Free Republic

The campaign ad was ominous: "John McCain would make you pay income tax on your health insurance benefits. Taxing health benefits for the first time ever."So warned candidate Barack Obama less than a year ago. In ads and speeches, Obama went on to predict the horrific fallout of McCain's proposal: financial hardship and millions dumped from employer-provided health plans. Today, spokesmen for President Obama are saying a tax on employer-provided health benefits wouldn't be such a bad thing after all. Roughly 163 million Americans receive health insurance through their employer. While actually a form of compensation, the value of the...

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Investigators asked the public to be on the lookout Friday for a red van they believe carried three men involved in the deaths of a Florida Panhandle couple who were shot in their rural home while eight of their children slept. Surveillance cameras showed the van at the home of Byrd and Melanie Billings in Beulah, a rural area west of Pensacola near the Alabama border, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said. The children were unharmed. The sheriff's office released an enhanced but still grainy photograph of a red, 15-passenger van dating to the late 70s or...

WAUSAU, Wis. – An American flag flown upside down as a protest in a northern Wisconsin village was seized by police before a Fourth of July parade and the businessman who flew it — an Iraq war veteran — claims the officers trespassed and stole his property. A day after the parade, police returned the flag and the man's protest — over a liquor license — continued. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin is considering legal action against the village of Crivitz for violating Vito Congine Jr.'s' First Amendment rights, Executive Director Chris Ahmuty said. "It is not often...

Men touted as a possible next pope of the Roman Catholic Church rarely get involved in public debates over a coup d’etat or wars of words with heads of state. But that’s what Tegucigalpa Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga has done recently in the the political crisis in his country, Honduras. Before the overthrown President Manuel Zelaya made his failed attempt to return home, Rodriguez issued a statement in a televised address declaring his ouster legal and warning Zelaya could spur “a bloodbath” if he came back to Honduras. snip n an interview this week with CNN en Espanol, Rodriguez took...

"Are you serious? Did you not have a childhood at all?"

"Are you serious? Did you not have a childhood at all?"

... While most environmental groups formally supported the House [climate] bill, the road to passage proved unsettling for the movement. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Public Citizen opposed the bill; members of some other groups privately berated their leaders for going along with it. And some, like Ms. Miller, have shifted to open protest. Few politicians make the transition from campaign trail to White House without sacrificing a few starry-eyed supporters along the way, of course. And Mr. Obama’s early record on environmental issues suggests that he is more aggressive than any of his predecessors in supporting causes like...

NEW YORK — The head of the United Nations General Assembly signalled Friday a breakthrough is imminent in talks to resolve the political crisis in Honduras. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann spoke in New York as thousands of supporters of Honduras’s ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, held rallies in the Central American country. “I have a feeling that we are moving in that direction rather quickly,” the former Nicaraguan revolutionary, who is also a Catholic priest, told a news conference at the UN. Insiders suggested that a timetable had been laid out in which Zelaya, a rich landowner whose leftist policies led him...

Sen. John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) political future remained unclear late Thursday while his Senate colleagues largely avoided questions over revelations that Ensign’s father paid nearly $100,000 to the family of his former mistress after her husband discovered the relationship.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Florence, Genoa and Venice were the financial capitals of the Western world. When they declined, financial leadership shifted to Amsterdam, then to London, and finally to New York, whose supremacy went unchallenged from 1945 until the end of the 20th century.In the new millennium, however, it is showing cracks. A decade ago, companies fought for the privilege of being listed on the New York exchanges. But interest has dropped significantly since the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000. The credit crisis has only made things worse. Will the city be able to retain...

The Democrat-on-Democrat earmark smackdown between House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (Wis.) and Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.) came in with a bang. It’s apparently going out with a whisper. An Appropriations subcommittee on Friday marked up the education spending bill that would have included the Waters’ funding request that sparked the fight. But, after Obey’s pledge not to fund the project, bill writers left it out.

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) today delivered the weekly Republican address on the economy, the Obama Administration’s trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending bill that isn’t working, and Republican efforts to offer better solutions.

Democrats on the influential House Ways and Means Committee seemed to be moving toward a funding plan for health-care reform that would cut Medicare and Medicaid spending by roughly $500 billion to $600 billion and levy a surtax on the wealthy — even as the bill's introduction was put off as party moderates wrangled with leadership over how to proceed. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel said Friday the plan would include three different surtax rates that would affect people making $350,000, $500,000 and $1 million a year, respectively. Rangel said the rates would be small, perhaps ranging between...

Illegal Immigration: As California issues IOUs to its citizens, another ballot proposition may be brewing to cut off benefits that are draining the state budget. From education to welfare to crime, the cupboard is bare.California is a leader in both government debt and the sanctuary city movement. But as its citizens seek shelter from the economic storm, the question has arisen anew whether its non-citizens and the better life they want takes precedence over its citizens and the better life they are entitled to. In this mother of all recessions, it's getting harder to argue that illegal aliens are here...

Defying their regime once more, Iranians have renewed their protests in the streets of Tehran. Last month, when the protests began, the New York Times ran a story hinting that Iran's demonstrators may have been inspired by an "Obama factor." The article suggested that President Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach, unlike his predecessor's approach, emboldened Iranians to rise up against their regime, demanding it repair relations with America and the world. The Times reporter drew a stark contrast between the presidency of George W. Bush and that of Mr. Obama. According to the article, "Iran's regime was able to coalesce support...

Politics: The career of Roland Burris, a political cipher from Illinois who became a U.S. senator and the lamest of ducks, is over. He can now retire into the obscurity he so richly deserves.Having obtained the seat under a cloud of typical Illinois corruption, Burris announced Friday he won't run for a full term in 2010. He was appointed by the former and recently impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich who, among his other accomplishments, tried to auction off the seat formerly held by Barack Obama. Blagojevich was forced out of office and may soon join other Illinois governors who went on...

The government could lose out on more than $2.7 billion if federal officials continue to undervalue part of the financial bailout package, a government watchdog panel will say on Friday. The Congressional Oversight Panel, working with a team of Harvard Business School professors, estimated that taxpayers had lost one-third of the value of the very small number of warrants that had already been sold by the Treasury Department.

MELBOURNE, Florida — A Florida attorney says a couple who were rocketed into the public eye by the antics of a former astronaut are getting married. Kepler Funk, a Melbourne attorney who represents Colleen Shipman, said Friday that she and former space shuttle pilot Bill Oefelein have gotten engaged. The couple, who now live in Alaska, have not set a date. • Photos: Astronaut Love Triangle Authorities say Lisa Nowak, who worked with Oefelein in the space program, famously drove from Houston to the parking lot of Orlando International Airport in February 2007 to confront Shipman.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry had kept the English-version document of a secret Japan-U.S. pact that outlines the handling of the U.S. forces' nuclear weapons since 1960, a former senior ministry official said Saturday. The document had been placed under the strict supervision of the ministry's North American Affairs Bureau and Treaties Bureau, which is now International Legal Affairs Bureau, said the official who served as director general of the Treaties Bureau. It is the first time that the existence of the English-version document at the ministry has been revealed. A former vice foreign minister has already confirmed the existence of...

Don’t shoot back! Don’t pick the poppies! And don’t bother the women and men in burqas! These are the new rules of engagement for leathernecks in Afghanistan. Sound incredible? They’re true. Welcome to the modern Marine Corps under Commander-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama On July 1, the U.S. military initiated Operation Khanjar or “Strike of the Sword,” an invasion of the Helmand Province by 4,000 Marines and 650 Afghan soldiers. “Strike of the Sword” represents the first military operation to be ordered by President Obama. The purpose of the campaign is to flush out Taliban operatives from southern Afghanistan in order...