Free Republic

When public school districts have a monopoly, they can easily justify delaying school or implementing extended closures. School choice is the solution. Across the country, school districts are announcing delayed openings or full-on closures for the semester or year. In its place, they will offer virtual learning as they did in the spring.Despite President Trump’s clear opposition to this (or because of it), school district leaders insist that a risk of a COVID-19 outbreak is too great to safely reopen schools. This is doubtful, seeing that schools would have to be “guaranteeing that no one will get sick if schools...

Carly Schroeder is trading fame for fatigues. The former "Lizzie McGuire" actress has enlisted in the Army. "I've been considering it for a while and it is a big choice, but thankfully my parents and my little brother were very supportive of me," Schroeder, 28, told TMZ on Wednesday. "My dad was actually in the Army, he was a Green Beret medic, and my little brother Hunter, he's in the Marines now."

WASHINGTON — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toppled a well-established Democratic leader in a stunning primary upset last year — now she's looking to spur others to do the same. In a promotional video for Justice Democrats, the grassroots group that backed Ocasio-Cortez's 2018 upstart run against Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent, as well as Rep. Ayanna Pressley's successful challenge to Mike Capuano in Massachusetts, Ocasio-Cortez shares lessons from her campaign to help boost a new recruitment drive for progressive insurgents called #OurTime. Already, the group is publicly searching for a primary challenger to centrist Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas. Cuellar has defended...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) used an instant-messaging system that did not automatically save the messages they sent, according to newly released emails obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Disgraced former IRS official Lois Lerner loved the agency’s “Office Communication Server” (OCS) specifically because it left no record of her messages during the period in which her department was targeting conservative and tea party groups. “I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails — so...

Many liberals in the media are expressing shock over Obama’s apparent willingness to increase oil production.  We all know that he is full of …, I mean ethanol, and they do too. Those of you who were befuddled at the news that Obama will ‘expand drilling’ in Alaska are not missing anything.  Obama has pulled this political chicanery a number of times.  Whenever a specific proposal that he so adamantly opposes becomes too popular to ignore, he announces his support for it by promising to implement inconsequential reforms.  To that end, he declared during his Saturday radio address that he...

Energy: As the House passes a bill to open up offshore drilling, the Senate holds another show trial of oil executives showing why people blame them, not the administration, for high gas prices. Last week they fought back. Summoned for what Sen. Orrin Hatch labeled a dog-and-pony show, executives of Exxon Mobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, BP America and Chevron appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday and, in often-heated exchanges, indicated their days as whipping boys are over. The hearing was called ostensibly to support the Democrats' Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act, a bill with no chance of passage....

We are living lives of self-imposed impoverishment. it will reach $130bbl, there is little reason to expect gasoline prices to do anything other than climb higher in the near future.One of the problems we face right now is the uncertainty in Libya, an OPEC nation that has cut its normal daily output of 1.6 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) to just over 700,000, amid the political tensions surrounding Muammar Gaddafi. What this means for humanity as a whole is that there is now less oil on the worldÂ’s market to meet the demand around the globe. What this...

Complete title: New Study Shows That Offshore Drilling Could Make Alaska the Eighth Largest Oil Producer in the World – Ahead of Libya and Nigeria (CNSNews.com) – A new study says drilling on Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) could make Alaska the eighth largest oil resource province in the world -- ahead of Nigeria, Libya, Russia and Norway. The report -- by the consulting firm Northern Economics and the University of Alaska-Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research -- says that developing Alaska’s OCS could produce almost 10 billion barrels of oil and 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas,...

Energy Policy: President Obama says the oil disaster proves the need to get off fossil fuels. But before we save the planet, let's save the Gulf and stop exploiting crises to deny America the energy it needs. Saving the planet is nice, but just how do we plug the hole again? With an abundance of hand gestures, the president didn't really say in his speech Tuesday night. He did say fossil fuels were bad and green energy is good, but the people of the Gulf states don't need wind turbines right now. Contrary to Obama's assertions, our "addiction" to foreign...

Energy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is its lies. Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did. According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar's May 27...

The Economy: As if the latest measly numbers on our jobless recovery weren't bad enough, along comes the administration to pile disaster upon disaster by slapping a six-month ban on deep-water drilling. When President Obama visited Louisiana on May 1, he talked about the possibility that the oil gushing from BP's Deepwater Horizon well could "jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home." Now the administration's response could jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands more. In a letter sent to Obama on Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged the president's decision to suspend deepwater drilling...

Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions? Environmentalism did not cause the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but it did help make it possible, just as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, which the Gulf Oil spill has now eclipsed, was also ironically made possible by a desire to protect the environment. The original plan when oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope was to build a pipeline directly to the...

Energy: An administration never enthusiastic about offshore drilling is using the Gulf oil spill as an excuse to suspend Arctic exploration. Who could've seen that coming? Now we'll be more dependent on foreign oil. Suspicions in some quarters that the administration was being deliberately lax in its response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in order to pursue a larger, anti-domestic energy agenda were met with derision. But if not deliberate, the effect is the same as the administration prepares to shut down our search for new oil. President Obama on Thursday announced a suspension...

Barack Obama made a big fuss over his plan to open more U.S. acreage to exploratory oil and gas drilling. But wildcatters aren't overly excited about the prospects. Though the plan added acreage in Alaska for possible leasing, some choice sites there were yanked. Drillers still have to wait for environmental studies before a lease sale may be held. Even then, they'd need to do seismic surveys and get federal air permits before touching drill bit to earth. Expect environmentalists' lawsuits, too. The President asserted that "drilling alone cannot come close to meeting our long-term energy needs." Really? A study...

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill. We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline. Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., Obama announced the welcome news that his administration will let lease sales go...

What the President announced today at-a-glance:Cancelled five lease sales off the Alaska coast that were planned over the next 2 years. One of the areas is estimated to hold up to 77 billion barrels of oil, or more than 3 times US reserves.A study of the southern Atlantic OCS, with the findings due back next year….no leasing.Delaying a planned lease sale off Virginia until at least 2012. Washington, DC – Earlier this morning, President Obama delivered remarks at Andrews Air Force Base on offshore energy exploration and production, and what a scene it was. While many newspapers and cable news...

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

Energy: A new study shows that our reluctance to develop domestic energy will cost the beleaguered U.S. economy trillions in opportunity costs, reduce our gross domestic product and increase our trade deficit. From trying to stimulate jobs in nonexistent ZIP codes at great expense to worshiping the false gods of climate change, our biggest deficit these days may be in the area of common sense. A new study shows that many of our wounds are self-inflicted as we forgo the wealth and jobs to be found in our waters and under our feet. The study by Science Applications International Corp....

Energy The administration asked for public comments on a plan to expand offshore drilling. When they came in 2-to-1 in favor, the Interior Department sat on the news. Time for a "Texas tea" party? When you ask for public comment on a major policy issue, at some point you should make the results public, not hide them until you can figure out a way to spin the public reaction to support a conclusion you've already drawn. On its last business day in office, the Bush administration published a proposed draft of a five-year plan to lease areas in the Atlantic...

Energy: The government says wind power could supply the eastern half of the U.S. with a fifth of its electricity by 2024. Just don't try building wind farms where someone might see them. A claim is contained in a new study released by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and technically it might be true. But we've heard these overblown predictions before, and experience around the world with heavily subsidized alternative energy has not worked out well. The area in question, called the Eastern Interconnection, is a grid extending roughly from the western borders of the Plains states through...