Free Republic

The Trump administration is poised to withdraw federal protections for countless waterways and wetlands across the country, making good on President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to weaken landmark water rules long resented by some developers, farmers and oil, gas and mining executives. Environmental groups said the Trump administration proposal would have a sweeping impact on how the country safeguards the nation’s waterways, scaling back not just a 2015 Obama administration interpretation of federal jurisdiction over the nation’s waters, but also how federal agencies enforce the 1972 Clean Water Act. […] The changes would affect what waterways and wetlands fall under...

Federal bureaucrats handed out more than 5.5 million new work permits to aliens inside the U.S. from 2009 to 2014 “beyond the number of new green card and temporary worker admissions,” according to a new report that accuses the Obama White House of setting up a shadow government program to do what the legitimate program won’t. “This is a huge parallel immigrant work authorization system outside the limits set by Congress that inevitably impacts opportunities for U.S. workers, damages the integrity of the immigration system, and encourages illegal immigration,” said the report, dated February 2015, by Jessica M. Vaughan of...

The first amendment is dead; long live the reign of sensitivity. Ben Shapiro explores how Americans have forfeited their fundamental rights in the name of political correctness. See the video and transcript.... TRANSCRIPT: Millions of people from all over the world held candlelight vigils in honor of the French magazineCharlie Hebdo after an Islamic terror attack on its staff. But in reality, those of us in the United States – yes, even those of us who tweeted #JeSuisCharlie – gave up our First Amendment rights long ago. We gave them up in the name political correctness, and in the name...

In 2008, Barack Obama was swept into the White House in large part due to public opposition to President Bush’s heavy-handed use of executive power and accusations that he had circumvented Congress - a constant criticism employed by candidate Obama on the stump. Consider this quote: “We can no longer wait for Congress to do its job. . . . So where Congress won’t act, I will.” It sounds like the kind of executive arrogance for which Bush was regularly pilloried by the media and his Democratic opponents. Yet these were not words uttered by President Bush; they were spoken...

President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for authority to close the Commerce Department and create a new export agency, an overhaul that could save $3 billion and help inoculate him against Republican election-year charges that he is a big-government liberal. White House budget official Jeffrey Zients told reporters the reorganization would fold together the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and other trade bodies now spread across Washington, giving businesses a single point of contact and ensuring federal spending goes further to boost exports.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government, and his first idea is merging six sprawling trade and commerce agencies whose overlapping programs can be baffling to businesses, a senior administration official told The Associated Press. Obama will call on Congress to give him a type of reorganizational power last held by a president when Ronald Reagan was in office. The Obama version would be a so-called consolidation authority allowing him to propose mergers that promise to save money and help consumers. The deal would entitle him to an...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) —The Obama administration is taking steps to extend new federal protections to a list of imperiled animals and plants that reads like a manifest for Noah's Ark —from the melodic golden-winged warbler and slow-moving gopher tortoise, to the slimy American eel and tiny.. rat. ...With a Friday deadline to act on more than 700 pending cases, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already has issued decisions advancing more than 500 species toward potential new protections under the Endangered Species Act.

Obama signs huge expansion of youth brigades legislation © 2009 WorldNetDaily President Obama today signed into law the "GIVE Act," H.R. 1388, which massively expands the National Service Corporation and allocates to it billions of dollars, and one executive for the program now says it will allow for the "managing" of up to 8 or 9 million people. WND has reported on plans to create the corps since Obama told a campaign stop in Colorado Springs last year he wants a "Civilian National Security Force" as big and as well-funded as the U.S. military. The bill includes a "National Service...

WASHINGTON – Calling on Americans to volunteer, President Barack Obama signed a $5.7 billion national service bill Tuesday that triples the size of the AmeriCorps service program over the next eight years and expands ways for students to earn money for college. "What this legislation does, then, is to help harness this patriotism and connect deeds to needs," said Obama, a former community organizer in Chicago.

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill Tuesday to strengthen national service by increasing funding for thousands of volunteers. The House approved 275-149 the Senate-passed Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature. "Just one month ago, in his address to Congress, President Obama called upon Congress to pass legislation 'to encourage a renewed spirit of national service for this and future generations,'" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. "Today, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act is on its way to his desk to become law." Obama...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tens of thousands of Americans, from teenagers to baby boomers, soon will get a fresh chance to lend a helping hand in a time of need after Congress voted Tuesday to expand ways for people to serve the country and each other. The House voted 275-149 for a $5.7 billion bill that takes ambitious steps on public service, including tripling the number of positions in the Clinton-era AmeriCorps program, its largest expansion since the agency's creation in 1993, and establishing a fund to help nonprofit organizations recruit and manage more volunteers. Congress was sending the bill to...

President Obama didn’t want any advice from Congress on the decision to ask GM CEO Rick Wagoner to resign, according to Carl Levin (D), Michigan’s senior senator. “He didn’t ask us about it, he informed us,” Levin told reporters in a conference call Monday afternoon. “The president said he’d already decided.” Levin said he and three other lawmakers were informed of the decision in a phone call Obama made from the Oval Office. Obama told the members of Congress that Wagoner needed to resign so that the administration could show the public it was making an effort at a fresh...

JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh.

This is a very good 10 minute video on where our country is going. It discusses the different types of governments in the world. This is not political. Both parties are responsible for the shift in the type of government that represents us. Can WE stop that shift. Never saw this before...it should be passed on...

I came across a video that left me shaking with fear and outrage: If this footage doesn't disturb you to your very core, I don't even know what to say. We have here a militarized group of young men being steeped in not only political ideology, but in literal cult worship of Barack Obama. This was going on before the election. I still remember the video featuring a glassy-eyed girl singing, “We’re gonna spread happiness! We’re gonna spread freeeeedom! Obama’s gonna change it, Obama’s gonna lead ‘em…” The cult mindset continued into his inauguration, with a creepy "Kids' Inaugural." That...

Senators have tabled, or killed, an amendment offered by Senator David Vitter (R-LA) to the Serve America Act (S. 277 / H.R. 1388) by a vote of 53 to 43.The amendment would state that no funds within the underlying bill for various service-related programs can go to “ACORN or any of its affiliate organizations in any way.”ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. It’s a community organizing group for “low- and moderate-income people” according to its website.The group’s political committees generally support Democrats. You’ll recall that it came under fire in the media for alleged voter...

In his 1835 masterpiece, Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, reported on his observations of the American scene after an extensive tour of the new Republic. One of his most profound insights had to do with the genius of Americans in the formation of institutions that mediate between large, distant government and the solitary, insular individual: Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans...

Interestingly enough an important amendment brought to the floor today was not in the H.R. 1388 when it passed the Senate today. The first presented by Sen Vitter (LA) wanted to insure that no money be made available to ACORN and its affiliates, on the grounds that it is a organization with possibly suspect behaviour and that including it in the bill would not be able to politicize charitable giving and activities. Saying that the bill doesn’t allow politicized does not necessarily protect the country from ACORN’s “so-called” charitable activities. ACORN has already received considerable funding from the government, for...

It is another sound good piece of legislation. H.R. 1388 has a creative title; The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act. 321 representatives of the people voted approval for this legislation which, among many other things, strikes a blow to the rights of people to mount any protests against legislation. Listen closely, it outlaws the right to mount protests against proposed legislation.

With all the focus and attention on the TARP, the so-called “stimulus” bill, the nationalization of huge chunks of our economy and the various issues economic – lost in the weeds have been a host of destructive “programs” being developed and passed by the Obama-Democrat machine. Right now on the floor of the United States Senate is one of the most disturbing pieces of legislation I have seen in a long time. HR 1388, the “Serve America Act” is cloaked in feel-good rhetoric and supposedly noble goals, but it is nothing more than another Washington power-grab – this time targeted...