Free Republic

The group that pushed Florida's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is intervening in lawsuits filed by gay couples that raise challenges... Florida Family Policy Council officials said Wednesday they would seek to preserve the constitutional amendment approved by more than 62 percent of voters... A coalition of black and Hispanic civil rights groups and pastors is also defending Florida's constitutional ban.

Building the Machine introduces the public to the Common Core States Standards Initiative (CCSSI) and its effects on our children’s education. The documentary compiles interviews from leading educational experts, including members of the Common Core Validation Committee. Parents, officials, and the American public should be involved in this national decision regardless of their political persuasion. What is the common core? The Common Core is the largest systemic reform of American public education in recent history. What started as a collaboration between the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to reevaluate and nationalize America’s education standards...

Ukraine is in the news and that’s not a good thing. I’m not a foreign policy expert, to be sure, but it can’t be a positive sign when nations with nuclear weapons start squabbling with each other. And that’s what’s happening now that Russia is supposedly occupying Crimea and perhaps other parts of Ukraine and Western powers are complaining. I’m going to add my two cents to this issue, but I’m going to approach it from an unusual angle. Look at this linguistic map of Ukraine. The red parts of the country show where Russian is the primary language and...

In the face of a stagnating economy and national debt topping $17 trillion, many policymakers in Washington, D.C. are seeking ways to reduce spending. Given that many states increasingly rely on federal spending to craft their state budgets, the necessary federal spending reductions could pose a serious fiscal threat to states that fail to prepare. What’s more, those federal funds come with serious strings attached, which often hamper state autonomy and effectiveness in policymaking. A recent report from State Budget Solutions based on Census data reveals that on the whole, states received 31.6 percent of their total revenue from the...

For the first 125 years of our history (1789-1913), America was a country comprised of libertarian politics and conservative cultural values. 1) Libertarian politics is based upon the fact that man was meant to be free. Thus his government must be strictly limited by a Constitution rather than determined by the dictates of an autocrat or the passions of the majority. And his economy must be a free marketplace, i.e., laissez-faire capitalism. 2) Conservative cultural values are based upon the fact that there is an objective moral order in the universe, i.e., certain rights and wrongs in human life that...

Federal regulation of the Internet is a bad idea. So is federal regulation of states that would rather keep their local governments out of the Internet business. Following a recent federal court ruling about the power of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the Internet, supporters of government-run broadband Internet service have urged the FCC to preempt state restrictions on local government efforts to build and operate their own broadband networks that compete directly with the private sector. More significantly, an announcement yesterday by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, proposing yet another attempt to impose some sort of net neutrality...

With full control of the House but not the Senate or the White House, Republicans lack the ability to enact positive legislation; yet they have the power to stop bad bills. Unfortunately, GOP leaders have made it clear they are willing to pass much of the Obama/Reid agenda because they don’t want confrontation with Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. For conservatives, that pretty much leaves us with the strategy of attempting to pass good bills out of the House just for messaging purposes. With unelected federal judges and administration bureaucrats forcing gay “marriage” on sovereign states across the country,...

In an all too familiar theme, President Obama continues to vacillate when it comes to explaining his energy and environmental philosophy. On the one hand, the President spoke about his idea of an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, one that he hopes will someday lead to energy independence. On the other, he spoke about the importance of addressing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It will be interesting to see how he attempts to reconcile these two statements in the last three years of his presidency. President Obama’s State of the Union address contained a few positives but also many areas...

State Budget Solutions, a non-partisan public policy organization, has released their 4th annual report on state debt. The findings are not pleasant. The data shows that the total combined state debt is equal to $5.1 trillion. For perspective, this figure is almost five times as much as the bipartisan appropriations bill ($1.1 trillion) now working its way through Congress. This stunning amount of debt is a clear threat to state budgets and should deeply concern taxpayers who will eventually find themselves on the hook to repay this debt, either through decreased government services and/or tax increases. Pension-reform The drivers of...

This past month, the Illinois State Supreme Court determined the state’s affiliate nexus law—a law requiring out-of-state companies with advertising affiliates in the state to collect and remit sales tax—violated federal law. In the majority opinion, Justice Anne Burke ruled that Illinois’ attempt to force collection of sales tax by out-of-state retailers based on their decision to use in-state online advertising rather than traditional print advertising represented a discriminatory taxation regime on the Internet and therefore violated the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act. No one understands the significance of last month’s Illinois State Supreme Court decision better than FatWallet founder...

Viewed from Washington, which often is the last to learn about important developments, opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative still seems as small as the biblical cloud that ariseth out of the sea, no larger than a man’s hand. Soon, however, this education policy will fill a significant portion of the political sky. The Common Core represents the ideas of several national organizations (of governors and school officials) about what and how children should learn. It is the thin end of an enormous wedge. It is designed to advance in primary and secondary education the general progressive agenda...

With the endless gridlock of modern Washington, it’s tempting to want to ditch the whole American constitutional system and install a king, who could at least get things done. This is essentially what David Brooks is proposing in his column this month, though he doesn’t quite come out and say it. Brooks is right that gridlock is stifling desperately needed policy innovation and reform, but is wrong about the cause and solution for it. The problem is too much power and authority is centralized in the federal government. The solution is to look to the states, which are already a...

Washington (CNN) – The heated debate over the Washington Redskins name has now moved beyond living rooms and corporate offices to the U.S. government itself, with one agency making an unequivocal ruling that the term "Redskins" is offensive slang. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected an application to trademark the name "Redskins Hog Rind," writing that the term "Redskins" is "a derogatory slang term that refers to, and is considered offensive by, American Indians." The agency cited five definitions from online dictionaries - from The Oxford Dictionary to Yahoo – that labeled the word as offensive or disparaging. In...

MARIJUANA users celebrated yesterday as Colorado became the first US state to allow retail cannabis sales, putting it in the vanguard of efforts across the country to legalise the drug. The western state famous for its ski resorts and mountain vistas has issued 348 retail licences - including for small pot shops - that make it legal to sell up to 28g of pot to people aged 21 or older. Washington state will follow Colorado later this year. Iraq war veteran Sean Azzariti was the first person to legally purchase cannabis for recreational use in the US. "It's an absolute...

A federal judge struck down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban Friday in a decision that marks a drastic shift toward gay marriage in a conservative state where the Mormon church has long been against it. The decision set off an immediate frenzy as the clerk in the state’s most populous county began issuing marriage licenses to dozens of gay couples while state officials took steps to appeal the ruling and halt the process. Cheers erupted as the mayor of Salt Lake City led one of the state’s first gay wedding ceremonies in an office building about three miles from the headquarters...

There is a local connection to a national effort aimed at amending the U.S. Constitution through the convention process.. Amending the Constitution is not an easy task. It requires either a two-thirds vote by both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate; or, a national convention requested by two-thirds – 34 – of the 50 states. The Arizona Legislature adopted a resolution in 2012 calling for a nat, What do these lawmakers want to change? A website that lists all of the state legislators involved in the effort points to re-establishing federalism and limiting the growth of the federal...

The Obama administration, in refusing to challenge the legalization of marijuana in some states, is ignoring its duty to enforce federal law that is asserted in the supremacy clause of the Constitution. Professor Melvyn Levitsky, a former U.S. ambassador who now teaches at the University of Michigan, said of the ballot initiatives in the states of Colorado and Washington "I'm concerned about the federal government cherry-picking federal law, deciding which federal laws it's going to enforce."

I just don’t get why Republicans, even conservatives, can’t seem to get their sound-bites wrapped around ZeroCare. The reason HHS keeps jacking "standards" is to raise the price of insurance such that people choose to pay the penalty and fund their own care. If they have a problem, they'll just have to rely upon Medicaid. It’s a twofer: a tax increase on the middle class with Medicaid becoming the default single-payer system. Middle class Americans will get the same "coverage" (or worse) than illegal aliens. It's equality and social justice for all you little people all in one swell foop!...

This past September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a new proposed rule under the auspices of the Clean Air Act (CAA) limiting carbon emissions from power plants built in the future. EPA is currently working on developing similar regulations targeting existing fossil fuel fired power plants which are expected to be announced in June 2014. Over the past couple of weeks, EPA has hosted 11 listening sessions around the country ostensibly soliciting ideas from the public to help determine what the best way to reduce carbon emissions from existing power plants under the CAA is. There has been...

French Catholics criticised a constitutional court judgment denying local officials the right to opt out of conducting same-sex marriages. Antoine Renard, president of France’s National Federation of Catholic Family Associations, charged that the court was operating under political pressure in issuing its decision. “This ruling could have dramatic consequences for religious freedom both here and abroad,” he said. “It also suggests the French Constitution is old-fashioned and needs verification.” Renard’s comments came as representatives of 20,000 French mayors prepared a series of appeals against the court’s judgment on October 18 that, in effect, rejected calls for a conscience clause to...