Free Republic

President Trump's administration, on orders to kill two regulations for every new one, ripped up the playbook during its first six months, eliminating 16 old rules for every new one, according to top officials. "It's really the beginning of a kind of fundamental regulatory reform and a reorientation of where we're going with regulation," said Neomi Rao, the newly installed administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. In a briefing with a handful of reporters, Rao laid out the administration's regulation agenda, declaring, "It's a beginning ... you're going to see...

Under a law signed on Wednesday, pro-life pregnancy centers in Hawaii will be forced to tell patients about free abortions provided by the state. And if they don't, they could face fines up to $1,000 dollars for a repeated offense. There are currently five pro-life centers in the state. "This clinic does not provide abortion services or abortion referrals. Only ultrasounds performed by qualified healthcare professionals and read by licensed clinicians should be considered medically accurate," reads the mandatory notification the centers will have to provide patients with. "Hawaii has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to...

When I read the president’s speech in Warsaw the other day, I was stunned. Who could have “thunk” it? Certainly in my lifetime, I have never read a presidential address that caught me by such surprise. It was the context that grabbed me. Western civilization has a context, and that’s what has been missing from presidential addresses for a long, long time, perhaps with the exception of Ronald Reagan. But this speech seems to grasp the contextual situation much better than Reagan did in terms of the full scope of the struggle for survival going on in our world. A...

I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. Psalm 138:2 KJV “We want God”, was the chant of the Polish people when they were calling for their freedom from Soviet oppression during the prayers of Pope John Paul in Warsaw. They did not want money or jobs or handouts they wanted God who represented their freedom just as our forefathers wanted to worship God freely when they sailed to America. It is time for America to go back to God...

"White privilege" (their term for self-sufficient productive people) is a direct result of our American heritage and Judeo-Christian work ethic and free market economy. America was founded on the Judeo-Christian principles of liberty, freedom, self-sufficiency, self-responsibility, self-governance, respect for God, respect for self, for each other and the law, civic responsibility and the value of family, church, tradition, education and hard work. The liberal/progressive/atheist/socialist democrats have been working overtime for a hundred years or more trying to tear all that down. They are teaching our children that there is no God, that government is all powerful and will provide for...

A 4th of July Meditation on the Paradox that Freedom Can Only Exist Within Limits Msgr. Charles Pope • July 3, 2017 • (credit: Rgoogin at Wikipedia)All across the United States on the Fourth of July, we celebrate freedom. In particular, freedom from tyranny, from government that is not representative, from unchecked power, and from unaccountable sovereigns.Yet as Christians, we cannot overlook that there are ways of understanding freedom today that are distorted, exaggerated, and detached from a proper biblical, Christian, or Natural Law context. Many modern concepts of freedom treat it as somewhat of an abstraction Yes, many...

President Donald J. Trump to Join Pastor Robert Jeffress in Honoring Veterans at the Kennedy Center for the ‘Celebrate Freedom’ Concert This Saturday Trump is spending the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, but plans to travel back to Washington on Saturday night for the "Celebrate Freedom Rally" at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.... A news release says that Trump will: "deliver a powerful address honoring our veterans, hundreds of whom will be coming from D.C. area to attend the event, including wounded warriors who are patients at the Walter Reed Medical Center."

Seems like more Americans are engaging the political process. Politics is involved in every single aspect of your life. You may not be involved in politics, but rest assured, politics is involved in your life. You may live in the Land of Freedom, but you cannot do anything without the directive, tax, fee, regulation or authority of your government. From the moment you woke up this morning lying under those government-approved, fire-resistance sheets to driving your highly regulated car and arrive at your job at a business permitted by the State, everything is touched by your government. You cannot allow...

My "Rewriting American History" column of a fortnight ago, about the dismantling of Confederate monuments, generated considerable mail. Some argued there should not be statues honoring traitors such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, who fought against the Union. Victors of wars get to write the history, and the history they write often does not reflect the facts. Let's look at some of the facts and ask: Did the South have a right to secede from the Union? If it did, we can't label Confederate generals as traitors. Article 1 of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which...

BERLIN — In a coordinated campaign across 14 states, the German police on Tuesday raided the homes of 36 people accused of hateful postings over social media, including threats, coercion and incitement to racism. ... The raids come as Germans are debating the draft of a new social media law aimed at cracking down on hate speech, a measure that an array of experts said was unconstitutional at a parliamentary hearing on Monday. ... According to Mr. Mihr, Germany’s current instruments for persecuting hate speech, as demonstrated by Tuesday’s raids, are working. “The raid shows that we don’t need this...

As a sociologist and legal scholar, I struggle to explain the boundaries of free speech to undergraduates. Despite the 1st Amendment—I tell my students—local, state, and federal laws limit all kinds of speech. We regulate advertising, obscenity, slander, libel, and inciting lawless action to name just a few. My students nod along until we get to racist and sexist speech. Some can’t grasp why, if we restrict so many forms of speech, we don’t also restrict hate speech. Why, for example, did the Supreme Court on Monday rule that the trademark office cannot reject “disparaging” applications—like a request from an...

Greg Caskey is a 27-year-old Abington, Pennsylvania, native who is a social sciences teacher at Delaware Military Academy. The academy is a thriving charter high school in Wilmington, Delaware, that was founded in 2003 by two retired military officers, Charles Baldwin and Jack Wintermantel. Students from all socio-economic backgrounds attend the school, which is doing a stellar job of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic and, just as importantly, moral character and self-discipline. Mr. Caskey is one of the school's standout teachers. He has developed an innovative way of teaching the principles of economics to the school's students -- a curriculum...

Former President Barack Obama in Montreal this week warned the world against income inequality and the concentration of wealth, all while pulling down $7,700 per minute at his $400,000 speech. Obama’s first post-presidency address on Canadian soil was loaded with anti-Trump, anti-capitalism and anti-American rhetoric. Big surprise there. Obama said that the concentration of wealth fans fears that governments exist solely to benefit the powerful, NBC reported and noted that Obama is now “striving to be an international community organizer.” He said the U.S. and other nations showed there was a better way “in creating an international order that was...

I was 12 the first time I felt the crippling cramps. I hadn’t yet gotten my period and was happily running around a state fair with my best friend, mouth full of cotton candy, when it hit me: a steady drum of pain beneath my pubic bone, a throbbing in my back that made its way down both my legs. I fell to the muddy ground. Suddenly the Ferris wheel was a nightmare, the carnival games distorted and unpleasant. I blacked out.

The Metropolitan Police have issued a warning to 'run, tell and hide' as they hunt for terrorists who went on a rampage on the streets of London tonight.

The deadline to pass bills from their house of origin is this Friday, June 2. Yesterday, May 30, the Senate passed anti-gun bill, Senate Bill 497, which extends California’s one-handgun-a-month limitation to all guns, by a vote of 25 – 13. It is obvious this legislation is another attempt to place more barriers on those exercising their rights and does nothing to address the criminal misuse of firearms or firearm trafficking. Criminals who generally acquire their firearms through illicit means will continue to ignore California’s stringent laws including limitations on the number of firearms that can be acquired within a...

If you approach the study of our Constitution with the mental image of building a house, it’s easier to comprehend and retain what you are learning. The original four short pages that make up the seven Articles of the Constitution provide the concrete foundation and the framework. The authors were literally called the “framers” of the Constitution. The Articles are short, to the point, and critically important in understanding the foundation of our republic. Patrick Henry said, “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people. It is an instrument for the people to restrain the...

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." —Winston ChurchillAs we do on this day each year, we pause to remember the men and women who died fighting for our freedom. We stand by humbly, gratefully, silently, to honor their sacrifice.We remember…We mourn for those lost…And we mourn for those they’ve left behind…As we reflect again on the the steep price of freedom.By all means, enjoy your picnics, parades and celebrations today – it is a holiday after all. But do pause to remember and honor all the brave Americans across...

In his weekly address released today, President Donald Trump said he is looking forward to talking with Pope Francis about how Christian teaching can put the world on a path to freedom. Trump noted that after his visits in Saudi Arabia and Israel, he will be traveling to the Vatican. “I'll head to the Vatican,” said Trump, “where I will have the great honor of an audience with Pope Francis. I look forward to speaking with the Pope about how Christian teachings can help put the world on a path to justice, freedom, and peace.” {..snip..}

We're living through a time when there seems to be something new and alarming in the news every day. Our media cycle is dominated by the dramatic, and one consequence of this is that alarming events can unfold on the state and local level going unnoticed despite their ultimately national consequences. One such example is before Oregon's state legislature. First introduced in January, an alarming bill, SB 494, would radically change the meaning of healthcare in that state, with the potential for national ripple effects. SB 494 would put countless medically vulnerable persons at risk of a premature and untimely...