Free Republic

As was widely reported this week, the White House has delayed implementation of out-of-pocket caps in Obamacare insurance policies until 2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/08/13/yet-another-white-house-obamacare-delay-out-of-pocket-caps-waived-until-2015/ The SCOTUS decision justified the constitutionality of Obamacare by rendering the cost of its policies to be taxes. By delaying out-of-pocket caps, the cost (tax) to the consumer will increase significantly for many policyholders. This amounts to a unilateral, White-House mandated tax increase which did not originate in the House of Representatives, let alone pass with a vote. Can a FR lawyer explain to this humble engineer why this is legal?

The prediction of gender from handwriting is a very interesting research field. It has many applications including the forensic application where it can help investigators focusing more on a certain category of suspects. There are a few studies regarding the automatic detection of the gender of a handwritten document [1-3]. The aim of this competition is to attract the interest of the document analysis community to this research area and to measure the performance of recent advances in this field. The dataset used in this study has been described in this paper [4]. A total of 475 writers produced 4...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGsy4rev-iQ Dr. Suzanna Gratia's testimony is as powerful today as it was 18 years ago. Should be watched and shared with every liberal gun grabber.

Come November, I hope Democrat Paul Sadler will be the new junior U.S. Senator of Texas. Sadler is a self-proclaimed Progressive with a proven track record behind his liberal Democrat label. But, despite my hopes, recent Texas electoral history and the state’s political climate suggest the November election will not send Sadler to Washington, D.C. So, Progressive Democrats should participate in tomorrow’s Republican Primary Runoff between former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz and Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst. For Progressive Democrats, David Dewhurst is the best option. Dewhurst publicly affirmed his support for a guest-worker program in 2007. His more recent...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - South Carolina's attorney general has notified the U.S. Justice Department of potential voter fraud. Attorney General Alan Wilson sent details of an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles to U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles. In a letter dated Thursday, Wilson says the analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead. In 71 percent of those cases, ballots were cast between two months and 76 months after the people died. That means they "voted" up to 6 1/3 years after their death. The letter doesn't say in which elections the ballots were cast. The analysis...

A woman in Australia who was pregnant with twins decided to have one of her babies aborted after doctors discovered that he had a life-threatening congenital heart defect. The seriously disturbing part? The doctors aborted the wrong fetus, terminating a perfectly healthy child. After doctors realized the "blunder," the woman, who was 32 weeks pregnant, had to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the sick fetus, where it was later terminated. The Royal Women's Hospital confirmed the incident and referred to it as a "terrible tragedy." Um, yeah ... one could say that. I honestly really don't even know what...

WASHINGTON -- The nation's health care tab is on track to hit $4.6 trillion in 2020, accounting for about $1 of every $5 in the economy, government number crunchers estimate in a report out Thursday. How much is that? Including government and private money, health care spending in 2020 will average $13,710 for every man, woman and child, says Medicare's Office of the Actuary. By comparison, U.S. health care spending this year is projected to top $2.7 trillion, or about $8,650 per capita, roughly $1 of $6 in the economy. Most of that spending is for care for the sickest...

Despite widespread media complicity, the nation is actually at the point where impeachment proceedings could begin for general and acute incompetence. This will not happen, but Barack Obama will be voted out of office in 2012, leaving four years of Blitzkrieg-level damage in his wake. It would take take a lengthy peer-reviewed scientific study to accurately rank the top five most destructive results of Obama's election, but: Holder's justice department leads the way (imprisonable gunrunning offenses and coverup, dropping charges against black panthers, complicit labor corruption, illegal pressure on ATF to massage statistics, reinvistagation of cleared CIA officers, list goes...

A new viral video making the rounds on the Internet purports to show what’s been dubbed a "mothership" and at least three separate smaller alien spacecraft filmed in the skies over London. The most famous video (which was taken anonymously and is one of two or three versions in circulation) shows a large glowing white oval moving in and out from behind clouds over the course of about 20 seconds, and then zooming off, with three white dots also making an appearance. So what are they? The pattern of movement does not resemble any known aircraft, and some are already...

Consider Barack Obama out for a stiff morning run, battling hills with his little Portuguese water dog. Halfway through his daily route, danger strikes. Secret Service nowhere in sight, a coyote charges Bo, beloved pet of Sasha and Malia. Before the coyote’s jaws can tear Bo's throat open, Obama levels his laser-sighted .380 Ruger. One shot, one kill. Heart still thumping from exertion, Barack re-holsters his weapon, checks his watch, and digs in for the final climb of the trail, a hard day’s work ahead. What's that? You have trouble seeing Obama as a strong, competent leader with the ability...

DURHAM, N.C. -- When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job. The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls. Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson. "I think justice comes and judgment will happen, but I don't think that means an eternity...

An Austin-based anarchist group whose members were prosecuted for plotting to bomb the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., three years ago has been linked to the unsolved June 2008 arson fire that gutted the Texas Governor's Mansion, officials said Thursday. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that a white Jeep Cherokee photographed by surveillance cameras at the mansion four days before the fire has been "connected to people who were part of that anarchist group." The connection was confirmed about three months ago, he said. The Jeep is believed to have been doing...

IPCC errors: facts and spin Currently, a few errors –and supposed errors– in the last IPCC report (“AR4″) are making the media rounds – together with a lot of distortion and professional spin by parties interested in discrediting climate science. Time for us to sort the wheat from the chaff: which of these putative errors are real, and which not? And what does it all mean, for the IPCC in particular, and for climate science more broadly? Let’s start with a few basic facts about the IPCC. The IPCC is not, as many people seem to think, a large organization....

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned. Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango's case.

Climate Change 2007: Al's Army It's after hours at Monarch High School in Louisville, Colorado, and the hallways have fallen silent. In one classroom, a handful of high-school science teachers sit at desks usually occupied by biology students. Mark McCaffrey is giving a talk on how to teach global warming, and he points to a PowerPoint projection of the full-Earth shot snapped by Apollo 17 astronauts: the iconic 'blue marble'. "Everything that's ever happened in human history has happened on this fragile little spaceship Earth," he says, almost reverentially. If this seems familiar, it could be because it sounds like...

DAYTON — A Carroll High School and University of Dayton graduate was among 13 U.S. troops killed in a helicopter crash Saturday in Iraq, a family member said Tuesday. Col. Paul Kelly, 45, had been scheduled to return home to Stafford, Va., in March following an extended deployment with the Army National Guard, said Peggy Kelly of Beavercreek, who is married to Col. Kelly's brother Patrick. He's believed to be the first UD graduate killed in Iraq. "They're heartbroken and just grieving terribly," Peggy Kelly said of Col. Kelly's parents, who live in Beavercreek. "One thing his mom did say:...

US nuclear weapons scientists are designing a warhead that is meant to be 'reliable' without ever having been tested. Geoff Brumfiel asks whether it could renew the United States' ageing stockpile. NNSA/NEVADA SITE OFFICE Wasteland: America's nuclearweapons test ranges have lain silent since the country declared a testing moratorium in 1992. It's a hot spring day in the Nevada desert, and retired technician Ernie Williams is showing tourists how nuclear bombs used to be tested. Williams is short and gruff and a veteran of the US weapons complex. Since 1951, he has participated in around 80 nuclear detonations or 'shots'....

MARION, Indiana (AP) -- A semitrailer crashed through a median on Interstate 69 and collided with a college van Wednesday night, killing five people, police said. The collision peeled open the side of the van, and several occupants were ejected, said state police Sgt. Rodger Popplewell. The semi driver was among five injured. About 2 miles of interstate in Grant County, midway between Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, were closed.

On the O'Reilly Factor just now, Schumer is spinning his crap and hilariously just called Justice Alito "slightly nerdy". I know this isn't newsworthy, but there's hypocrisy and then there's hypocrisy.

Change of heart on Iraq war By Ian Greenleigh Daily Texan Columnist As President Bush began to speak of a war in Iraq as if it was inevitable, countless Americans took to the streets in outrage. Hoping against hope, they attempted to sway the resolve of a notoriously stubborn leader - a colossal task that bore no fruit. I was one of these Americans. I was wrong. Amidst the endless reports of U.S. casualties, executive ineptitude and the seemingly slow rate of progress in Iraq, my about-face this late in the game may seem almost unthinkable. Indeed, millions of Americans...