Free Republic

Even in the indoctrination of my university experience, I have always sensed that there was and is something wrong with the socialist/statist form of charity, which is illustrated ironically in the picture below: Although the picture is comical, it is also deadly serious, for this is exactly what statist charity in essence represents. In the name of some Robin Hood sort of politics, the state robs the productive members of society, destroys wealth, and then has the audacity to call it "charity" or redistributive politics. If you disagree with such a system (I vehemently do), you are labeled as a...

Asked during last night’s Republican debate about whether his campaign was downplaying his health care plan, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney replied, “I love it.” While praising the plan as a model of bipartisanship — and citing support for it from both Ted Kennedy and the Heritage Foundation — Romney failed to tell viewers what was in the plan. It’s worth reminding people, therefore, that the plan Romney loves: Imposes an unprecedented individual mandate, requiring everyone in Massachusetts to purchase a government-designated insurance product or face thousands of dollars in tax penalties. Significantly increased Medicaid eligibility and provided taxpayer-funded subsidies...

Lobbyists have been furiously lobbying the Obama White House to oppose restrictions on their ability to lobby. The kafuffle began on September 23 when special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform Norm Eisen wrote that "the White House has informed executive agencies and departments that it is our aspiration that federally-registered lobbyists not be appointed to agency advisory boards and commissions." How many Industry Trade Advisory Committees -- ITACs -- are there? The Washington Post says the system of these committees is "so vast that federal officials don't have exact numbers for its size; the most recent...

The tide is turning. and fast. There will soon be an accounting - and the mood and the money for it. The reputation of science - and of many scientists - will be damaged severely. Until now those scientists who knew the science behind global warming theory was weak or flawed largely kept their doubts to themselves, out of fear or other forms of self-interest. I’ve had the emails from some confessing to just that. But self-interest should dictate they now make a stand. They need to show, for their own sake and for the sake of science, that they...

Hopes suddenly rose on Friday that a new global climate pact was within reach after rich nations attending a Commonwealth summit in the capital of Trinidad offered to pay poorer countries to help seal the deal. “Success in Copenhagen is in sight,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said By showing willingness to meet “the need for money on the table,” it was now “realistic” to expect Copenhagen to result in the framework for a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012, Rasmussen said. Copenhagen will not be a talk shop,” Ban said. “We will come out with a...

Till now, I have avoided more than very limited comment on the whole global-warming-carbon emissions controversy. But now that colossal spending and regulating programs impend on these issues, I must say that the Al Gore-David Suzuki conventional-wisdom hysteria is an insane scam. The basic relevant facts are that carbon emissions are not the principal factor in global warming, and despite dire contrary forecasts and ever-increasing carbon-emissions in the world — especially as the economies of China and India, representing 40% of the world’s population, expand by six to 10 percent each year — the world has not grown a millidegree...

As Air Force One heads to Copenhagen for the climate summit Dec. 9, it will presumably not make a U-turn while flying over the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at University of East Anglia near Norwich, England. But perhaps it should. The 61 megabytes of CRU e-mails and documents made public by a hacker cast serious doubt on the ballyhooed consensus on manmade global warming that the Copenhagen summit was called to address. The CRU has been a major source of data on global temperatures, relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the e-mails suggest that CRU scientists...

Double-digit. That hyphenated adjective has been used most often recently to describe October's 10.2 percent unemployment rate. But it can also be used to describe the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product. That precise number is not yet known, but it may turn out to have a more dire effect on our national life than October's unemployment rate. In the fiscal year just ended, federal spending was nearly 25 percent of GDP, while federal revenues slipped below 15 percent because of the financial crisis and recession. We have not seen a budget deficit of this...

LONDON (Reuters) - Investors welcomed new China and U.S. climate targets 10 days before a U.N. summit but an Australian carbon vote delay hinted at wider difficulties to cement a global deal. Traders in a $126 billion carbon market want tight climate targets to boost demand for emissions permits, and energy companies want to know the full future costs -- including from carbon -- of burning fossil fuels as they plan new power plants. "It increases the chances of getting a better, collaborative agreement in Copenhagen, which would in turn create a larger low-carbon marketplace," said James Cameron, vice-chairman of...

Feast and football. That’s what many of us think about at Thanksgiving. Most people identify the origin of the holiday with the Pilgrims’ first bountiful harvest. But few understand how the Pilgrims actually solved their chronic food shortages. Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the...

WASHINGTON — Americans' day-to-day lives won't change noticeably if President Barack Obama achieves his newly announced goal of slashing carbon dioxide pollution by one-sixth in the next decade, experts say. Experts say it will mean higher energy bills, fewer deaths from air pollution, and maybe even a dividend check at the end of the year. But mostly, they say, it'll be small, slowly evolving changes that the public won't even notice. Even a 17 percent emissions cut by 2020, as Obama outlined, would mean hundreds if not thousands of U.S. lives saved because there would be less air pollution to...

A blog entry posted at CQPolitics.com looked at a recent Rasmussen Reports poll and another by the Kaiser Family Foundation and concluded that the “new polls disagree on whether a government overhaul of the nation's health care system will leave people better off or worse off.” In fact, according to the posting, the results were dramatically different with the Rasmussen poll showing that people think the system would be worse by a 54% to 20% margin “while the Kaiser poll says the country as a whole would do better, 54 percent to 27 percent.” The post concluded that the polls...

The puzzling thing about politicians of either party who claim to be "centrist" or "moderate" is how much they sometimes sound like party-line right-wing Republicans. Distinguishing among these species of politicians can be almost impossible during the current struggle over health care reform, especially when a senator like Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas tries to explain herself. Like so many of the Republicans they try to emulate, the conservative Democrats claim to worry about spending and deficits -- except with respect to programs that benefit them, their favorite constituents or the lobbyists who pay their campaign expenses. Facing re-election and...

Why Socialism is Not Compassionate We are facing widespread ignorance of why socialism is bad for our economy and our freedoms. As conservatives, we must demonstrate that liberalism in all its forms, while sincere, is misguided. Our calling is not just to confront our opponents in the political arena, but to educate and win in the battle of ideas! What we encounter in discussing issues today with Americans, is that many think socialism is good. In fact, they think that it is distinctly compassionate, thus truly moral. In this essay we will examine why socialism—and its compadres marxism and liberalism...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fannie Mae plans to raise minimum credit score requirements next month and limit the amount of overall debt that borrowers can carry relative to their incomes, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. Starting December 12, the automated system that the government-controlled mortgage finance company uses to approve loans will reject borrowers who have at least a 20 percent down payment but whose credit scores fall below 620 out of 850, the newspaper reported. Previously, the cut-off was 580. Also, for borrowers with a 20 percent down payment, no more than 45 percent of their gross monthly income...

The climate-gate revelations have exposed an unprecedented coordinated attempt by academics to distort research for political ends. Anyone interested in accurate science should be appalled at the manipulation of data "to hide the decline [in temperature]" and deletion of e-mail exchanges and data so as not to reveal information that would support global-warming skeptics. These hacks are not just guilty of bad science. In the United Kingdom, deleting e-mail messages to prevent their disclosure from a Freedom of Information Act request is a crime. The leaked e-mails indicate that the people at the CRU can't even figure out how their...

There are a few speakers whose oratory style is almost as impressive as what they’re talking about. Al Gore is one of those speakers. Gore knows there’s a lot of factors that will help save the environment, but he left us with the most important one – the same one that will influence almost any major IT change in a company. “This is not a political issue, or a scientific issue or a psychological issue – it’s a moral issue. If anything it’s actually a spiritual issue,” he said. “In the future, our children may ask us one of two...

He started late, made them laugh for the first 5 minutes then gently kicked out the media. “I’m Al Gore and I used to be the next president of America,” he said. Everyone laughed. “Now I’m a recovering politician”. In the script of his speech which he was to deliver after the dozen or so journalists were escorted out of the ballroom, Gore argues “Physical changes in our planet will influence global business and require new corporate strategies that take into account the broader environmental, social and political issues involved in shaping the clean economy of the future.”

Tackling climate change will help prevent millions of deaths among people who are alive now and save the world for future generations, scientists said today. The benefits of cutting greenhouse gases are widely believed to be far in the future. But there are health gains from measures to tackle global warming — such as walking instead of taking the car, and eating less meat — which would be felt in this generation instead of being confined to future generations. The series of papers, backed by the UK Department of Health and the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, are...

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island and seven other Northeast states will undertake a study of “green jobs” in the region thanks to a $4 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. The funding, which comes from the economic stimulus law enacted in February, was announced last week by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. “If we get our act together as a nation and start addressing the major environmental problems of our time – global warming and our dependence on fossil fuels – we can create millions of good paying jobs,” Sanders, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Green Jobs...

Heavily promoted initiatives to train Massachusetts workers for jobs in the emerging green economy are running head on into an increasingly stark reality: The recession is making green jobs, like those in many other sectors, stubbornly scarce. “One of the worst things you can do is train people and not have a job for them at the end,” said Larry Martin. “You get their hopes up high, put them through all this training to find out at the end there’s no jobs,” he said. “Unfortunately, a lot of these grants, whether they be state or federal, came out too soon...

A yearly survey by the Department of Agriculture finds that the recession has dramatically worsened hunger in the United States. "Food insecurity" is at its highest level since the survey was started in 1995, with big increases across the board. Childhood hunger is an especially heart-rending scourge that President Obama, during his 2008 campaign, vowed to eradicate by 2015. He has yet to put forward a proposal for meeting that ambitious goal, but you can't really fault the government for not addressing the hunger problem. According to the USDA survey, 4.8 million households -- which included 4.5 million children --...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Small Business Administration said on Tuesday that supplemental economic stimulus funds for its two most popular loan programs have run out and new loan volumes could fall if funds are not extended. The SBA said $375 million in Recovery Act funds for use in 7(a) and 504 loan programs were exhausted by Monday, leaving thousands of struggling but viable small businesses in limbo unless new resources can be found. Companies with fewer than 500 employees accounted for 64 percent -- or 14.5 million -- of the 22.5 million net new jobs between 1993 and the third...

With the United States under direct assault from the evils of Socialism (or other forms of "Collectivism" including: Communism, or Fascism...pick your tyranny), and with Thanksgiving Day upon us, it's timely, appropriate, and necessary to visit the nation's very first attempt with Socialism, nearly four centuries ago.

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Honduras' Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that ousted President Manuel Zelaya cannot legally return to office, dimming the possibility of his reinstatement after a June coup, court sources said. The Court did not release the full text of its non-binding ruling, but a court source and a lawyer close to the proceedings said it closely follows earlier decisions upholding Zelaya's ouster after he moved to change the constitution.

We have had six Republican presidents since Franklin Roosevelt. Have anyone of them done anything to reverse the policies of FDR?

A new poll shows that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney now has a less than 50 percent favorability rating among Republican voters. Public Policy Polling has released its monthly 2012 survey, which finds that while 65 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and 75 percent have a favorable opinion of former GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, only 48 percent view Mitt Romney favorably. Romney's popularity has fallen 19 points in the poll since May. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling says the healthcare plan that Romney passed in Massachusetts when he was governor...

Reading Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower, an account of the voyage of the Pilgrims and the settling of Plymouth Colony, what strikes me most is not simply the extraordinary suffering of those who made the crossing, or how close to failure the entire venture teetered for years, or even the author's recounting of the first celebration we've since dubbed Thanksgiving. What leaps out from the pages of the history, probably because it's so little a part of the common narrative of the Pilgrims, is a crucial decision by the colony's governor, William Bradford, to change the fundamental organization of Plymouth's economy, a...

3 Trees Said to Prove Warming! --snip-- That's another thing, folks. People said, "I don't get why you believe in God, Rush. Your belief in God, how does that tell you that global warming is a hoax?" Well, belief in God is a very personal thing, but I happen to believe in a loving God of creation -- and I just intellectually cannot accept the fact that a loving God which has created all this beauty and has blessed this country -- I cannot believe that a God like that -- would punish the human being he created for progress,...

Cutting emissions to mitigate climate change will also make people healthier, according to research. A special series of articles, published in medical journal, the Lancet, outlines how such policies could have a direct impact on global health. The series has been released ahead of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Researchers called for health and climate change scientists to work together and for more funding for such interdisciplinary projects.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Better home insulation and ventilation and using electricity instead of fossil fuels could reduce indoor pollution and save thousands of lives, especially in low-income countries like India, a study has found. Using mathematical modeling and case studies, researchers said such strategies could avert 5,500 premature deaths per year in a country like Britain. "The total number of averted premature deaths from acute lower respiratory infections will have reached about 240,000 children aged younger than 5 years, and more than 18 million premature adult deaths from ischemic heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease will have been...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods fell unexpectedly in October, according to government data on Wednesday that reinforced views of a gradual economic recovery from recession. The Commerce Department said durable goods orders dropped 0.6 percent after rising by an upwardly revised 2.0 percent in September. New orders in September were previously reported to have increased 1.4 percent. Durable goods orders are a leading indicator of manufacturing activity, which in turn provides a good measure for overall business health.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Climate change is likely to hit the water-starved Arab world harder than many other parts of the globe and threatens to slash agricultural output in the area, U.N. and Arab League officials said. "Climate change will be critical for the Arab world because this region in particular already suffers from poverty, widespread aridity, water scarcity and social marginalization," said Sima Bahous, Deputy Secretary General for Social Development in the Arab League.

Obama’s decision not to build the Missile Defense System in Poland and the Czech Republic and his Noble Prize have not yet been comprehended from a philosophical viewpoint. It’s time to do it. Power of Money against Power of Spirit The last turning point similar to the current one happened approximately 400 years ago. The Western European society discovered a new hierarchy of values. Feudalism that valued service and chivalry was replaced with capitalism. Wealth became the measure of success, and everyone was to care about his own pocket only. The cult of money replaced all other values, including religious....

Today, November 24, it is exactly 150 years since Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species. The world has been gearing up for this “second echelon” of celebrations for this international “Year of Darwin”, following on from the 200th anniversary of his birth this last February. Atheists and humanist groups in particular have seemed to be relishing the thought of giving further prominence to the ideas of their patron saint. Their adulation is heightened by their knowledge that...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's December jobs forum may be better at serving his political need to show the White House cares about sky-high U.S. unemployment, than discovering new ways to cheaply boost economic growth. There is a long history of presidents hosting "economic summits" to show their concern about the economy. But economists say that by appearing to rule out significant additional spending to lift the economy, Obama will limit what the forum can achieve, and he risks making it look like an exercise in public relations. "You need more demand for goods and services in order to...

Vice President Joe Biden did everything short of shaking a pair of pompoms yesterday as he cheered on an economic recovery while criticizing those he hears booing from the sidelines. "Ladies and gentlemen, things aren't good but they're getting a lot better," Biden told 500 people gathered at a fundraiser for the Committee of Seventy. "We're no longer debating whether we're going to slide into a great depression. We're debating what the shape of the recovery is. Is it robust enough from my perspective? No. Do we need to do more? Yes." "We may be wrong," Biden said. "But the...

There is a charge among some left-leaning professed Christians that conservative social policies neglect Christ's commission to minister to the poor. Does the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 imply Christians should petition their government to enforce "redistributive justice?" Jack Clark thinks so. We excerpt Clark's podcast, Blast the Right, and consider his "equivalent alternative solutions challenge;" it is fine to oppose government programs which provide for the poor, Clark says, but only if you can present an equivalent alternative solution which will help just as many people, in the just the same way, just as...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew more slowly than initially thought in the third quarter, held back by strong imports and weak investment in nonresidential structures, according to data on Tuesday that hinted at a lackluster recovery. In its second reading of third-quarter gross domestic product, the Commerce Department said the economy grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate, rather than the 3.5 percent pace it estimated last month.

<p>The Alliance Defense Fund just filed an emergency injunction and restraining order in response to the decision a couple hours ago by an "ethics panel" at East Tennessee Children's Hospital to discontinue care of 9-month-old Gabriel Palmer.</p> <p>Baby Gabriel was born prematurely with a genetic abnormality, club foot, and narrow airway, but he flourished when he went home from the hospital in June, where he grew, played, and received physical therapy while going to regular doctor visits. He was fed through a tube and received some oxygen and medications.</p>

An oft repeated declaration is that the United States is the richest country in the world, so don’t tell me we can’t afford healthcare for our people; but, is that statement really true? In fiscal year 2009, the U.S. Government spent over a trillion dollars more than it took in through tax revenue, and it plans to continue such trillion dollar deficits for at least 10 years. Well before those ten years of deficit spending end, interest on the accumulated debt will exceed revenue. The national debt is now about 12 trillion dollars with 55 to 100 trillion dollars in...

It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck...

Darwinism and the adoption of Chinese Marxism According to James Pusey, writing in Nature, "Charles Darwin's banner was first unfurled in China during the Reform Movement of 1895-98, in response to China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War." There were two groups seeking change: the reformers, who were loyal to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the revolutionaries, who wanted a clean break with the past. --snip-- The reformers and the revolutionaries debated vigorously "with both sides wildly waving Darwin's banner" The leaders of these movements imbibed the message of scientific racism coming from America and Europe and presented themselves as 'fit'...

As the Congress continues to rewrite and introduce new versions of so called health care reform legislation in both houses of Congress the citizens of the United States are treated to longer and longer bills that are more and more confusing. The House has passed its version and now the Senate has voted to bring its version to the floor for debate. That tells us what we need to know about the so-called moderate Democrats in the Senate. If the people in Louisiana and other states don’t rise up against Mary Landrieu and the other Senators who are selling out...

You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. That’s the way it’s always worked in Washington, so the news that Mary Landrieu will hold a fundraiser in New Orleans for Senator Harry Reid comes as no surprise. Reid procured a substantial dose of cash to Landrieu’s Louisiana in exchange for her crucial “moderate” vote. Senator Mary Landrieu from Louisiana garnered a lot of attention before the healthcare vote last night as to whether she would or wouldn’t vote yes to send the monstrosity of a bill to the floor for debate. After rumors of a $100 million dollar bribe by Senator...

Dear Senator Mary Landrieu, In the words of Ricky Ricardo, you got some splainin’ to do. This state is clearly against this health care bill and you voted to move it forward despite the overwhelming wishes of your constituents. Avoiding your constituents can not continue to be your response. Reserving and filling the front four rows with people who are obviously for the health care bill at a town hall only serves as an indication that you are more interested in advancing this agenda than serving your constituents. Don’t hide from your constituents over this Thanksgiving break, don’t stay in...

A listener sent in an email, reminding me of this quote from Dr. Adrian Rogers. Rogers was born in 1931, right before our imperial federal government began its massive FDR induced expansion. In 1996 Rogers wrote "Ten Secrets for a Successful Family." He wrote that "by and large our young people do not know either the importance or the value of honest labor." I think Dr. Rogers got this one right ..... at any rate: The quote: Here you go: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working...

Welcome to the People’s Republic of Amerika! B. Hussein Obama, George Soros and Congress have so much planned for you......

When my family lived in West Berlin, some of the simple personal freedoms Germans enjoyed — freedoms that we here in the US don’t have — amazed me. They were small things, really – like no speed limit on the autobahn (highway), and no legal restrictions on the drinking age. Such restrictions have become so commonplace for us, that we can scarcely imagine life without them. I told a German friend of mine that I found it odd that her fellow countrymen had so many more personal freedoms than we do in America. She shrugged her shoulders and said, with...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KHcQsjFdC8&feature=channel Joseph Stalin declassified. Newly revealed documents about Stalin and the founding of the USSR and his inner circle. About the purges and memos concerning STalin.