Free Republic

What’s the best way to protect the rights of workers? Let them determine their own job preferences, or mandate that companies provide them with certain protections? California has chosen to take the latter path. Has it worked? Is it a victory for workers, or a debilitating defeat? Patrice Onwuka of the Independent Women’s Forum looks into these questions. Her findings may surprise you.

new report shows some 53 million Americans—or 34 percent of the U.S. workforce—are now working as freelancers in some capacity. "This is more than an economic change," asserts the report, a joint effort from the Freelancer's Union and freelance markeplaces oDesk and eLance. It's also "a cultural and social shift" that will "have major impacts on how Americans conceive of and organize their lives, their communities, and their economic power." The first and last time anyone looked at the freelance worker population in the U.S. was 2004, in a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Back then the GAO...

Politics: If you were wondering about the Democrats' evolving foreign policy, wonder no more. They've made it clear they'll flatter and talk to anyone, even terrorists. They just won't talk to President Bush. Fresh from the diplomatic travesty of her trip to the Mideast, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has let it be known that she, along with Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, might soon journey to Iran to talk to the mullahs and their terror-supporting sheriff, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to Lantos, he and Pelosi are just executing "an alternative Democratic foreign policy." That is, an "alternative"...