Free Republic

tates: Illinois entrepreneur turned governor Bruce Rauner ends the practice of forced union dues for government workers who don't want to join a union as he pursues right-to-work zones to promote growth. In Illinois, they're called "fair share" dues collected from workers said to benefit from the collective bargaining of the unions they're in thrall to, whether they want to join or not, moneys collected by force to pay for that representation. "Fair share" is a favorite mantra to liberals, but not to newly elected Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. He believes that there's nothing fair about extorting money from people...

Political Correctness: The Army has announced that as a result of Congress' making victims of attacks by foreign terrorist acts eligible, the Fort Hood victims will get Purple Hearts, and civilians will get Defense of Freedom medals. That language broadened the definition of an attack on eligible victims to include an assault by "a foreign terrorist organization." The definition includes attacks by a perpetrator or perpetrators in contact with a foreign terrorist organization or "inspired or motivated by a foreign terrorist organization" prior to the attack. The Nov. 5, 2009, attack on Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Hasan, in which...

ies: Investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson reminds us the secretary of state who blamed Benghazi on a video once made up a story about courage under fire in Bosnia. Maybe Brian Williams can be her 2016 running mate. 'Nothing in life," Winston Churchill once famously said, "is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result," except perhaps in the minds of network anchors like NBC's Brian Williams and political candidates such as Hillary Clinton, who also claimed a brush with death in a war zone on her resume. Perhaps they can swap war stories. Former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson reminded...

mmigration: Aliens granted executive amnesty by President Obama will be eligible for tax credits for the years they worked here illegally. But wasn't amnesty supposed to benefit the economy and not drain the U.S. Treasury? Subverting the Constitution to grant millions of illegal aliens work permits and freedom from deportation apparently isn't enough for the Obama administration. It now intends, through the Internal Revenue Service, to subvert the tax code to let these illegals collect billions in retroactive Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) payments. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, an unindicted co-conspirator in the cover-up of the IRS Tea Party targeting...

Aggression: As Russian-backed separatist rebels continue their advance, it's becoming clear even to administration officials that Ukraine needs more help than first-aid kits and K-rations. A report issued Monday by eight former senior American officials urges the Obama administration to send — and send quickly — some $3 billion in defensive military equipment as it becomes increasingly evident that the effects of sanctions the president says have hurt Russia have not been apparent on the ground in Ukraine. Among the officials advocating the move, the New York Times reports, is former senior Pentagon official Michele Flournoy, once on the short...

ulture: An unlikely issue has entered the infant 2016 presidential campaign: Vaccines and required vaccinations. Let's hope the fact there's no scientific link to autism or anything else isn't lost in the political fray. Candidates will often look for an edge over their opponents. Thus, both New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky recently suggested that, while vaccinations are good, forcing parents to vaccinate their children might be too much. We believe vaccines are safe and should be routine, but concern about parents' rights is not unreasonable. What really gripes us, however, is listening to the...

Stimulus: Obama says jobs from the Keystone project aren't permanent and it's just one pipeline that will move foreign oil to foreign markets. But fixing the bridge he once used as a prop didn't create permanent jobs either. 'Let's set our sights above a single pipeline," the leader of the party of infrastructure told Congress in the State of the Union. But this Congress has 80 more Republicans than when he took office, and on Thursday the Senate rejected his admonition by a 62-36 vote. Eight Democrats crossed the aisle after a series of amendment votes, a process that had...

Arms Buildup: A senior weapons developer tells Congress that Beijing's massive defense buildup, emphasizing precision-guided and other advanced weapons, has placed the U.S. and its shrinking military at serious risk. 'I am very concerned about the increasing risk of loss of U.S. military technological superiority," Frank Kendall, deputy undersecretary for acquisition, said Wednesday. "We're at risk, and the situation is getting worse." He was testifying before the House Armed Services Committee at a hearing on the subject of defense and technological change. The Chinese were paying attention to U.S. military dominance in the early 1990s after we won the arms...

Defense: War clouds gather in the East China Sea as China, in one of a series of territorial claims against its neighbors, builds a helicopter base within attack range of Japan's Senkaku Islands, which Beijing claims as its own. When President Obama traveled to China last November, we don't suppose that he discussed with his Chinese counterparts their military buildup in the East and South China Seas and their ambitious territorial claims on island chains such as the Spratly, Paracel and Senkaku. As Bill Gertz reports in the Washington Free Beacon, commercial satellites observed construction of a Chinese military helicopter...

Transparency: The administration is said to be hiding for reasons of damage control a report on the soldier we traded five Taliban leaders for. Bowe Bergdahl's lawyers have already been given a charge sheet for desertion. Both Fox News and now NBC News have reported that Sgt. Bergdahl will be charged with desertion. "I have been told and confirmed by two other sources that his attorney has been given what we call a charge sheet," retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a respected military analyst, told Fox's Bill O'Reilly on Monday. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski quoted senior defense officials on Tuesday...

Defense Spending: The venerable A-10 Warthog, designed to stop Soviet tanks, and the perfect weapon to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State, as President Obama promised, faces a budgetary chopping block. We have noted the irony of how Obama was going to war against the Islamic State with weapons systems he had scrapped, ending the production runs of the F-22 Raptor and Tomahawk cruise missiles. They were dismissed by the administration as relics of the Cold War even as Russia was rearming and trying to reassemble the old Soviet Union. We've also mentioned the phasing out of the A-10 Thunderbolt,...

Washington University School of Medicine researchers have found that those patients who suffer from inflammatory bowel diseases also had a greater variety of viruses contained within their digestive systems than they found in the bowels of health volunteers. This, they believe, suggests that viruses somehow play a role in the development of this condition. ... “This is the tip of the iceberg. A significant portion of the viral DNA we identified in these patients is unfamiliar to us—it comes from newly identified viruses we don’t know much about,” explains senior study author Herbert W. Virgin. “We have a great deal...

Valor: When Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair at the 2012 GOP convention, many thought he'd lost it. Now more Americans are watching his story of hero Chris Kyle than saw the State of the Union. There was a sense of irony in President Obama praising himself for a "persistent, steady resolve" in fighting an Islamic terrorism he refuses to call by name. He delivered his State of the Union speech just as the U.S. military was moving the assault ships Iwo Jima and Fort McHenry into the Red Sea to evacuate American personnel, if necessary, from...

Taliban Swap: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the report on the possible desertion of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will be produced "fairly soon." Does it expose his trade for terrorists as another administration disaster? bfrrIt's bad enough that the Obama administration is conducting a clearance sale of al-Qaida detainees at Guantanamo, releasing the worst of the worst like a candy dispenser. But as the Islamic State spawns terror cells in Europe, and al-Qaida, the demise of which was greatly exaggerated, is linked to the terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris as revenge for...

Military Spending: In the face of an expansionist China seeking to dominate the East and South China Seas, Tokyo has set its largest defense budget ever to help defend islands that it rightfully considers Japanese territory. As its military, economy and ambitions grow, so too does China's assertiveness about control of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the larger South China Sea. Chinese military doctrine refers to establishing dominance over what it calls the "first island chain," which encompasses the East China Sea. Beijing has long declared the South China Sea to be its territorial waters and has...

Homeland Security: To keep out Islamic State terrorists, the Saudis are building a 600-mile-long barrier — complete with five layers of fencing, underground movement censors and radar cameras — on their northern border. If they can do it ... Good fences, it is said, make for good neighbors, which on a grand scale was the intent of the Great Wall of China in antiquity and the Israeli fences of more recent vintage. Both were designed to keep out intruders and to make sure all guests were invited guests. Unlike the Berlin Wall, they were built to keep hostiles out, not...

Energy Policy: In spite of dramatically lower methane emissions from fracking, according to the EPA's own data, the agency wants to impose draconian regulations on the oil and gas industry similar to those on coal. The new rules that the White House announced on Wednesday aim to cut oil emissions of methane, a target of environmental groups, by 45% below 2012 levels, despite the fact that the emissions already show a sharp decline even as shale oil and gas production has skyrocketed. This war-on-shale action mirrors the administration's war on coal, with EPA rules impossible to meet economically and sometimes...

State Government: Bruce Rauner became Illinois' 42nd governor on Monday, the first Republican since 2003. He inherits a state that's been dubbed "America's Greece," but it's another opportunity to show what a GOP chief executive can do. A big part of the GOP tsunami in 2014 occurred at the state level, with Republicans expanding their hold on governors' mansions and legislatures with wins in blue states such as Maryland, Massachusetts and President Obama's Illinois. The number of GOP governors has grown to 31 from 21, control of legislatures has expanded to 68 of 98 partisan legislative chambers, and Republicans now...

Security: In the wake of the Islamist terrorist attack in Paris, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani argues to reinstate a policy cancelled by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has arguably left the city as exposed as it was on Sept. 10, 2001. Although the Paris terrorist attack by Islamists has not been linked to any mosque, the historical record is dotted with similar attacks that have such links, including the Nov. 5, 2009, rampage at the Army base in Killeen, Texas, by Maj. Nidal Hasan that killed 13 and wounded 31 as the self-proclaimed "Soldier of Allah" shouted "Allahu...

Hypocrisy: Mexico's president tells ours that his country will supply any documents needed for illegal aliens to qualify under Barack Obama's executive amnesty. At the same time, Mexico deports more illegals than we do. In an Oval Office meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said that his administration "is ready to give (support) to the Mexican population living in the United States so that they can show the documentation that is necessary to prove that they have been in the United States prior to 2010" to meet the five-year requirement of Obama's amnesty plan and...