Free Republic

The Obama administration may give Americans extra time to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, postponing when penalties for failing to buy coverage will go into effect, MarketWatch has learned. The health care law requires most people to have health insurance by Jan. 1, 2014, but allows for “short coverage gaps” of up to three months before imposing the penalty, which is $95 or 1% of an individual’s income (whichever is greater) next year. That means someone must be covered by March 31, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed, which is...

Hoping a new attorney general will be more sympathetic to their cause, John Walker Lindh's parents again asked the White House to commute the sentence of the Marin County man who fought in Afghanistan for the Taliban. The family filed a petition today asking that Lindh's 20-year sentence be commuted. Lindh pleaded guilty in 2002 to providing services to the Taliban and carrying explosives during a felony. His attorneys first applied for a commutation in 2004, and have regularly beseeched the government since then to shorten Lindh's sentence. "We hope that President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush will find...

The entitlement mentality produces petulant insistence on an ever-higher ratio of rights to responsibilities. Unsurprisingly, this mentality flourishes on campuses, where tenured faculty and privileged students live entitled lives supported by the taxes and generosity of others. The mentality was on vivid display in the Supreme Court on Tuesday when an association of 36 law schools and faculties asserted an audacious entitlement. Many schools bar military recruiters... The schools asked the court to declare unconstitutional, as a violation of the First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and association, the law that denies federal funds to any school that denies...

MIDI - CAN'T SMILE WITHOUT YOU You know we can't smile without it...we can't smile without it We can't laugh and we can't sing About that George Bush, we hate everything Because he's always been winning Although we keep spinning We've really gone limp...we're so impotent We just can't smile without it What has gone wrong...our power's gone...so we must attack And who'd believe that we're so down in the dumps...we look like chumps We want it back And you know we can't smile without it...we can't smile without it We can't laugh and we can't sing About that...