Free Republic

Since county officials began questioning firefighters’ use of sick leave two years ago, sick-leave requests in the Clark County Fire Department have fallen by 57,000 hours. A county report obtained in response to a Sun request found that within those 57,000 hours, battalion chiefs’ sick leave fell from an average of 164 hours a year two years ago to about 16 hours last year, a 90 percent decline. For rank-and-file firefighters, the average hours of sick leave taken fell from 227 hours two years ago to 136 hours last year, a 40 percent drop. The staggering decline has saved Clark...

We get on President Obama’s case for neglecting to keep his campaign promises, so it’s only fair to note when he fulfills them. In January 2008, Obama promised to bankrupt coal-fired power plants with his new environmental regulations. Consider this a promise kept: GenOn Energy Inc. plans to close five of its older coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania over the next four years.The company, based in Houston, said Wednesday that tough new environmental rules make it unprofitable to operate the plants, which generate a total of 3,140 megawatts of electricity. The plants are in Portland, Shawville, Titus, New Castle and...

A number of states have joined with industry organizations to challenge new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency on the grounds that they run contrary to the Clean Air Act. Oral arguments began on February 28 before D.C.’s Court of Appeals.Previous cases have not gone so well. In 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court affirmed the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. And last year, the Court unanimously threw out a lawsuit, American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, that was brought by eight states. In its decision, the court held...

I"m a nurse anesthetist, and I just got a work-related email from my boss. Basically it said "please conserve midazolam, fentanyl, morphine, and hydromorphone.....supplies are CRITICALLY short & the hospital is struggling to maintain supplies". Um, ok. The last time I checked, this was the United States, not Crapistan. How are we "critically short" on all of the major anesthesia drugs that we use??? Am I supposed to offer the patient a bullet to bite? Are there any FReepers out there who have ties to the pharm industry and can explain this? Speaking with others throughout the hospital, I have...

This week, talks for updating the treaty on Internet governance will begin in Geneva. This treaty could result in the granting of numerous new powers over the Internet to the United Nations. The push to finalize the treaty by year’s end comes from a number of countries, including Russia, China, and many Arab states. Their aim to give the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) more power is based on a desire to impose international controls and regulations onto the Net, threatening technological innovation, free speech, and the free flow of information. A number of the proposals for these new powers...

First Amendment: The ex-head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops compares the administration take on freedom of worship to the Soviet Union's and says its contraceptive mandate will force church hospitals to close. On the first Sunday of Lent, Chicago's Francis Cardinal George issued his version of the letter issued by the USCCB he recently led. It shredded assurances by the administration that things could be worked out so that religious freedom would not be impaired and painted a bleak future that just might be the administration's intent. Going a bit further than his peers, Cardinal George essentially rejected...

In yet another slight to rule of law, the Obama Administration has asked a federal court to put a press conference pronouncement above official regulation. Last week, the Department of Justice filed a legal response to one of numerous lawsuits currently challenging the constitutionality of the Obamacare anti-conscience mandate. The Administration submitted its response to the legal complaint of Belmont Abbey College, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, to the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. In what the Becket Fund is calling a “remarkable” stance, the Obama Administration argues that the court should dismiss Belmont...

Unbelievable. Yes, this happened HERE. People who are concerned about the spread of Muslim sharia law into American jurisprudence used to be dismissed as alarmists. That won’t happen again for a while, thanks to a Pennsylvania judge who just dismissed assault charges against a Muslim who was videotaped attacking a man dressed as “Zombie Muhammad” during a Halloween parade. The judge, who is a Muslim, didn’t even care to see the videotape, because the assault was entirely justified under sharia law, so the First Amendment doesn’t apply. In fact, the beaten Zombie Muhammad should just be thankful he wasn’t killed,...

Obama Cabinet Secretary: 'The Private Market is in a Death Spiral' By Fred Lucas February 29, 2012 (CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday that the days of private health insurance are coming to an end in the United States. “The private market is in a death spiral,” Sebelius said, contending this would be the case whether or not President Barack Obama's health care law had been enacted. At the Ways and Means hearing, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) asked Sebelius about the administration’s assurances that people who liked their...

Calling pro-family citizens "rabid," the Maryland Attorney General told a homosexual rally in September that if "the right-wing myopic folks" win a vote to overturn the new "gay marriage" law, then the Governor's newly appointed judges will strike down the current one-man-one-woman marriage law as unconstitutional — "so we will win." That's what Douglas Gansler, Maryland's aggressively pro-homosexual Attorney General, told a rally of homosexual group Equality Maryland back on Sept. 7, 2011. As Gansler has acknowledged, "gay marriage" has been universally rejected across the country, by the will of the people. It's only been instituted by judges or legislatures,...

In 1942, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Supreme Courts ruled that an Ohio farmer named Filburn was NOT permitted to raise the amount of wheat he wished on his own farm, for the purpose of feeding his own family. And for 70 years this and a handful of similar, overreaching decisions by the Court have resulted in the wholesale abuse of a power granted Congress in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, namely the “Commerce Clause.” (1) In the Wickard v Filburn case, the Court opened to Congress the nearly unlimited power to exercise legislative authority relating to...

The Justice Department will defend against any legal challenge to the new Obama administration mandate to force employers to provide abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception, even if it goes against their conscience, Attorney General Eric Holder told a House subcommittee Tuesday. The Department of Health and Human Services rule, part of Obamacare, violates the freedom of conscience for Catholics and other religious groups that expressed their objections to the mandate, opponents say. Already there is litigation asserting that the rule violates the First Amendment’s guarantee to free exercise of religion.

Numerous Tea Party chapters claim IRS attempts to sabotage nonprofit status By Perry Chiaramonte Published February 28, 2012 | FoxNews.com Tea Party chapters around the nation are blasting the Internal Revenue Service after the federal agency sent them letters demanding information about their politics, contributors and even family members. In letters sent from IRS offices in Cincinnati earlier this month, chapters including the Waco (Texas) Tea Party and the Ohio Liberty Council were asked to provide a list of donors, identify volunteers, financial support for and relationships with political candidates and parties, and even printed copies of their Facebook pages....

The Energy Department isn’t working to lower gasoline prices directly, Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday after a Republican lawmaker scolded him for his now-infamous 2008 comment that gas prices in the U.S. should be as high as in Europe. Instead, DOE is working to promote alternatives such as biofuels and electric vehicles, Chu told House appropriators during a hearing on DOE’s budget. But Americans need relief now, Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) said — not high gasoline prices that could eventually push them to alternatives. “I can’t look at motivations. I have to look at results. And under this administration the...

Warning that the Church is being “despoiled of her institutions” as “freedom of conscience and of religion become a memory from a happier past,” Cardinal Francis George of Chicago observes that “the Catholic Church in the United States is being told she must ‘give up’ her health care institutions, her universities and many of her social service organizations.” “So far in American history, our government has respected the freedom of individual conscience and of institutional integrity for all the many religious groups that shape our society,” he continues. “The government has not compelled them to perform or pay for what...

Gun owners, possessing firearms for hunting and self-protection, are beset each year with a volley of laws, rules, regulations, ordinances, and judicial decrees that affect their hunting privileges and rights under the Second Amendment. Judges in each county of the state have the discretion to grant pistol permits on the basis of what they deem permissible in their county. New York State allows only carrying a pistol/ handgun that is concealed. Hence, when a person applies for a pistol permit, he or she is offered two basic options: restricted (to hunting or target shooting) or unrestricted (carried concealed on one’s...

Jessie Sansone and his family are reeling after he was arrested and strip searched by police after his four-year-old daughter drew a picture of a man with a gun in her Kitchener, Ont., kindergarten class. The 26-year-old father of four said Saturday the sketch was supposed to be him, getting the bad guys and monsters. The school must have thought differently, as after Nevaeh drew it Wednesday, the school contacted Family and Children's Services and they called police. Waterloo Police met Sansone at the school when he tried to pick up his kids he was told he was charged with...

Two men have been fined $20,000 for illegally cutting down five trees to improve the Lake Tahoe views from a home owned by one of them. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's governing board approved a settlement agreement Wednesday with Tanner Tingey of Fresno, Calif., who owns a second home near Tahoe City, Calif., on the lake's north shore; and with Trent Udlock of Tahoe City-based Udlock Landscape Construction. The two men worked together last summer to remove five trees larger than 14 inches in diameter from Carnelian Bay property just below Tingey's Tahoe home, the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza reported...

Despite being criticized for a potential payout of more than $200,000 to retiring Henderson Police Chief Jutta Chambers through the city’s Voluntary Employee Severance Program, city officials remain steadfast employee buyouts will result in savings for the city in the long run. “The main objective of the VESP is to have employees take that buyout and then not fill those positions,” said Mayor Andy Hafen. “We realize that that’s not going to happen in every single case. In the case of Chief Chambers, obviously the only cost benefit that we might get is that the next chief may not be...

RENO, Nev. - The biggest prior threats to Burning Man's annual regeneration in the Black Rock Desert were U.S. land use laws, undercover cops and the media-perpetuated perception that the largest outdoor arts festival in North America is really just an excuse to get naked and do drugs. But that was before the teeth-gnashing "ticket fiasco." Two decades after the free spirits moved their party from San Francisco's Baker Beach to a dried up ancient lake bed 120 miles north of Reno, the annual pilgrimage with its drum circles, decorated art cars, guerilla theatrics and colorful theme camps has become...