Free Republic

The Environmental Protection Agency is taking steps to regulate greenhouse gases, even though the issue remains far from settled in Congress, where a key Senate committee is debating a major climate change bill. In hearings before the Senate Environment and Public Works committee Tuesday, several moderate Democrats expressed concerns that the EPA is jumping the gun in mandating new curbs on greenhouse gas emissions across a slew of industries. “There is a great deal to be gained by certainty so people can make plans,” said Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter. “If the EPA continues to have flexibility we don’t know...

U.S. consumers turned decidedly more pessimistic in October, according to a report released Tuesday, with households increasingly worried about job prospects. The Conference Board, a private research group, said its monthly Consumer Confidence Index fell to 47.7 this month, from a revised 53.4 in September, which was originally reported as 53.1. The current month's reading was well below economists' projections of 53.2, according to a survey conducted by Dow Jones Newswires. The downturn in consumer confidence at this stage of the recovery is to be expected, as it has occurred in previous recoveries (please see chart below), and does not...

Washington is captivated by the Senate melodrama over the so-called public option, salivating at the ring of Harry Reid's political bell (see below). But the most important health-care questions continue to be about the policy substance—particularly those that Democrats don't want asked. Foremost among them is: How will ObamaCare affect insurance premiums in the private health-care markets? Despite indignant Democratic denials, the near-certainty is that their plan will cause costs to rise across the board. The latest data on this score come from a series of state-level studies from the insurance company WellPoint Inc. At the request of Congressional delegations...

Uncertainty over health care costs is preventing small businesses from adding jobs, part of the reason for the so-called jobless recovery, said by some to be underway. Gary Fields paints a compelling picture of the worries and doubts faced by small businesses, in the Wall Street Journal. One employer: "... cut overtime for many of his 150 employees in anticipation of facing fresh health-care costs. He's worried about getting hit by higher taxes next year, which would cut into income to pay for expansion, raises, bonuses, new product lines and delivery trucks." It is always safer to postpone spending, in...

After witnessing a gay pride march, committed Christian Pauline Howe wrote to the council to complain that the event had been allowed to go ahead. But instead of a simple acknowledgement, she received a letter warning her she might be guilty of a hate crime and that the matter had been passed to police. Two officers later turned up at the frightened grandmother's home and lectured her about her choice of words before telling her she would not be prosecuted. Mrs Howe, 67, whose husband Peter is understood to be a Baptist minister, yesterday spoke of her shock at the...

In America we are a century and a half away from the "Know-Nothing Party", a secret political society that fulminated against the Catholic Church and Irish immigrants. (Asked about its composition, members would say, "I know nothing;" hence, the moniker.) Formed in public as The American Party, the party's hateful, nativist politics took a long time to expunge from our shores. But we now have an Englishman, Richard Dawkins--one of society's "Brites" according to his fellow-Darwinist, Daniel Dennett--in a screed against the Catholic Church that proclaims the same frothing bigotry exemplified by the Know-Nothings. This and Dawkins' various other attacks...

A strange anomaly occurs whenever the phrase “voter registration fraud” is searched. Who’s responsible for that? Perhaps the players? Search the Internet and you will find dozens of stories on the Association of Community Organizations For Reform Now or ACORN on a never ending stream of Google results. However, Project Vote (Voting for America) is often only listed as an affiliate. Articles posted by the mainstream media tend to downplay Project Vote’s role or is it something else?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid addressed a development, first reported by TPMDC, that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will filibuster a health care bill if it includes a public option. "Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid's problems," Reid told reporters at his weekly press conference. During a Q&A session with reporters, Reid offered a fairly spirited defense of Lieberman, signaling perhaps that he doesn't believe Lieberman will ultimately be an obstacle--or at least that he doesn't want to tip his hat: "I don't have anyone that I've worked harder with, have more respect for, in the Senate than Joe...

Today the FCC is set to begin drafting new rules and legislation on how broadband companies must manage access to the internet in an effort to provide you with more government controls over the citizens of the United States while providing exemptions to some companies. The whole net neutrality issue comes along to fix a problem when no problem exists. Many have come to believe that this effort to further regulate the internet is driven solely by political agenda as a way of suppressing opposition to the current administrations agendas. With much weight given to this concept as closed door...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Max Baucus said Tuesday he has "serious reservations" about climate legislation newly unveiled by his Democratic colleagues, signaling that lawmakers may have to pull back from some ambitious goals in order to line up needed votes. "I have some concerns about the overall direction of the bill," Mr. Baucus (D., Mont.) said at the start of hearings in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "I have serious reservations with the depth of the mid-term reduction target in the bill and the lack of preemption of the Clean Air Act." Mr. Baucus -- who's also chairman of...

Angry parents and others joined MassResistance at the Massachusetts State House on Oct. 13 to testify before the Joint Education Committee in support of the David Parker Parents Rights Bill (H406 – written by MassResistance) and against the Planned Parenthood compulsory sex-ed / homosexuality / abortion counseling bill (H3434) – both of which would affect children in the public schools. Much of the testimony was shocking and explicit. But most of the committee, dominated by left-leaning politicians, seemed uninterested and even hostile.

October is 'Gay History Month' - being pushed in schools. Radical "history" includes founders of modern porn movement. It's another one of those things that most parents don't even know is happening. And school officials like it that way. Barack Obama declared June to be "Gay Pride Month." April is reserved for the homosexual "Day of Silence" in public schools. But for the last dozen years the homosexual movement has pushed October as "Gay History Month" as an "educational" experience for schoolchildren across America, including encouraging kids to "come out". And this year is as strong as ever. It's yet...

Grayson: “You know…FOX News and their Republican collaborators are the enemy of America. They’re the enemy of anybody who cares about health care in this country, the enemy of anybody who cares about educating their children, the enemy of everybody who wants energy independence, anything … good for this country. And they’re certainly the enemy of peace, there’s no doubt about that. They ARE the enemy.”I’ve seen people like Alan Grayson, the Democratic Representative from Florida’s 8th Congressional District, before. For example, I once attended an event held by Michigan Congressman John Conyers in the southern, suburban, part of his...

October 27, 2009 Obamacare’s False Dawn The public option is a recycled means of pretending away Obamacare’s costs. Rich Lowry The public option is back. Its Lazarus act is hailed as a sign of how rosy the health-care debate looks for Democrats. August is but a sepia-tinged memory. Passage of a sweeping bill is now considered a lock by the wisest and most conventional Beltway pundits. And legislation may even include the most shining prize of all, the public option that liberals — no matter what the talking points for public consumption — consider a way station to the Valhalla...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Senate committee on Tuesday launches three long days of hearings on a Democratic climate bill in a bid to further convince an international summit in December that Washington is serious about tackling global warming. The Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee will kick off Tuesday's hearing at 9:30 a.m. EDT with a panel of heavy-hitters from President Barack Obama's Cabinet: the secretaries of energy, transportation and interior and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Joining them will be the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. According to an EPA statement, the officials will focus...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senators tussled over the cost of climate legislation Tuesday with the leading author of the bill maintaining that while energy prices will increase, inaction on global warming would cause even worse economic and security problems. "Are there some costs? Yes sir, there are some costs," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. But of the array of studies that show restricting greenhouse gases will lead to higher energy prices, he said, "none of them factor in the cost of doing nothing." Kerry was the leadoff witness as the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began a series of marathon...

Congressional Democrats are set to announce Tuesday legislation aimed at squeezing more information from foreign banks and U.S. citizens with offshore accounts to ferret out tax evaders. The bill from Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.), and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), includes some of President Barack Obama's proposals to fight offshore tax cheating. According to a summary of the bill obtained by Dow Jones Newswires, it is expected to raise $8.5 billion for the U.S. government over 10 years. Foreign banks with U.S. customers would face a 30% withholding tax on income from...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is holding a series of meetings with Democratic centrists to secure the 60 votes he needs to begin the healthcare debate. Democratic leaders expect the legislation to hit the Senate floor next week or the week after. Reid appears confident that the entire Democratic Conference will vote en bloc to begin the healthcare debate, but he’s not taking any chances after losing a crucial vote last week on legislation to address Medicare payments to doctors. Nothing is certain in the wake of Reid’s announcement Monday that he would include a government-run insurance plan in...

American Life League 27 October 2009 CONTACT: Katie Walker540.659.4942| kwalker@all.org  Washington, DC (27 October 2009) – The Senate version of America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 may transform the nation’s largest abortion chain into a quasi-government entity for sex education. Section 1803, page 503, creates a National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Resource Center and states: The Secretary shall award a grant to a nationally recognized, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that meets the requirements described in clause (ii) to establish and operate a national teen pregnancy prevention resource center (in this subparagraph referred to as the ‘Resource Center’) to carry out the purpose...

A spokesman for Rep. Alan Grayson is defending the Florida Democrat’s use of the word “whore” to describe a female official at the Federal Reserve, pointing to a secondary dictionary definition to argue that Grayson meant only that the woman had sold her soul for financial gain. “The attack was on her professional career, not her personal life,” Grayson spokesman Todd Jurkowski wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. “The second definition of ‘whore’ in the American Heritage Dictionary is 'A person considered as having compromised principles for personal gain.’ “I think a reasonable person could believe that a person who...

New Yorkers are fleeing the state and city in alarming numbers -- and costing a fortune in lost tax dollars, a new study shows. More than 1.5 million state residents left for other parts of the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy. It was the biggest out-of-state migration in the country. The vast majority of the migrants, 1.1 million, were former residents of New York City -- meaning one out of seven city taxpayers moved out. "The Empire State is being drained of an invaluable resource --...

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Sunday said she would support amending the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act to include gays and lesbians. Though no such amendment has been offered in Congress, Gillibrand said such a measure would be "transformational" and is "certainly worth fighting for." "I would [be supportive of that]. I truly believe that this gay rights agenda is the civil rights march of our generation. I think marriage equality, I think repealing DOMA, 'Don't ask, don't tell.' All of that work we're doing is part of equal rights in America and it is something that is so important...

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) is drawing criticism from his congressional colleagues, but President Obama offered him some warm words at a Miami fundraiser for the Democratic congressional campaign committees last night. Obama, in introducing the members of Congress in attendance, called Grayson – along with Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Kendrick Meek – as “outstanding members of Congress.” Obama may regret his praise of Grayson, who is now drawing fire from members in both parties for referring to Linda Robertson, the adviser to Obama’s Fed Chief Ben Bernanke as a “K Street whore” in a radio interview last month. And...

This is the moment....when Senator John Kerry, who served in Vietnam and currently chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday that he opposes sending more troops unless conditions on the ground improve in Afghanistan. I'd say that's the basic gist of it. I think James Dobbins states it very well: James Dobbins, who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan during the Bush administration and is now at the Rand Corp., said that Kerry had made many "sensible" points in the speech but that he found the conclusion unsatisfactory. "The argument seems to be that we're not going to...

The Federal Reserve joined the Treasury Department on Thursday in imposing new limits on executive pay, extending the government's control over compensation at taxpayer-owned companies to institutions that are merely government regulated. {snip} However, the Fed's proposed rules have wiggle room: The guidelines would let banks set their own compensation but give the Fed veto power over pay practices that it determines could threaten the safety and soundness of a bank. They would extends the regulators' reach into pay practices affecting tens of thousands of bank employees, from senior executives to traders of complex securities.

...and Distribute Wealth From Developed Countries to 3rd World Nations. The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations will hold their 15th conference on climate change through December 7-18th. At the conference, globalists like Obama will sign the ‘Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty’ that will replace the Kyoto treaty that is set to expire in 2012. Lord Christopher Monckton, the man who warned many this week of the treaty appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio program, he makes it clear that the treaty will create a World Government Dictatorship that will have complete authority over all nations by intervening in...

US President Barack Obama on Friday hit out at naysayers he blamed for peddling "cynical" claims that global warming is a myth to derail a landmark climate change bill in Congress. Obama warned that the closer the Senate came to passing legislation which has already cleared the House of Representatives, the more opponents would resort to underhand tactics. "The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized," Obama warned in a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "But I think it's important to understand that the closer we get, the harder...

Halloween just got scarier – much scarier. I'm not talking about a new Hollywood slasher film or a new line of grotesque costumes, but a possible political nightmare scenario in which the White House could be positioned to sell out U.S. sovereignty, shred the Constitution and leave you and yours to the whims of foreign powers. Flying deep under Washington's radar is an upcoming (December) global climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, under the guise of the "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change." Virtually nothing has been said about it from the White House. But then again, I'm sure...

Environmental alarmism is being exploited to chip away at national sovereignty. The latest threat to American liberties may be found in the innocuous sounding Copenhagen Climate Treaty, which will be discussed at the United Nations climate-change conference in mid-December. ... Its executive arm is something called the Adaptation Fund Board, under which is the Copenhagen Climate Facility, also known as "the Facility." The Facility is necessary because in order to save the planet, "the way society is structured will need to change fundamentally." This change would be impossible under the "fragmented set of existing institutions," so the Facility will step...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. --...

Here is obamas puppet master calling for SDRS

Unbelievable....these NJ commies will never give up their power and corruption!!

Obama’s “Safe Schools” czar, Kevin Jennings, founded and led GLSEN for 18 years. A current GLSEN lesson plan for “LGBT History” -- intended for schoolchildren – celebrates gay and lesbian activists from the 1950s and ’60s. It recommends the film “Gay Pioneers” which profiles several practitioners and promoters of pornography. GLSEN recommends “Gay Pioneers” for classroom use, for showing at a Gay-Straight Alliance club meeting (invite other clubs!), for a school assembly, or for donation to the school library. (In the past, GLSEN’s website has recommended readings for children describing -- and implicitly endorsing -- adult-child sex and sexual experimentation...

A top White House economic adviser will make the case for healthcare reform this afternoon while taking shots at Bush administration policies. In a speech to the liberal Center for American Progress, Christina Romer, Director of the Council of Economic Advisers, will argue that the actions of the Bush administration--and not stimulus spending--were largely responsible for the current deficit. According to excerpts released by the White House, Romer will cite a study concluding that "roughly half of the long-run deficit is due to the policy actions of the past 8 years," while "just 3 percent of the long-run fiscal problem...

Paul Kroenke wrote a great piece on the empty bravado of Mayor Richard Daley and his populist claims that he won't raise property taxes. Kroenke pretty much shows that because of the tax zones that Daley has set up across the city, he really can't raise property taxes even if he wanted to do so. Back on October 14, Daley played the populist by claiming that he was ruling out property tax hikes. "You can't [raise property taxes] ... That would hurt people tremendously," Daley said. "You can only take so much. People are being laid off on a daily...

We are nominating Sen. Baucus' health care reform bill for the Pulitzer Prize — for fiction. Like works of great fiction writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the story line of the Baucus bill is not what it seems and is in fact a clever subterfuge of what health care reform will mean for the American people. Hiding behind this facade is another story about a massive power grab by the Washington political establishment. The bill is loaded with fiction. To begin with, it purports to reduce the deficit. This is really an Enron-style scam...

Democrats are pushing Senate leaders and the White House to speed up key benefits in the health reform bill to 2010, eager to give the party something to show taxpayers for their $900 billion investment in an election year. The most significant changes to the health care system wouldn’t kick in until 2013 – two election cycles away. With Republicans expected to make next year a referendum on health care reform, Democrats are quietly lobbying to push up the effective dates on popular programs, so they'll have something to run on in the congressional midterms. Democrats are anxious to mix...

Democrats are pushing Senate leaders and the White House to speed up key benefits in the health reform bill to 2010, eager to give the party something to show taxpayers for their $900 billion investment in an election year. The most significant changes to the health care system wouldn’t kick in until 2013 — two election cycles away. With Republicans expected to make next year a referendum on health care reform, Democrats are quietly lobbying to push up the effective dates on popular programs, so they'll have something to run on in the congressional midterm elections.

It is becoming more obvious that the articles linked by Yahoo! are planted by the government. I don't know if I should keep my tinfoil hat on or take it off while I post this. Millions of Americans think Yahoo! is real news.

I saw two stories recently that had diametrically opposed messages.The first was pro-life in the broadest sense of the word, a breakthrough against cancer via a new tumor-targeted genetic medicine, Rexin-G, that produced clinical remissions in late-stage cases of three chemotherapy-resistant, otherwise intractable cancers — prostate cancer, metastatic osteosarcoma, and pancreas cancer. The second, fundamentally anti-life, was a YouTube video of a speech delivered by Robert B. Reich on healthcare reform at the University of California at Berkeley on September 26, 2007.Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and more recently a member of President-elect Obama’s transition advisory board...

Regardless of how President Barack Obama's health-care agenda plays out in Congress, it has not been a success in public opinion. Opposition to ObamaCare has risen all year.--snip--The health-care debate is part of a moral struggle currently being played out over the free enterprise system. It will be replayed in every major policy debate in the coming months, from financial regulatory reform to a cap-and-trade system for limiting carbon emissions. The choices will ultimately always come down to competing visions of America's future. Will we strengthen freedom, individual opportunity and enterprise? Or will we expand the role of the state...

Legislation to be introduced in Congress will make it easier for the US government to seize control of troubled financial institutions that are considered too big to be allowed to fail, The New York Times says. The bill will be introduced in Congress by a key ally of President Barack Obama - Representative Barney Frank - who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, the Times said, citing a senior administration official. The legislation would make it easier for the government to throw out the financial company's management, wipe out the shareholders and change the terms of existing loans held by...

Here is video of America's future journalists at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism doing a hip-hop rant as part of an assignment, which included an attack on Fox News and Sean Hannity: "But I will never lose touch with my own humanityGet every side to speakBut there's no need to hear crazyOr create false sense of parityLike Fox News and Hannity . . ."Looks like they are training them well, to become clones of the impartial "journalists" at MSNBC. . . (VIDEO)

When the tree recently fell in the financial forest, the reported sound was deafening and proclaimed to the high heavens near and far but hardly anyone talked about the ax. Imagine if you will, Hitler won World War II and having done so, his historians and propaganda machine would never speak of his crimes. Rather, they would blame all the problems on those horrible, nasty Jews led by Churchill and Roosevelt. Recall the Pravda of the Soviet Union. Their truth was what ever Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, Brezhnev or Chernenko wanted. Gorbachev managed to finally muff the punt, but the way...

Surely President Barack Obama and his advisers don't really think that their feud with Fox News will do anything but enhance the cable network's viewership. A deeper problem is what the flap reveals about Team Obama, which seems to be more comfortable with campaigning than governing. I'm not happy about that. It does not fill me with glee to see Fox News star Sean Hannity joyfully replaying Obama's 2004 come-together speech about how we're "not red states or blues states" but "the United States of America" and asking where is Obama's promise now? I don't agree with Hannity on much....

Advocates of imposing "network neutrality" say it's necessary to ensure a "free" and "open" Internet and rescue the public from nefarious corporations that "control" technology. Few proposals in Washington have been sold employing such deceptive language -- and that's saying something. But few public policy ideas can boast the unashamedly socialist pedigree of net neutrality. The modern Internet is a creation of the free market, which has brought about a revolution in communication, free speech, education, and commerce. New Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski apparently doesn't like that. He stated last month the way Internet service providers manage their...

The Silence of the Lambs - - Obama Style Farewell, Free Speech - - Part 991 bythelastcrusade.org So much for free speech and 1st Amendment rights. A hate crimes bill, which was passed by the U.S. Senate on Thursday and sent to President Obama for his signature, will serve to muzzle Christian writers, preachers, and teachers who still possess the temerity to advocate Biblical values. Mr. Obama has made a pledge to the gay and lesbian community that the bill will become law before the end of October. Matt Barber, an attorney for Liberty Counsel, says that the President...

During the boom years, New York–based small-business lender CIT group went heavy into the risky subprime loan business, under the guidance of CEO Jeffrey Peek. This past year, after it all came crashing down, CIT accepted $2.3 billion in TARP money and then went and asked the administration for more. They were denied. ("Their Plan A was: Seek assistance from the government. And their Plan B was: Ask again," a senior Obama administration official told the Journal at the time.) Absent a plan, the company spiraled toward bankruptcy, and last week Peek was forced to resign. Now his wife, Liz...

As an intellectual and sophisticated man of advanced education and refinement, President Obama should know better than to believe press clippings originating with the leftist media. An experienced political professional intent on playing on the world stage should also be able to accept criticism and dissent without unraveling to the point of utter distraction. After all, we do live a civilized society where the president serves at the pleasure of the people. He is neither deity nor royalty, despite what obedient armies of Obamanites and adoring media types tell him. Criticism and robust opposition come with the gig, Mr. President!...

Critics call the Obama administration's criticism of Fox News petty. But if it discredits the network in the eyes of moderates, the strategy might work. The Obama administration has taken a fair amount of grief for its campaign to marginalize Fox News, saying the cable network is “not a news organization” but rather “the communications_arm of the Republican Party.” Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, not a fire-breathing conservative, calls it “dumb on multiple levels” – a distraction from policy messages, a boost to Fox ratings, and, she writes, “it deprives the White House, to the extent it refuses to provide...