Free Republic

Nothing—including cost or reality—will keep California progressives from their effort to turn the state into a grand carbon-free economic experiment. The state Air Resources Board moved this week to ban gas space and water heaters in 2030 and proposed that all big rig trucks must go electric. Cities such as San Francisco and Oakland have passed electric-only building mandates. The air board is now forcing everyone else to get with it by prohibiting the sale of gas furnaces by the end of the decade, even though they are generally less expensive and last longer than electric heat pumps. Come 2030,...

The evolving landscape of lithium batteries is creating both contradictions and infrastructure hurdles that, according to some, need to be addressed sooner rather than later. A critical component of this is waste management. More than 6 million electric vehicle (EV) battery packs will end up as scrap between now and 2030, and the recycling and reuse industries are racing to keep up. Some researchers project that recycling alone will be an over $12 billion industry by 2025.U.S. President Joe Biden wants to make America a key player in the EV battery industry with a $3.1 billion spending package for automobile...

California on Thursday is expected to put into effect its sweeping plan to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a groundbreaking move that could have major effects on the effort to fight climate change and accelerate a global transition toward electric vehicles. “This is huge,” said Margo Oge, an electric vehicles expert who headed the Environmental Protection Agency’s transportation emissions program under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. “California will now be the only government in the world that mandates zero-emission vehicles. It is unique.” The rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board,...

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture. The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said. “Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very...

Joe Biden plans to move quickly against guns, adding the issue to his list of first executive orders, according to his top policy aide. Stef Feldman, the national policy director of Biden's presidential campaign, included the Democrat’s gun plan in a list of initial executive actions set to be unleashed after Inauguration Day. Speaking in a Zoom briefing hosted by Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, she said that Biden is planning to “make big, bold changes through executive action, not just on policing and climate like we talked about previously, but in healthcare and education on gun...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Donald Trump’s top adviser on matters related to the coronavirus, said in a January interview that the virus was “not a major threat” to the U.S. “Bottom line. We don’t have to worry about this one, right?” Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly asked Fauci on January 21. “Obviously, you need to take it seriously, and do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are doing, ” Fauci responded. “But, this not a major threat for the people of the...

Next week the YAF (Young America’s Foundation) kicks off their rollicking Road to Freedom seminars at their headquarters in Virginia. Attendees “will be introduced to works of intellectual leaders such as—Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig Von Mises, among others—who influenced President Reagan and the largest peacetime expansion of the economy in American history.”In addition to this invaluable instruction (or reminder) of the historic role of free-markets with human freedom and of socialism with slavery, this year’s event will feature a methodical, merciless (and hilarious) “deconstruction” of the world’s top symbol of socialism: Che Guevara. In keeping with the “deconstructor’s” traditional...

Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. Daily results are based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 national adults; Margin of error is ±3 percentage points

The U.S. has lost track of some of Syria’s chemical weapons, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday, and does not know if any potentially lethal chemicals have fallen into the hands of Syrian rebels or Iranian forces inside the country. “There has been intelligence that there have been some moves that have taken place. Where exactly that’s taken place, we don’t know.” Panetta said, in a Pentagon press briefing.

A newly released report reveals some hard facts about how much time and effort President Obama has actually put into fixing the economy. An analysis of the President's official schedule looks at his first 1257 days, and paints a picture of what reality looks like, as opposed to his rhetoric. The following excerpt shows some of the startling facts.

WASHINGTON – With few options at hand and his poll numbers sagging, President Barack Obama expressed concern Tuesday about the sudden slowdown in the economy but said he is not worried about a second recession and the nation should "not panic." The president spoke about the new economic trouble in detail for the first time since a report late last week showed job growth had slowed sharply in May. He tried to reassure Americans worried about high unemployment and expensive gas that the nation is on a slow, if not steady, path to recovery. "I am concerned about the fact...

Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, plans to return to teaching economics at the University of Chicago this fall, the White House announced Monday night. Goolsbee has been on leave for four years from the university’s Booth School of Business and could have lost his tenured position at Chicago, where he was a professor for 14 years before joining the administration, if he did not return, an official said. Goolsbee, one of Obama’s longest serving aides, was an economic adviser on the 2004 Senate campaign, and the senior economic adviser on the 2008 presidential campaign.He...

President Barack Obama on Friday defended his health-care law in the face of continued Republican-led calls for repeal, declaring that the time to fight the overhaul has passed. Obama was speaking at the annual conference of Families USA, a liberal advocacy group that played a big role in the health-care overhaul.

Although no final decision has been made because of family considerations, ABC News has learned that White House officials are preparing for Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to announce on Friday -- as Congress adjourns for recess -- that he is leaving his post to explore a run for mayor of Chicago.

You don't often hear a U.S. president, past or present, talking about his mistakes and shortcomings in office. But that's what you will hear now - from the 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter. It turns out that during his four year term President Carter kept a diary that he is now publishing, along with an often-harsh critique of his own performance in the White House. His tenure, which correspondent Lesley Stahl covered as a CBS White House correspondent, was tumultuous. The problems he confronted kept mounting and people wondered if he was cursed by a dismal economy,...

LOS ANGELES — If the mark of a real independent is lack of friends, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the quintessential nonpartisan in American politics right now. His approval rating has not risen above 30 percent since May 2009. California remains in deep fiscal distress. He is despised by the state’s workers (whose pay he cut), Democrats (who loathe his aversion to new taxes and his desire to cut entitlements) and Republicans (who wish those respective aversions and desires were stronger), as well as college students, public school parents and people who hate the smell of cigars. As Governor Schwarzenegger prepares...

Independent voters see Pres. Obama in a negative light by a nearly 2-1 margin, according to a new Marist College survey, while almost half of voters say he has failed to meet their expectations. The poll, conducted Feb. 1-3, showed just 44% of registered voters approving of Obama's job as president. 47% disapprove. But among indie voters, Obama's approval rating sits at a terrible 29%, while his disapproval rating is at 57%. Obama's 44% job approval rating is the lowest he has scored in any non-internet poll since moving into the WH, according to a review of data compiled by...

It took a tough question from Matt Lauer, but after having laughably claimed that "the system worked," Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano has now conceded the obvious: that the security system that permitted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board NWA 253 with explosives "failed miserably." On Today and in other interviews this morning, Napolitano attempted to use her own ignorance as a shield. Each time she was hit with a hard question, her response was to the effect "yeah, we're wondering about that ourselves." She also continued to point the finger back at the Bush administration, repeatedly mentioning that the security procedures...

Director of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano either doesn't get it, or is dumber than toast. Today President Obama's choice to protect us from terrorism appeared on CNN and proved that she does not belong in her position. Napolitano, said it was too early to speculate on the claims of Al Qaeda connections made by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian held in connection with the incident. After his arrest in Detroit, Abdulmutallab said he had obtained a specialized explosive chemical compound and a syringe sewn into his underwear from a bomb expert in Yemen associated with the terror network, according...