Free Republic

Competitiveness: The latest index of economic freedom shows America falling fast, being ranked for the first time as "mostly free." We've fallen behind Canada, and it's look out below. Our accelerating descent into a command-and-control economy with government pulling the strings is taking its toll. The Heritage Foundation's 2010 index of leading economic indicators shows that the land of the free is only mostly free, falling to eighth in the world from sixth last year, now sandwiched between Canada and Denmark. That Canada, long considered a bastion of socialized medicine, is ranked as economically freer may surprise some. But our...

Heritage members and fans are discussing President Barack Obama’s State of the Unions address at Twitter and Facebook right now. And here are just some of our experts immediate reactions to parts of the speech: State of the Economy President Obama inherited a global recession and a global financial meltdown. So far, his enacted policies have had no beneficial effect as the 10 percent unemployment demonstrates in spades, and his threatened policies remain perhaps the greatest barrier to a strong economy. The economy will recover, and appears to have started to do so, thanks to the inherent strengths of the...

Guest post from Edwin J. Feulner, President of the Heritage Foundation The President of the United States tomorrow will inform the Congress on the State of our Union, as he is constitutionally mandated to do. The past 12 months have seen our country head down a dangerous course, and The Heritage Foundation can only hope that the President will use this time of reflection, coming on the heels of a stunning electoral loss, to change direction. You must recognize, Mr. President, that the State of the Union is not good. You need a new approach and fresh domestic and foreign...

If we adopt the compassion of time rather than that of cash, we are not trying to do the same thing as liberals, only a bit more cheaply. Instead, we must ask of every idea that calls itself compassionate, "Does it make great demands on men (and women) to give themselves to their brethren?" Are we offering not coerced silver, but our lives? If we talk of crisis pregnancies, are we actually willing to provide a home to a pregnant young woman? If we talk of abandoned children, are we actually willing to adopt a child? We need to ask...

Step aside, elected Members of Congress. If you can’t pass cap and trade legislation, The Environmental Protection Agency will move in with massively complex and costly regulations that would micromanage just about every aspect of the economy. They announced today that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten public health and the environment. Since 85 percent of the U.S. economy runs on fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide, imposing a cost on CO2 is equivalent to placing an economy-wide tax on energy use. The kind of industrial-strength EPA red tape that the agency could enforce in the name...

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a "climate emergency." As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the "trigger" placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee. As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points...

Last week the Obama administration issued a report purporting to show that the President’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan had saved or created exactly 640,329 jobs. Such a precise number for such a fuzzy concept as jobs “saved or created” immediately raised doubts about the veracity of the report in any honest American’s mind. And since that report was issued, a once compliant press has filed story after story tearing the credibility of the Obama administration’s job creation claims to shreds. Just enter the words “stimulus”, “jobs”, and “report” in a Google News search and these are just some of...

Starbucks Sabbath Allie Winegar Duzett, November 3, 2009 In recent years, the American family has been falling apart. Divorce rates have skyrocketed, as have births outside of marriage; non-traditional families are on the way to becoming the norm in society. Brad Wilcox spoke of the “unprecedented family revolution” in America at a recent Heritage Foundation event, Religious Practice and the Family: What the Research Says. This family revolution, Wilcox argued, has “undercut marriage as a fundamental institution” in American society, which matters because religion and familial stability typically go hand in hand. As Wilcox pointed out, “couples who share a...

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

Strategic Defense: With Iran on the verge of a deliverable nuke, the administration tells our allies in the dead of night that we will scuttle missile defense plans in Eastern Europe to please the Russians.Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after...

Ambassador John Bolton will be addressing the First Principles on First Fridays monthly lecture series sponsored by Hillsdale College's Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on September 11, 2009 in The Allison Auditorium at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Ambassador Bolton will be speaking on "Obama's Foreign Policy: A Report Card". To RSVP, please go to http://www.hillsdale.edu/firstfridays.asp or call 202-248-5084 and ask for Jennifer Powell.

Over the course of the health care debate, the bloggers at Verum Serum have done a true service to the cause of honesty in public discourse by posting video after video of liberal politicians and intellectuals all admitting that, despite his claims otherwise, President Barack Obama’s public option is designed for the sole purpose of being a Trojan Horse for government-run single payer health care. Now Verum Serum has edited all their public option videos into one clip. So the next time an Obamacare supporter tries to tell you that the public option is all about “choice and competition”, respond...

Senior policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation believes "cap-and-trade" legislation will increase an already bloated federal government. David Kreutzer tells OneNewsNow that if cap-and-trade legislation -- sometimes referred to as "energy ration and tax" by opponents -- passes the Senate, it will add more than $8 billion in additional government staff. "This is not the cost to the economy from the higher energy prices -- that's much, much higher; that will be thousands of dollars per family...$9.4 trillion over the first 24 years," Kreutzer explains. "The eight billion [dollars] is just for the staff in Washington to handle the paperwork."...

Share a NiteCap and an interview with HonestConservative and Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation as we discuss the healthcare scam and how socialists goals have changed little in our lifetime, just ask Ronald Reagan, whose conservative philosophy will be with us through the glories of audio technology.

An Analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 by David Kreutzer, Ph.D., Karen Campbell, Ph.D., William W. Beach, Ben Lieberman and Nicolas Loris Center for Data Analysis Report #09-04 After a truncated debate and last-minute changes, the House of Representatives narrowly passed climate-change legislation on June 26, 2009, designed by Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA). The 1,427-page bill would restrict greenhouse gas emissions from industry, mainly carbon dioxide from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas.Since energy is the lifeblood of the American economy, 85 percent of which comes from CO2-emitting fossil fuels,...

For many Americans, the 2008 presidential election was historic, both in its outcome and the number of citizens who voted, many for the first time. The overall turnout of the votingeligible population was 61.7 percent, the highest turnout since the 1964 presidential election.[1] Local election officials in many states reported high levels of voting by many individuals who have not traditionally participated in the election process. The same, however, cannot be said for America's military members and their votingage dependents ("military voters"). For these voters, especially those serving in dangerous combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 presidential...

1.Millions Will Lose Their Current Insurance. Period. End of Story: President Obama wants Americans to believe they can keep their insurance if they like, but research from the government, private research firms, and think tanks show this is not the case. Proposed economic incentives, plus a government-run health plan like the one proposed in the House bill, would cause 88.1 million people to see their current employer-sponsored health plan disappear. 2.Your Health Care Coverage Will Probably Change Anyway: Even if you kept your private insurance, eventually most remaining plans—whether employer plans or individual plans—would have to conform to new federal...

Climate Change: The EPA has prepared a finding for review that global warming is a public health threat, the first step toward regulating the American economy down to your lawn mower.We are often told how the pursuit of alternative energy will help save the earth from climate change and create lots of green jobs. Advocates rarely use the phrase "global warming" any more because the earth is in fact no longer warming, and hasn't for a decade due to a decline in solar activity and other natural factors. They prefer the phrase "climate change" because it can cover a multitude...

Energy: While members of Congress take vacations their constituents can no longer afford, a country prepares to end its dependence on foreign oil by extracting supplies from shale rock. It's not the U.S. It's in the Middle East.Jordan imports 95% of its oil. Unlike the U.S., the desert kingdom plans on doing something about it. It does not, however, plan to cover its flat open spaces with solar panels or wind farms. It's going to do something the Democratic Congress has refused to do — get oil from its abundant shale rock. On Sunday, Maher Hjazin, head of the Jordanian...

Palin Vs. Kerry (And MoveOn.org) By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM The political death of Sarah Palin has been greatly exaggerated. In a devastating op-ed in the Washington Post, Alaska's governor exposes the cap-and-tax fraud that has nothing to do with earth's temperature and everything to do with government control of the economy. She also exposes the stealth socialism ambitions of the Democratic left and once again points out the availability of abundant "shovel-ready" resources under America's soil, off America's shores and even in America's rocks. Judging from the reaction from Sen. Kerry and...