Free Republic

WHAT IS SLDS? The STATE LONGITUDINAL DATABASE SYSTEM, is a comprehensive database compiled ON EACH CHILD. This data is not aggregate data, it is linked specifically to the child. DATA that is collected will FOLLOW THE CHILD through to their adult years and BEYOND. In fact, that is the PURPOSE of the SLDS, to provide a database that “grows” along with the child into their CAREER YEARS. The Workforce Data Quality Initiative’s Mission Statement from the United States Department of Labor’s website reads: “The long-term Workforce Data Quality Initiative and SLDS goal for States is to use their longitudinal data...

Impending state legislation and civil discord on the national level has equated to an uptick in firearms sales for area shops, shop owners say. Among other factors, a new state law, effective Jan. 1, will require purchasers of both long guns and handguns to obtain a firearm safety card. As with the current requirements to purchase handguns, the new rule will require a shopper to take a test and pay a one-time fee before the sale of a rifle, shotgun or handgun could be made.

Via WaPo, it’s now officially a mixed-blessings news day for Jeb Bush fans. Two issues here. One: Does Obama enjoy more power to craft policy if Congress is deadlocked between the two parties? Ezra Klein says yes, I say no. Two: How far can Obama go in crafting policy in the name of “prosecutorial discretion”? No one disputes that he can prioritize one illegal immigrant’s deportation case over another’s. If he can do that for one person, why can’t he do it systematically for five million? At what point does “prosecutorial discretion” become unconstitutional legislation by presidential diktat?Judge Arthur Schwab’s...

Asserting a legal and constitutional authority he himself said he did not have, President Obama is going rogue, issuing an executive amnesty to 4 to 5 million illegal aliens. He will order the U.S. government not to enforce the law against these 5 million and declare that they are to be exempt from deportation and granted green cards. Where did Obama get his 4-5 million figure, not 2-4 million, or 5-7 million? Nowhere in law, but plucked out of his own mind, as to what he can get away with. Barack Obama just felt it was about right. Thus does...

Calling a secretive government operation to strangle politically out-of-favor businesses “more dangerous” than the IRS targeting scandal, a congressman with a background in banking is preparing to introduce legislation to kill the Obama administration initiative. “I believe this activity is probably more dangerous and more disastrous than that of the IRS scandal because this is running people out of business for no reason and it’s harming livelihoods, incomes [and] families,” Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., said today in an interview with The Daily Signal. Luetkemeyer, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, was comparing the Department of Justice’s Operation Choke...

LYNDEN — The Lynden Pioneer Museum will remove World War II-era guns from a current exhibit and return them to their owners, to avoid violating the new background-check law, according to the museum’s director. The new law, passed by voters this month as Initiative 594, requires background checks on the recipients of guns in all sales or transfers, with exceptions for family members and antiques. The 11 rifles the museum borrowed from collectors for the exhibit are too new to qualify as antique under the law, and I-594 is silent on any exemption for museum displays. “I read through the...

Are you a Democrat who can provide legal justification for President Obama issuing work documents to illegal aliens in his proposed executive order? If so then you need to contact Lawrence O'Donnell, host of MSNBC's The Last Word. O'Donnell has claimed that he spent days trying to track down such a Democrat but was unable to find any who could provide such justification. Among those Democrats unable to provide a constitutional basis for that part of the executive order was Representative Peter Welch of Vermont who presented the face of befuddlement when asked that question by O'Donnell.

President Barack Obama plans to announce an overhaul of U.S. immigration policy through executive action that would shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Such a move will set up a showdown with Republicans, who have blocked Democrats' efforts in Congress to reform immigration laws and warned the president not to take unilateral action on immigration. The Times, citing unidentified administration officials with direct knowledge of the plan, said Obama's proposed overhaul may be announced as soon as next week. Officials said it would allow many parents of children who are...

The Federal Election Commission deadlocked in a crucial Internet campaign speech vote announced late last week, leaving online political blogging and videos free of many of the reporting requirements attached to broadcast ads — for now. All three Republican-backed members voted against restrictions, but they were opposed by the three Democrat-backed panel members, including Vice Chairwoman Ann M. Ravel, who said she will lead a push next year to come up with rules for government political speech on the Internet. It would mark a major reversal for the commission, which for nearly a decade has protected the

A senior Democratic tax writer said Friday that the Obama administration could take unilateral action targeting offshore tax deals before Congress leaves town for the midterm elections. Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) said that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told a group of House Ways and Means Democrats on Wednesday that the White House would roll out administrative actions against the recent influx of so-called inversions “when they’re ready.” “That could be next week,” Levin said at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. Lew has only said that the administration would decide in the “very near future” how to respond...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress. In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of...

After meeting with a "bevy" of big-business groups, President Barack Obama is reportedly considering granting them up to 800,000 additional guest-worker visas via executive actions.

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is throwing down the gauntlet again. He is calling on every American citizen to call their U.S. senators and demand to know where they stand on President Barack Obama’s planned executive amnesty. Sessions, in a statement exclusively provided to Breitbart News, berated House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, calling on Reid to allow a vote on the House-passed measure that would block President Obama’s attempts to continue or expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty to millions more illegal aliens. “Recent developments suggest...

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that President Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional could mean as many as 800 cases decided by the illegal appointees would have to be reconsidered. The Court ruled three appointments President Obama made on Jan. 4, 2012, to fill out the five-member National Labor Relations Board, were improper because the Senate was not, in fact, in recess. That means the NLRB did not have a quorum, as required by law, when it ruled on hundreds of cases from the time they were appointed until August 2013, when other nominees were properly...

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”—James Madison “Here [in New Mexico], we are moving more toward a national police force. Homeland Security is involved with a lot of little things around town. Somebody in Washington needs to call a timeout.”—Dan Klein, retired Albuquerque Police Department sergeant If the United States is a police state, then the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is its national police force, with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies. In fact, although the DHS’ governmental bureaucracy may at times appear to be...

The Obama administration, after failing to get gun control passed on Capitol Hill, has resorted to using its executive power to try to put some in the firearms industry out of business, House Republican investigators say. The assertion is included in a report recently released by California GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Citing internal Justice Department documents, the committee concluded that the administration used a program known as Operation Choke Point to target legal companies that it finds “objectionable.” The program was started in 2013 to protect consumers by “choking” alleged fraudsters’...

<p>Amid jubilation Saturday over the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from captivity by the Taliban, senior Republicans on Capitol Hill said they were troubled by the means by which it was accomplished, which was a deal to release five Afghan detainees from the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.</p>

There is no doubt in any sane mind that Obamacare is a travesty on the U.S. Constitution and a terrible fraud perpetrated on America citizens. Yet it seems as though we’re all stuck with it . . . or are we? On Friday Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ 8th Dist.), led the charge in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, in the case of Steven Hotze, M.D. v. Kathleen Sebelius, ramping up efforts to prove, once and for all, that the entire basis for the ACA bill was bogus in...

Senate Democrats said Wednesday that the Supreme Court has stretched the First Amendment too far when it comes to campaign finances, and vowed to hold a vote to amend the Constitution and undo a number of landmark decisions. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat and chairman of the Rules Committee, said he will push a constitutional amendment to the full floor later this year that would give Congress the power to impose strict limits on campaign finance. “It will draw to a fine point where we are at — and that is, the First Amendment is sacred, but that...

Does the Environmental Protection Agency really need armed agents? Outside of law enforcement, federal agencies now employ over 25,000 people as armed agents. They are more than guards. They’ve become like private armies that can push around private citizens. Over 70 non-military federal agencies now have their own armed agents. You expect armed agents with the FBI, the U.S. Marshal Service and the Border Patrol. But the EPA? The Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, even the Social Security Administration and the National Institutes of Health? Even the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban...