Free Republic

On Tuesday the Supreme Court will consider in Maine Community Health Options v. U.S. whether Congress can limit the spending discretion it has previously granted to the executive branch. Four health insurers have sued the government for not making payments they say they are entitled to under the Affordable Care Act’s “risk corridors.” The temporary program was intended to entice insurers to join the ObamaCare exchanges by minimizing their potential losses and giving them time to calibrate premiums and risk pools. Under a formula in the ACA, relatively profitable insurers for the first three years of the exchanges were required...

North Korea took aim at President Trump on Monday, dubbing him a "heedless and erratic old man," after he tweeted leader Kim Jong Un wouldn't want to "void his special relationship" with him or the U.S. by interfering in the 2020 election by acting "in a hostile way." The country won't cave to U.S. pressure because it has nothing to lose, Kim Yong Chol, a senior North Korean official and former nuclear negotiator, said in a statement. The North accused Trump of trying to buy time ahead of an end-of-year deadline set by Kim Jong Un for Washington to salvage...

Once An Anti-Abortion Protester, Now An Abortion Clinic Nurse "No one wants to be there. No one wants to have to make that choice." Meet a former anti-abortion protester who is now a nurse at North Dakota's only legal clinic. **video is 5 min long*

Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed in a new interview that when his son Hunter was a board member of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings while he was in office, no one informed him that it could pose a problem. Biden insisted again that Hunter did nothing wrong, but this time appeared to fault his staff for not cluing him in that there could be concerns about his son's involvement with the foreign company that had been under investigation while Biden was in office and dealing with Ukraine policy. "Nobody warned me about a potential conflict of interest. Nobody warned...

Sometimes a bad candidate is just a bad candidate. That was the case with Kamala Harris, who exited the race for president of the United States last week. Unfortunately, many in the pundit class are already propagating the myth that Harris is out because of racism, sexism or both. On ABC, The View’s Sunny Hostin declared, “I don’t think that you can look at that without also looking at the fact that as a woman of color, she also faced unprecedented sexism, compounded by racism as well, as a female candidate of color.” Fellow presidential candidate Julian Castro opined that...

The Democrats' drive to impeach President Donald Trump kicks into high gear Monday with a hearing designed for Democrats to make their case against the President. Lawyers for the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees will make opening arguments and present the evidence before facing questions from the Judiciary panel -- a lengthy event that's likely to be the final public hearing before Democrats take up articles of impeachment. The hearing sets the stage for a two-week stretch, in which Democrats are expected to introduce impeachment articles , debate and approve them in the Judiciary Committee and then take a vote...

Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan who later played a role in the Obama administration's response to the financial crisis of 2009, has died at the age of 92. Multiple media outlets reported that Volcker, who raised interest rates as the Fed's chief to combat inflation, had died. In the Obama years, Volcker reemerged to tout a rule, eventually called the Volcker rule, that put tougher constraints on big banks.

French commuters faced a 360-mile traffic jam today as the fifth day of nationwide strikes caused delays into Paris. Traffic was held up getting into the French capital on Paris' ring road, the Peripherique, which was up from 90 miles on an average day. The Parisian metro had only two out of it 16 lines fully operating and the SNCF national railway company warned against severe disruptions in the suburbs of Paris.

As education goes, so goes nearly everything else: politics, culture, and social cohesion. And those who form the minds of teachers—who, in turn, instruct young minds—arguably wield even greater influence. It is unsurprising, then, that schools of education, where teachers receive their training, are at the epicenter of ongoing ideological battles. As the Martin Center’s Jay Schalin pointed out in his report released earlier this year, schools of education were politicized from their founding, but have become even more so over the years. Schools of education have particularly become the home of critical theorists—who aim to radically alter society according...

As is often the case, there is more to the story than meets the eye. A viral video circulated last week showing an illegal immigrant using a rope ladder to scale a new section of the border wall, with the help of two people on the Mexican side. But on Thursday, Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) shared a video of a border patrol agent explaining that despite the video making it seem as though the wall doesn't work, it did, thanks to ancillary security features.  “Yesterday, a video showing someone illegally crossing into the United States over the new border...

... a close look at unintentional shootings by law enforcement officers, including at schools, raises doubts about whether more guns would help keep students safe....Other accidental shootings at schools occurred while officers chased or arrested suspects, taught gun safety classes, or attended school events while off-duty, the AP found. Some injured officers, teachers or students. One happened the day after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, when a sheriff’s deputy shot himself in the leg while responding to a report of a person with a gun at a school in neighboring Coconut Creek.

President Donald Trump is now leading Democrat presidential candidates in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as Congressional Democrats continue struggling to impeach the president. A Firehouse/Optimus poll conducted in December shows Trump ahead of his Democrat opponents, even former Vice President Joe Biden who remains one of the stronger candidates opposing the president.

Forget the $120,000 banana, this new piece of art is priceless… The duct-taped banana at Art Basel is gone and has been replaced with “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself,” which security quickly covered up. And the fact that they felt the need to hide it makes this modern art by definition. The duct-taped banana at Art Basel is gone and has been replaced with “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself,” which security quickly covered up. 😂 pic.twitter.com/nPtnuCm6sc — Giancarlo Sopo (@GiancarloSopo) December 9, 2019

For all of Sen. Kamala Harris’s challenges gaining traction in the 2020 presidential campaign, she had remained the clear favorite in Hollywood. Now that the California Democrat is out of the race, the movie industry may be poised to coalesce around Mayor Pete. In recent months, actresses Sharon Stone and Alyssa Milano have contributed to Pete Buttigieg’s effort to become the Democratic nominee, joining other celebrities like Michael J. Fox and Frances McDormand, who previously maxed out their donations to the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana. No candidate has raised more money from employees of Comcast, parent of film...

A honey badger was rescued from the coils of a python by two jackals and was then helped by them in killing the snake before he turned on his new friends to steal the reptile. Roselyne Kerjosse captured the spectacular fight to the death while on safari in Chobe Park, Botswana last month. When the 60-year-old began recording, the honey badger was in mortal danger, with the python wrapping its entire body around it.

While the Trump Economy is working great for most people, one industry hasn't been enjoying the boom: the media. According to Business Insider, the media industry is continuing to cut jobs this year. The media industry continued to execute cuts in December and November as Gannett, Highsnobiety, and the CBC reduced headcounts. The cuts followed large rounds of layoffs earlier in the year from companies including BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media.The massive cuts this year represent a recent trend in media that has seen upstart companies and newspapers alike shrinking and disappearing. It's not just print media that's not...

Virgil has channeled the thinking of Richard Nixon, as he watches the latest impeachment hearings. Yes, I died in 1994, but I still keep up with the news—especially, of course, news about impeachment. In 1974, after I was railroaded out of the White House by partisan Democrats, hypocritical liberals, and self-righteous reporters, I made a vow: Never again let that sort of railroading happen to a Republican president. That is, I would share lessons learned about protecting the presidency, always—whether I was in this world, or the next. Happily, my advice has been working, both for Ronald Reagan and, now,...

"What happened to Drudge?"A lot of people have been asking that question lately. If you talk to conservatives these days, you'll hear that Matt Drudge's eponymous news aggregation site has gone over to the dark side—that Matt's joined the anti-Trump resistance. And now, Rasmussen Reports, an arguably reputable polling operation, is calling Drudge out on Twitter, even suggesting that the site has been sold.The whole kerfuffle appears to have begun at the end of November, when the Bongino Report, touted as a Trump-friendly alternative to Drudge, launched. Bongino taunted Drudge with a pair of tweets: Tired of Drudge? Get...

WASHINGTON - A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan...

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has imposed a four-year ban on Russia from all global sport, including the 2020 Olympics and the 2022 World Cup finals. WADA's executive committee took the decision after concluding Moscow had tampered with laboratory data. The agency found Russia planted fake evidence and deleted files linked to positive doping tests that could have helped identify drug cheats.