Free Republic

Hide your Santa’s, hide your reindeer, and take down your wreaths …because big government is regulating everything! That’s right, the government is now turning all its nanny state hate towards the holiday season – and in a move that would make even the Grinch blush, President Obama’s bureaucracy is proposing new regulations on the use of traditional Christmas lights and other holiday decorations. This month the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) un-wrapped new proposed federal regulations that if enacted, would categorize certain Christmas lights and other “seasonal decorative lighting products” as posing a “substantial product hazard” to the public at...

An article in the book The Abortion Controversy has a disturbing quote by a pro-choice activist: In 1989, the Miami Herald ran a story about a local abortion clinic whose conditions were so heinous that one woman died and another was maimed. Abortion proponents admitted that they had known about the clinic conditions but had remained silent for political reasons. According to pro-choice advocate Janis Compton–Carr: “In my gut, I am completely aghast at what goes on at that place. But I staunchly oppose anything that would correct this situation in law.” — Misty Mealey “Abortion Is a Social Failure”...

Say transgender kids should choose which sex to live with Health and Human Services released long overdue guidelines Friday ordering facilities that house illegal immigrant children to set up sexual abuse prevention programs, and to be prepared to deal with tricky cases such as transgender or intersex children. The rules, which congressional Democrats had demanded earlier this week, govern everything from pat-downs to evaluating each child for their likely risk of being targeted for sexual abuse or harassment, and govern how the children should be housed while at the private facilities, which operate under a government contract.

“Lack of transparency was really critical to getting it passed,” former Obamacare consultant Jonathan Gruber explained. The Democrats cleverly exploited the American voters’ “lack of economic understanding.” Now President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is using secretive, duplicitous science, and exploiting people’s lack of scientific understanding, to impose punitive regulations cleverly labeled the “clean power plan.” The agency claims the clean power plan will prevent “dangerous manmade climate change” by reducing carbon dioxide and “encouraging” greater use of renewable energy. Its real goal is forcing coal-fired power plants to reduce operations significantly or shut down entirely. The EPA also claims that...

After weeks of promising bipartisanship and refusing to make policy announcements that might rile Democratic lawmakers, Maryland Gov.-elect Larry Hogan has picked his first political fight, coming out swinging against environmentalists and their powerful allies in the General Assembly. Mr. Hogan vowed Monday to roll back proposed new regulations that would limit phosphorus runoff from farms, siding with Eastern Shore farmers who rely on phosphorus-rich chicken manure for fertilizer and against environmentalists who blame it for choking the life out of the Chesapeake Bay. The regulation, known as the “phosphorus management tool,” or PMT, has been hotly debated in the...

AirBnB.Com, Uber.Com: If you own a house or car, should you be free to do what you want with it? If your plans for your personal property include making money, then you may find out the hard way that, no, you can’t do as you wish. That’s the harsh lesson being learned by many Americans as they participate in the new, burgeoning freelance services industries. Consider Raleigh, North Carolina resident Gregg Stebben. He and his wife Jodi are registered as service providers with AirBnB.Com, the new online venture that matches travelers in search of lodging with private homes, extra bedrooms...

If you own a house or car, should you be free to do what you want with it? If your plans for your personal property include making money, then you may find out the hard way that, no, you can't do as you wish. That's the harsh lesson being learned by many Americans as they participate in the new, burgeoning freelance services industries. Consider Raleigh, North Carolina resident Gregg Stebben. He and his wife Jodi are registered as service providers with AirBnB.Com, the new online venture that matches travelers in search of lodging with private homes, extra bedrooms and couches...

On Thanksgiving eve, the Obama administration dumped reams of mind-numbing ObamaCare regulations into the Federal Register — including yet more unilateral rewrites of the Affordable Care Act. Dropping the rules as most Americans were busy preparing for the holiday made a mockery (again) of President Obama’s promise to have “the most transparent administration in history.” The stunt has even worked to keep most of the media from reporting on the rules. Yet the changes these regulations make in the health-care law are substantial. For one, the president is redefining what health plans are “adequate” for larger employers (100-plus workers) to...

The GOP is preparing to mount a full-scale assault on President Obama’s regulatory agenda, using the party’s strengthened hand in Congress to delay, soften or block contentious administration rules at every turn. As long as Obama sits atop the executive branch, Republicans’ power to derail scores of rulemaking efforts now under way is limited. But control of both the House and Senate in the next Congress will enable GOP lawmakers to ratchet up their attacks on what they view as overzealous regulation. “So long as we have this president the federal agencies can go around Congress," said Sen. Jim Inhofe...

The city of Berkeley is considering whether to require local retailers to give out radiation-related safety sheets to cell phone customers who make a purchase. Customers could be advised not to hold or carry the phone near the body while using the device, and directed to consult the manual to learn the “recommended separation distance” between the phone and one’s body.

The Obama administration is expected to release on Wednesday a contentious and long-delayed environmental regulation to curb emissions of ozone, a smog-causing pollutant linked to asthma, heart disease and premature death. The sweeping regulation, which would aim at smog from power plants and factories across the country, particularly in the Midwest, would be the latest in a series of Environmental Protection Agency controls on air pollution that wafts from smokestacks and tailpipes. Such regulations, released under the authority of the Clean Air Act, have become a hallmark of President Obama’s administration. Environmentalists and public health advocates have praised the E.P.A....

While Americans are focused on what delicious foods they’re going to eat for Thanksgiving, the White House is focused on releasing its massive regulatory agenda– marking the fifth time the Obama administration has released its regulatory road map on the eve of a major holiday. The federal Unified Agenda is the Obama administration’s regulatory road map, and it lays out thousands of regulations being finalized in the coming months. Under President Barack Obama, there has been a tradition of releasing the agenda late on Friday– and right before a major holiday. “It’s become an unfortunate tradition of this administration and...

Business groups are joining with local government representatives and conservative lawmakers to criticize the Environmental Protection Agency’s water jurisdiction proposal, imploring the Obama administration to rescind it. Opponents of the proposed rule say the EPA’s effort to redefine its authority over creeks, ponds and wetlands is written so broadly that it could put millions of new miles of rivers and streams under federal control, along with ditches, puddles and dry creek beds. Such a change would be a major impediment to commerce, as businesses could suddenly need permits for all manner of routine activities like building fences or digging ditches,...

The White House on Monday essentially dared Republicans to try and stop President Obama’s climate-change agenda, with officials bragging that even after the GOP takes control of the Senate in January, there is nothing that can be done to stop a host of controversial new actions. On a conference call with reporters, White House counselor John Podesta said the administration will move ahead on the issue despite Republican efforts to stand in the way. He even called out incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by name, saying the Kentucky Republican will not succeed in trying to slow executive action on...

Looming Environmental Protection Agency ozone regulations personify the Obama administration’s secrecy, collusion, fraud, and disdain for concerns about the effects that its tsunami of regulations is having on the livelihoods, living standards, health and welfare of millions of American families. Virtually every EPA announcement of new regulations asserts that they will improve human health. Draconian carbon dioxide standards, for example, won’t just prevent climate change, even if rapidly developing countries continue emitting vast volumes of this plant-fertilizing gas. The rules will somehow reduce the spread of ticks and Lyme disease, and protect “our most vulnerable citizens.” It’s hogwash. But Americans...

Sen.-elect Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) pledged on “Fox News Sunday” to be “extremely aggressive” in trying to rollback some regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency. “Extremely aggressive,” she said when asked how aggressive she would be in the Senate in trying to rollback some of the EPA regulations. “That is my promise to West Virginia. We have lost over the last two years, 5,000 jobs. Those are just coal jobs. “We had several thousand other miners who are what are called a warn notice, meaning they're potentially going to be losing their jobs. That doesn't even count the transportation job,...

Hear the story of George Norris, a 67-year old hobbyist, was convicted and sent to prison for failure to comply with obscure laws involving his small business – selling orchids from his backyard. George Norris, a 67-year old hobbyist, developed a small business selling imported orchids out of his backyard greenhouse. Norris did his best to make sure he was in compliance with laws and regulations regarding his hobby. That’s why he was surprised to come home one day to find his house being raided by armed federal agents. After spending his life savings and borrowing what he could to...

~ RH Reality Check’s Andrea Grimes, itemizing the “undue burden” placed on pregnant mothers who have to travel further to get an abortion at a regulated abortion clinic in Texas, as opposed to a closer unregulated clinic. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of these regulations on October 2, effectively shuttering 13 unstandardized abortion clinics around the state.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an industry challenge to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations issued by Republican former President George W. Bush's administration that set standards for ozone pollution. By declining to hear the case, the court left in place the so-called primary air quality standards designed to protect public health, which Democratic President Barack Obama's administration defended. Those rules, which set air quality standards that U.S. states and the federal government must implement through regulations, had been challenged by the Utility Air Regulatory Group, which represents electricity-generating companies.

The U.S. Department of Education’s latest rule, the “gainful employment” or GE rule, mandates that for-profit colleges cannot saddle students with debt at an arbitrary rate. However, it affects only for-profit colleges such as Kaplan, DeVry and University of Phoenix, representatives of Kaplan claimed during a Washington, D.C. briefing recently. At the meeting organized by the Independent Women’s Forum, former Dallas mayor Thomas Leppert, now the CEO of Kaplan, explained how the rule itself is not fair to for-profit colleges. “A regulation should apply to any institution,” said Leppert, who noted “it only applies and targets the for-profit sector.” He...