Free Republic

An FBI whistleblower has issued a chilling warning to the American people while testifying before U.S. Congress. Veteran FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen was called a witness during the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on Wednesday. During a powerful and emotional statement to his fellow Americans, Allen urged “brothers and sisters of all faiths” to “pray” and stock up on food, water, guns, and ammunition. Fighting back tears, he also advised citizens to connect with “three to four friends in your neighborhood and promise to come to each other’s mutual aid.” Allen issued the...

Rocky Cole is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The city of Hutchinson has told him he and his wife, Lisa, can’t continue living in their home because of code violations, but he is struggling to afford to make the needed changes because he is on a fixed income. He has lived in the home at 211 N. Chemical St., owned by his mother, Myrna Cole, for about 11 years, he estimated. Unable to work full-time because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Rocky Cole relies on Social Security disability income. Because of that limited income – and because...

An eye-opening analysis by SNL Metals & Mining released today shows how delays in the U.S. mine permitting process diminish the value of a minerals project – underscoring the urgent need for a streamlined permitting process. The study, commissioned by NMA, finds that a duplicative permitting process that can delay mining projects a decade or longer is hindering the U.S.’s ability to meet a rising demand for minerals. The study, “Permitting, Economic Value and Mining in the United States,” reveals that an average domestic mining project can lose a third of its value due to permit delays, and increased cost...

Government: The FAA has done an incompetent job of making tiny sequester budget cuts, leading to flight delays across the country. It's time for Congress to haul these people in and make them explain their real priorities. By the Federal Aviation Administration's logic, all it takes is a 5% cut in the FAA's $12.5 billion budget, as the 2011 Budget Control Act requires, to throw the whole air transportation system out of whack. The result? Three-hour delays for 1,200 flights at America's busiest hub airports — including all three in the New York area, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta —...

Gubmint and How Gubmint Works Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, "Someone may steal from it at night." So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job. Then Congress said, "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?" So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions and one person to do time studies. Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?" So they created a Quality...

In 2004, I wrote an article describing how Americans die needlessly because of the FDA’s delay in approving lifesaving drugs.1 One example of a delayed therapy I cited was Provenge®, which in the year 2002 had demonstrated improved survival in prostate cancer patients.2 In 2007, Dr. Stephen Strum and I co-authored an article showing how enormous numbers of lives could be spared if scientists were liberated from oppressive FDA over-regulation. We described several cancer drugs that should have been approved including Provenge®, which by the year 2007 had extended survival in several clinical studies.3 In 2010, the FDA finally approved...

On Tuesday's Situation Room, CNN's Jack Cafferty used the term "Obama-nation," a pun on the word "abomination," which is used on many conservative blogs, to slam the "sprawling bureaucratic giant...that seems to be the result of President Obama's new health care law." Cafferty admitted during his commentary that ObamaCare is "shaping up to be exactly what the critics were afraid it would be." The CNN commentator devoted his regular Cafferty File segment 12 minutes into the 6 pm Eastern hour to the recent report from the Congressional Research Service that, as Cafferty put it, "says it's 'impossible' to estimate the...

Swedes left with a monster problem THE placing of a mythical monster on Sweden’s endangered species list, in an apparent fit of bureaucratic zeal, has caused an administrative problem for the country’s authorities. "During a routine inspection of the environment court in Jaemtland recently, we came across a decision that attracted our interest," said Nils-Olof Berggren, a Swedish parliamentary ombudsman. "The court had turned down an application from a man who wanted to search for and hatch the monster’s eggs, probably believing [the application] was just a joke." However, Mr Berggren found there was an actual decision from 1986 placing...