Free Republic

John Colbert for Congress. California’s 29th Congressional District Congress will be immensely improved by the replacement of the nihilist Adam Schiff with the conservative, moral John Colbert. Colbert is seeking the a spot on the ticket as a Republican to replace Democrat Schiff this November. To make a comparison,Go to the John Colbert web site:Colbert link Then visit an eyewitness report on the so-called Townhall Meeting, staged by Schiff: Report on Schiff JWThinkwright

Imagine Congress trying to pass an expensive and unpopular healthcare bill by twisting arms, cutting backroom deals, refusing transparency and politicians mysteriously changing their votes, only to finally pass the controversial legislation at the last hour by a paper thin margin. This is what happened in 2003 when the “Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act” was passed by a Republican controlled Congress with the minimum 216 votes and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. It was the largest government healthcare entitlement expansion to date, estimated at about $400 billion, but has exceeded over half a trillion...

Most Americans know who Thomas Jefferson was. He was the principle author of the Declaration of Independence and one of the most influential of the founders of this nation. He was Governor of Virginia, the first Secretary of State of the United States, and the nation’s third president, serving eight years beginning in 1801. As a major figure in the founding of the United States of America he fully understood the reasons the colonies split from Great Britain, and his beliefs were fairly representative of the people of the times who decided the oppressive and tax-crazed British government was destructive...

Following months of heated public debate and aggressive closed-door negotiations, Congress finally cast a historic vote on healthcare late Sunday evening. It was truly a sad weekend on the House floor as we witnessed further dismantling of the Constitution, disregard of the will of the people, explosive expansion of the reach of government, unprecedented corporate favoritism, and the impending end of quality healthcare as we know it. Those in favor of this bill touted their good intentions of ensuring quality healthcare for all Americans, as if those of us against the bill are against good medical care. They cite fanciful...

Dear anyone who will listen to me. Trying to Explain Quantum Mechanics to a heroin addict with your life savings at stake if you fail, is the same feeling I got tonight. When watching C Span and seeing Shirley Chisholm talking in an empty chamber to the empty headed man holding a gavel who was one notch stupider than she was spewing irrelevant and mindless thoughts for sake of exacerbating. I thought her time would have been much better spend in the vernacular of my expression. I have my Bottle of Rolling Rock not yet opened and my blind dog...

The current American federal deficit (as of March 2010) is about $30,000 per person -- including children, the sick, crippled, homeless, and retired. For people who work, the deficit amounts to $60,000 each. Government debt grew by a sickening $5,000 per head last year (2009). And it's scheduled to grow by slightly more this year (2010). The current national debt ceiling is 14.3 trillion dollars, or one full year of America's income. Now this is an evil almost beyond compare. Whatever government "investments" this amount represents, and however many irresponsible Big Businesses were recently rescued by it, and however much...

Last week Congress voted to encourage participation in the 2010 census. I voted "No" on this resolution for the simple, obvious reason that the census- like so many government programs- has grown far beyond what the framers of our Constitution intended. The invasive nature of the current census raises serious questions about how and why government will use the collected information. It also demonstrates how the federal bureaucracy consistently encourages citizens to think of themselves in terms of groups, rather than as individual Americans. The not so subtle implication is that each group, whether ethnic, religious, social, or geographic, should...

When the City of Chicago banned all handguns recently, countless Americans rightly cried foul. When it looked like the Supreme Court might overturn the ban, gun-rights advocates cheered the decision. But while their heart is in the right place, their enthusiasm is not, as what gun-rights advocates are really cheering is the federal government assuming even more power. The Bill of Rights was never intended to be a list of individual rights, but a list of things the federal government could not do to the states. Patrick Henry and his anti-federalist friends did not want an all-powerful “national” government and...

In 2007, USA Today reported. “Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.4 billion a day – or nearly $1 million a minute. What’s that mean to you? It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.” Three years later Congress has raised the national debt ceiling yet again — to an unprecedented and even more astronomical $14 trillion. From healthcare to climate change, stimulus to war, virtually every conversation coming out of today’s Washington, DC-regardless of which party is in...

The key to highest quality and lowest cost in doctoring is this: No Welfare State mandates on health care. No "helpful" regulations on doctors, medicines, medical procedures, or overall treatment plans. Let people buy any kind of drugs, health care, or medical insurance they want, from anyone they want, from anywhere on earth. It's called freedom. Case closed. Nothing else to discuss or debate.

The government-school establishment has said the same thing for decades: Education is too important to leave to the competitive market. If we really want to help our kids, we must focus more resources on the government schools. But despite this mantra, the focus is on something other than the kids. When The Washington Post asked George Parker, head of the Washington, D.C., teachers union, about the voucher program there, he said: "Parents are voting with their feet. ... As kids continue leaving the system, we will lose teachers. Our very survival depends on having kids in D.C. schools so we'll...

When Ann Coulter praised Ron Paul at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., the right-wing author and provocateur said she supports everything the congressman stands for except foreign policy. This wasn’t the first time Coulter made this point. Said Coulter at CPAC in 2008, “I must say I love Ron Paul on everything but Iraq.” Comparing Paul’s foreign policy stance to that of the congressman’s fellow non-interventionist Pat Buchanan, Coulter added “Whenever I listen to Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan I always think ‘I can’t listen too long or they might convince me.” Coulter is essentially saying...

When Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was censured by various GOP county committees in his own state recently, Graham dismissively blamed it on “Ron Paul people.” When Florida governor and U.S. Senate candidate Charlie Crist was defeated in a Republican straw poll by challenger Marco Rubio in December, Crist complained it was nothing more than “Ron Paul people” At this year’s 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C/, there were plenty of “Ron Paul people,” enough to deliver the congressman a first-place victory in the annual CPAC straw poll, long considered a decent gauge of conservatives’ mindset. But...

Last week marked the one year anniversary of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, or the stimulus bill, passing into law. While the debate over its success has been focused on whether or not it is stimulating the economy and on various questionable uses of funds, in my estimation this legislation is accomplishing exactly what it was intended to accomplish – grow the government. Those of us concerned about the ever increasing level of government debt gasped at the astonishing $787 billion cost estimates for this bill. True to form it has actually cost 10 percent more at $862 billion....

Still, if the GOP is interested in actually doing something more glorious than its multi-year FUBAR when George W. Bush and the Republicans were fully in charge of the federal government, they'd do well to listen very closely to Dr. No. However rotten Obama and the Dems poll, the GOP should never think anyone believes them when they say they are the party of small government and, for god's sake, we're well past the sad-sack culture-war days of various Republican geniuses like Newt Gingrich (4 percent!) talk up flag-burning amendments (the First Amendment is not a suicide pact with square...

The government-school establishment has said the same thing for decades: Education is too important to leave to the competitive market. If we really want to help our kids, we must focus more resources on the government schools. But despite this mantra, the focus is on something other than the kids. When The Washington Post asked George Parker, head of the Washington, D.C., teachers union, about the voucher program there, he said: "Parents are voting with their feet. ... As kids continue leaving the system, we will lose teachers. Our very survival depends on having kids in D.C. schools so we'll...

A number of commentators have recently taken up the notion that libertarianism has become a significant force in contemporary American politics. This conviction is partly based on the assumption that, by being different from both liberals and conservatives, libertarians can enter coalitions with both, thus boosting their political power beyond their numbers. For example, David Kirby and David Boaz of the Cato Institute recently argued that, although unaware of the appropriate label for their beliefs, a significant number of Americans have “libertarian leanings” and that they are not only swing but bellwether voters; their support for Republicans, for example, ominously...

Last week we were reminded that ours is not the only country suffering from severe economic turmoil. The Greek government is the latest to come close to default on their massive public debt. Greece has insufficient funds in their treasury to make even the minimum payments that are now coming due. Their debt level is about 120 percent of their gross domestic product and their public sector absorbs what amounts to 40 percent of GDP. Any talk of cutting costs and spending is met with violent protests from the many Greeks heavily dependent on government payments. Mounting fears of default...

About one year ago President Barack Obama signed the fantastical boondoggle American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law. It was a ghastly 787 billion dollar federal government intervention project -- most of it wasted or counter-productive. It's going to take decades to recover from this Big Government fiasco -- along with President George Bush's very similar mega-bill the year before. In general terms, we'll never recover. America will financially suffer from these two miserable government "bail-outs" forever. Yesterday -- commemorating this unspeakable Leviathon-based disaster -- President Obama pointed out that "economists from across the political spectrum warned that if dramatic...

In preparation for the two recent back-to-back blizzards, D.C. residents were emptying the shelves of neighborhood grocery stores. Notwithstanding the pre-blizzard panic buying, what's interesting is that no one was freaking out about whether the stores would be adequately stocked after the blizzards. After all, think about it: there is absolutely no government planning that goes into what is stocked in grocery stores. No federal Department of Food. No local or state planning commission. No grocery boards. No bureaucrats or bureaucracies. No laws requiring grocery stores to be well-stocked. No rules and regulations dictating how much of each food item,...