Free Republic

One of the most overlooked aspects of the year just ended is the vindication of Chief Justice John Roberts -- a vindication that showed up as the national catastrophe known as ObamaCare got rolling. Roberts may have also doomed Hillary Clinton's chance to live in the White House again. The chief justice, an appointee of President George W. Bush and reputedly a constitutionalist in his jurisprudence, set his diabolical trap (diabolical to Democrats) on June 28, 2012, when he joined with the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of ObamaCare. Conservatives and Republicans across the...

<p>WASHINGTON—All five regulatory agencies put to a vote and approved the Volcker rule on Tuesday, ushering in a new era of tough oversight that drills to the core of Wall Street's profitable markets and trading businesses.</p> <p>The rule will put in place new hurdles for banks that buy and sell securities on behalf of clients, known as market making, and will restrict compensation arrangements that encourage risky trading. The Fed also approved an extension to give banks until July 2015 to comply with the rule, though firms will be expected to make "good faith" efforts to get into compliance earlier.</p>

It is a phrase used for centuries by couples pledging to be faithful to each other. But as Gary and Louise Lidington, from London, made final preparations for their wedding last weekend, they received an urgent telephone call from council registrars warning that they could not legally say the words “in sickness and in health”. Officials in Tower Hamlets, east London, said that the phrase, which is used around the world, was too “religious” for a civil ceremony. The couple were forced to rewrite their vows, which they chose because of their traditional ring, just hours before the wedding, which...

Ct Sen Murphy has asked News Corp not to air the NASCAR NRA 500.

The Massachusetts Board of Education recently issued formal “guidance” to the state’s public schools, telling them how to implement new laws protecting against gender identity discrimination. The Board of Education insists that schools must not only provide equal access to educational activities programs but also proactively “create a culture” that would make gender-nonconforming and transgender kids “feel safe, supported, and fully included.” The result? Transgender children must be allowed to use the restrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex, if they so choose. Teachers will “work with” other students who object to the invasion of privacy, helping them over...

Here's an easy way to tell when your position isn't a conservative one. When you're standing with Van Jones, your position isn't a conservative one. When you're standing with Code Pink, then your position is not a conservative one. No amount of noise or chest-beating is going to change that.

Why does it seem like wherever there is human suffering, some giant bank is making money off of it? According to a new report from the World Development Movement, Goldman Sachs made about 400 million dollars betting on food prices last year. Overall, 2012 was quite a banner year for Goldman Sachs. As I reported in a previous article, revenues for Goldman increased by about 30 percent in 2012 and the price of Goldman stock has risen by more than 40 percent over the past 12 months. It is estimated that the average banker at Goldman brought in a...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will deliver the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address on Feb. 12. Rubio's response will be delivered in both English and Spanish, according to Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) office. "Marco Rubio is one of our party’s most dynamic and inspiring leaders. He carries our party’s banner of freedom, opportunity and prosperity in a way few others can. His family’s story is a testament to the promise and greatness of America," Boehner said in a statement on Wednesday. "He’ll deliver a GOP address that speaks from the heart to the hopes and dreams...

With California mandating that 33 percent of electricity be generated from renewables by the end of the decade, there are 227 proposed solar projects in the pipeline statewide.. Coupled with wind and other renewables they would generate enough electricity to meet 100 percent of California's power needs on an average summer day... Developers are flocking to flat farmland near power transmission lines, but agriculture interests, environmental groups and even the state are concerned that there is no official accounting of how much of this important agricultural region's farmland is being taken out of production. Planning department records in four of...

Former Obama administration regulatory czar Cass Sunstein has published an op-ed: that the president wants a "second Bill of Rights" alongside the existing one. Sunstein located the source of Obama's inspiration in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union address, rather than the South African constitution--though the American academics whose writings inspired South Africa's ambitious Bill of Rights could well have taken Roosevelt's proposals as their foundation. Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights--not a list of constitutional amendments, but policy goals--was as follows: In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak,...

(Reuters) - Ending a self-imposed silence about the November election, 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said on Wednesday that he and presidential running mate Mitt Romney lost not because of ideas, but due to ineffective communication.

Politicians typically talk about rising inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena, when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains and holds back our growth. When even the free-market-oriented magazine The Economist argues — as it did in a special feature in October — that the magnitude and nature of the country’s inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong. ... There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically...

PAUL KRUGMAN: The Deficit Is Basically Solved Walter HickeyJan. 10, 2013, 4:00 PMMany people think that fixing the deficit is a painful process that involves deep cuts to crucial programs. Some think the process is too hard, and it's not worth trying yet. That's not correct, according to a chart from from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Richard Kogan showing just how far the United States has come in the past two years. We've talked before about how the painless and most effective solution to the deficit is additional growth in GDP. As the recovery progresses and GDP...

Washington — Consumers saved nearly $1.5 billion in 2011 as a result of rules in President Obama´s healthcare law that limit what insurance companies can spend on expenses unrelated to medical care, including profit, a new analysis shows. Much of those savings — an estimated $1.1 billion — came in rebates to consumers required because insurers had exceeded the required limits. The study by the New York-based Commonwealth Fund also suggests that the Affordable Care Act forced insurers to become more efficient by limiting their administrative expenses, a key goal of the 2010 law. In some cases, insurers passed savings...

This week financial news organization CNBC gave some mainstream attention to the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History, in which “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners are being accused of laundering of 43 trillion dollars worth of ill gotten gains.The lawsuit is said to involve officials located in the highest offices of government and the financial sector.Since this information was surprisingly revealed by the mainstream news organization there has been a very suspicious and deadly fallout at the CNBC headquarters.Within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior vice president Kevin...

- The Daily Caller - http://dailycaller.com - The Grover Plan: More Cowbell!Posted By Mickey Kaus On 5:58 AM 11/13/2012 @ 5:58 AM In DC Exclusives,KausFiles | No Comments We’ll dilute our way out of it! Republicans did poorly among Hispanics last week. How to address that problem? The answer, they’re told by Washington savants, is to back an immigration reform that … increases the number of Hispanics! It’s a plan so crazy it just might be crazy.Joshua Culling, who works for Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, elaborates on the plan elsewhere on this site. It turns out the idea–let’s...

GLENDALE, Calif. (KABC) -- Proposition 37 is a measure to require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food. There are two sides to this contentious issue.

The city of Santa Cruz, usually at the forefront of environmental causes, became the latest, but probably not the last, local government to ban single-use plastic bags, with the 6-0 vote by the City Council Tuesday night. Santa Cruz banned foam products as well. Santa Cruz's new law on foam products, for instance, will outlaw foam coolers, toys, shipping containers and packing peanuts. The city of Capitola also bans foam ice chests and coolers, and the county bans foam food containers. The 48 and counting plastic bag and foam bans of some type in California offer a patchwork of regulations,...

Once one of the most beautiful cities in America, San Francisco is now a bastion of 'progressive' lunacy: the law is basically ignored, the homeless are encouraged to camp-out... convicted felons are given jobs over honest citizens... our military is hated and disrespected... and droves of gay activists walk the streets stark-naked. Public decency laws, federal immigration laws, and plain common-decency have been replaced by a city that no longer respects itself, or others... And if the 'progressives' have their way- the whole country will look just this nuts. So if you want to be offended, disrespected, and insulted, plan a...

OIL STOCKS GOLD