Free Republic

President Barack Obama is preparing to unleash a series of “executive actions” aimed at boosting the green energy industry as part of the president’s global warming agenda.Obama is launching a “Clean Energy Impact Investment Center” at the Energy Department to “make information about energy and climate programs … accessible and more understandable to the public, including to mission-driven investors.” The White House is also ordering the IRS to come out with guidance and rules to get nonprofits to invest in green energy technologies, along with creating more government financing options for small businesses looking to go green. “Today’s announcements...

Police in Overton, Texas ordered two sisters, Zoey (aged 7) and Andria Green (aged 8) to “cease and desist” selling lemonade in their efforts to raise money to buy a Father’s Day gift for their dad. “Selling anything in Texas without a permit is illegal,” explained rousting officer Doug Stamper. “It doesn’t matter that neighborhood lemonade stands have been a time-honored way for kids to make a buck. Under the law, they need to buy a permit if they want to sell lemonade.” The cost of the required permit is $150. Few kids would have the funds to afford it....

A legal team investigating the Obama administration’s order that certain American military veterans deemed “incompetent” give up their weapons says the problem is worse than expected. People who live with veterans now are being ordered not to possess a gun, and some veterans are told they can “buy back” their Second Amendment rights by giving up their veterans’ benefits. “This is simply unbelievable, On the one hand the [Veterans Administration] and the FBI have found veterans to be mentally ill and too dangerous to be allowed to own firearms, while on the other hand allowing these allegedly dangerous people to...

Artificial trans fat will have to disappear from the American diet, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA on Tuesday ruled that trans fat is not "generally recognized as safe" for use in human food. The department gave food manufacturers three years to remove the partially hydrogenated oils, or PHOs, from their products. The companies can petition the FDA for a special permit to use it, but no PHOs can be added to human food unless otherwise approved by the FDA. Eating a diet rich in trans fat is linked to higher body weight, heart disease and...

Let's give plaudits for House Democrat Rep. Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.) for her plan to require criminals to buy gun insurance: Democrat Congresswoman Says Making Gang Members Buy Gun Insurance Will Stop Shootings I’m afraid it won't be enough, though. Violence isn’t always the fault of guns; oftentimes it's the fault of fists, knives, feet, cricket bats, broken bottles, sewing needles, derringers, etc. So there has to be a better solution to the country’s rampant violence problem, and not just locking up perps - what is that going to do? We propose a Federal system whereby criminals will be required to...

Security Expert: Feds Involved In Day-To-Day Busts Isn't Something Seen Every Day. Bullet-riddled windows, yellow crime scene tape, and evidence markers denoting where shell casings fell on the sidewalk are becoming all-too-familiar sights on New York City streets. Now in an unprecedented move, a federal agency is joining the effort to get gun crimes under control, CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported Monday. Kramer is told it was a collective decision made by the federal government, the NYPD, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Those agencies are mounting a...

For the first big speech of her 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton turned a little-known strip of New York into a serene summertime autocracy, pleasant and creepy at the same time.

BONN, GERMANY - Several nations expressed growing unease on Thursday that time is running short to resolve disputes about global warming after U.N. talks ended with little progress toward an international deal to combat climate change meant to be agreed in December. The U.N. panel of climate scientists says it is at least 95 percent probable that most global warming since 1950 is caused by human activities, led by burning fossil fuels. Co-chair Ahmed Djoghlaf accused the media of being too negative. "Saying that the process is going nowhere is not a responsible statement," he said. "The job is huge,...

... For uninsured California immigrants such as Vasquez and Becerra, which side of a county line they live on can significantly affect the care available when they're sick. Counties are required under a 1933 state law to "relieve and support all incompetent poor, indigent persons." That requirement has been open to interpretation when it comes to healthcare for those in the country illegally. Among the 11 counties that provide low-cost medical care to such immigrants, some limit treatment to seriously ill patients or children. The remaining 47 counties do not consider these immigrants to be covered by the state mandate....

A GOP-controlled Senate panel on Wednesday blocked President Barack Obama's request for $50 million to pay for legal help for unaccompanied immigrant children coming to the United States after fleeing violence in Central America. The lawmaker responsible for the move was Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, chief author of a spending bill funding the Justice Department's budget. The spending measure, however, has a long way to go before becoming law. Without lawyers, children are much more likely to be sent back to their home countries. Under federal law, immigrant children have two options to seek legal status, including requesting...

Hundreds of migrants brought to Italy after being rescued at sea camped on streets near Rome's Tiburtina train station and gathered in Milan's main terminal on Thursday, making a brief stop on their journey to northern Europe. At Tiburtina, migrants from Syria, Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia were among those resting in the shade under olive and fig trees. Children played in the supermarket nearby, and dozens napped on cardboard under an overpass. Italy is struggling to handle the summertime surge in migrants, with thousands rescued at sea each week and more than 50,000 so far this year. Almost 2,000 have...

Next time there is a knock at the front door, it just might be the head of the Environmental Protection Agency waiting to deliver a message. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy dealt a warning Wednesday to Americans who do not place environmental stewardship above everything else. "If you are selling to somebody a product, and you can assure them that that product was produced in the most environmentally responsible way, I will guarantee you that they will value that product more highly," McCarthy said at the 2015 GreenGov symposium at George Washington University in Washington. "I can guarantee you because if...

Wednesday in Iowa, former Johns Hopkins pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, a Republican presidential candidate, said he was “thinking seriously” about creating a program with a “covert division” of monitors to spy on government workers in hopes of improving government efficiency. Carson said, “The other thing that I’m thinking very seriously about doing is adding a covert division of people who look like the people in this room, who monitor what government people do. And we make it possible to fire government people!” Carson added, “I think just knowing that person that just came through that door might be one of...

At the Treasury Department, the memo came down from the deputy executive secretary, Wally Adeyemo, in December of 2009. Going forward, the memo stated, “sensitive information” requested under the Freedom of Information Act was to be reviewed not only by career FOIA officials but also by a committee of political appointees... before release. And it didn’t just happen at Treasury, but at the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security, too. Current and former FOIA attorneys at these agencies say documents requested by the media have come in for special scrutiny, called “sensitive review,” often holding up release for weeks...

Justice Department’s national security chief cites six-month transition period in the USA Freedom Act as a reason to turn the bulk surveillance spigot back on.The (Obama administration) has asked a secret surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans for six months. The legal request, filed nearly four hours after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning precisely the bulk collection he asks the secret court to approve, also suggests that the administration may...

Dozens of activists are calling on a Dallas-based video broadcast station to fire a black talk show host for blaming a group of mostly black teenagers for starting a fracas at a private swimming pool in McKinney, Tex. on Friday. Benet Embry, has been accused by some for being a traitor to his race after he posted to his Facebook account to push back against what he called a false media narrative that has been crafted in the wake of the incident. The Daily Caller confirmed with the CEO of Deep Ellum, Jedi Jantzen, that the station has received at...

The United States Department of Justice is using federal grand jury subpoenas to identify anonymous commenters engaged in typical internet bluster and hyperbole in connection with the Silk Road prosecution. DOJ is targeting Reason.com, a leading libertarian website whose clever writing is eclipsed only by the blowhard stupidity of its commenting peanut gallery. Why are the government using its vast power to identify these obnoxious asshats, and not the other tens of thousands who plague the internet? Because these twerps mouthed off about a judge. Last week, a source provided me with a federal grand jury subpoena. The subpoena1, issued...

link only: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kalief-browder-1993-2015

resident Obama bluntly challenged the Supreme Court over a pending ruling on the validity of ObamaCare subsidies, complaining Monday that the court should never have taken up the case -- and warning that a ruling against subsidies would be a "twisted interpretation" of the law. The president and his administration's legal team for months have fought the Affordable Care Act court challenge, which is over whether people who enrolled through the federal HealthCare.gov are entitled to subsidies. But the president's comments on Monday, during a press conference on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Germany, were perhaps his toughest...

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A white former North Charleston police officer was indicted on a murder charge Monday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man who was running away from the officer after a traffic stop. The shooting April 4 was captured on video by a bystander and showed officer Michael Slager firing eight times as 50-year-old Walter Scott ran away. The shooting rekindled an ongoing national debate about the treatment of black suspects at the hands of white officers