Free Republic

The Federal Communications Commission recently adopted a plan to regulate the Internet like the phone companies of the 1930s. The decision is wrong for countless reasons, including an imminent reduction in investment and innovation. To undo these burdensome regulations, Congress should work together in the coming months to pass a law that both ensures the desired consumer protections everyone favors but forgoes the antiquated 1930s-style public-utility regulations. Let's take a step back. The FCC initially proposed last year to adopt a simpler set of rules guaranteeing that the Internet remains open and available to all users. This type of regulation...

Teaching children responsibility is a primary task for parents. The question of whether or not an allowance should be paid for completing chores requires parents to consider training in two areas simultaneously: responsibility for work and responsibility for money. I don't think that there's necessarily one right answer to the question of whether completion of chores should be tied to monetary reward or not, but I can tell you how we handled the issue and why. We decided not to tie allowance to chores. We set clear expectations for what the kids were responsible for (unloading the dishwasher, doing their...

At Accuracy in Academia, we have long complained of academic historians who ignore primary sources in favor of secondary ones. What gets lost in that process from the former approach to the latter one is, well, history. Never have I found myself tripping over a professor at the Library of Congress in 30 years as a regular there. In an article which appeared on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Peter N. Kirstein helpfully shows us part of the origin of this revisionist history. Kirstein himself is a professor of history at Saint Xavier...

Jazz Shaw referenced a case this week we’ve been watching at HotAir since it was argued the first time, on more narrow grounds, at the Supreme Court a couple years ago. The question at the heart of this round of oral arguments on an archaic raisin regulatory regime: Can the government confiscate substantial parts of a farmer’s crops in a bid to keep the prices of that crop stable as part of a long-ago established regulatory structure, without paying the farmer. The Hornes of California disobeyed the government’s orders to give over the literal fruits of their labors and...

The latest Census Bureau projections show immigrants will account for 14.8 percent of the U.S. population early in the next decade, setting an all-time record and raising questions about whether the country has the ability to assimilate newcomers at such a torrid pace. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker seemed to step into that debate earlier this week when he broke with GOP orthodoxy and suggested potential limits on future legal immigration, insisting American workers’ wages should be a factor in setting U.S. policy. Combined with his earlier reversal from pro-legalization to anti-amnesty for illegal immigrants, Mr. Walker’s remarks drew a rebuke...

Heartbreaking news, and a demonstration of the limit of remote-control warfare. The US drone program in Pakistan inadvertently killed two Western hostages being held by al-Qaeda, including an American whose family had repeatedly appealed for his release based on his age and health: A U.S. drone strike in January targeting a suspected al Qaeda compound in Pakistan inadvertently killed an American and Italian being held hostage by the group, senior Obama administration officials said.The killing of American development expert Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto is the first known instance in which the U.S. has accidentally...

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is slamming politicians in Indiana and Arkansas for a “retreat” on so-called religious freedom legislation and says he isn’t going to be pressured by corporate America into backing off of his support for similar legislation in his home state on the issue of marriage. “In Indiana and Arkansas, large corporations recently joined left-wing activists to bully elected officials into backing away from strong protections for religious liberty,” Mr. Jindal wrote in an opinion piece published Thursday by The New York Times. “It was disappointing to see conservative leaders so hastily retreat on legislation that would simply...

In 2008, some wonderful soul uploaded a video titled "Hippies-Crying Over Dead Trees" to YouTube. It is glorious. Enjoy.

The Supreme Court will decide Friday whether to grant review on a case relating to the infamous Wisconsin “John Doe” investigation of conservative groups that supported Governor Scott Walker and his reform of public sector union collective bargaining.The case, O’Keefe v. Chisholm, was filed by Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth after they each received John Doe subpoenas in October 2013, demanding that they turn over all Club records and communications–including all emails, financial materials and donor lists–to prosecutors. Consistent with Wisconsin’s John Doe law, the subpoenas gagged O’Keefe and the Club, prohibiting them from speaking to anyone...

In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled “Earth Day, Then and Now” to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article. Well, it’s now the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 15 years ago: How accurate were the...

On today's Morning Joe, ardent Hillary Clinton fan Howard Dean ran into a buzzsaw when he tried to defend her against serious charges of conflict of interest by going after the authors of the stories rather than the substance of the allegations. Joe Scarborough ripped Dean's "comic-book politics" and called his conduct "unbecoming." New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters accused Dean of maligning his fellow reporters, and Mika Brzezinski taunted Dean, saying "you can go on your little jihad against the author, but it's not going to change the facts." View the video here.

According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel item, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be able to take to the stump in his bid for the White House and claim to have cut Wisconsin’s state budget yet again. An employee of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources appears to have run to the media because a notice of potential layoffs due to budget cuts was circulated. Private sector employees don’t get to enjoy this luxury of media coverage attempting to prevent human resources actions over budget shortfalls. It’s as if government workers are scared, somehow—especially those working in areas embraced by the political...

Clinton rules mean they feel entitled to …well…everything. Now that Hillary Clinton has announced her candidacy, even the mainstream media has started to raise questions regarding the Clinton Foundation. In the wake of reports of pay-to-play donations made to the foundation from rogue nations and Iranian sanction busters, Reuters has investigated the disclosures made by the foundation for years and found them wanting. From Jonathan Allen: Hillary Clinton's family's charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation...

M. H. Abrams, who transformed the study of Romanticism with the critical histories “The Mirror and the Lamp” and “Natural Supernaturalism,” and who edited the first seven editions of “The Norton Anthology of English Literature,” a virtual Bible in literature survey courses, died on Tuesday in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 102. Cornell University, where he taught for nearly 40 years, announced his death. On its publication in 1953, “The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition” was greeted as an instant classic. With fluid ease, Professor Abrams distilled the arguments of philosophers and critics from ancient Greece...

YouTube is the Web's de facto home for video. But 10 years ago, online video was anybody's game. As it celebrates a decade offering us everything from new celebrities to cat videos, YouTube has become a premiere destination for content. Here's how it got there. Ten years ago today, a startup called YouTube uploaded its first video. Co-founder Jawed Karim, in a private test of the fledgling service's capabilities, posted a short video of himself at the San Diego Zoo. The 18-second clip shows Karim unenthusiastically noting how elephants have "really really really long, um, trunks. And that's cool. And...

As the Federal Reserve begins to consider raising interest rates, potentially sometime later this year, one critical question is how close the U.S. economy, with a 5.5% unemployment rate as of March, is to reaching full employment (NAIRU), the natural long-run rate of unemployment given constant levels of frictional unemployment. In December, Federal Reserve officials assessed in their Survey of Economic Projections that the economy’s long-run unemployment rate was somewhere between 5.2% and 5.5%, while in updated projections released in March, Fed officials lowered their estimate to a range between 5 and 5.2%. One important distinction to make is not...

In a speech yesterday about working families--while trying to explain why he thinks too many women face "being reprimanded or fired for taking too many bathroom breaks when you're pregnant"--President Obama let it slip that he knows unborn babies have feet that kick. "Too many women face unnecessary difficulties on the job, like the difficulty of being paid less than a man for doing the same work," said Obama. "That’s a difficulty. Or being reprimanded or fired for taking too many bathroom breaks when you’re pregnant. Clearly that’s a man making that decision because they don’t have five pounds of...

Military Laboratory, of Philadelphia, lists military arms and supplies available to the public in the new republic. Clayton Cramer notes that all these arms and supplies were protected by the just written Second Amendment. Military Laboratory, At No. 34, Dock Street, near the Drawbridge, PHILADELPHIA: 1789 Where Owners and Commanders of Armed Vessels may be supplied, for either the use of Small Arms or Cannon, at the shortest notice, with every species of MILITARY STORES. V I Z. Rammers, sponges, worms and ladles, with or without spring worms, ready covered, of all sizes, of superior qualityCopper gun ladles and double...

Five years ago this week, a blowout of BPÂ’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig 40 miles from the Gulf Coast tragically claimed eleven lives and spilled 3 million barrels of oil from the damaged wellhead into the Gulf. ItÂ’s hard to forget the video images of thick oil gushing, day after day, into the regionÂ’s waters. It was a horrific accident that caused substantial damage to the ecology and commerce of the region. Gulf-area wildlife, portions of the shoreline, tourism, fishers and shrimpers, and energy-sector workers suffered large losses in the aftermath of the spill. BP has paid close to $27...

In rural Pottawotamie county in Oklahoma, the Sheriff appreciates the efforts of armed citizens.  I was able to get in touch with the elder Alvin Cleere.   His son had captured a burglar by being observant.   The son, also named Alvin, had noticed a pickup truck at an property were it did not belong.  He checked things out and found that the truck was loaded with stolen goods.   From kfor.com: He discovered the truck was loaded with stolen property, matresses, fixtures- even a kitchen sink. This fed up crime fighter pulled the 45 from his pickup. “That...