Free Republic

The Obamacare penalty was ruled a tax by Robers. I am trying to identify what type of tax it is. Is it an income tax? No. Is it a property tax? No. I wouldn't be taxed on property that I own. I would be taxed on services that I didn't buy. Is it a sales tax? No. I wouldn't be paying a percentage sales tax on soemthing that I bought, I would be paying a tax on something that I didn't buy. Is there anything like this 'tax' in existence today? I truly need to know. How can a person...

Will Obama support the repeal of ObamaCare? I already know the incredulous reaction of most of you to that question: “Of course he WON'T support the repeal of ObamaCare. You have to be NUts to even make such an absurd speculation!” Perhaps I should have put “repeal” in quotes so it would read: “Will Obama Support the “Repeal” of ObamaCare?” Does this make more sense to you now? A “repeal” of ObamaCare in name only, i.e. a cosmetic “repeal” which actually leaves ObamaCare almost completely unchanged. But why would Obama come out in favor of a strictly cosmetic “repeal” of...

By now the whole world has seen the video of a group of middle school boys bullying Karen Klein, the school bus monitor in Greece, New York. The boys have been vilified, their families threatened, and the school board will decide whether the boys will be suspended for the entire 2012-2013 school year. An online site has collected more than $500,000 for Klein and she is being showered with gifts, including an expense-paid trip to Disney World by ABC, which owns the theme park. An important issue, however, is not being addressed. What were Klein’s qualifications for being a school...

The best car made. Style, Utility, Audacity Rolls-Royce 10EX Concept Car, 1925. "The experimental New Phantom" In 1925 Rolls Royce selected one of their new Phantom I chassis No. 10 EX and ordered a special open sports body from the coach builders Barker and Co. of London. This departure from their traditionally staid image was inspired by Claude Johnson's desire to develop a modern equivalent to their famous Continental Silver Ghost. Royce instructed his brilliant young designer I.F. Evernden to tackle this task. 19 Photos

The presidential race of Mitt Romney and the success of the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon have generated new interest in Mormonism. Stephen Mansfield's book The Mormonizing of America provides a careful study of this growing religion. The Book Stop blog is posting excerpts from the first two chapters of this book. The Mormons and the MediaNowhere in American society does this create an occasion of people talking past each other as when it comes to the media pursuing a prominent Mormon. Reporters naturally want to find something controversial about this visible person, so they ask about holy underwear....

“IT is not our job,” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote in Thursday’s health care ruling, “to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” He might just as easily have written, “to protect politicians from the consequences of their political choices.” And now, with the Supreme Court parenthesis out of the way, we can get back to finding out exactly what those consequences will be. For President Obama, the consequences of health care may still be fatal to his re-election hopes. The choice to go all-in on reform was the most important call of the Obama presidency,...

Assembly of the United Grand Lodges of Serbia gave the initiative for the integration of our Freemasonry. In the Masonic Centre in Belgrade will be the temple of the Academy of Arts At the annual conference of the United Grand Lodges of Serbia (UVLS) in Belgrade, gave the 400 delegates, as "news" found out, the approval for the construction of the first Mason University, and to start the process of unification of Serbian Masonry. - We agreed that one of our mission, which will contribute to progress and UVLS, but our society is the establishment of a higher education institution...

WASHINGTON, July 20 - He is the son of a company man, and he has lived a loyalist's life. His teachers remember him as the brightest of boys, but his classmates say he never lorded it over them. He was always conservative, but not doctrinaire. He was raised and remains a practicing Roman Catholic who declines, friends say, to wear his faith on his sleeve. [Snip] "I would not hew to a particular 'school' of interpretation," he added, "but would follow the approach or approaches that seemed most suited in the particular case to correctly discerning the meaning of the...

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court could decide later this year whether to take up the issue of gay marriage, after a group of lawmakers asked it be deemed unconstitutional, a court source said Saturday. The subject is a hot-button issue that soared to the forefront of the political debate in May when Barack Obama became the first US president to say publicly that he was in favor of same-sex marriage. On Friday, the Republican-led Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group filed a petition with the US high court, asking it to say that a law defining marriage as a union between...

Here's government-run healthcare in all its "glory": *********************************** "CROW AGENCY, Mont. - Ta'Shon Rain Little Light, a happy little girl who loved to dance and dress up in traditional American Indian clothes, had stopped eating and walking. She complained constantly to her mother that her stomach hurt. When Stephanie Little Light took her daughter to the Indian Health Service clinic in this wind-swept and remote corner of Montana, they told her the 5-year-old was depressed. Ta'Shon's pain rapidly worsened and she visited the clinic about 10 more times over several months, before her lung collapsed and she was airlifted to...

If you wish to understand Thursday's incoherent opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, you must first know Republican history from the Summer of 2005. Contrary to most that has been written since Thursday's enactment of RobertsCare, Chief Justice John Roberts did not change. He has always been that way. Eight years ago, when John Roberts was nominated, we were warned that he was a liberal jurist appointed by a RINO president, just as liberal David Souter was appointed by the previous RINO president. Two articles in July 2005 by Ben Shapiro and Ann Coulter foretold the Souter-like liberal jurisprudence of...

Will Florida’s Robert L. Quinn be America’s answer to the anonymous Tank Man of China who stood up in front of a column of tanks ordered by the Communist regime to clear Tiananmen Square of peaceful citizen protestors? His frail body holding back the menacing war machines became an iconic photo of the Twentieth Century signifying an ordinary citizen standing up to unrelenting governmental power which just had declared martial law to quell its own Chinese citizens! Quinn, a septuagenarian, who identifies himself as an ordinary American citizen, sent a deeply moving, poignant letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller in...

It is a source of constant amusement to me that so many people obsess—as if fiddling with a Rubik’s Cube—over the various combinations of states that could get either President Obama or Mitt Romney to the magic number of 270 votes in the Electoral College. The guilty include pros at both ends of the political spectrum; people who ought to know better; and armchair analysts who seem to think that they can crack the magic code. The simple fact is that our nation has had 56 presidential elections. In 53 of them (94.6 percent), the winner in the Electoral College...

SHERMAN OAKS (CBS) — Officials are on the hunt for the shooter who killed a father of five who was working inside Hoagies & Wings on Ventura Boulevard Friday evening. Raul Lopez, 38, was reportedly trying to get five customers who had been “acting out” to leave peacefully. He reportedly used a chair to try to shoo the men out. One of the men pulled out a gun and shot Lopez on the patio, from about a foot away. Edward Lawrence, reporting for CBS2 and KCAL9, spoke to stunned employees and a witness who didn’t want to show his face...

The court's decision to uphold all but one component of the health-care law means new rules for insurers that have already taken effect will remain in place. Beginning in 2014, virtually all Americans will have to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. There also will be new opportunities to get coverage, including state-based marketplaces known as exchanges* (through which individuals will be able to purchase private plans that meet strict benchmarks for quality) and federal subsidies to help low-income people buy plans on the exchanges.

The short term effect of Japanese stimulus following the earthquake and tsunami has now worn off. All Japan has to show for that stimulus is a bigger pile of debt, proving once again the Broken Window Fallacy. In the real world, Japan has a debt-to GDP ratio of 225% and rising. Japan's export machine has stalled. So has Japanese manufacturing in general. Markit reports Japanese manufacturing output falls for first time in 2012 to date June data pointed to the first month-on-month reduction in manufacturing output since December 2011, as both new business and new export orders fell. Backlogs of...

There was a brief blurb on the morning news about an increase to the tax on pipe tobacco, which many people are using for roll your own cigarettes. Does anyone have more info? I thought I heard them say it goes into effect tomorrow. I can't find info if it is a change to state law or federal law. Anybody know more about this?

The presidential race of Mitt Romney and the success of the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon have generated new interest in Mormonism. Stephen Mansfield's book The Mormonizing of America provides a careful study of this growing religion. The Book Stop blog is posting excerpts from the first two chapters of this book. What Matters to a MormonFor a Latter-day Saint, the heart of Mormonism is the restoration of priesthood authority. It is impossible to overstate this. At the core of everything Saintly is the unshakable belief that something lost for centuries was restored through Joseph Smith. It is now...

UEFA Euro Championship: Italy V Spain 230pm EDT ESPN TV.

She was weak on cooking segments, celebrity interviews It was just another day of salt in the wounds for Curry, who soldiered through a tearful on-air goodbye last week that many described as a public execution Ann evidently didn’t curry any favor with the president of NBC News — who bashed her performance on the “Today” show, saying she was weak on cooking segments and celebrity interviews. “We gave her a year to prove herself, and ultimately we came to the conclusion that she had played at the highest level she could,” Steve Capus told the Hollywood Reporter. “When you’re...