Free Republic

No, no, no. Hell, no! That’s my response to the latest trial balloon floated by the White House to join with Silicon Valley on a creepy program monitoring Americans’ “neurobehavioral signs” to (purportedly) prevent gun violence. President Donald Trump’s old friend, former NBC head Bob Wright, has been pushing an Orwellian surveillance scheme called “Safe Home” — “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes” — that would cost taxpayers between $40 million and $60 million. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, reports that the plan could incorporate “Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google...

A woman named Kae who worked in a mental hospital says: “During the years that I worked in a psych unit of the hospital, I encountered many depressed women who had abortions and kept their emotions about it buried. The emotional pain that is hidden so deeply will eventually resurface if left unresolved. Many of these women suffered from eating disorders. Most eating disorders manifest from the patient’s desire to gain control over certain issues in her life. Most young girls I saw who had been pushed into abortions by their parents or boyfriends would either overeat, not eat, or...

ven as stories pour in of Americans facing steeply higher health insurance premiums and canceled coverage, Team TISI +0.13% Obama just imposed new regulations that will make those problems worse. It’s almost like they can’t help themselves. On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced new regulations mandating health insurers cover mental and behavioral health to the same extent they cover physical health care. A “mental health parity” mandate was passed by Congress in 2008, but Obama officials claim health insurers aren’t fully complying. (You’ll just have to overlook the irony of the Obama administration, which has postponed...

(snip)Connecticut is one of only SIX states in the U.S. that doesn’t have a type of “assisted outpatient treatment” (AOT) law (sometimes referred to as “involuntary outpatient treatment”). There’s no one standard for these types of laws, but (roughly speaking) these are laws that allow for people with mental illness to be forcibly treated BEFORE they commit a serious crime.(snip) Apparently far left groups (the ACLU filing against the law here) defeated a Connecticut mental health protections law just months before the Newtown shootings. Their primary concern being that the proposed law would “severely curtail the privacy rights and liberty...

Some 250 teenage boys will pile onto the carpet of the Islamic Center of Passaic County on Sunday to catch the Super Bowl on a big screen. But when the much-buzzed-about commercials come on, they won't be watching. A youth leader manning the projector slaps a piece of paper over the lens, blocking out images the center considers inappropriate, such as beers and bikinis. "The purpose is to keep them away from bad influences," said Emad Hamdeh, the youth committee director. "The beer commercials show people happy while drinking; that's not reality." During the self-imposed blackouts, the boy fans don't...

Last year, Congressman Ron Paul led the charge in Congress to keep federal funds from paying for universal or mandatory mental-health screening of children. Our efforts were successful in exposing the undermining of parents' right to decide what is best for their children. Recognition of the absence of parental consent and the potential for abuse through forced drugging of children created quite a stir in the House and Senate. Senators Sam Brownback (KS) and James Inhofe (OK) hastily sent a letter supporting our position to the House/Senate conference committee that would decide the issue. Despite the outpouring of public support...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- NBC's Today Show has once again provided more evidence of how the media cannot go too low to exploit tragedy and blame it on Ronald Reagan. This morning, host Katie Couric and reporter Kelly O'Donnell suggested Reagan-era budget cuts in mental health programs are part of the reason alleged Capitol Hill shooter Russell Weston was allowed to commit his crime.