Free Republic

First lady Michelle Obama thought about sending her daughters away to summer camp, she said recently, but instead decided on another program -- the "Camp Obama" world tour. "This has been such a, you know, busy year for them," she said, "We're having 'Camp Obama' and, you know, they're going to travel a little more with us, and we're going to do some historic things." It's not your everyday sleepaway camp, but a world-class adventure: This week, the first tweens have toured Rome's Coliseum and Russia's Kremlin -- exotic locations for sure, but the president said his daughters haven't skipped...

At a campaign rally in Colorado Springs last July, that former community organizer, Barack Obama, grandly told an enraptured audience: "We've got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded" as the U.S. military. Now, understand, he wasn't talking about a "security" force in the sense of an armed militia. He was talking about a network of social service workers. When I first heard that, I wrote it off as a politician's extravagant, feel-good campaign rhetoric. After all, the Department of Defense includes about 3 million men and women...

We’ve all seen it. In our schools, our children’s schools, public meetings, television shows, leadership seminars, political speeches, and even in legislation supported by the President, the message is clear: we should all be doing community service. The fact is that the call to service is greater now than at any time in our country’s past, and the pressure to provide it even greater. The pressure to conform to the growing demand to volunteer your self, in body and bankbook, can be daunting. When confronted with a group of peers, all telling you how much you are needed, it can...

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 5:10 pm Service, Coming to a Town Near You (White House Photo, 4/21/09, Samantha Appleton) A few weeks ago, President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law, ushering in a new era of service and volunteering for our nation. Facing unprecedented challenges, the President has asked all Americans to engage in service opportunities help create a better nation. The Corporation for National & Community Service was charged with dramatically expanding opportunities for Americans to serve, and in a sign of how seriously they are taking...

President Barack Obama is picking a Nike vice president to lead the federal agency that oversees the country's national service programs. Obama's selection of Maria Eitel comes Tuesday as the president plans to sign a bill to triple the size of AmeriCorps and expand other programs that the corporation administers. Eitel is nominated to be chief executive officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service, a job that requires Senate confirmation. Eitel is also the president of Nike Inc.'s charitable arm, the Nike Foundation. She served under President George H.W. Bush as deputy director of media relations and later...

Congress appears ready to pass an Obama administration plan that could create mandatory public service requirements for all American youth, fulfilling a campaign promise. The bill, HR 1388: The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, otherwise known as the "GIVE Act," has already passed the House by a vote of 321-105. On Tuesday, the Senate voted closure on the motion to proceed by a margin of 74-14 in a move that makes its ultimate passage likely. The bill, promoted by the Obama administration as a means of encouraging America's youth to participate in voluntary community service, has received little scrutiny...

The House of Representatives passed the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (GIVE), creating a mandate for community service among high school and college students. The bill spends $6 billion on beefing up government-paid and sponsored national service programs, and paves the way for future mandatory service by establishing a commission to explore the feasibility of such a plan. The stated goal of the Obama Administration is to require service programs in secondary schools, as well as for a period of three months to a year of service before, during, or after one’s college education. Leaving aside the already heavily...

WHILE YOU WERE BEING DISTRACTED BY THE AIG SHAM OUTRAGE AND YOUR OWN CLASS ENVY…. the Obamessiah administration continues on with its plans behind the scenes. As we mentioned earlier in the week, The Obamessiah is pushing to community organize all of us into his own league of Socialist Brownshirts. The House passed the “Give Act” on Wednesday. How many GOP members caved and stabbed us in the back this time, you must be asking? 70. Full list of turncoats below the fold. Only one Democrat voted against it - Robert Berry of Arkansas. Kudos to him. The rest of...

First lady Michelle Obama says community service isn't "just an escape for the wealthy," and that it can help do for young people what it did for her husband. She says it helped set Barack Obama on a path to being elected president. Mrs. Obama on Tuesday continued her effort to encourage volunteerism by visiting more than 100 disadvantaged youths who came to the National Mall to begin building a "green" house for a Texas family whose mobile home was destroyed by a hurricane. The students participate in YouthBuild, a nationwide program in which poor 16-to 24-year-olds work toward their...

"Hey, Comcast Team!" yells my 19-year old stepson, Kip, pointing to a billboard in downtown Boston. His red City-Year sweatshirt sports a Comcast logo. As he passes the billboard, he grins from ear to ear. Way to go, Comcast. (Other City-Year sponsor firms include Microsoft, KPMG, Deloitte and Touche, T-Mobile and Timberland.) Support for youth volunteer programs like City-Year isn't just about good branding, or Corporate Responsibity 101. Speaking of education in his address to the nation, Barack Obama stumped for the Serve America Act, a bill that would make participants eligible for educational awards. "I know that the price...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) today introduced the “Serve America Act,” a bill to expand national and community service opportunities for all Americans. Senators Mikulski, McCain, Dodd, Cochran, Reid, Gregg, Durbin, Wicker, Murray, Snowe, Kerry, Lincoln, Cardin, Rockefeller, Schumer, Whitehouse, Menendez, Bayh and Landrieu are also sponsors of the legislation. The goal of the legislation is to encourage 175,000 more Americans to give a year of service to address specific national challenges such as strengthening our schools or increasing economic opportunities, thereby expanding the number of such service participants to 250,000. The legislation...

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is lending his stature to an initiative from the incoming administration to connect volunteers with causes that need them. President-elect Barack Obama's "Renew America Together" initiative will officially launch a Web site on Martin Luther King Day, January 19, to help people answer the call. Obama's inauguration is the following day. The Web site, www.USAservice.org, will allow people to offer their time or resources and be contacted by people in the community who need that type of help. Powell said the site will follow the model of craigslist.org, a worldwide virtual bulletin board where...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Former secretary of state Colin Powell helped promote a mass volunteer initiative on behalf of US president-elect Barack Obama Friday, calling on Americans to make long-term commitment to serve their communities. Obama and his family, along with vice president-elect Joe Biden and his wife, are set to officially launch the "Renew America Together" initiative on the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday January 19 -- the day before Obama's inauguration -- by taking part in community service activities in Washington. "Volunteering is something you give to your community and to our society," Powell said at a press conference....

With the hospice care volunteer work she's done in Belize, Kara Pennino is one of those millions of youngsters challenging the myth of the selfish teenager. But while the Rochester, N.Y., high school senior always figured her service work might impress a college, she never imagined it could help make college more affordable. So she was stunned earlier this month when she got her acceptance letter from Drew University in New Jersey. She stopped reading after "Congratulations" to celebrate with her teary-eyed mom. It was mom who noticed the second letter — telling Kara she'd won a new community service...

Wow! With Wii Community Service, it's almost like you're really helping. With community service mandates for high school and college in the works, Nintendo is developing "Wii Community Service." Benny Haha, the developer in charge of the Wii Community Service project, said the popular home video console that detects movements and reproduces those movements virtually is a 21st century approach to forced volunteerism. "The youth who so passionately backed the change of Barack Obama now must contemplate the mandates on community service, which may mean they will be forced to unsatisfying things, like work in the elements and, like, lift...

Most people on the left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom. Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of. Nazis were free to be Nazis under Hitler. It is only when you are able to do things that other people don't approve that you are free. One of the most innocent-sounding examples of the left's many impositions of its vision on others is the widespread requirement by schools and by college admissions committees that students do "community...

Through the holidays and beyond, high school students will be working feverishly to serve the needy — packing food baskets, ladling meals at soup kitchens, collecting toys for children in hospitals — all in the name of amassing the community service credits they need for graduation. Cynics call these programs a form of forced altruism. Proponents say that they widen students’ horizons while getting service work done. Either way, the backlash has begun: not only do college admissions officers roll their eyes at bogus-sounding claims, but high schools are scaling back the requirements, acknowledging that a lot of the so-called...

Overwhelmed by piles of junk mail, 'Mailman Steve' quit bringing it to the people on his North Carolina route. Customers are grateful. The Direct Marketing Assn., however, is not amused. Sick of junk mail? Pay homage, then, to overstressed, overworked mailman Steven Padgett, who has confessed to a cardinal sin among the letter carriers tribe: He failed to deliver. "Mailman Steve" -- a pudgy, kindly 58-year-old who toiled along a route in a rapidly growing neighborhood here -- was given probation in federal court this week for squirreling away at least seven years' worth of undelivered junk mail, which he...

"We finally had a glimpse of what the President-Elect wanted to accomplish, and now that glimpse is gone as soon as we started scrutinizing the specifics…." Take a look at this unbelievable story! Spread it around!!!

The Republicans should ask why community service is not mandated for government benefits such as food stamps, section 8 vouchers, etc. Please help me compile a list of welfare programs for which "community service" requirements could be added. Instead of Obama enslaving our children, why not ask the welfare recipients, who are part of the Democratic base, to do something in return for their benefits? I'm sure the Dems would not go for this. The purpose of making this proposal is to highlight their hypocrisy.