Free Republic

Due to high taxes, burdensome regulations, lack of public sector reforms, and a lackluster job climate, more people have left California than come to the state since 2005, according to a comprehensive study by the Manhattan Institute released on Tuesday, suggesting California is no longer “perceived by most Americans as the land where dreams come true.” In the report, titled “The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look," Tom Gray and Robert Scardamalia found Californians have fled to states like Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, and Georgia because those states have a better economic climate with less taxes and...

How compromised are our politicians? This compromised. As I reported at Atlas last Saturday, on Friday night a Muslim was arrested in Chicago after plotting to blow up a car bomb outside a crowded bar. According to ABC News, the would-be jihad murderer, Adel Daoud, 18, attended the Islamic Foundation School in Villa Park. The very next day after the arrest, Illinois Congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth went to speak at the Islamic cultural center in Villa Park, the same place where jihad killer wannabe Adel Daoud went to school. Did she tell the Muslims there that they needed to cooperate...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows President Obama attracting support from 47% of voters nationwide, while Mitt Romney earns 44% of the vote. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided. A president’s job approval rating is one of the best indicators for assessing his chances of reelection. Typically, the president’s job approval rating on Election Day will be close to the share of the vote he receives. Currently, 50% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) at least somewhat disapprove of...

As I read that Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan as a running mate, I heard "Puppet Man," by the 5th Dimension, echoing through my head. I wondered if this choice, worse than Palin could even pretend to be, would wake up the 50 percent who chant the "Star Spangled Banner" even though they are clueless as to what that song signifies. I’m sure the tune gets blurred between shouts of Hallelujah and Ave Maria. I have to laugh at this choice. Obviously, Mitt and his puppeteers aren’t concerned with the vote. The majority of independents are lost on Mitt’s choice....

...you can get arrested for expired tags on your car-  but not for being in the country illegally! You know you live in an upside-down country when... Your government believes the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more of our money. A seven year old boy can be thrown out of school for calling his teacher "cute"- but hosting sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable. The Supreme Court can rule that lower courts cannot display the 10 Commandments in their courtroom while sitting in front of a display of the...

Last year, Congress agreed to $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts, unless politicians find other things to cut. They didn't, of course. So now, with so-called sequestration looming in January, panic has set in. Even the new "fiscally responsible" Republicans vote against cutting Energy Department handouts to companies like Solyndra and subsidies to sugar producers. Many claim that any cut in military spending will weaken America and increase unemployment. It's another demonstration of the politicians' addiction to spending -- and how we are complicit. "One more infrastructure bill" or "this jobs plan" will jumpstart the economy, and then we'll kick...

Peter Orszag, former head of the Obama Office of Management and Budget, is desperate. With even Roll Call recognizing that President Obama is fighting an uphill battle for re-election, Orszag is floating a trial balloon: mandatory voting. His call for forced voting comes in an op/ed for Bloomberg News: The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected by a majority of American adults. It’s our own fault -- because voter participation rates are running below 60 percent, a candidate would have to win 85 percent or more of...

The Rev. Al Sharpton, leader of the National Action Network, will be honored with a humanitarian award at the BET annual awards show at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles July 1, the network announced. BET said Sharpton will receive the 2012 Humanitarian Award for his commitment to political activism and social reform over the last five decades. “As the Founder and President of the National Action Network, Sharpton continues to raise awareness about civil rights and political issues, and actively takes a stand against prejudice and injustice for all people-no matter one's race, gender, sexual orientation or political affiliation,”...

After days of ridicule for launching a conspiracy theory-fueled investigation into Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett on Tuesday backed off his threat to keep the president off the ballot in November and apologized to his state. “If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn’t my intent,” Bennett said in an interview with Phoenix radio station KTAR. “He’ll be on the ballot as long as he fills out the same paperwork and does the same things that everybody else has.” Bennett said he still intends to keep asking Hawaii for verification that Obama’s...

Last week, news was made as today’s deadline approached for commercial and municipal swimming pool owners to install means, by which disabled swimmers could enter the nation’s swimming pools. It is the kind of regulation that would make a great punch line for the conservative version of the Daily Show, if conservatives were that funny. The Obama Administration has recently construed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Standards for Accessible Design to apply to the act of swimming. Today, this regulation was supposed to go into effect, opening up the owners to $100,000 fines as well as trial lawyer...

Samantha Brick, the journalist who decried women for being jealous of her "lovely looks", has taken a swipe at French women including the new first lady of France, Valerie Trierweiler.Miss Brick, who was publicly ridiculed for her article in April entitled Why women hate me for being beautiful, claimed to have an "insight into the sinister machinations" of the minds of French women. According to Miss Brick, the ladies of France, who are often celebrated as sophisticated and fashionable, are actually adulterous misogynists. The columnist for the Daily Mail is married to French native Pascal, and has lived in the...

Police continue to downplay the Trayvon Martin connection to the beating. But a neighbor confirms what his sister told News 5. The neighbor, too scared to go on camera, told News 5's Lauren Vargas that they heard one of the suspects say "This is justice for Trayvon" as she drove away. Tonight, an angry mother who lives on the street told News 5's Blake Brown that the kids who live on Delmar Drive are the real victims. Before Lauren Vargas' live shot on News 5 at 5:00, a black woman who lives on the street started yelling at Lauren saying...

Official: Zimmerman is in custody and will be charged with 2nd-degree murder

Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative activist and top Santorum supporter, tells National Review Online that Santorum is “reengineering” his presidential campaign. “You can’t repeat the same behavior and expect different results,” he says. “We’ve got to do things different. We’ve got to reengineer the campaign. We’ve got to add things, take things out, and make changes. Everyone recognizes that, from the candidate on down.” Earlier today, Viguerie, along with a group of movement leaders, met with Santorum at an office in northern Virginia. For over an hour, they discussed ways to revive his bid. “We came up with a number...

During remarks in Portland, Maine, on Friday, President Obama said, “We won’t win the race for new jobs and new businesses and middle-class security if we cling to this same old, worn-out, tired ‘you’re on your own’ economics that the other side is peddling. It was tried in the decades before the Great Depression. It didn’t work then. It was tried in the last decade. It didn’t work. You know, the idea you would keep on doing the same thing over and over again, even though it’s been proven not to work. That’s a sign of madness.”

Making houses and cars smokefree is the only way to protect children from second-hand smoke, according to a new government campaign in England. The TV and radio adverts show how pervasive invisible second-hand smoke can be. Breathing it in can damage lungs and cause cancers, research has shown. Snip The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said it wanted to see smoking in cars made illegal, when children are present. "I have no doubt an outright ban on smoking in cars would have the same positive results [as banning drink-driving]” - Prof Terence Stephenson Royal College of Paediatrics &...

Its popularity has declined sharply, many of its details have yet to emerge, and independent authorities have questioned its financial and operational viability, but California's bullet train project is very likely to get the green light from the Legislature soon. That's the consensus of those who have been counting votes among the Legislature's dominant Democrats, who can give the California High-Speed Rail Authority authorization to sell bonds and begin construction of an initial segment in the San Joaquin Valley. And that's true even though lawmakers still don't know, in any detail, what linking the northern and southern halves of the...

The threat of global climate change has prompted us to redesign many of our technologies to be more energy-efficient. From lightweight hybrid cars to long-lasting LED's, engineers have made well-known products smaller and less wasteful. But tinkering with our tools will only get us so far, because however smart our technologies become, the human body has its own ecological footprint, and there are more of them than ever before. So, some scholars are asking, what if we could engineer human beings to be more energy efficient? A new paper to be published in Ethics, Policy & Environment proposes a series...

KITCHENER — A Kitchener father is upset that police arrested him at his children’s’ school Wednesday, hauled him down to the station and strip-searched him, all because his four-year-old daughter drew a picture of a gun at school. “I’m picking up my kids and then, next thing you know, I’m locked up,” Jessie Sansone, 26, said Thursday. “I was in shock. This is completely insane. My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school.” The school principal, police and child welfare officials, however, all stand by their actions. They said they had to investigate to determine whether...

Religious materials -- including Qurans that were burned at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, sparking Afghan protests -- were removed from the library of a detainee center "because of extremist inscriptions" on them, a military official said Tuesday. There was "an appearance that these documents were being used to facilitate extremist communications," a military official said. "Additionally, some of the documents were extremist in and of themselves, apparently originating from outside of Afghanistan," the official said. The official said the material was burned, but authorities are attempting to determine how much. The uproar prompted Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO's International...