Free Republic

Yesterday the Obama administration announced a delaying tactic which will put off the possibility of new offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic coast for at least five years: The announcement by the Interior Department sets into motion what will be at least a five year environmental survey to determine whether and where oil production might occur.

Every year about this time, the warmer weather gives every manner of fast-growing weed the opportunity to appear out of nowhere and begin consuming people's lawns. Deny it an environment in which it can thrive, by spreading a grass fertilizer and weed killer mix from your home and garden store, and it somehow finds its way to your neighbor's grass. The same is true about international activists and representatives of various countries' governments who periodically gather under the umbrella of the United Nations, intent on changing the world. Deluded with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and obsessed with controlling the...

The Obama Environmental Protection Agency just condemned to death an entire U.S. industry - a legal and scientific horror story that congressional Republicans failed miserably to prevent. The EPA’s newly proposed greenhouse gas emission standards for coal-fired power plants will be finalized by the Obama administration, win or lose, after the November election. Though the proposed standards leave alone existing coal-fired power plants, they effectively prohibit the construction of new plants by establishing an impossible-to-meet emissions standard. But don’t get the idea that the EPA threw the coal industry a bone by omitting existing coal-fired plants, as the agency has...

CUMMING, Ga. - Newt Gingrich turned the church pulpit into a history class when he addressed the congregation at First Redeemer Church, comparing the struggle of American colonies -snip- "I don't come here as a religious leader and I don't come here as a saint," Gingrich said as soon as he began talking. "I come here as a citizen who has had a life that at times has fallen short of the glory of God, who has had to seek God's forgiveness and has had to seek reconciliation." As such, Gingrich said, he was speaking in the pulpit "as a...

The best reason to rule Obamacare constitutional--the one that makes the answer seem obvious--is a matter of common sense. But that's a case counsel isn't allowed to make. The common-sense case goes like this. Contrary to what Justice Kennedy said this week, no important principle is at stake in this decision. For all practical purposes, the economic power of the federal government is no longer constitutionally constrained. Am I forgetting the Broccoli Question? If the government can force you to buy health insurance, what can't it force you to buy? The common-sense answer to this, as we've just seen, is...

Government to Force Firearms Owners to Buy Gun Insurance © gps333@charter.net In a nutshell, here is the new law: “Every owner of a firearm must, within ten days of taking possession of such firearm, obtain an insurance policy from a state-approved insurance provider, that provides a minimum of $ 250,000 liability and loss coverage per firearm, with a minimum total rider of $ 5,000,000, regardless of the number of firearms possessed. Each 100 rounds of ammunition will require a minimum coverage of $5,000. Failure to secure such insurance coverage will be punishable by a prison sentence of not less than...

The fact that the world is being restructured from decentralized diversity to collectivized hierarchy by an authoritarian regime cloaked in green trappings can hardly be disputed. The final push toward the next and perhaps final phase may be announced this June at the 2012 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A Scientific American editorial by Gary Stix highlights a policy article written by several dozen scientists that appeared online March 15 in the journal Science. The conclusions reached by the scientists, as well as the editorial from a staff member of Scientific American are incredibly unscientific...

The Property Rights Alliance is pleased to herald the publication of the 2012 International Property Rights Index (IPRI), the world’s most comprehensive measure of intellectual and physical property rights among nations. Sixty-nine international organizations partnered with the Washington, DC-based Property Rights Alliance and its Hernando de Soto Fellowship program to produce the sixth annual IPRI. The IPRI utilizes three primary metrics to create a composite score: Legal and Political Environment (LP), Physical Property Rights (PPR), and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Most importantly, the IPRI stresses the great economic disparities among countries with strong property rights and those without. Nations comprising...

When the Supreme Court on Monday began hearing oral arguments in the cases challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—AKA “Obamacare”—Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan showed up to hear the arguments and gave no indication she would recuse herself from judging the cases even though she had cheered enactment of Obamacare as an Obama political appointee and had personally assigned her top deputy in the Obama Justice Department to defend the law in federal court. A federal law, 28 USC 455, says a Supreme Court justice must recuse from “any proceeding in which his impartiality might...

<p>As some have noted, the conversations, tensions, and irritations are ratcheting up, and arguably enough to consider the possibility of a more violent future -- i.e., revolution or civil war.</p> <p>Whether civil war will precede revolution, be contemporaneous with it, or not occur at all is unknowable and likely will depend to some degree on the influence of Fifth Columnists and their religious/racial/ethnic/cultural/philosophic/violent inclinations. As to them, we will have to see.</p>

The Obama administration today endorsed new oil and gas exploration along the Atlantic Coast, setting the stage for possible future drilling lease sales. The announcement by the Interior Department sets into motion what will be at least a five year environmental survey to determine whether and where oil production might occur. There are also no guarantees the administration will approve drilling permits at the end of the environmental review. "The president's actions have closed an entire new area to drilling on his watch and cheats Virginians out of thousands of jobs," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who chairs the House...

Over the past few years the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has hardened its deleterious track record of trading in cost-benefit analyses and objective policymaking for sheer political gain. The Commission completely ignored a lack of market failure or consumer harm in enacting Net Neutrality rules. They demanded politically motivated, unrelated, and extraneous regulatory conditions for every merger under their review - including those they eventually crushed. And their timetable for many proceedings progresses like a senior citizen behind the wheel: painfully slow with unpredictable starts and stops. Today, the U.S. House of Representatives is taking steps to depoliticize and streamline...

More than 30 Democrats called on President Obama to recess-appoint five Federal Election Commission (FEC) commissioners during the Easter recess next week. Chief deputy whip Peter Welch (D-Vt.) asked the president to “use his constitutional authority” to replace the commissioners. These commissioners’ terms have expired and the commission's deadlock is holding back further clarifications on significant issues coming out of the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling. “Doing so [appointing new commissioners] will breathe life into this important agency and send a clear signal to those seeking to exploit an uncertain campaign landscape that the cop is back on...

---- Snip ---- U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts granted requests for acquittal on the most serious charges: conspiring to commit sedition, or rebellion, against the U.S. and conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. Other weapons crimes tied to the alleged conspiracies also were dismissed. ---- Snip ----

Earlier this year, the E.U.’s “Right to be Forgotten” took a step toward implementation, despite the enormous free speech and business costs. Then in February, the White House released a framework calling for a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” based off European standards. Now, in the same vein, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released its final report on consumer privacy. Calling for Congress to enact “baseline privacy legislation,” the FTC’s regulatory appetite has hardly diminished. The Commission builds off a preliminary report released in December 2010, renewing a push for “Do Not Track” functions, while also slightly expanding the...

The EPA proposed strict limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from new power plants despite warnings from utilities and others that such a step would lead to the demise of coal-fired electricity generation. The agency outlined a standard that analysts said would effectively ban new coal-fired stations unless they use carbon-capture technology, which hasn't yet been proven cost-effective. The EPA said the rule wouldn't apply to existing power plants, including when they make modifications to comply with other air-pollution rules, addressing a major concern of the power industry. The rule would also exempt new plants that are permitted and under construction within...

Whoever chooses to merely dismiss the significance of today’s exchange between our President and Russia’s President should have their intelligence and patriotism questioned. Let this exchange be a warning to voters: President Obama will have “more flexibility” to weaken us if he’s re-elected in November. He was caught speaking candidly to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev before a “hot mic” today (and surely one must believe he didn’t know the mics were still on; surely he’s not so audacious as to purposefully broadcast his intentions), as reported by ABC’s Jake Tapper. Here’s the exchange: President Obama: On all these issues, but...

President Barack Obama offered a private request Monday to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for some “space” on missile defense ahead of November’s elections. “On all these issues, particularly on missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space,” Obama said, referring to incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a TV pool reporter who heard audio recorded by a Russian reporter who was in the room moments before the two leaders spoke to reporters after their 90-minute meeting. “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you,” Medvedev responded. A...

After squinting through binoculars into a nation frozen in time, US President Barack Obama reeled off a contempt-laden and startlingly frank indictment of North Korea. The Stalinist remnant of the Cold War was, in Obama's eyes, nothing but a nation which cannot make "anything of any use", "doesn't work", and even its vaunted weapons exports were hardly state of the art. "It is like you are in a time warp," Obama said Sunday, after he toured a rocky border post in the demilitarised buffer zone that has split the Korean peninsular for longer than he has been alive. "It is...

Obama fearing a revolution against him by the states, has moved swiftly by nationalizing nearly all National Guard Forces in multiple states; Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina – to name a few. The Governors of the Great States of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia still have under their Command-and-Control the State Defense Forces to go against U.S. Federal forces should the need arise. Also important to note: There are NO U.S. laws prohibiting National Guard troops from also joining their State’s Defense Forces. This dilemma occurred during the Civil War with many...