Free Republic

In an effort to cut down on the number of alcohol related accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board wants to lower the legal limit for driving from a 0.08 to 0.05 blood alcohol content in all states. That doesn't mean post-dinner-out driving standards will be more exacting anytime soon, though — indeed, the fight is just now underway, and from some of the most unlikely of people. ~snip~ Of course, the NTSB can't order the state or federal governments to do anything. They can only make recommendations about that one fewer beer. In fact, the recommendation to lower the legal...

The US Senate on Monday passed a bill aimed at ending tax-free shopping on the internet but the move looks set to face fierce opposition before it becomes law. The Marketplace Fairness Act, which has cross-party supporter and the backing of powerful retailers, would give states the power to require retailers with sales over $1m to collect state and local sales taxes for online purchases.

The Hill reports that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback just signed into law a statute that "bars the federal government from regulating guns and ammunition manufactured and stored within Kansas state lines." Moreover, the new law makes it a felony for federal authorities to attempt to enforce federal gun control laws, treaties, or rules related to firearms within Kansas state lines. Federal agents would not be arrested but will be prosecuted on "a complaint-and-summons basis." Naturally, U.S. Attorney general Eric Holder is furious. Already he has sent a letter to Brownback promising, “The United States will take all appropriate action, including...

With the Autumnal Equinox now behind us, We, the People of Massachusetts, are reminded that in less than a month’s time we’ll be called upon to elect (or re-elect) a Senator to represent our interests in the upper house of the United States Congress. T’was not always thus. Those among my readers who stayed awake during Mrs. McGuffey’s 9th Grade History class will recall that, until the 2nd decade of the 20th Century, U.S. Senators were (per Art. 1, Sec. 3 of the Constitution) chosen by state legislatures, not elected directly by the people as at present. The most contentious issue facing the...

...The usual refrain among Republicans is that Congress should always be looking to “return power to the states.” But as George Mason University law professor Michael Greve explains in his book, The Upside-Down Constitution, the manner in which the federal government empowers states matters. Through “competitive federalism,” states are free to tax and regulate their own citizens as they see fit, and citizens and businesses can then move between the states. This is Greve’s Constitutional ideal. But under “cartel federalism,” which is what most of our federalist system has degenerated into, the federal government taxes everyone and then gives grants...

I would like to think that Supreme Court justices are smarter than I am. At one level, they surely are. Their years of devotion to the practice and analysis of law involves countless pages of book-learning I will never undertake. Their brains must fairly bulge with minutiae I cannot grasp. But there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom. There are high school dropouts who have deep wells of astuteness about how to think, act and live in an enlightened way. And there are Ph.D.’s I would not let into my house. In one stunning moment Tuesday from the Supreme...

...None other than the legislative haunt of Gov. Andrew “confiscation could be an option” Cuomo and loathsome nanny-state Mayor Bloomberg, of course. George Mason University's Mercatus Center just released the third edition of their comprehensive "Freedom in the Fifty States" study, ranking "the American states based on how their policies promote freedom in the fiscal, regulatory, and personal realms." The researchers calculated in factors ranging from the states’ levels of government spending and debt, tax burden, property rights protection, and health insurance freedom all the way to their policies on alcohol, tobacco, gambling, marriage, and firearms. North Dakota, South Dakota,...

"The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust." -- Samuel Butler In the current political climate surrounding the hot topic of gun control, there has been much attention focused on the subject of "gun owner paranoia." One mainstream news agency after another has decried the lack of progress regarding the gun control bills currently stagnating in Congress due to gun owners' supposed fears regarding gun bans and firearms confiscation. However, despite the government assurances that gun confiscation is off the table, a sentiment that is being...

In a move that reminiscent of the tyrannical actions of Abraham Lincoln that led to the War of Northern Aggression, Barack Obama says that he will not wait on states to enforce Obamacare. Instead his administration has announced its intent is to completely disregard the state’s Tenth Amendment rights to nullification of the Obamacare law, via their passed legislation and state constitutions. In fact, his administration has said that in states where they refuse to comply with federal healthcare mandates that agents from the Department of Health and Human Services will assume absolute control over the state’s health insurance industry....

Alcohol occupies a peculiar position in the culture of the United States. Like so much else besides, it is subject to the ongoing brawl between puritanism and libertarianism, two philosophies that have long jockeyed for dominance here. Americans have made many contributions to the bar — including the perfection and popularization of the cocktail. But puritanism has survived, enjoying a rich history of its own. Benjamin Rush’s inquiries into alcoholism spawned a variety of anti-alcohol movements at the outset of the new republic; in the 1850s, “temperance” overlapped uncomfortably with the Know Nothing movement’s distaste for secular principles; and...

Since the murder of 20 kindergarten students in Newtown, Conn., sparked a nationwide debate over firearms, Gov. Peter Shumlin has been unwavering in his opposition to any new Vermont laws aimed at restricting the rights of gun owners. “I just think you need a 50-state solution,” Shumlin said at a press conference last Thursday. “That’s not something that I feel any ambiguity about.” Could a new piece of information change his mind? At that same press conference, Shumlin was asked whether state and local police should be able to enforce federal gun laws that aren’t codified in Vermont statute. Federal...

In his column of March 12, 2013, my beloved friend wrote on the issue of legalized marijuana in the state of Colorado. On his radio show, he justifiably bemoaned readers of his column who had written comments questioning his sanity and their relationship over this one issue despite years of being Prager groupies. I will not do any of that. But for only the second time in our long relationship, Mr. Prager, you are dead wrong on a topic … but I still love you. We Baby Boomers grew up in a generation where marijuana made the jump from the...

“Marriage, it doesn’t mean anything.” That’s what Barack Obama told wife Michelle while they were dating, according to her 2008 interview in The New Yorker. Marriage won’t mean anything if Obama has his way with the Supreme Court. As a suitor of voters, Obama expressed his “sacred” version in response to a question from Pastor Rick Warren just before the 2008 election: “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian -- for me -- for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God's in the mix.”...

The Obama administration denied an appeal for flexibility in lessening the sequester’s effects, with an email this week appearing to show officials in Washington that because they already had promised the cuts would be devastating, they now have to follow through on that. In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections. He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who...

One hundred years ago, the United States ratified an amendment to the Constitution that changed the way America chose its senators. The amendment's supporters said that senators directly elected by the people would not only be more democratic, but also less corrupt and less susceptible to special interest influence. Instead of reducing corruption, however, changing the method of Senate selection provided entirely new avenues of political exploitation by fundamentally transforming our federal government. Most importantly, the amendment destroyed the federalist structure that the Founding Fathers installed to protect state sovereignty. Today, members of the Georgia House of Representatives seek to...

It is a matter of public record that the United States Senate is a terrible place where serious policy issues are ignored; routine votes are occasionally delayed over concerns about non-existent terrorist groups; and proverbial cans are proverbially kicked down the proverbial road of sadness, gridlock, and despair. What's less clear is why the Senate is such a congress of louts. Is it the endless pressure to raise money? The never-ending campaign? The fact that Americans hold lots of substantive disagreements on important things and are themselves—it's been said—somewhat dysfunctional? Actually, according to Georgia state Rep. Buzz Brockaway, the biggest...

Rallies have been scheduled to protest Barack Obama’s gun agenda, members of Congress are pondering their resistance and American consumers are speaking daily with ever-new records for gun purchases. Now states are getting into action, with several legislatures already developing bills that would simply pull the rug from under the president’s agenda by specifying that unconstitutional rules or regulations, or executive orders, won’t be allowed. Rep. Kendell Kroeker of Wyoming introduced HB 104, The Firearms Protection Act, and spoke to WND about the bill. “The new bill expands to any gun owned in Wyoming and any gun regulation handed down...

The Illinois Senate could vote as early as tomorrow on a measure to sanction same-sex marriage in the state. One former member of that body has already weighed in: President Barack Obama. “Were the President still in the Illinois State Legislature, he would support this measure that would treat all Illinois couples equally," Obama spokesman Shin Inouye recently told the Chicago Sun-Times. It's unusual for a sitting president to get involved in a state legislative matter (especially, you might argue, a president whose own views on the issue have been unclear until recently). Supporters say it's just another indication that...

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work harder to persuade ideological friends and foes alike that the way to reduce partisanship and maximize happiness in America is to embrace federalism — the view that we should push as many decisions as possible to the lowest local level feasible.Federalism reduces partisanship by shrinking the importance of the federal government. It increases happiness by maximizing the number of people who get to live the way they want to live.Unfortunately, proponents of federalism tend to start the conversation with the really big issues: gay marriage, drugs, guns, abortion, etc.I’m for...