Free Republic

"...Yet in the President’s $3.8 trillion budget, Obama is asking for $553 billion for his defense budget. He claims he has found $78 billion in “cuts” over the next five years, most of which aren’t actual cuts as they are funneled into other defense spending programs. On top of that, the Obama budget projects defense spending to grow by a full percentage point over the next decade. Even Republicans, who are traditionally loath to decrease military spending, made almost $20 billion in cuts to security-related accounts in the FY 2011 Continuing Resolution. The President declined to show any such restraint....

Is the Democrat fixation on failure finally coming to an end? That's what some may be thinking as Democrats in Congress respond to the introduction of a new stop-gap funding measure by House Republicans last week. After refusing to debate the long-term CR passed by the House last Saturday, Senate Democrats spent last week demagoguing the package, attempting once again to forestall a comprehensive budget plan for the 2011 fiscal year. However, after refusing to pass a budget last year, forcing the government to operate on stop-gap funds and continuing to clamor for higher spending, Democrats have intimated the short-term...

My son (a believer) and one of his childhood friends (an atheist and extreme liberal) are taking a philosophy 101 class at the local college here in town and they are debating the Euthyphro Dilemma. There are two audio files in this post that DESTROY the atheists argument in regards to this position, not to mention that this is in fact NOT a dilemma: [QUOTE] ...While Plato was dealing with polytheism and a form of monism, this argument as dealt with herein is response to the challenges presented to theism. However, his use of a third option is what we...

When 'Made In China' Isn't Enough ~“Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.” ~ Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Ma.)Made in China wasn’t enough, now union minions want to be owned by China as well. So far all I see is a bunch of snot-nosed, deficit-financed, government slugs spewing nonsense, but not one drop of blood. Hey union guys, this isn’t 1945, except maybe in terms of the National Debt. Back in the day, American unions used to fight so-called greedy capitalists for higher pay, greater benefits, and better working...

the Obama administration might want to rethink its high-density and urban-oriented strategy. Despite all the media focus on an imagined “back to the city” movement, Americans continue to disperse to “opportunity regions” and toward the suburbs. As a result, expect generally conservative-leaning suburbs and exurbs to gain more power after reapportionment and core city influence to decline further.

...Mr. Lipton’s main target was Tim Phillips, President of Americans for Prosperity: “The visitor, Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, told a large group of counterprotesters who had gathered Saturday at one edge of what otherwise was a mostly union crowd that the cuts were not only necessary, but they also represented the start of a much-needed nationwide move to slash public-sector union benefits. “We are going to bring fiscal sanity back to this great nation,” he said. What Mr. Phillips did not mention was that his Virginia-based nonprofit group, whose budget surged to $40 million in 2010...

In order to force the absence of a “quorum,” and thus delay an inevitable Republican victory, senate Democrats have fled Wisconsin, holding their votes hostage “Dog Day Afternoon” style in motels across Illinois. In the mean-time union members, government employees, and teachers—some with students in tow—have been playing hooky to mau-mau the remaining members of the state senate. Enter Monday's lead editorial in the Washington Post. Choosing the side of moderate reform rather than rabid collectivism, the Post cautioned that “abolishing contract negotiations between unions and management is not necessarily a panacea for state and local governments - or a...

It’s not often that you’ll see the Environmental Protection Agency fighting for American businesses against the encroachment of Big Government. Despite a recent tendency to disregard the economic impact of its most noxious regulations, the unwilling Agency is being dragged, by court order, to release its long awaited boiler-MACT rules. The Maximum Achievable Control Technology standards in question were first announced in spring of last year. Intended to replace the previous rules, which were vacated by a D.C. circuit court in 2007, these new MACT regulations would impose exacting emissions standards upon thousands of fossil fuel and biomass-fired boilers nationwide....

The following proposals were intended as amendments to the House’s recently passed H.R. 1, a continuing resolution for FY 2011. Although each failed its respective vote, the fact that such bold reforms are under consideration holds promise for the future. Indeed, thin margins of defeat in certain cases indicate that eventual passage is possible...

"Dr. Ronald Polland: Obama's Two Minute Warning; Factcheck.org Forged Obama's Birth Certificate Game over, Barack Obama. This 2-minute video will destroy your birth certificate fraud. You were not born here. You are not a US citizen. Your FORGED BIRTH CERTIFICATE, fabricated by Annenberg Factcheck, proves you are a liar, a fraud, an imposter, and an illegal alien. The FIRST EIGHT SECONDS of this video buries your rabid liberal media in their own lies. They demanded that conservatives accept what the Hawaii Governor said about you and your birth certificate. We do - now you and your gullible supporters must do...

The workforce of the Internal Revenue Service currently consists of over 93,000 employees to collect and process tax returns and enforce tax laws. While this number is daunting in and of itself, the IRS recently released its new budget which calls for an additional 1,056 new IRS employees citing specifically the new demands placed on the agency due to the new healthcare law. Beyond just more employees the burden of the healthcare law would require more facilities and new systems to handle the task; U.S. News and World Report put the cost to taxpayers at over $359 million in fiscal...

...There is another reason that Jerry Brown wants Republicans to go along with his budget plan aside from the fact that he needs four GOP votes to get his tax hikes on the ballot. The fact is that Brown knows that his budget does nothing to address the states true problem – overspending, it does nothing to address the state’s unfunded pension liability pegged at half a trillion dollars, and will only leave the state’s economy worse off. Brown knows this and wants Republican fingerprints on it for that reason. Gov. Brown’s budget has the same problem as Obama’s –...

With so many states facing crushing budget deficits and unsustainable growth in spending, governors and state legislatures across the nation are finally taking the lead and beginning to combat the exorbitant power of organized labor. These steps are being driven not only by necessity, but because the American people are beginning to recognize the radical agenda of labor unions that seek to deny workers the fundamental right to choose their own terms of employment. Even those on the far left are falling into this trend, as a demonstrated by a recent article in The Nation Magazine. In discussing ways to...

It's been widely reported that Wisconsin Democrats have been discovered at their secret hideout at a Best Western in Rockford, IL, outside the jurisdiction of Wisconsin state troopers who would like them to return to Madison to do their job. While Republicans are at work, their colleagues across the aisle decided a contentious budget fight would be the perfect time to skip town for a little R&R in Rockford. I'm a big fan of traveling, and I always like to pack my vacation agenda to the gills so I can really experience new places to the fullest. I'd like to...

For the third year in a row, states and the federal government have raised discriminatory taxes on wireless phone and broadband service. According to a comprehensive study in this month’s State Tax Notes, the average American pays a whopping 16.26% on their wireless phone and broadband bills, with Nebraska residents paying as much as 23.69%. Much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the federal government, which has raised the federal Universal Service Fund Tax from 2.99% in 2006 to 5.05% today. However, the problem also comes from state and local governments, which continue to raise telecom...

Once upon a time, the United States was the greatest industrial powerhouse that the world has ever seen. Our immense economic machinery was the envy of the rest of the globe and it provided the foundation for the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world. But now the once great U.S. economic machine is being dismantled piece by piece. The U.S. economy is being gutted, neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized and very few of our leaders even seem to care. It was the United States that once showed the rest of the world how to...

A Buffalo-based company is the latest to get in on the medical brokering scheme that’s gaining ground in Canada as lengthy wait times force more and more people south of the border for treatment.

Sunday, April 06, 2008 "The Police are the Public, and the Public are the Police." The title to this post is a quote attributed to Sir Robert Peel. Known as the "Father of Modern Policing", Sir Robert was the man responsible for the creation of what many believe to be the first modern professional police department -- the Metropolitan Police Force in London. Prior to Sir Roberts little experiment, the British in the 1800's had a strong antipathy for the idea of a full-time police department -- matter-of-fact, it was seen as a threat to liberty and a (and this...

For a decade now U.S. city planners have obsessively pursued college graduates, adopting policies to make their cities more like dense hot spots such as New York, to which the "brains" allegedly flock. But in the past 10 years "hip and cool" places like New York have suffered high levels of domestic outmigration.

Simple Chemistry and the Real Greenhouse Effect. Truths: 1. Most of the Sun’s radiation that gets to the Earth’s lower atmosphere passes through substantially unabsorbed. 2. Most of the radiation is then absorbed on contact with the Earth’s surface. This includes the majority water and the minority land. 3. Most of the Earth’s surface is either water or moist vegetation. Most of the radiation from the sun is converted to infrared wavelengths at or near the surface. The water molecules absorb the infrared radiation causing increased vibration within the individual water molecules. This is converted into translational energy during intermolecular...