Free Republic

It looks like the days of trading half of your peanut butter and jelly sandwich for half of your best friendÂ’s ham sandwich may soon be over if the federal government has anything to do with it. A Richmond, Virginia mother received the following note, telling her not to pack a lunch for her pre-school age child. (source: Momdot.com) Dear Parents, I have received word from Federal Programs Preschool pertaining to lunches from home. Parents are to be informed that students can only bring lunches from home if there is a medical condition requiring a specific diet, along with...

A Democratic member of Congress is using the government shutdown to pressure the Department of the Interior to prohibit oil and gas exploration on federal land. Energy companies should not be able to use federal lands if those lands are closed to hikers and campers, according to Rep. Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Grijalva started an online petition to demand that Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “stop mining [on] public lands while visitors are locked out.” “Fossil fuel and logging companies shouldn’t have special access to our federal lands while...

Remember when the media rushed to talk about transparency in the Barack Obama “Hope and Change” era? Good times, good times. Leonard Downie, who once worked as the executive editor of the Washington Post and wrote a novel about Washington corruption and the Iraq War, finds a bigger and non-fictional problem in the successor to George W. Bush. Downie gives the Post a preview of his report from the Committee to Protect Journalists which outlines the Obama war on reporters and their sources: “A memo went out from the chief of staff a year ago to White House employees and...

An Australian climate change body scrapped by the new government has been relaunched as a non-profit organisation reliant on public donations. Prime Minister Tony Abbott axed the Climate Commission, set up by the previous government, last week. But the group resurrected itself as the Climate Council, saying it hoped "Obama-style" public donations raised online would keep it open.

A Baltimore-area police chief is reviewing the arrest of a man who rose at a town hall-style meeting to challenge the national Common Core standards and wound up in an angry confrontation with an off-duty police officer. Robert Small,46,showed up at the public forum Thursday night in Towson,but when he began asking questions about Common Core, the police officer,who was providing security at the meeting,shut him down. “My question is how does lowering educational standards prepare kids for ... college,because that’s what it’s all about?” Small asked in a scene caught on videotape. But audience members had been told to...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday vowed to move forward with legislation to expand background checks for gun buyers but said he doesn't have enough support yet to hold a vote. The Nevada Democrat said in light of the fatal shootings at the Washington Navy Yard Monday that killed 13, including the accused shooter, "we're going to move this [legislation] up as quickly as we can." But he quickly added he only will bring the matter to the Senate floor when he has the 60 votes likely needed to pass the measure, a move he said isn't plausible in...

<p>Monday’s deadly shooting at the Washington Navy Yard has renewed interest in why most military personnel are forbidden from carrying firearms on military bases. In the aftermath, some have pointed fingers at former President Bill Clinton, but is he really to blame?</p> <p>Not according to what we found.</p>

(Headline only) Breaking News: Syria accepts Russian proposal to put chemical weapons under international control - Interfax

Voters go to the polls next Tuesday in the first-ever state Senate recalls in Colorado history, and liberals around the country are worried. Worried enough that New York’s billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg has put $350,000 into the state to protect two senators being targeted for recall recall because of their anti-gun views, according to The New York Times. Worried enough that “billionaire philanthropist” Eli Broad has pumped in a quarter-million to the same cause, according to The Times. (Ever notice only rich liberals are called “philanthropists” in the NYT?) Worried enough that New York liberal Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillebrand has...

Former White House regulatory czar Cass Sunstein says the international community hasn’t fought global warming because the people aren’t afraid enough. “An understanding of what human beings fear — and what they do not — helps to explain why nations haven’t insisted on more significant emissions reductions,” writes Sunstein, who is now a professor at Harvard Law School. According to Sunstein, one reason people don’t fear global warming is because they don’t associate it with any “particular tragedy or disaster.” … Sunstein notes, that there “are no obvious devils or demons — no individuals who intend to create the harms...

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According the San Jose Mercury News, the bills being heard in the state senate on August 12 would create a database of all ammo purchases in the state, "make it crime to have a gun that's not locked up when it's not being carried, and extend the time for which someone is banned from owning a firearm after making a violent threat." On August 13, another slate of bills will come before the State Assembly. These would ban all semi-automatic rifles with a detachable magazines, would "make it a crime to leave a gun unlocked when you're out of the...

Would Nazi Germany’s systematic enslavement and extermination policies have gone unchallenged by victim populations if the Third Reich had not imposed and expanded on the “gun control” edicts of the Weimar Republic? The question has been explored for decades now, by innovative civil rights groups presenting groundbreaking research, like Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, as well as by a handful of Second Amendment scholars. Unfortunately, for those interested in a more complete understanding, it has gone unasked and unmentioned in most “mainstream” history books. “A skeptic could surmise that a better-armed populace might have made no difference,” the...

The federal government is hiring what it calls a "Behavioral Insights Team" that will look for ways to subtly influence people's behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient.

Who will control your doctor? Yesterday the U.S. Energy and Commerce House health subcommittee voted to pass a version of the bipartisan 70-page draft "SGR repeal" bill that will change the way Medicare pays your doctor and other clinicians. The bill repeals a longstanding contentious system of yearly payment cuts under a law called the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) -- but then it puts government in charge of doctors. Congress has regularly passed annual "doc fix" bills to stop the SGR pay cuts. Thus, if the SGR cuts were finally allowed to take effect next year, Medicare payments to doctors...

Due largely to unauthorized leaks, we now know that the National Security Agency has seized from private companies voluminous data on the phone and Internet usage of all U.S. citizens. We've also learned that the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved the constitutionality of these seizures in secret proceedings in which only the government appears, and in opinions kept secret even from the private companies from whom the data are seized. If this weren't disturbing enough, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform, is compiling a massive database of citizens' personal information—including monthly...

Nothing in politics happens by accident, so the saying goes and is absolutely true. Our constitutional republic has been under attack for more than a century by individuals who desire to rule the world. You and I are merely underlings who provide massive power and riches to them through the ballot box and our consumer dollars. Unraveling all the organizations that yank the strings of American politics can be daunting. In 2005, I penned two important pieces for WND: “The treasonous Council on Foreign Relations” and “The treasonous Trilateral Commission.” Nothing has changed. Those two organizations are not some harmless...

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, June 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that generic drugmakers cannot be sued under state law for adverse reactions to their products, a decision that consumer advocates called a blow to patient safety. In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled for Mutual Pharmaceutical Co, owned by Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, overturning a multimillion-dollar jury award to a badly injured patient in New Hampshire who alleged a generic drug she had taken was unsafe based on its chemical design. The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, said the state's law could not run against...

“I pledge allegiance to the Earth and all its sacred parts. Its water, land, and living things and all its human hearts.” -Global Education Associates, The Earth Pledge If you like your electricity, refrigeration, and air conditioning, you should pay careful attention. Most readers are by now familiar with Smart Meters that read electricity, gas, and water consumption from a remote location. They are mandated and forced upon us by the United Nations Agenda 21 through its octopus arms of the EPA, the federal government, NGOs, and local and state governments in the name of saving the planet. The Utility...

As EAGnews reported previously, the data compiled through Common Core will yield all sorts of non-education related information about students for bureaucrats: family income, religious affiliation, discipline problems, number of hours worked per weekend, medical laboratory procedure results, amount of non-school activity involvement and computer screen name. How would voters react if they knew an aspect of Common Core is to collect this sort of information on kindergarteners?