Free Republic

Federal authorities have issued a moratorium blocking oil, gas and coal leasing on 800,000 acres of public land in southwestern Colorado and eastern Utah that is habitat for the imperiled Gunnison sage grouse. ... restrictive measures that will impact jobs and economic development

President Obama, appearing emboldened after his recent move to cut carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, on Saturday ridiculed members of Congress who deny climate change or plead scientific ignorance as an alibi for avoiding an inconvenient truth. Speaking in gleefully sarcastic terms to a commencement ceremony at the University of California, Irvine, Mr. Obama likened those who deny climate change to people who would have told John F. Kennedy, at the dawn of the space program, that the moon “was made of cheese.” He saved his most scathing words for lawmakers who say they are not qualified to judge...

Many federal workers and contractors who earn the minimum wage are getting a raise next year. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez has issued a rule to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10. The higher level applies to new federal construction and service contracts beginning Jan. 1. President Barack Obama had announced the raise earlier this year, but Perez moved to put it into effect. "No person who works a fulltime job should have to live in poverty," Perez said Thursday in a conference call with reporters. "All workers, not just those who work on federal contracts,...

President Barack Obama will host a live Q&A on Tumblr called #ObamaIRL on Tuesday to discuss education, college affordability and student debt. You can watch the live stream on the White House's Tumblr page on Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET.

On the same day that Sonic, an Oklahoma City-based fast food chain, issued a statement against customers carrying guns at their restaurants, an employee at the company’s Topeka, Kan. store was robbed. According to Topeka police, two males robbed a carhop on Friday afternoon, reports the Topeka Capitol-Journal. Sonic is unique among major fast food eateries in that it provides customers the option of having carhops bring orders to their vehicle. While police said no guns were displayed by the robbers, the crime follows a new policy that the Oklahoma City-based company issued Friday. “We’ve considered the views and desires...

French economist Thomas Piketty has become a darling of the left for allegedly "proving" that, as paraphrased by Chris Giles at the Financial Times, "wealth inequalities are heading back up to levels last seen before the first world war." The Media Research Center's Julia Seymour has described Piketty as a "'rock star' of the far-left," an accurate assessment given praises heaped upon his book and especially his public policy prescriptions by the likes of Alternet and Vox's especially gullible Matthew Yglesias. Seymour also notes that Piketty's work has received a great deal of favorable notice in the establishment press, and...

The Obamanation formula for the successful financial "Fundamental Transformation of the United States of America" can be defined, in part, as follows: Mc + Vf = Sg Where: * Mc = Marxist Communism, defined by Englishman Intellectual Karl Marx as: "FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY, TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS NEED." * Vf = Volker Failure threshold of permanent financial failure as defined by Economist Intellectual Paul Volker: "The Federally Regulated stimulation of financial debt, Private, State, or Federal, until that financial debt exceeds what can be recovered in a court-managed bankruptcy." * Sg = Single Government, which is...

The president's top five jokes from the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner touched on television, the speaker of the House and - of course - HealthCare.gov. He even brought a special guest for an assist at the end.

A User’s Guide to Russian Propaganda Submitted by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton on April 19, 2014 – 3:07 pm ESTNo Comment By: Brent P. Western press and media are having trouble distinguishing facts from Russian propaganda. This is understandable – the Russian propaganda machine is a mature and venerable institution that engages in an art that, for better or for worse, the West simply does not practice as often nor as effectively. The intent of this guide is to help those less accustomed to the ways of the Russian government to discern between reporting and propaganda. There are a few simple tell-tale...

--snip-- BANGKOK (AP) - A survey released Tuesday -- the first comprehensive one of its kind - says that only 10 killers of 908 environmental activists slain around the world over the past decade have been convicted. The report by the London-based Global Witness, a group that seeks to shed light on the links between environmental exploitation and human rights abuses, says murders of those protecting land rights and the environment have soared dramatically.

Here’s your history lesson of the day, and it’s a duzy. Do you all remember the department store chain Montgomery Ward? It was in the same class as JC Penney and Sears, and like Penney’s and Sears had a robust catalog business in the 20th century. The catalog ended in 1985 and the stores closed in 2000. The incident we are going to talk about happened during World War 2, in 1944. When I read this it initially put my jaw on the floor, but when I thought about it for a moment, I realized that it put all...

Texans like to talk all the time about how big Texas is, and how if you´re driving from the bottom of Texas to Canada, then you´re spending half of your time just getting through the state itself. So is that true? It´s pretty close. Texas really is gigantic. Redditor Armeleon put together a map that gives you a good idea of the massive size of Texas. Texas spans about 800 miles from north to south. Everything seen in red on the map is closer than 791 miles to Texas (the longest straight-line distance in Texas from north to south is

Parents across the country may hold the key to this year’s mid-term elections as they vent their anger over the implementation of a controversial education achievement measure called the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the initiative in a bid, they say, to improve education standards in Math and English, and give new life to what many view as a sagging education system. Indiana recently voted to back out of Common Core. But many parents see the initiative as a bid by the federal government to take over the education system. They...

Wyoming has spent $7.9 million on sage grouse conservation since 2005. That was the finding of a new report by the Western Governors Association, which inventoried the efforts of 11 western states to protect the bird and its habitat. The report comes in advance of an expected 2015 ruling by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over whether to add the species to the endangered species list. The sage grouse's listing could curtail energy development throughout the West. ... Utah, by comparison, spent $8.8 million on improvements to sage grouse habitat in 2013 alone.

Catch award-winning, acclaimed author, Trevor Loudon with Glenn Beck on TheBlaze TV March 26th at 5:00 PM EST KeyWiki.org Page: http://keywiki.org/index.php/Keith_Ellison Election Facts for 2014: • Party – Democrat • State – Minnesota • Location – Minnesota 5 • First Elected – 2006 • Candidates in 2014: Keith Ellison – D – Incumbent Undeclared No Declared Opposition Listed Keith Maurice Ellison is a Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the 5th District of Minnesota. He is also a Co-Chair on the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and of the...

First Lady Michelle Obama received an unscheduled greeting today from the President of China at the end of her first full day in the country, a place which President Obama has said he wants to “rebalance” US foreign policy. But the first lady is not engaging in any formal talks on issues such as human rights or global politics. Her trip to China is purely for cultural reasons. President Xi Jinping welcomed the first lady and disclosed he had spoken to President Obama by phone a few days ago and confirmed the two presidents are scheduled to hold a bilateral...

If the United States wants to avoid falling like the Roman Empire, it must avoid “overconsumption” and distribute resources equally, according to a study funded by NASA. “The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent,” reads the NASA-funded report published in the Ecological Economics journal. “Two important features seem to appear across societies that have collapsed,” the study adds. “The stretching of resources...

Obama is not a dictator, but there is a danger in his aggregation of executive power. Recently, a bizarre scene unfolded on the floor of the House of Representatives that would have shocked the framers of the Constitution. In his State of the Union address, President Obama announced that he had decided to go it alone in areas where Congress refused to act to his satisfaction. In a system of shared powers, one would expect an outcry or at least stony silence when a president promised to circumvent the legislative branch. Instead, many senators and representatives erupted in rapturous applause;...

President Obama announced his fiscal 2015 budget on Tuesday morning at Powell Elementary in the District’s Petworth neighborhood, highlighting the school’s early childhood education program as a model for the nation.

President Obama vowed to use his executive authority to usher in a "year of action" even if Congress remains gridlocked, he said in his weekly address. "Where Congress isn’t acting, I’ll act on my own to put opportunity within reach for anyone who’s willing to work for it," the president said. Obama pointed to a recent trip to North Carolina to announce the formation of a new public-private manufacturing institute as evidence of how he could act alone to spur economic activity. "It’s a partnership between companies, colleges, and the federal government focused on making sure American businesses and American...