Free Republic

<p>GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - The Mesa County Board of Commissioners voted to implement the “Free to Choose” mask resolution beginning on Friday, Apr. 16. Under the new guidelines, businesses and individuals will be able to decide whether to wear a mask or not in public indoor spaces. Businesses will also have the option of limiting indoor capacities or not. However, businesses will still be able to require customers to wear masks.</p>

The issue of heavy-handed state regulations hurting Summit County workers and business owners is a very important grassroots concern to local conservatives. The governor’s arbitrary dial of repression imposed from on high vacillating between colors of the rainbow is making it impossible for local businesses to stay afloat. Hooray for Summit Daily News reporter Jenna deJong for finally shedding light on the severe problems caused by Gov. Jared Polis’ restrictions. There has been an inordinate emphasis on the number of COVID-19 cases rather than the more accurate and useful focus on hospitalizations and fatalities — both of which are low....

Draconian enforcement of COVID-19 lockdown accelerates. Yet another shock video out of Australia shows police enforcing coronavirus rules by arresting an elderly woman sitting on a park bench for not wearing a mask. “This is unlawful, on what grounds am I under arrest?” asks the woman. An officer then walks around the back of the bench and snatches her friend’s phone away, preventing her from filming the encounter. The woman is told that she is being arrested for failing to provide her name and address. ... Once a person has been targeted for not wearing a mask or violating any...

In deeply conservative eastern Washington state, a prominent state lawmaker kicked out of his Republican Party caucus labels the coronavirus as a foreign bio-weapon, accuses Marxists of using the pandemic to advance totalitarianism and rails against lockdown restrictions imposed by the Democratic governor. A California teleconference last week to consider sport fishing limits in rural areas unprepared to handle influxes of anglers descended into chaos — with callers branding state officials as “fascists” and declaring it was time to “make fishing great again.” Across the U.S., elected officials from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma suspicious of big government and outraged with orders...

(CNN) – Hoping to help close the gap between workers' skills and the needs of businesses, President Barack Obama on Wednesday will announce he's putting hundreds of millions toward job training programs that produce highly skilled workers. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will head to a community college in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania to make the announcement. The funding will come in two parts: $500 million toward a new job training competition that pairs community colleges with businesses, and $100 million for new apprenticeship programs to train workers. The White House says the new initiatives are meant to combat a...

For as long as they've existed, politicians have bent language to avoid saying things that sound unpleasant. Once upon a time, the players in the major league of Washington, D.C. politics at least told their versions of truth with eloquence and style. My, how things have changed! With countless examples of the media ignoring news that might damage Democrats, it seems this practice has bred a sense of security among the party's leaders. They even appear emboldened by their media allies as they get closer than ever to something they've craved for decades: complete control of the health care industry....

Some conservatives have begun to openly wonder if Obama is going to seize power in America. Would he want to do this? Perhaps so (a scary thought, but he has promised change.) No one dreamed that Carter, the worst president of the last century, wanted or planned to seize power. Clinton wanted to win power, but the worst anyone expected of Clinton was Huey Long bossism. Obama rose in politics through the thoroughly corrupt one-party government of Chicago. His spiritual advisor sounds like a rabble-rousing storm trooper. His intellectual mentor, Saul Alinksy, like the Bolsheviks and Nazis, believed in state...

In his still young presidency, Barack Obama already has revealed himself as a reveler in the exercise of a certain type of power. Not on the international stage, where his apology tour of Europe was just the latest example of the abasement of America that he sees as part of his mission in life. Nor in dealing with the threat of terrorism (or "overseas contingency operations" and "man-made disasters" as a way to define away the future of his office) or looming dangers from a nuclear Iran. But he has demonstrated a desire to act forcefully in one particular way:...

The Obama administration now wants unfettered power to seize assets, abrogate contracts, and take over management of private corporations if it believes their failure would cause systemic damage to the economy. This is how Robert Gibbs justified it this morning: “We need resolution authority to go in and be able to change contracts, be able to change the business model, unwind what doesn’t work,” Gibbs said on CNN in one of several morning television interviews aimed at promoting the administration proposal. ” . . . This is the exact type of authority that will allow us to deal with the...

Coming soon to a computer screen near you, from the folks who brought you peacekeeping in Rwanda, a firm hand against worldwide terrorism, and advanced bookkeeping to the Oil-for-Food program -- it's the Internet! The United Nations is drawing fire from its most ardent watchdog on Capitol Hill, Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), for a recent report recommending that its International Telecommunications Union (ITU) wrest from the U.S. governance of the Internet. The report's genesis is a classic tale of bureaucracy: it's a product of the Working Group of Internet Governance (WGIG), which was recommended at the World Summit on the...

June 6, 2005 — One man's battle to save his bicycle shop may rest with the United States Supreme Court. The city of Chicago wants to use the power of eminent domain to take the property for a condo development. The bike shop owner calls that an abuse of power. Eminent domain gives a city the power to take private land -- for a fair price -- so long as the deal benefits the public. A Connecticut case awaiting an important ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court is mirrored by many eminent domain cases across the country including the fight...