Free Republic

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Many U.S. troops in Iraq were overjoyed to see President Barack Obama take his oath, but some were unhappy about one thing the Democrat has promised to do: permit gay and lesbian soldiers to serve openly. Obama said during his campaign he opposed a 1993 law stating that homosexuals are not eligible to work in the U.S. military, widely referred to as the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule. This month, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs, when asked whether the new administration planned to scrap the law, replied on the president's transition website: "You don't hear politicians give a...

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. endorsed a $2.30 tax increase on a pack of cigarettes this morning, giving Utah the highest state cigarette tax in the country with a goal of wiping out the remaining state sales tax on food. "I think that's a perfectly fair tradeoff," the governor said after publicly embracing the tax hike for the first time and going further than previous legislative proposals. Huntsman's target would more than quadruple the existing 70-cent tax on a pack of smokes. Legislative leaders were open to the idea, and said it will be among the topics discussed in the upcoming...

The ostensible subject was Caroline Kennedy. But in the course of, you know, discussing Kennedy's foundering effort to, you know, be anointed senator, Mika Brzezinski said something of more enduring interest. The Morning Joe co-host provided a telling glimpse into the liberal mindset, as Brzezinski cast her vote for Big Mommy government. Host Joe Scarborough observed that New York Gov. David Paterson was letting Kennedy twist in the wind. Rather than spending his time taxing everything in sight, the guv would be better off appointing Caroline or someone else, so the new senator could hit the ground running once Hillary...

Governor Paterson says he can raise $404 million in state revenues with a 15% tax on soft drinks (but not diet sodas, juices, milk, or water). The relevant section of the statute reads: "Create Sales Tax on Soft Drinks. Imposes an additional 18 percent rate of sales and compensating use taxes on fruit drinks that contain less than seventy percent of natural fruit juice and non-dietetic soft drinks, sodas and beverages. By increasing the price, it will discourage individuals, especially children and teenagers, from excessive consumption of these beverages. Revenues will be directed for health care initiatives." And here’s the...

In the social circles of the New York Times editorialists, it's OK to have one kid. Two is pushing the envelope. Three or more is tacky, and a threat to the survival of the planet. That being so, there's really no reason to let any car bigger than a Prius be built. Doing so just encourages the unenlightened to overbreed. And so it is that in its editorial of today, the Grey-but-barren Lady suggests that as a condition of the Detroit bailout, "Congress could consider demanding that Detroit simply phase out S.U.V.’s and vans by a certain date."

Social engineering by government always ends in disaster. Social engineering occurs when government passes laws and regulations that force citizens to behave the way government thinks they should behave. Prohibition is a great example of social engineering. In 1919, government decided that its citizens should not drink "intoxicating liquors." This "government-knows-best" idea produced more than a decade of lawlessness far worse than citizen intoxication. Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Free people in a free market always produce the best products, most efficiently, at the lowest price. Every time government "engineering" intrudes into the market, products, efficiency, price – and consumers...

We're beginning to get a sense of what the next four years will look like. It won't be a conservative era, that's for sure. Nor will it, despite appearances to the contrary, be a reprise of the Clinton era. Bill Clinton's version of economic liberalism meant slightly higher tax rates on income and capital, a slightly more burdensome regulatory apparatus, lower deficits, and a commitment to free trade. The public sector didn't meddle too much in the private sector. It was content, for the most part, to sit back and enjoy the tax revenue that the tech boom poured in....

A neighborhood grocery-store clerk was shot dead yesterday afternoon on a tranquil block in the shadows of Martin Luther King Jr. High School, and police are scrambling to determine the motive and identification of the gunman, while tracking down other weekend homicides.

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years. "Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10-...

While the state has seen demographic shifts in suburban school districts, the isolation and intense concentration of minority students in the 31 Abbott school districts is worse today than it was 20 years ago.  That's the basis for a "friend of the court" brief filed jointly by the New Jersey Black Issues Convention and the Hispanic Directors Association, two influential umbrella organizations. They are among nine groups challenging the state's overhaul of the school funding formula that guaranteed additional aid to the state's neediest districts. Locally, Paterson, Passaic and Garfield are classified as Abbott districts.   The court is scheduled...

A decision, made under pressure from Congress and investors, to steer Fannie Mae into dangerous corners of the mortgage market proved to be disastrous.

[In 2004, Daniel] Mudd, [new CEO of Fannie] made a fateful choice. Disregarding warnings from his managers that lenders were making too many loans that would never be repaid, he steered Fannie into more treacherous corners of the mortgage market, according to executives. ... Capitol Hill bore down on Mr. Mudd as well. The same year he took the top position, regulators sharply increased Fannie’s affordable-housing goals. Democratic lawmakers demanded that the company buy more loans that had been made to low-income and minority homebuyers. “When homes are doubling in price in every six years and incomes are increasing by...

Getting class-warriors to admit they're wrong about anything is always a struggle. Witness Bill O'Reilly's attempt to get House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) to admit he was on the wrong side of housing policy for decades. Frank, a member of the kooky socialist Congressional Progressive Caucus, wouldn't give an inch in a recent interview even though his fingerprints (and those of some Republicans) are all over the current crisis on Wall Street. (See transcript from October 2 "The O'Reilly Factor" show here; video here) But let's look at the facts. Stanley Liebowitz, an economist at the University...

What if the current Mortgage/Credit Crunch is not just an isolated financial crisis, but in fact the signal for the death of one era, and the (painful) birth of another? If that is the case, it goes a long ways towards explaining the bizarre nature of what we’re seeing going on in Washington and on Wall Street… and suggests that we need a whole different set of solutions. Living out here in Silicon Valley, the heartland of American innovation, it’s hard not to be appalled by the events taking place 3,000 miles away in the seats of American finance and...

Think there's no such thing as too much parking? Take a look at Tysons Corner, where there's more parking than jobs, more parking than office space, more parking than in downtown Washington. That must change, said advocates and politicians seeking to transform Virginia's largest business hub from suburb to city. Reducing parking, charging for parking and finding new uses for the acres of parking that separate Tysons' buildings and the people inside is at the heart of plans to remake the area.... "Who wants parking spaces to be the hallmark of a development?" said Clark Tyler, chairman of a Fairfax...

Dr. Love is struggling.... Dr. Love's allies in the war on childlessness have fared no better. The Singaporean government's official matchmaking agency, the SDU -- the initials stand for Social Development Unit, but it's known to snarky islanders as "Single, Desperate, and Ugly" -- is situated just off the city-state's main shopping thoroughfare, and it doesn't seem nearly as popular as the nearby Emporio Armani.... The developed world is experiencing a wave of pro-natalist sentiment that threatens to bully the childless, tax the single, and reorient states toward the production rather than the protection of citizens. In most developed nations...

From Times OnlineApril 23, 2008 Executives harpooned by online 'whalers' Spies and conmen target bosses in e-mail attacks to install malicious software with access to most privileged data Jonathan Richards Corporate bosses have become the latest target of cyber-criminals, after a string of attacks in which senior management have been singled out to receive fraudulent e-mails. Internet fraudsters have taken to sending personally addressed e-mails to chief executives and other high-level executives with a view to installing malicious software on computers that have access to the most privileged company information. In the latest e-mail scam, known as "whaling" because it...

Compassionate fascism is just as anti-liberty as the other kind Perhaps you wonder how society's self-appointed hall monitors got the right to make you feel bad about the fries on your plate or the cigarette you're smoking, or outlaw listening to iPods while crossing the street. If so, you may also be fed up with being nagged about recycling, and be wondering why just because you don't think we're all responsible for global warming, you have been designated a pariah through that infelicitous phrase -- climate-change denier. You know what that's supposed to sound like. Worse, some of your accusers...

by Richard Lawrence Poe Friday, February 29, 2008 ArchivesPermanent Link I ADDRESS this column to that new breed of conservative, the Hillarycon. These are conservatives who support Hillary Clinton. Below I describe the three types of Hillarycon and explain why each is wrong. TYPE 1: The Innocent Hillarycon The first type is the most well-meaning, but possibly the most deluded. Innocent Hillarycons view Hillary as a weaker candidate than Obama, and thus seek to help Hillary win the nomination. They are wrong. Hillary's weakness is an illusion. She is playing rope-a-dope with Obama. By hanging on the ropes, and...

UNHAPPY couples used to stick together for the sake of the kids. Now they can make the best of a bad marriage in the name of being environmentally friendly. Scientists have quantified for the first time the extent to which divorce damages the environment. The researchers found that the combined use of electricity across the two new households created rose 53% while water use was up by 42%. Across America – one of 12 countries studied – divorced households used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2005 that could have been saved if the families had not split up. That...