Free Republic

Obama administration makes changes to Federal Aviation Administration because too many white males were passing their air traffic controller classes The Obama administration has abandoned the old system for getting qualified air-traffic controller applicants because too many of them were white males, and replaced it with a new system that asks applicants how many different sports they played when they were in high school.The Federal Aviation Administration has stopped giving preferential treatment to air-traffic controller applicants who had passed classes from the 36 FAA-approved college aviation programs across the U.S., because too many of the people who passed these classes were...

The Standing Committee of China’s rubberstamp parliament is meeting to discuss formally acceding to a far-reaching climate change agreement negotiated in Paris last year, amid signs that President Obama is preparing to take the same step — but without Senate ratification — possibly within days. The White House maintains that the climate accord is an executive agreement, not a treaty, and therefore does not require the Senate’s advice and consent. Obama travels to China this week for a G20 summit in Hangzhou, and climate change is high on the agenda both for the summit and for his bilateral meetings with...

Every group (and especially an empire) needs its good or evil spokesperson, leader, or figurehead to focus upon: the embodiment of the particular group or nation. The size of the group is irrelevant: there simply must be a leader that exemplifies the characteristics of the group. History is replete with great leaders, however, benevolence and goodness are not necessarily a leader's qualities. For every good leader, it seems there are a plethora of those who are self-serving, power-hungry despots whose aims are either not for the people or (the other end of the spectrum) against the people. To be...

The most precious virtues that made America's great experiment in freedom and individual liberty so unique have taken quite a beating under Barack Obama and his enablers. Now, after six years of abusing the Constitution on domestic policy issues the Senate has agreed that a White House deal with Iran that will lift Congressionally imposed sanctions is not really a "treaty."  This is no justification for ditching the very things that are supposed to give average Americans the last word on public policy through their representatives and major agreements involving nuclear weapons have always before required a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. And yet, the often-repeated White House rallying...

... Singer’s experience is shared by virtually every journalist on the government beat, from the White House on down. They can recite tales with similar outlines: An agency spokesman — frequently a political appointee — rejects the reporter’s request for interviews, offers partial or nonresponsive replies, or delays responding at all until after the journalist’s deadline has passed. Interview requests that are granted are closely monitored, reporters say, with a press “minder” sitting in. Some agencies require reporters to pose their questions by e-mail, a tactic that enables officials to carefully craft and vet their replies. Tensions between reporters and...

IT is time to talk about President Obama’s contingency plan for health care. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier this month in King v. Burwell, a case challenging the provision of tax credits on federal insurance exchanges. While the legal issues are dry lawyers’ fare — how to interpret several interconnected phrases of the Affordable Care Act — the practical stakes are high. The government estimates that millions of Americans will be left without affordable health insurance if it loses. While the administration may well prevail, it has expressed remarkable pessimism about its options if it does lose. The...

In a move clearly intended by the Obama Administration to suppress the acquisition, ownership and use of AR-15s and other .223 caliber general purpose rifles, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives unexpectedly announced today that it intends to ban commonplace M855 ball ammunition as “armor piercing ammunition.” The decision continues Obama’s use of his executive authority to impose gun control restrictions and bypass Congress. It isn’t even the third week of February, and the BATFE has already taken three major executive actions on gun control. First, it was a major change to what activities constitute regulated “manufacturing”...

In his “fourth quarter,” he feels free to ignore popular opinion, the rule of law, and Congress. Until now there were two types of peaceful American change. One was a president, like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, working with Congress to alter American life from the top down by passing a new agenda. The other was popular-reform pressure, as happened in the 1890s or 1960s, to change public opinion and force government to make new laws or change existing ones. Barack Obama has introduced a quite different, third sort of revolution. He seeks to enact change that both the...

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;...

Last week, Reporters Without Borders dropped America in the World Press Freedom Index 2014 from 33rd to 46th. James Risen of The New York Times rightly explained, “I think 2013 will go down in history as the worst year for press freedom in the United States’ modern history.” And he’s right. The violation of press freedoms has been egregious under this administration, even as the press fetes President Obama as an honest and effective commander-in-chief. Selective Access. President Obama has regularly granted special access to reporters who give him preferential coverage. CBS’ Steve Kroft admitted as much after a...

Jonathan Turley and Nicholas Rosenkranz with Megyn Kelly, discussion Obama's abuse of power.

President Obama—the imperial President, the “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” President who can’t wait to show us his “year of action”—once vowed to do exactly the opposite. "The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America." That was candidate Obama back in 2008. This comment somehow slipped under the radar for the past few years and resurfaced...

KELLY: Let me ask you about this because in that soundbite we played before we went to commercial, you said the framers would be horrified because everything they did was to create balance between the branches of government and we've lost that. TURLEY: Well, I'm afraid it's quite serious because the framers created a system that was designed to avoid one principle thing, the concentration of power in any one branch. Because that balancing between these branches in this fixed orbit is what not only gives stability to our system but it protects us against authoritarian power, it protects civil...

Dr. Ben Carson, the brain surgeon turned popular political analyst, told WND Obama administration officials are “acting like the Gestapo” with the Justice Department indictment of Dinesh D’Souza coupled with the Internal Revenue Service’s political targeting of the administration’s critics. “I believe we are dealing with an extremely corrupt administration,” he said. Dr. Carson himself became the subject of an IRS audit after criticizing Barack Obama’s policies at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington last year.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reacted to President Obama's comment about how the scandal surrounding the Internal Revenue Service had “not even a smidgen of corruption.”"When the president goes on Fox News and says there is not a smidgen of corruption, it's like he's laughing at the impartial administration of justice," Cruz said in an interview on Fox News with host Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday night.Cruz criticized the White House for delaying the investigation into the IRS practice of going after Tea Party political groups and appointing a major Obama donor to investigate the situation."It's an abuse of power and...

In an FDA office building in suburban Maryland, the bureaucrats gather over coffee to draft rules meant to squeeze the trans fat out of snack foods. Four blocks from the White House, in an EPA conference room: more bureaucrats, more meetings, more drafting of rules, these aimed at forcing industrialists to spend billions cutting carbon to fend off global warming. Congress? Who needs Congress? Americans heard President Barack Obama declare this week that he intends to bypass the gridlocked Hill to get things done on his own. What they didn’t hear: just how far he’s actually pushing his executive authority....

President Obama on Friday said that he believed immigration reform could pass in 2014, but cautioned that he would consider executive actions if House Republicans fail to act. “There are still some differences, and obviously, the devil is in the details. But it is my firm belief that we can get immigration reform done this year,” said Obama in a Google+ Hangout in which he took questions from the public. “Obviously, if at some point we see that it's not getting done, I'm going to look at options to make sure that we have a rational, smart system of immigration,”...

A group of House Republicans is pushing a resolution to bring legal action against President Barack Obama for overstepping his authority in executive orders. The STOP (Stop This Overreaching Presidency) resolution, sponsored by Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), targets Obama for allowing a year extension health care policies that were ended because of Obamacare; delaying the employer mandate for one year; deferring the deportation of illegal immigrants brought to the country as children and waiving part of the welfare work requirement. “He’s got a pen and a telephone, it’s true, but we’ve got the Constitution,” Rice said on Wednesday. “The prosperity...

Other than his fundamental dishonesty about certain conditions in America, what he stands for, his record, his failure to accept responsibility for his actions, his demonization, his divisive rhetoric, his arrogant promise to double down on his unconstitutional unilateral executive actions, his calls for yet more government instead of less, his foreign policy distortions and his diminution of the presidential office, President Obama's State of the Union address was pretty good. President Obama remains on his high horse about minimum wage, but he conveniently ignores that only 1 percent of the people in the U.S. labor force earn minimum wage,...

Congress can pass legislation giving judges more discretion in the sentencing of prisoners, but President Obama “also has the ability to take executive action” to commute the sentences of “low-level” drug offenders—and that’s just what he plans to do, Deputy Attorney General James Cole told the New York State Bar Association annual meeting on Thursday. “A little over a month ago, the President commuted the sentences of eight men and women who were sentenced under severe—and out of date—mandatory minimum sentencing laws,” Cole said. …