Free Republic

Headlines are proclaiming this week that student-loan debt is rapidly nearing a trillion dollars. Earlier this year, as financial expert Mark Kantrowitz has noted, another landmark was achieved: Student borrowing now exceeds all credit-card debt. While the data here are somewhat murky and questionable, under any accounting they add up to big bucks. There are three worrisome trends. First, student debt is doubling every seven years or so, growing much faster than credit-card balances, home-mortgage obligations, or commercial loans. At some point, this will become unsustainable as debt burdens overwhelm borrowers’ ability to repay (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) — particularly...

Bob Martin doesn’t mind paying taxes. As a pharmacist at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, the Lake Hallie resident said he is paid a good salary and is glad to pay taxes. But, he said: “I shouldn’t have to pay someone $400 to do them.” Martin said the Fair Tax Act of 2011 would change that, revitalize the nation’s economy and spur the creation of thousands of jobs, if not more. The Fair Tax is still a tax, and it wouldn’t affect state income taxes. But instead of paying a federal income and payroll tax, people would pay what...

An East Bay lawmaker said Monday she'll introduce a bill which, if passed and then approved by voters, would abolish California's death penalty. The forthcoming bill from state Senate Public Safety Committee Chairwoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, would convert already-condemned inmates' sentences to life in prison without possibility of parole. "Capital punishment is an expensive failure and an example of the dysfunction of our prisons," Hancock, who also chairs the budget subcommittee that oversees prison spending, said in a news release. "California's death row is the largest and most costly in the United States. It is not helping to protect our...

Excerpt from the US Constitution: Article III Section 1: “The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. Section 2: The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States,...

Governor Rick Perry this morning said he'll ask Texas legislators to take emergency action in January to abolish sanctuary city rules, allowing police to freely question residents about their immigration status. Perry made his pledge as he accepted the endorsement from the Houston Police Officer's Union, saying it will give police all the tools they need to do their job. "As long as I'm Governor, Texas will never become a sanctuary state," Perry told a large crowd of Houston police officers who applauded enthusiastically. "There's some Texas cities who've enacted sanctuary city rules, they've basically been handcuffing you from the...

When Congress created Labor Day in the late 1800s, it was to placate an increasingly hostile labor movement. At a time when American workers needed protection from heavy-handed industrial bosses, labor unions made sense. But with the growing effort by Big Labor to unionize public employees, it’s left its mission of worker protection from dangerous conditions and now has increasingly become a leech on the taxpayers. Public employees hardly need protection from their employer, the government. If there’s any segment of society that needs protection from the government it’s taxpayers, not their employees. Big Labor’s legacy today

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is proposing to abolish the beleaguered agency that oversees offshore drilling and replace it with three separate entities. The plan by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar would eliminate the Minerals Management Service and replace it with two bureaus and a revenue collection office. .. One bureau would inspect oil rigs and enforce safety regulations, another .. oversee development of offshore drilling. A third .. collect billions .. in royalties for onshore and offshore drilling. The minerals agency has long been accused of being too cozy with the oil and natural gas industry.

Intense interest in the Obama administration has swelled the ranks of the White House press corps. Outlets such as Politico have thrown a basketball team's worth of bodies at the project, and outlets that didn't even exist until recently -- Fivethirtyeight.com, the Huffington Post -- have created their own White House correspondent positions. Yet too often, the White House briefing room is where news goes to die. Name a major political story broken by a White House correspondent. A thorough debunking of the Bush case for Iraqi WMD? McClatchy Newspapers' State Department and national security correspondents. Bush's abuse of signing...

WHEREAS, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States of America authorizes Congress "To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures"; WHEREAS, on December 13th, 1913 the US Congress enacted the Federal Reserve System; WHEREAS, the Federal Reserve System is considered an independent agency within the federal government, with oversight of Congress and containing appointed public officials on its board of directors; WHEREAS, the Federal Reserve System Controls the Federal Reserve Note, the official currency of the great nation of the United States of America; WHEREAS,...

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive..... “The savings rate isn’t going up for the investment of $80 billion,” he [Democratic Congressman George Miller] said. “We have to start to think about ... whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.” “From where I sit that’s just crazy,” said John Belluardo, president of Stewardship Financial Services Inc. in Tarrytown, New...

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College on Friday, less than a week after the Democrats settled on how to handle delegates from Florida at their national convention. “It’s time for Congress to really give Americans the power of one-person, one-vote, instead of the political machinery selecting candidates and electing our president,” Nelson said in a release announcing the amendment. Nelson had announced he would offer the legislation in an address to his state’s senate in March. Nelson said his principal argument for making the change is that the Electoral College permits a candidate...

Britain may abolish ancestry visa By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor Last Updated: 7:59pm GMT 21/02/2008 Britain is proposing to sever its historic ties to tens of thousands of Commonwealth nationals who have an automatic right through descent to live and work here. The small print of this week’s Home Office green paper charting new pathways to citizenship suggests the ancestry visa might be abolished. The visa enables people aged 17 or over whose grandparents were born in the UK to come for four years and eventually apply to stay. It is used mainly by young Australians, New Zealanders and...

WASHINGTON - White House hopeful Tom Tancredo said Thursday the existence of the Congressional Black Caucus and other race-based groups of lawmakers amounts to segregation and should be abolished. "It is utterly hypocritical for Congress to extol the virtues of a colorblind society while officially sanctioning caucuses that are based solely on race," said the Colorado Republican, who is most widely known as a vocal critic of illegal immigration. "If we are serious about achieving the goal of a colorblind society, Congress should lead by example and end these divisive, race-based caucuses," said Tancredo, who is scheduled pitch his longshot...

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - July 19, 2006 - A University of Illinois researcher had discovered a fourth copy of a rare letter Abraham Lincoln had written by to the nation's governors in 1861. The letter John Lupton found Tuesday in the Lehigh County Historical Society's holdings was one Lincoln wrote as part of an unsuccessful ratification process for a constitutional amendment Congress adopted during the term of his predecessor, President James Buchanan, that would have made slavery the law of the land. The president remembered for abolishing slavery had been willing to push the amendment as "kind of a carrot...

The "unConstitutional" Transfer of Powerand the Nullification Party an American Patriot July 30, 2005       On July 28, 2005 in "A "Treaty" by any other name is still a "TREATY," I questioned the constitutionality of the President entering an "agreement" without the 2/3rds vote of the Senate under Article II or the power of the President to introduce legislation to "regulate commerce" to Congress under Article I which vests that power to Congress.       I have since learned that CAFTA "legislation" was introduced under the Presidents "fast track authority." Since 1974, Presidents have used "fast-track authority" to negotiate foreign...

Amendment would provide for direct popular election Dateline: December 27, 2004 Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has announced that she will introduce legislation to abolish the Electoral College system and provide for direct popular election of the President and Vice President when the Senate convenes for the 109th Congress in January. “The Electoral College is an anachronism and the time has come to bring our democracy into the 21st Century,” Sen. Feinstein said in a press release. “During the founding years of the Republic, the Electoral College may have been a suitable system, but today it is flawed and amounts to...

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the Liberty Amendment, which repeals the 16th Amendment, thus paving the way for real change in the way government collects and spends the people’s hard-earned money. The Liberty Amendment also explicitly forbids the federal government from performing any action not explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. The 16th Amendment gives the federal government a direct claim on the lives of American citizens by enabling Congress to levy a direct income tax on individuals. Until the passage of the 16th amendment, the Supreme Court had consistently held that Congress had no power to...

Last week, Juliet Eilperin reported in the Washington Post(1) that "House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) would like to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the current tax system with either a flat tax, a national sales tax or a value-added tax." As reported, Hastert suggests that a new tax system would increase productivity and "double the economy" over the next 15 years. "All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won't seem so daunting anymore," The Post reports Hastert wrote. "People ask me if I'm really calling for the elimination...

Heritage Lecture #842 June 16, 2004 Concern over the United Nations' management and efficiency is nearly as old as the organization itself--with the U.S. initiating its first review of the organization only two years after its founding in 1945. I'm sure it will surprise no one that the review found problems with duplication, mushrooming mandates and programs, and poor coordination. In the decades since, the U.S. has made repeated efforts to resolve these problems. One successful effort was the unilateral decision of the U.S. to reduce payments to the U.N. until it amended its budgeting rules to permit large contributors...

An Arizona state legislative committee has approved a resolution calling for the dissolution of the federal government in the event that it abolishes the U.S. Constitution, declares martial law or confiscates firearms -- scenarios some say are not unrealistic. Critics of the resolution, however, call the measure a "total waste of time." Rep. Karen Johnson, a Mesa Republican and chair of the House Committee on Federal Mandates and States' Rights, authored the resolution which the committee approved 3-2. Only the committee's vice-chair, Republican Rep. Gail Griffin, abstained from voting. Specifically, House Concurrent Resolution 2034 outlines the origin of the United...

EU determined to abolish death penalty worldwide The European Union says it wants to use all diplomatic means to try and persuade China, Iran, the US, Japan and others to abolish the death penalty. The EU is teaming up with other countries, including Mexico and Canada, and the 45-nation Council of Europe in calling for the end of capital punishment. On Friday, the 15-nation EU bloc plans to mark the first 'World day against the Death Penalty.' Efforts to try and convince Washington and Tokyo to scrap the punishment have not been easy, EU officials say. "This is a complex...

How Preachers Incited RevolutionAngry colonists were rallied to declare independence and take up arms because of what they heard from the pulpit. By Harry S. Stout No turning back.At the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775) Americans suffered 441 casualties and the British 1,150. Though a strategic victory for the British, English nerve was shaken, the colonists were emboldened, and any hope for peaceful reconciliation was lost. It's 1775. The year 1787, with its novel constitution and separation of church and state is a long 12 years away. At the moment, you and your friends are just a bunch...

The Injustice of the Income Tax The American Legion MagazineBy Alan Keyes March 2, 2002 The income tax usurps privacy, allows the federal government to control income and paves a path to tyranny. Few issues provide such an enduring occasion for political debate as the question of how to fund the federal government - the question of taxes. In recent years, we have approached national agreement that the current system is deeply and perhaps fatally flawed. Accordingly, politicians have presented various versions of what they call "fundamental reform". But much of the talk of fundamental reform is really an effort...