Free Republic

. . . Democrats will control Congress. If they also control the White House, we will have a series of legislative packages that will make the Great Society look like a libertarian government. . . . The country is in trouble. We have forgotten our founding principles, and we move inexorably toward a European style socialist state, with the only winners being an enormous bureaucracy. This will accelerate the economic decline. The argument is to give the Democrats their head, and pick up the pieces after the inevitable crash. I think that overlooks the resilience of tax and tax, spend...

The 50 U.S. states are holding more than $32 billion worth of unclaimed property that they're supposed to safeguard for their citizens. But a "Good Morning America" investigation found some states aggressively seize property that isn't really unclaimed and then use the money -- your money -- to balance their budgets. Unclaimed property consists of things like forgotten apartment security deposits, uncashed dividend checks and safe-deposit boxes abandoned when an elderly relative dies. Banks and other businesses are required to turn that property over to the state for safekeeping. The problem is that the states return less than a quarter...

Lately I've been thinking of four left wing incidents that happened in Maine over the course of two years. I feel I should get them off my chest I think some of them would be interesting and I think others should know about them. The first one involves an incident that took place in the Bangor metro area two years ago. This freind of mine and his family were having trouble. He had difficulty getting by and he worked at Edwards Shop'n'save in Hampden outside Bangor. He was on food stamps and his wife was laid off and couldn't get...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional leaders are racing to push through an array of election-year housing measures that already have stirred up much political wrangling and the White House is examining its own plan to further help homeowners caught in the mortgage meltdown. With foreclosure signs prevalent and a Wall Street rescue reverberating, majority Democrats want the government to step in and back up to $400 billion in troubled loans. The goal is to help strapped borrowers and thaw a credit market plagued by uncertainty about the value of subprime mortgages made to people with spotty credit or low incomes. As...

RFFM.org Commentary Most of us who fall within the category of baby boomers can explain why small government and low taxation served our nation very well. At least we should be able to. A little more than a quarter century ago, the norm included one parent who brought home an income which supported an entire family. Of course, government programs, including the GI Bill, made it possible for millions of families to join the middle class after World War II. But, all the same, jobs in manufacturing were sufficient to bring reality to the well-turned phrase, "a rising tide lifts...

I have a feeling that this Presidential election is about a lot more than whether we have the first woman president, or the first black president, or the first prisoner of war president. I think it's about whether whoever we elect has the strategic ability to understand that the era of big government is over, that tax cuts are better than tax raises, that there are no more family farms and nobody cares except the people in Iowa who are trying to convert them to ethanol ranches anyway, and that there are asymmetric threats to the peace of the world...

He may be down and finally out but Mike Huckabee's longevity in the presidential race has been the surprise of campaign season. He was the favorite of evangelicals, finished with a much higher than expected delegate count, and outlasted such better-funded rivals as Mitt Romney. Huckabee lost because he never connected with non-evangelical Republicans, particularly economic conservatives who doubted his commitment to limited government. On the campaign trail, Huckabee mused about fighting poverty and signing a national smoking ban. In Arkansas, he approved tax increases. But these weren't just the candidate's personal tics. Hucakbee was following his evangelical flock. Supportive...

Historical facts clearly prove the murderous evils of atheism and big government At a minimum, atheist dictators in the Soviet Union, Red China, Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia murdered 105 million people in the 20th Century, more than 60% of the mass murders, genocide and political murders in that time. In comparison, only about 2% of the 169 million examples of democide in the 20th Century were due to religious conflict. Also in comparison, the Crusades murdered only 1 million people over several centuries, the Spanish Inquisition only murdered 350,000 people over several centuries, and the witch hunts added...

LOS ANGELES - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday signed one of the nation's toughest laws on pet sterilization, requiring most dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered by the time they are 4 months old. The ordinance is aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating the thousands of euthanizations conducted in Los Angeles' animal shelters every year. "We will, sooner rather than later, become a no-kill city and this is the greatest step in that direction," Councilman Tony Cardenas said as he held a kitten at a City Hall news conference. The ordinance does exempt some animals, including those that...

Obama’s Big-Government Vision By Lawrence Kudlow Tuesday, February 19, 2008 Senator Barack Obama is very gloomy about America, and he’s aligning himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic party in hopes of coming to the nation’s rescue. His proposal? Big-government planning, spending, and taxing -- exactly what the nation and the stock market doesn’t want to hear. Obama unveiled much of his economic strategy in Wisconsin this week: He wants to spend $150 billion on a green-energy plan. He wants to establish an infrastructure investment bank to the tune of $60 billion. He wants to expand health insurance by...

On Super Tuesday, Jonn McCain secured the Republican nomination. How did that happen? The reason is George W. Bush. He redefined conservatism with a "compassionate" variant that is a distinct departure from classic Reaganism. Bush muddled the ideological waters of conservatism. It was Bush who teamed with Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind, a federal venture into education that would have been anathema to Reagan. It was Bush who signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. It was Bush who strongly supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. It was Bush who on his own created a vast new entitlement program, the...

Editor's note: A May deadline looms as just one flash point in a political showdown between Homeland Security and states that oppose Real ID demands. This is the third in a four-part series examining the confrontation. No television, no wedding or family photographs, and definitely no image of herself on her driver's license: That was the devout Christian life that Nebraska resident Frances Quaring was trying to lead. Which is why, after the state of Nebraska rejected her request for a license-without-a-photograph in the mid-1980s, Quaring sued the state in a landmark case that ended up at the U.S. Supreme...

The Geopolitics of Dope January 29, 2008 | 2103 GMT By George Friedman Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary. Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres...

Arizona’s Governor, Janet Napolitano (D), plans to use new photo radar and other speed enforcement technology on state highways to generate revenue to help close the state’s budget deficit. Her proposal projects at least $120 million in revenue per year from the program. This is about a tenth of a forecast $1.2 billion deficit. Napolitano acknowledged that the technology was sold to the public as a means of promoting safety, but said it would be foolish to overlook its revenue raising potential. "Since the majority of the traffic on our roads exceeds the speed limit, we realized we’re sitting on...

Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary. Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres into the United States on this scale goes beyond what has become accepted...

Carla Howell is President of the Center For Small Government and heads the 2008 Massachusetts ballot initiative to END the Income Tax. Is Mitt Romney the "economic conservative" he claims to be? Especially when it comes to tax and spend policies? Now that he's running for president, let's compare his words with his deeds. Taxes Romney claims to be anti-tax. He even "took" a "no new taxes" pledge when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002. "Took" is in quotes because he refused to sign that pledge. His signature wasn't necessary, he claimed. He assured us that he's a...

In a piece published on January 9th for Townhall, economics writer Jerry Bowyer posed some common questions about the FairTax. The FairTax would replace personal income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate income taxes, and the death tax with a national retail sales tax. The FairTax has become a prominent subject for discussion as Mike Huckabee, its leading advocate among the presidential candidates, has risen to the top of the national polls. In politics, as in life, “context” (which could also be called, “basic point of view” or “the framing of the issue”) trumps “content” (in this case, the...

Conservatives may be surprised to hear that for over 50 years they have been successful in stopping the growth of big government. Going all the way to the early 1950s Federal spending has hovered in a fairly narrow band around 20% of GDP. But even that limited success is soon to be swamped by reality. For the Federal Government’s long-term projections show a radical change over the next 40 years, with Federal spending soaring close to 40% of GDP or more. This is due to our nation’s big entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Counting state and local...

Spychief Mike McConnell is drafting a plan to protect America’s cyberspace that will raise privacy issues and make the current debate over surveillance law look like “a walk in the park,” McConnell tells The New Yorker in the issue set to hit newsstands Monday. “This is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.” At issue, McConnell acknowledges, is that in order to accomplish his plan, the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing the Internet in the United States...

Verbal bouquets are being thrown by presidential candidate Barack Obama at the ideals of bipartisanship, nonpartisanship, post-partisanship. You may want to consider some recent handiwork before buying in. Take last month's fuel-economy legislation, deemed "a nice little Christmas present" for the American people by Nancy Pelosi. President Bush wore himself out singing the bill's praises. Mr. Obama, who has been hell on the auto makers, practically called it America's salvation. But its only redeeming feature is that it's unlikely ever to take effect, at least in current form. We won't try to list all the built-in fudge factors. No two...

MANCHESTER, N.H. – It is the historic mission of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary to give us the establishment candidate in each party, and then the insurgent candidate. The two pairs then battle it out in South Carolina to give us the probable nominees for November. Year 2008 looks no different, with this exception: The insurgents, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, swept the first contests and now have the momentum. And both establishments are reeling. Twenty-four hours before New Hampshire, the GOP establishment has not even settled upon a champion. If Mitt Romney wins the Granite State, he...

"Have you wondered why Mike Huckabee is suddenly getting so much favorable attention from the mainstream media (who themselves are controlled by this gaggle of global elite)? To find the answer as to why he would suddenly become the darling of the media, look no further than the fact that just a couple of months ago, Mr. Huckabee appeared before the globalist-minded Council on Foreign Relations. (To read his speech click here [http://www.cfr.org/publication/14335/]) And when he did, it became abundantly clear that Huckabee was a man globalists could trust. Huckabee, ... The Administration plans to increase the Army and Marines...

IF You Want More W A R More S P E N D I N G More G R O W T H of  G O V E R N M E N T ............ MIKE HUCKABEE IS YOUR LEADER ! "Have you wondered why Mike Huckabee is suddenly getting so much favorable attention from the mainstream media (who themselves are controlled by this gaggle of global elite)? To find the answer as to why a professing pro-life, conservative Christian would suddenly become the darling of the media, look no further than the fact that just a couple of months...

The results are in from the Iowa caucuses. On the Democratic side, it’s Obama (38%), Edwards (30%) and H. Clinton (29%), with Richardson and Biden in low single digits, and Dodd under 1% and withdrawing from the race. This was predicted as a close 3-way, and it was. It seems that, at least in lily-white Iowa, America’s First Black President proved a liability for America’s First Woman President, and may well help elect America’s actual first Black President (not to mention the first President from my college– and my college class no less)! Oprah, it seems, is every bit as...

(CNSNews.com) - Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee -- who won the Republican caucuses in Iowa Thursday night, just as the polls indicated he would -- will be all over the air waves Friday morning, trying to translate his Iowa victory into momentum in New Hampshire. Polls show that Republicans Mitt Romney and John McCain are running neck-and-neck in the Granite State. "We've learned that people really are more important then the purse," Huckabee said Thursday night. He frequently mentions the fact that he was outspent 15 to 1 by Romney. Nevertheless, Huckabee beat Romney, 34-25 percent. Huckabee's populist message and...

Bye Bye, Light Bulb If only Microsoft could argue its competitors hurt the environment. Just like that--like flipping a switch--Congress and the president banned incandescent light bulbs last month. OK, they did not exactly ban them. But the energy bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush sets energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that traditional incandescent bulbs cannot meet. The new rules phase in starting in 2012, but don't be lulled by that five-year delay. Whether it's next week or next decade, you will one day walk into a hardware store looking for a 100-watt bulb--and there won't be...

Fred Thompson or Ron Paul? Like Perry and some others, I would rather see a big government Democrat elected than a big government Republican. At least that would bring back some opposition. Republicans in Congress have a much better record of reining in the Democrats' presidents than their own. And as I explain later, I think that one of these two is the only Republican candidate capable of winning the national election. Ron Paul answering the What programs? question by naming three cabinet level departments ... Wow. Good answer. If there was no rest-of-the-world, he would possibly have my vote....

State Republican lawmakers have a long history of resisting taxes, and this year is no different. Even before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger calls a planned special session to deal with the state's "fiscal emergency," GOP legislators say they have ruled out revenue increases as a potential remedy. They're not joking: All but one GOP member in the Capitol has signed a no-tax pledge. It's said "an elephant never forgets," and the Republicans whose party is symbolized by that pachyderm remember tax increases as hurting the economy – and their own political fortunes. "It's such a strong plank of the Republican platform...

Is Huckabee a Jimmy Carter Christian?Recently Huckabee reportedly was unaware that the Supreme Court struck down an anti-sodomy law as being unconstitutional. How can we depend upon him to carry the social conservative banner into the next election cycle if he fails to understand one of the most basic and recent court decisions. How can we trust him to pick judges who are opposed to anal intercourse, if for no other reason than it is the most fertile infectious form of HIV transmission. If you can vote for a man who is opposed to school choice and one who is...

You remember Ponytail Guy, who during a 1992 presidential townhall pathetically implored the candidates to "treat us as your children." I don't know what's become of Ponytail Guy, but his Big Mommy Government-loving spirit was celebrated on CNN this evening. At 5:40 PM ET on the Situation Room, anchor Suzanne Malveaux asked congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin what she was seeing out on the campaign trail in Iowa that the TV cameras might not be capturing. View video here.

Washington, D.C. -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement responding to remarks by President Bush this morning on the nation’s economy:“The President’s statement this morning fails to grasp that middle-class families are working harder but earning less, while facing record gas prices, failing mortgages, and rising home heating bills.  If President Bush thinks this is success, I would hate to see his definition of failure.“Even as middle-class families are struggling, the President’s budget plan gutted energy independence, cut home heating assistance for seniors, undermined cancer research, robbed promised funding from K-12 education, and slashed Pell grants and college financial...

For three reasons, that's wrong. An honest assessment of the budget picture – of the sort required of corporations by the Sarbanes-Oxley law – would put the 2007-08 deficit at $16.3 billion, not $14 billion. That's because Sacramento treats the $48 billion in guaranteed-but-unfunded health care benefits for state retirees as if it were something ethereal instead of a huge fiscal obligation that state Controller John Chiang says should be prefunded with $2.3 billion a year. Both the governor and Assembly Speaker Fabian NÚñez continue to push for a grand health insurance measure under which nearly all employers would be...

in·cred·i·ble –adjective 1. so extraordinary as to seem impossible: incredible speed. 2. not credible; hard to believe; unbelievable: The plot of the book is incredible. —Synonyms: farfetched, astonishing, preposterous. "It's an incredible plan," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles). The Speaker’s quote about the just-struck agreement on government healthcare with Governor Schwarzenegger unintentionally speaks volumes. Incredible, farfetched, preposterous, hard to believe – call it what you will, the plan will cost far more than advertised and will drive business out of state, reducing state tax revenue and throwing people out of work. Beginning with a low-balled $14 billion price...

How free are we really? By Selwyn Duke web posted December 17, 2007 We Americans take great pride in our freedom. We call ourselves "the land of the free, home of the brave," have Lady Liberty in New York Harbor and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. America is synonymous with freedom in the minds of most. Much of the rest of the world, however, is thought a land of darkness which doesn't benefit from our unencumbered bliss. Thus do we speak of the free and unfree worlds. In reality, it's not that simple. There is neither such thing as a...

Most of the leading Republicans running for president show some support for Bush’s ideology, but no other candidate so completely embodies it. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee dramatically increased state spending. During his two-term tenure, spending increased by more than 65 percent -- at three times the rate of inflation. The number of government workers increased by 20 percent, and the state’s debt services increased by nearly $1 billion. Huckabee financed his spending binge with higher taxes. Under his leadership, the average Arkansan’s tax burden increased 47 percent, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, including increases in the state’s gas, sales,...

A quick note about my various Huckabee postings. As many (most) readers know, I am supporting Fred Thompson in the Republican primary (and wrote an article explaining why in NRODT). This is not the reason why I have been posting so much that is critical of Huckabee, however. Rather, I find Huckabee's record and various positions to be particularly problematic, far more so than any of the other candidates. (Note I have not been posting items critical of the other candidates, even though I prefer Fred.) In my view, Huckabee is a big government populist liberal, not a conservative. In...

That's very true. As America demonstrates, faith thrives in a free market. In Europe, the established church, whether formal (the Church of England) or informal (as in Catholic Italy and Spain), killed religion as surely as state ownership killed the British car industry. When the Episcopal Church degenerates into wimpsville relativist milquetoast mush, Americans go elsewhere. When the Church of England undergoes similar institutional decline, Britons give up on religion entirely. Instead of a state church, Europe believes in the state as church – the all-powerful beneficent provider of cradle-to-grave welfare. "Freedom requires religion," said Mitt Romney, and, whether or...

AUSTIN — A coalition of strip clubs has filed a lawsuit seeking to block a state law that would add a $5 surcharge for every strip club visitor. The new fee, which was approved this year by the Texas Legislature, is set to take effect on Jan. 1. It's expected to raise about $40 million to be dispersed for sexual assault prevention programs and health care for the uninsured. The Texas Entertainment Association and Karpod, Inc., the operator of an Amarillo club, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Travis County against Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Comptroller Susan Combs. The...

They’re at it again. Apparently, Massachusetts legislators feel that the nanny state is just not overwhelming enough already. Or perhaps they believe that the term “nanny state” is meant to be taken literally. A Democratic legislator recently filed a bill in the state legislature banning spanking. No no, the bill isn’t designed to ban child abuse or truly injurious behavior – there are already plenty of laws on the books and social services to cover those situations. House Bill 3922 would presume guilty of child abuse and neglect any parent who spanks little Timmy on the behind for repeatedly putting...

Had only married women been allowed to vote in the 2006 elections, Republicans might still control the House of Representatives. Fifty percent of married women voting in those elections, the network exit poll revealed, opted for a Republican candidate for the House. Only 48 percent went for a Democratic candidate. On the other hand, had only unmarried women been allowed to vote, the House today might be almost entirely composed of Democrats. While 53 percent of the overall vote in U.S. House races in 2006 went to Democrats, 66 percent of the unmarried-woman vote went to Democrats. What does this...

Republican presidential candidates have pulled out their knives for Mr. Nice Guy. A surprising surge of support for Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, who had long seemed a rank outsider in the 2008 presidential race has turned him into a target six weeks before voting in Iowa. The Times of London reports that “running on a shoestring budget as an affable conservative with unrivalled religious qualifications (he is a former Baptist minister), Huckabee has been previously dismissed as an under-funded no-hoper. He is mostly known for a quirky sense of humor and his skills on bass guitar -...

BOSTON, Nov. 20 — As the Democratic presidential candidates debate whether Americans should be forced to obtain health insurance, the people of Massachusetts are living the dilemma in real time. A year after Massachusetts became the only state to require that individuals have health coverage, residents face deadlines to sign up or lose their personal tax exemption, worth $219 on next year’s state income tax returns. More than 200,000 previously uninsured residents have enrolled, but state officials estimate that at least that number, and perhaps twice as many, have not. Those managing the enrollment effort say it has exceeded expectations....

 For those who hold the Constitution of the United States in high regard and who are concerned about the fate of its principles in our contemporary practice of government, the modern state ought to receive significant attention. The reason for this is that the ideas that gave rise to what is today called "the administrative state" are fundamentally at odds with those that gave rise to our Constitution. In fact, the original Progressive-Era architects of the administrative state understood this quite clearly, as they made advocacy of this new approach to government an important part of their direct, open, comprehensive...

There is n-o m-o-n-e-y. California's state government is i-n d-e-b-t and the hole is getting deeper. We should change the name of this state to "Denial." Unless the politicians and voters are willing to raise taxes, forget all these grandiose new government programs Sacramento has been yakking about concerning healthcare and education. In fact, forget them anyway for now. Tax increases will be needed just to pay for what the governor, the Legislature and the voters already have saddled on the state. Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill confirmed Wednesday what previously had been leaked by the Schwarzenegger administration: The...

For those Americans who know anything at all about the history of the Great Depression and the New Deal, the story line seems simple, dramatic, inspiring and familiar: Capitalists and speculators went wild with greed in “The Roaring Twenties,� leading to a stock market crash and hard times. Banks closed, once prosperous workers sold apples on street-corners or became hobos in shanty-towns, while the Republican President Herbert Hoover did nothing for the destitute and suffering nation. Then FDR arrived on the scene, inspiring new hope with his golden words (“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself�) and...

What if there was a "just say no" movement on the part of conservative communities to REFUSE federal handouts? What if we just went back to the way it was before? What if we just say thanks but no thanks. Time was all towns lived within their means and just spent what they could afford. Why don't we go back to that?

(AP) OTTAWA, Ill. -- Barack Obama said Saturday that health care and other domestic needs will be neglected until the Iraq war ends, and that he had the judgment and ideas to lead the country. "When this war is over, we can finally get back to facing the challenges we face here at home, the challenges you're grappling with every day," the Democratic presidential candidate told about 600 people at a union conference. The first-term Illinois senator said the war now costs between $10 billion and $12 billion a month. He noted that President Bush had vetoed a $35 billion...

Meeting last week in Wyandotte County, officials from 22 states had hoped to move closer to their goal of collecting sales tax on all Internet purchases nationwide. At the end of the two-day meeting, they left empty-handed. Right now, many Internet vendors collect sales tax voluntarily at the urging of some states, but not all do. The patchwork of sales tax laws currently presents a burden on interstate commerce that courts have ruled unconstitutional. To solve the problem, several states — including Kansas — have joined the “Streamlined Sales Tax Project.” The member states are working to simplify sales tax...

Let's face it. Americans love things that are big. We love big houses, big cars, and Big Gulps. We supersize our meals, our TV sets and even our golf clubs (Big Bertha has revolutionized the game of many a duffer). Athletes take steroids to make themselves bigger, and people who are not satisfied with their natural endowments resort to surgery to bolster their appeal. After all, in America, size matters. Regrettably, however, our love affair with all things big appears to extend to government. Government spending relative to GDP has grown dramatically in the past century—from 5.5% to 28.9%. Federal...

Here we go again. HillaryCare is back, and its apparent that Sen. Clinton has learned little since the American people overwhelmingly rejected her last attempt to overhaul the U.S. health care system. Once again her plan, which would cost $110 billion per year in new taxes, calls for greater government control over American health care. If her plan were to pass this time, it would mean higher taxes, lost jobs, less patient choice, and poorer quality health care. Among the worst features of her proposal: An individual mandate. Sen. Clinton would require every American to purchase health insurance or face...