Free Republic

Texas is in much better shape than California. Taxes are lower, in part because Texas has no state income tax. No wonder the Lone Star State is growing faster and creating more jobs.And the gap will soon get even wider since California voters recently decided to drive away more productive people by raising top tax rates.But a key challenge for all governments is controlling the size and cost of bureaucracies.Government employees are probably overpaid in both states, but the situation is worse in California, as I discuss in a recent interview with John Stossel.But being better than California is not exactly a...

Featured Term (selected at random):LEONINE SACRAMENTARY The oldest of the Latin sacramentaries or liturgical books. It was erroneously attributed to Pope Leo I and was in use from the fourth to the seventh centuries. It contains neither canons nor the Ordinary of the Mass, but many propers, collects, prefaces, secrets, postcommunions, and orations, together with ordination forms. Many of these prayers are still in use today. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

President Obama’s inaugural address was eloquent and moving in parts. It was also deeply partisan and polarizing, something that is unusual for a day normally devoted to unity and common purpose. But not in Barack Obama’s America. In his inaugural speech he did what he seemingly cannot keep himself from doing: portraying himself and his followers as Children of Light and portraying his opponents as Children of Darkness. You are either with Obama–or you are with the forces of cruelty and bigotry. In Obama’s world, there is no middle ground. He is the Voice of Reason; those who oppose him...

Department of Homeland Security: Sport rifle (AR-15) “suitable for personal defense” Posted by Steve McGough on January 15, 2013 at 8:28 am The United States Department of Homeland Security has stated a rifle chambered in 5.56 NATO (compatible with .223) with a magazine capacity of 30 rounds is “suitable for personal defense use in close quarters…” Well smack me up-side the head. First, a hat tip to Breitbart’s Awr Hawkins who pointed us to a posted General Services Administration (GSA) business opportunity solicitation posted and updated last summer. Basically, the site posts a request for proposal (RFP) for personal defense...

<p>The city’s population of mentally deranged street people may explode because of new regulations signed by Gov. Cuomo last week that forbid privately run adult homes from accepting new residents, advocates warned.</p> <p>“Hospitals can’t discharge to us,” said Jeffrey Edelman, who runs adult homes in Queens and The Bronx. “Within a week, the hospitals will be starting to get backed up, and they are going to have big problems.”</p>

"Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt." --William Cobbett What is it with this administration -- a general envy and resentment of success ("You didn't build that!") or just a general incompetence at anything to do with basic economics? Like the old and bitter truth that the surest way to make something scarcer is to tax it. The administration's latest victim is the American medical-device industry -- the people who make everything from body-scanning machines to catheters to glucose meters, anything regulated by...

Reuters) - More than 80 percent of health departments in the United States that treat tuberculosis resistant to standard treatment have trouble obtaining the drugs they need to cure the disease, according to a national survey released on Thursday.

In his second inaugural address, Obama makes clear that it’s fight night in America. snip Indeed, Obama’s second inaugural address was a liberal wet dream: It pressed all of the Left’s erogenous zones: • Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security? Obama vowed not to change or reform them — even though they are driving us toward financial insolvency, and even though they provide workers with a relatively lousy return on their investment. • “Climate change”? It is real, and it must be addressed — now! • “Sustainable (read: green) energy”? “America cannot resist this transition. We must lead it” — now!...

On Inauguration Day there was lots of talk about laying aside partisan differences and coming together as a nation. However, during the inaugural luncheon Michelle Obama's body language indicated that if she has anything to say about it over the next four years, laying aside and coming together will include rolling her eyes. [SNIP] Then the President 'laid aside' and 'came together' by accusing political adversaries who were genuinely wishing him well of being those who trade "absolutism for principle...substitute spectacle for politics...[and] treat name-calling as reasoned debate." Part of the ceremony included freshly-tanned Republican Speaker of the House John...

I know this is a major vanity. However, I want to know what's the best Seniors Organization out there. I turned 50 last June, and I'm thinking about retiring from my teaching job. The Blue Cross/Blue Shield coverage goes up dramatically for retirees, and I'd like something that might be more affordable. I definitely want something opposing AARP, which is the Seniors Political Arm of the Obama Administration. However, in doing research there's several to choose from. AMAC, American Seniors Association, Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC), the National Active Retirement Association, etc. Which one to choose? Which one's best?...

Prenatal screening won't tell us anything about what each individual will do with the life God has given them. That is up to each individual. It's time for American to trust in the power of our potential. It's time for America to trust in the power of life.

Dear Dave, Recently, my husband had to quit his job due to an old back injury. We have $25,000 in debt, but I’ll be receiving a $38,000 inheritance in a couple of weeks. Should we use the money to pay off our debt, or hold on to it in case he needs surgery?KristenDear Kristen,Now is the time to keep the cash piled high. You’re in the middle of an emergency, and that means you push the pause button on your Total Money Makeover and stop paying extra on debt. Surgery is a possibility at this point, plus you may need...

"First they came for the local radio hosts...." If you want a glimpse into the real, practical mechanisms whereby unprincipled political power diminishes and silences opposing voices, look not to the nationally-publicized attacks on Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. Look to what happens at the local level, to people who do not have a national microphone and millions of defenders. Consider the example of Brainerd, Minnesota's (population 13,613) local conservative radio show. For almost two years, Guy Green and his partner Tony Bauer have hosted The Speakeasy with Guy Green, a two-hour political talk show airing five nights a week...

Perhaps I'm the only one that can appreciate true culture. Perhaps I'm the only one that can appreciate the 'shovel ready' jobs being created by the thousands right as I type this. Maybe it's the time that the American economy has finally roared back to life with massive growth and tumbling unemployment. Yes, I expect unemployment to be down near 3% by the end of the year with GDP growth near 20%. Why? Well, Michelle Obama saved it all herself. Don't believe me? Well, she has personally (well, I mean through taxpayer money) injected tens of thousands of dollars into...

For some years now, we have been told about a major division within American conservatism: fiscal conservatives vs. social conservatives. This division is hurting conservatism and hurting America, because the survival of American values depends on both fiscal and social conservatism. Furthermore, the division is logically and morally untenable. A conservative conserves all American values, not just economic ones. By social conservatism I am referring to the second and third components of what I call the American Trinity — Liberty, In God We Trust, and E Pluribus Unum. It is worth noting that a similar bifurcation does not exist on...

<p>World unemployment could top record levels this year and continue rising until 2017, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Tuesday in its annual employment report.</p> <p>2009 currently stands as the worst recorded year for world unemployment, with 198 million people across the globe without work.</p>

In the libertarian sci-fi classic, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," Robert A. Heinlein describes a successful revolution of the individualistic, free-market-oriented residents of the Moon against the Earth's tyrannical big government. The ins and outs of agitating and organizing the masses to fight the oppressive Authority feel just as realistic as the finer points of everyday life in the underground Lunar cities of the future. The proposed revolutionary scenario could even serve as a workable model for similar real-life endeavors, if only the renowned futurist author hadn't neglected to factor in the immanent function of any oppressive regime: systemic...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Gareth Morgan has a simple dream: a New Zealand free of pet cats that threaten native birds. But the environmental advocate has triggered a claws-out backlash with his new anti-feline campaign.

Cable from Chris Stevens was chock full of reports on regional violence, concerns about local security capabilitiesJust hours before he died in a terrorist attack at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Ambassador Chris Stevens sent a cable to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton painting a chaotic, violent portrait of the eastern Libya city and warning that local militias were threatening to pull the security they afforded U.S. officials.... [snip] Militia leaders told U.S. officials just two days before the attack that they were angered by U.S. support of a particular candidate for Libyan prime minister and warned “they would not...