kill them politically. But this is precisely what they voted to do under the Bipartisan Budget Bill of 2015. The bill reduced the benefits of married couples and divorcees who were younger than 62 as of Jan. 2 by up to $60,000. Even $25,000 is a lot of money for most workers, given that the median household income is about $50,000. The new law prevents most people who reach age 66 from providing spousal benefits to their spouse or children while letting their own retirement...

Greenpeace charged on Monday that a massive US-EU trade deal would place corporate interests above the environment and consumer safety, as it released classified documents from the negotiations. […] Greenpeace said the papers show, for example, that the US wants to be able to scrap existing EU rules in areas such as food labeling or approval of dangerous chemicals if it they spell barriers to free trade. “TTIP is about a huge transfer of power from people to big business,” the group argued, having also projected an image of a classified text passage onto the façade of Berlin’s parliament building....

"... One new idea that has not yet been proposed is for Congress to empower states to have the ability to reform their insolvent pension plans. Such legislation would pre-empt state laws that prohibit states from making necessary reforms. It would allow pension reform laws passed by state assemblies to take effect. ..."

We are re-upping this post from early 2014 in light of Boehner labeling Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh" and saying, "I've never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life." Here's where their work together began, two decades ago. For what it's worth, Cruz downplayed their relationship Thursday in his comments responding to Boehner. "I've met John Boehner two or three times in my life," he assured. As we show below, that's not entirely accurate.