Free Republic

He is struck by how many USPS executives started out as letter carriers or clerks. He finds them so consumed with delivering mail that they have been slow to grasp how swiftly the service's financial condition is deteriorating. "We said, 'What's your 10-year plan?' " Herr recalls. "They didn't have one."

The state makes a mess of everything it touches, argues Jeffrey Tucker in "Bourbon for Breakfast." Perhaps the biggest mess it makes is in our minds. Its pervasive interventions in every sector affect the functioning of society in so many ways, we are likely to intellectually adapt rather than fight. Tucker proposes another path: see how the state has distorted daily life, rethink how things would work without the state, and fight against the intervention in every way that is permitted. Whether that means hacking your showerhead, rejecting prohibitionism, searching for large-tank toilets, declining to use government courts, homeschooling, embracing...

Taxpayers have a nasty surprise coming. More and more future tax dollars will go to pay off old bills and old promises the federal government made, but couldn’t pay. The money borrowed by the federal government will result in a national debt of some $20 trillion by the end of this decade and taxpayers will have to pay almost $1 trillion a year, just in interest. The chaos and danger of such a predicament is evident in Greece, which is so deep in debt - its economy is in chaos with national strikes, violent street protests and pensions on the...

Today in America we have two different classes of poor: 1) the American Indigent Poor; and 2) the Capable Poor or the “New American Poor” (i.e., “The Subjective Socially Dependent”). The American Indigent Poor are those individuals who are truly helpless and indigent. These were born with physical infirmities and birth defects who suffer physical traumas or mental issues and are unable to survive through this life without help from society. Some are our valiant veterans of foreign wars and others are rejected outcasts of society. These individuals need and deserve our charity and help, and most of all we...

By the end of the year, the federal government may have totally restructured the American healthcare system. This health-insurance industry takeover may lead to widespread taxpayer subsidies for elective abortion. A new national energy tax may be imposed to reduce carbon emissions. The secret ballot for union organization may be effectively eliminated, swelling Big Labor’s ranks and coffers. Or maybe none of these things will have happened. Hard as it may be to believe, that last prospect looks most likely. It is a real possibility that none of these major legislative items—all considered inevitable after the Democratic victories of 2006...

In the past five years - before our very eyes - we have seen the nearly complete erosion and virtual extinction of conservative policies and programs in US politics. It seems that The United States is increasingly becoming more like a secular socialist State than the Representative Republic of "In God We Trust" that it was founded upon. Our Judean-Christian heritage, morality and values do not dominate our culture and society as they once did. Another reality is that many have never known any other kind of society than what presently exists. Accountability, responsibility and virtue are “hisses and by-words”...

Today our nation and the world in which we live in are looking more and more for a “savior-messiah” to deliver us from the many crises that engulf our present world. When the masses are fearful and uncertain, that is when they are the most open to deception and most susceptible to relinquishing their personal freedoms to anyone who promises deliverance from their dire situations. History has testified to this countless times. The Lord Jesus Christ knew this and gave countless warnings to his own and to the world. Be not deceived! (Matt 24:4; Luke 21:8; Mark 13:5-6; 2 Thess....

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. plans to call today for the Federal Reserve to be given new, explicit powers to intervene in the workings of Wall Street firms to protect the financial system, adapting his vision of how the financial world should be regulated to reflect the lessons of the collapse of Bear Stearns. "Our nation has come to expect the Federal Reserve to step in to avert events that pose unacceptable systemic risk," Paulson plans to say in a speech today, according to prepared remarks obtained by The Washington Post. But the central bank "has neither the clear...

WASHINGTON — Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has a message for Americans: Quit digging your grave with a knife and fork. Huckabee shed more than 100 pounds after being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in 2003. He has taken his personal health kick to the next level by running marathons and writing books like "Quit Digging Your Grave With A Knife And Fork." He is also using his success story to wage war on junk food in public schools in hopes of targeting childhood obesity rates. Other states, under pressure to encourage healthier eating habits for children, are developing similar school...

The European Union continues to inch closer to the dystopia foreseen by George Orwell in his novel ''1984.'' In Orwell's novel the main character is a party member in a socialist, totalitarian government that perpetuates its power through omnipresent surveillance and perpetually seeking out ''thoughtcrime,'' such as holding views that were contrary to what the party wishes individuals to think. In the main character's diary, he explains it thusly: ''Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death,'' and ''Thoughtcrime is the only crime that matters.'' After six years of work, the European Union announced in Luxembourg last week that they...

Merck & Co. is immediately suspending its lobbying campaign to persuade state legislatures to mandate that adolescent girls get the company's new vaccine against cervical cancer as a requirement for school attendance, the company said late Tuesday. The drugmaker had been criticized by parents and doctors' groups for quietly funding the campaign via a third party to require 11- and 12-year-old girls get the three-dose vaccine in order to attend school. Some had objected because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted disease, human papilloma virus, which causes cervical cancer. Vaccines mandated for school attendance usually are for diseases easily...

Drunk driving is a serious national problem. So here's a proposal: Wine drinkers would not be arrested for DUI unless they have a blood-alcohol level of .10. But anyone drinking hard liquor would be considered intoxicated at .02. I know it sounds nutty, since drunk is drunk, regardless of what you use to get there. But it's no crazier than the federal law on crack cocaine. Two decades after the great crack scare provoked a draconian response, we still treat it as an unparalleled scourge. Americans who have come of age in the interim might be surprised to know that...

Today President Bush participated in a roundtable discussion on the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit program at Greenspring Village Retirement Community in Springfield, Virginia. This afternoon he met with Republican leaders in the Roosevelt Room at the White House to discuss strategy in the War on Terror.Tonight at 10:00, MSNBC will broadcast the complete hour long interview of Brian Williams with President Bush (and Mike recommends it, so it's got to be good!)Enjoy your trip to Sanity Island on the Daily Dose!!

The prospect of millions of Mexicans receiving United States Social Security checks is moving closer to reality. The Gannett News Service reports U.S. and Mexican officials are discussing a "totalization" agreement that would transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in payments south of the border. The plan would allow documented and undocumented immigrants to return home but still collect U.S. benefits. WorldNetDaily reported the idea to merge both countries' Social Security systems was pushed late last year by Mexican President Vincente Fox as payback from President George W. Bush for failing to secure major new immigration reforms beneficial to Mexico...