Free Republic

Shortly after he claimed to be a “unifier” during his Super Tuesday press conference, Donald Trump was at it again, lambasting “so-called conservatives” who don’t share his liberal position on Planned Parenthood, continuing to insist he applauds the group because it allegedly “does a lot of good of good things” for women’s health. Similar logic applies to his position on ObamaCare. He loves the coercive freedom- and job-killing individual mandate, which is the heart of ObamaCare, because he doesn’t want to see bodies in the street, a classic liberal rhetorical scare tactic. Planned Parenthood may do the occasional mammogram referral,...

When Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump momentarily embraced Obamacare's individual mandate before disavowing it, Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives caught the vapors. But where is conservative outrage over Marco Rubio's health plan, which actually contains an individual mandate? Rubio, unlike his opponents, has offered details on how he would replace Obamacare. (Trump merely promises "something terrific.") He builds his replacement plan around an individual mandate, and an expansion of Obamacare's spending. Rubio's plan is so similar to Obamacare, so disruptive, and so easily demagogued, you would think he was a Democratic mole. The centerpiece of Rubio's proposal would "provid[e] every...

Donald Trump said Sunday he actually opposes Obamacare's individual mandate, following up his reversal last week of his apparent support for the law. The GOP presidential frontrunner told CNN's Anderson Cooper Thursday that he "likes" the healthcare law's requirement to have health coverage. He tweeted the following day that he would actually repeal it, along with the rest of President Obama's healthcare law. On CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday Trump said he doesn't like the mandate at all.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Pope is backin' away from what he said, and Trump is backin' away from what he said. Trump's backin' away from a couple of things that he said! Trump's going moderate on the Pope, and now Trump is backing away from his allegation last Saturday that George W. Bush "lied" about Iraq. What's that going to do to the Democrat outreach plan? ... There is all kinds of confusing stuff going on out there, folks. And you are at the right place to have it all untangled. There are intricately woven webs of deceit no matter...

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 26m26 minutes ago I was asked about healthcare by Anderson Cooper & have been consistent- I will repeal all of #ObamaCare, including the mandate, period. I was referring to a backstop for pre-existing conditions. I will eliminate the law, in its entirety, & replace it w/ something much better. I will replace it with private plans, health savings accounts, & allow purchasing across state lines. Maximum choice & freedom for consumer. I'm self-funding and I am going to take care of the people – not the special interests and insurance companies like the other candidates. Remember,...

Donald Trump: “I like the mandate.” Donald Trump has often promised to repeal the “disaster” that is Obamacare and he’s right, it is a disaster.But at Thursday night’s CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall in South Carolina, Donald Trump embraced what is easily the worst part of Obamacare, the anti-free market “individual mandate” which forces Americans to buy only government-approved health care insurance, whether they want to or not.To justify his support for the Obamacare mandate, Donald Trump uses leftist talking points of not wanting people to “die in the streets,” as if they has ever happened in America — before...

Trump: I 'Like' Obamacare's Individual Mandate 7:48 AM, Feb 19, 2016 | By Jeffrey H. Anderson The most unpopular part of Obamacare now has a champion in the Republican presidential field. Via the Right Scoop, Donald Trump was asked on Thursday night by CNN's Anderson Cooper, "If…there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, what's to—why would an insurance company not have a preexisting—insure somebody with a preexisting condition?" Trump replied, "Well, I like the mandate. Okay, so here's where I'm a little bit different. I don't want people dying on the streets. And I say this all the time."...

If Cruz and Rubio are looking for some eleventh-hour ad material to galvanize righties before tomorrow’s big vote, they can’t do better than this. Somehow, after six years of conservative agitation against the mandate and a 5-4 Supreme Court majority finding it unconstitutional as an exercise of Congress’s commerce (but not taxi!) power, it seems likely we’re going to end up with two consecutive Republican presidential nominees who are pro-mandate. Romney at least wanted to leave the mandate-making to the states; Trump, an authoritarian with no apparent philosophical interest in federalism, probably won’t be as deferential. The silver lining,...

"COOPER: If Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance what's to… and why would insurance company not have a pre-existing insure somebody… TRUMP: I like the mandate. Okay, so here's how I'm a little bit different. I don't want people dying on the streets and I say this all the time. And I say this… Look I did five speeches maybe six speeches today we had a lot of rallies with thousands and thousands of people. I mean we get big crowds. Everytime I talk about this I get standing ovations. The Republican people, they're...

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was more than a tragedy for his family and American jurisprudence. It was a calamity for religious liberty. The Court will soon hear Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, which challenges the Obamacare contraception mandate. Because the loss of Scalia reduces the number of justices to eight, the spectre of a tie vote now looms over the case. If the remaining justices vote as they did in the Hobby Lobby case, the result will be a per curiam decision whereby a prior miscarriage of justice by the Tenth Circuit Court of...

One of the worst of Obamacares ill-conceived provisions went quietly into effect on January 1. The employer mandate, previously inflicted only on businesses with 100 or more employees, will now be imposed on those with as few as 50. This mandate will prevent countless small employers from hiring workers they would otherwise have hired and incentivize many others to replace full-time employees with part-timers. It is such an obvious job killer that the Obama administration delayed enforcement until after the 2014 midterms, the liberal Urban Institute has called for its repeal, and it has even been obliquely criticized by Hillary...

In a stunning decision, a federal judge permanently barred the Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing the contraception mandate under ObamaCare against an employer for moral rather than explicitly religious grounds. Judge Richard Leon, the same DC district court judge that ruled the NSA phone collection program unconstitutional (and was reversed last week), rebuked the federal government for violating the Equal Protection clause by only allowing religious groups a waiver for objections to contraception and other products and services. Ruling in favor of March for Life, Leon said that the 14th Amendment demands equal protection for similarly...

As the Little Sisters of the Poor are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a federal court decision that forces the order of Catholic nuns to abide by the "Obamacare" contraception mandate, over 20 states, a group of Orthodox Jewish rabbis and a number of Evangelical and secular organizations are urging the high court to take up the case and protect religious liberty. "We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of support we have received from such a wide range of people and groups," Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, Mother Provincial for the Little Sisters of the Poor, said in...

Gov. Brown Talks To KCAL9 About Bill That Would Mandate Reduction In Gas Usage LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — As Gov. Jerry Brown prepares to travel to Rome next week for an international climate conference, the debate over a bill aimed at reducing gas usage in California is heating up. Brown fully supports SB-350, which would mandate a 50-percent cutback in California’s gas usage in the next 15 years, arguing that it’s a prime factor in global warming. “We’ve got a serious problem here,” he told KCAL9 Political Reporter Dave Bryan via satellite. “Burning oil and gas and coal and diesel...

The IRS reported this week that 6.6 million people paid the ObamaCare mandate penalty for not having insurance last year, which the administration says is 10% higher than they'd expected. This isn't exactly good news, given that the entire point of the mandate penalty tax is to encourage everyone to buy coverage. Even if it were, the number comes with two big caveats.

Over the past two decades Israel has managed to destroy its regional reputation. With our own hands, we have twice shown our neighbors they have little reason to tie their fates to ours. We are unreliable. In 1994, Israel betrayed the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza who had helped us fight against PLO terrorists for decades. Open season on our Palestinian allies officially began in July 1994 with the entrance of thousands of PLO terrorists – led by Yasser Arafat – into Gaza and Jericho. Arafat’s henchmen did not limit their murderous wrath to the Palestinians who saved countless...

The Supreme Court on Monday gave new life to a lawsuit challenging ObamaCare’s contraception mandate, striking down a previous ruling in favor of the federal government. An appeals court in Cincinnati will now reconsider the legal challenge from the Catholic groups in Michigan and Tennessee that had sought exemptions from an ObamaCare provision that requires employers to cover birth control for all workers. The justices asked the lower court to reconsider the case in light of last year's landmark ruling on the contraception mandate. That ruling, which was issued last June, decided that the arts-and-crafts retailer, Hobby Lobby, could...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A Washington state school district pulled 143 students who lacked documentation proving they had received required immunizations from classrooms on Monday, in a first-in-the-state clamp-down triggered by a recent measles epidemic. The Spokane Public Schools, the state's second-largest district, made the decision after a measles epidemic in which more than 150 people fell ill across the United States, and a whooping cough outbreak in the state's eastern city. "(The students) stay out of school until they show compliance," district spokesman Kevin Morrison said. He said the district was the first in the state to take such action....

George Orwell said that “in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Republican congressman Brian Babin is new to Congress, and this dentist from Woodvine, Texas radiates a love for country while worrying for his grandchildren when he sees the sorry state of our federal government. But Babin is unafraid to speak clearly, and Washington should listen to what he has to say.

Republican leadership has an odd idea for one of its first big policy pushes of this Congress: a change to Obamacare that threatens to make the law worse. The idea, expected to come to a vote in the House on Thursday, is to change Obamacare’s requirement that most employers provide full-time workers with generous health insurance, a rule known as the “employer mandate.” (Or the “employer shared responsibility provisions,” if you prefer Gruber-speak). It sets the definition of full-time work at 30 hours a week. Republicans have been making the case for some time — and no small number of...