Free Republic

Rick Santorum is touting his promise to eliminate corporate taxes on manufacturers...[that's] coming under scrutiny from conservatives who are decrying it as thoroughly unconservative. ...[Santorum] added: “We need to have a manufacturing base in this economy. Why? Because of our national security.” ...advocates for other sectors of the economy quietly gripe that they’d be effectively underwriting manufacturing...by paying a higher tax rate... “Giving a preferential rate is picking winners and losers through the tax code,” said Curtis Dubay, a tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation... “This is not free-market economics, this is trying to tilt the market toward manufacturing,...

The recent Obama mandate for universal birth control gave the Republicans an opportunity to fight for individual liberty -- and they missed it by a mile. Instead of attacking government-imposed health care as a violation of liberty, they only selected a minute fraction of the leviathan and subjected it to very narrow criteria. This was an opportunity to aim for the heart of ObamaCare, but critics asked for only a minor adjustment -- and that's all they got. Government-mandated health care violates individual rights. The objection of Catholics to the funding of contraceptives is just one example of forcing people...

....Asked about the legalization of online gambling, Santorum responds: "I’m someone who takes the opinion that gaming is not something that is beneficial, particularly having that access on the Internet. Just as we’ve seen from a lot of other things that are vices on the Internet, they end to grow exponentially as a result of that. It’s one thing to come to Las Vegas and do gaming and participate in the shows and that kind of thing as entertainment, it’s another thing to sit in your home and have access to that it. I think it would be dangerous to...

Mitt Romney, whose campaign is preparing a multi-million dollar wave of negative advertising to persuade voters that Rick Santorum should not be president, says he is open to the possibility of choosing Santorum to be his running mate should Romney win the Republican nomination. Romney appeared on Fox News Wednesday morning and was asked, "You and Rick Santorum, we haven't seen you go head-to-head yet…In the big picture, could you see a scenario where you two team up?" "Oh, I think it's always possible to have people come together in our party, whether it's Rick and I, or others in...

Talk about government run amok, get a load of this. A preschooler in North Carolina was told by a state official that the lunch that was packed by her mother was unacceptable, because it did not meet USDA guidelines. The official then made the preschooler purchase a lunch provided by the school, and the girl later went home with her uneaten sack lunch AND a bill for $1.25. Talk about Big Brother watching you! As reported in the Carolina Journal Online, the girl's mother packed her a " turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice." However, this...

...Jonah Goldberg explained that Mike Huckabee's brand of conservatism was inconsistent with traditional conservatism, in that the former Arkansas Governor believes that government exists, not to protect individual liberty, but to make people live moral lives in accordance with his personal beliefs.... While Rick Santorum doesn't have the record of supporting tax hikes that Tax Hike Mike had or some of the other points listed above--though some of the do apply, he certainly has a record of backing certain social policies based upon the notion that government exists to ensure a certain behavior from its citizens.... On the fiscal and...

Shyness, bereavement and eccentric behavior could be classed as a mental illness under new guidelines, leaving millions of people at risk of being diagnosed as having a psychiatric disorder, experts fear. Under changes planned to the diagnosis handbook used by doctors in the US, common behavioral traits are likely to be listed as a mental illness, it was reported. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders could also include internet addiction and gambling as a medical problem. … "We need to be very careful before further broadening the boundaries of illness and disorder," Simon...

The tax-exempt sector is in trouble when even stern critics of big government demand that Congress and the IRS rein in nonprofits. The latest example comes from the hard-right American Thinker website. Unfortunately, the essay’s author hasn’t thought through her argument, which adopts the flawed thinking of her political opponents. ...Worst of all, she repeatedly attacks her targets by stressing how much money they have and how little control and taxation government exercises upon it.

Mitt Romney Former Governor of Massachusetts 32 Rick Santorum Former Senator from Pennsylvania 30 Newt Gingrich Former Speaker of the House 16 Ron Paul U.S. Representative from Texas 8

Taking Aim at Santorum: The Romney Campaign Misfires. FEB 20, 2012, VOL. 17, NO. 22 • BY JONATHAN V. LAST On Saturday, February 4, a national poll from Rasmussen Reports showed Rick Santorum as the only Republican to lead President Obama in a head-to-head matchup. The next morning, a PPP poll showed Santorum suddenly leading Mitt Romney in Minnesota. So the Romney campaign responded with what are becoming its trademark tactics. Having completely ignored Santorum since New Hampshire, on Sunday afternoon the Romney team sent out a press release calling him “a proud defender of earmarks and pork-barrel spending.” The...

FReep This Poll! Contraception Controversy Should health insurance companies be required to give women free contraceptives? - Yes - No Note: Go to the link provided here to the Fox 5 San Diego homepage. Scroll down a bit and look for the poll on the right side of the homepage (a bit above Chrissy's Outfit of the Day) Vote your choice.

  Testing Our Country to Destruction David C. Stolinsky Feb. 9, 2012 Years ago, car magazines tested tires. I mean they tested them. In addition to the usual on-the-car tests of handling and braking, they also tested high-speed endurance. They mounted the tire on a laboratory wheel; adjusted the pressure, temperature, and load; and then slowly increased the speed as the tire spun on a roller. Eventually the tread would separate or spin off chunks of rubber, or the sidewall would burst. The endpoint was the destruction of the tire. Thus if a tire flew apart at 120 miles...

Ezra Klein has unwittingly offered a telling insight into the liberal mind. On Morning Joe today, the liberal Washington Post blogger actually argued that quintessential big government programs like massive involvement in housing finance and the imposition of a carbon tax aren't "progressive" but simply "good policy." Joe Scarborough pushed back saying Klein's notion of "good policy" was only so for those who share his liberal mindset. View the video here.

The EU commission is revising its impact assessment of a proposed financial transactions tax (FTT), which included a worst-case scenario leading to job losses. The responsible commissioner now says original projections were "misused" and the overall impact will be positive. "The commission services are carrying out a fine-tuned economic analysis," a spokeswoman for commissioner Algirdas Semeta, in charge of taxation, told this website on Friday (3 February). The revised impact assessment is expected to focus on the positive impact of a 0.1 percent tax on primary markets and 0.01 percent on the much larger and more speculative market for derivatives....

< snip > ..... If Republicans have an opening this year, it is with the white working class, a crowd the Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging for decades. Barack Obama did better than John Kerry or Al Gore with these voters, though even he earned just 43% of their vote. ..... < snip > ..... The white working class will make up as much as 55% of the vote in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. ..... < snip > ..... And so at the heart of the Santorum agenda are policies designed to give special handouts to the working class,...

Bridging the Gap Decision unchanged on HHS exemptionsHed: Checking the Air Outside By Bishop David A. Zubik I have a friend who smokes. Like most smokers I know, he’s not very proud of it. Whenever he has to have a cigarette, he excuses himself by saying that he is going to be “checking the air outside” for a few minutes. I hope and pray that the day will come soon when he manages to quit. But in the meantime, I live with his euphemism about “checking the air outside.” In last week’s “Bridging the Gap” column (“To Hell with You”...

New Playgrounds Are Safe—and That's Why Nobody Uses Them The problem with safety guidelines is that they make most playgrounds so uninteresting as to contribute to reduced physical activity. Playgrounds don't look like they used to. Steep metal slides and wooden towers have given way to slow, plastic slides and carefully penned-in climbing contraptions. And forget about seesaws -- they're a thing of the past. When kids are bored by unimaginative (read: safe) playground equipment, they're less active as a result, and with childhood obesity at epidemic proportions, that's a danger, too. An interesting new investigation looks into this phenomenon....

EXCERPT ‘‘We are putting colleges on notice,’’ Obama said. ‘‘You can’t assume that you'll just jack up tuition every single year. If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down.’’

President Obama: I Want Second Term 'Badly' By DEVIN DWYER (@devindwyer) LAS VEGAS, Nev., Jan. 26, 2012 President Barack Obama today signaled an aggressive tact for his early re-election campaign, critiquing his Republican opponents by name and insisting he's ready to "fight with every fiber of my being" for a second term. "How much do you want it?" ABC News' Diane Sawyer asked Obama during an exclusive interview in Las Vegas. "Badly," the president said, "because I think the country needs it." "Whoever wins the Republican primary is going to be a standard bearer for a vision of the country...

First Lady Michelle Obama received a warm welcome from the students and teachers at an elementary school Wednesday where she promoted new tougher nutrition standards for school meals. The students clapped and cheered as Mrs. Obama entered the cafeteria at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Va. The first lady, who was was joined by celebrity chef Rachael Ray and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, picked up food from the lunch line before sitting with the kids and teachers. Obama and Vilsack unveiled the updated nutrition standards for school meals required by the 2010 school nutrition bill.

Government regulators, environmental groups and the news media tell us that the air we breathe is polluted, the water we drink is tainted, our orange juice contains a fungicide, and evil corporations are hoping to make a profit at Mother Earth’s expense. They also remind us that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal agencies are protecting us by fighting the greedy capitalists who seek our destruction. Don’t believe it. The United States is among the cleanest nations on the planet.

Last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision on religious liberty involves much more than just the freedom of churches to choose their ministers. It goes to the heart of the exceptional kind of country America is designed to be. It’s also yet another warning to persons in the charitable sector that overweening government is not their friend. The best evidence for that charge? The fact that all nine members of the court flatly rejected the government’s claims to power over religious groups in civil society. Even Obama appointees Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor signed on to Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion, which...

I mean, really. How dare you peasants tell the government what to do? How dare you tell them to stay out of your lives? Santorum 2012! (VIDEO AT LINK) "One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish right. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the...

One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish right. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world. There is no such society that I’m aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.” - Rick Santorum See Video Here

Pffffft!! FUMR!! Big government liberal/progressive!!

At a campaign stop this weekend, in-the-spotlight GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he supports increased Internet regulation. According to Santorum, our rights aren’t “absolute� and stop at whatever point their exercise begins to infringe on the rights of others. Piracy represents an abuse of intellectual property rights — and that abuse should have consequences, Santorum says.So far, so good. Everybody agrees that piracy is a problem.But Santorum seems too ready to look to regulation for the solution to the piracy problem, suggesting that government interference might be an effective way to thwart piraters. That, to me, seems short-sighted, given...

Mitt Romney: 36 Newt Gingrich: 25 Rick Santorum: 17 Ron Paul: 7 Other: 5 Undecided 10 Other: 5

Monterey biologist accused of feeding whale SAN FRANCISCO ---- A marine biologist who runs popular whale-watching tours on California's Monterey Bay has been indicted for violating federal laws that protect marine mammals. Nancy Black, a marine scientist whose work has been featured on PBS, National Geographic and Animal Planet, was charged Wednesday with four violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Her attorneys countered the charges by arguing that her interactions with the creatures were legal scientific research. She was accused of feeding killer whales in 2005 during a research trip, and misleading investigators by editing video footage of her...

Monterey biologist accused of feeding whale SAN FRANCISCO ---- A marine biologist who runs popular whale-watching tours on California's Monterey Bay has been indicted for violating federal laws that protect marine mammals. Nancy Black, a marine scientist whose work has been featured on PBS, National Geographic and Animal Planet, was charged Wednesday with four violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Her attorneys countered the charges by arguing that her interactions with the creatures were legal scientific research. She was accused of feeding killer whales in 2005 during a research trip, and misleading investigators by editing video footage of her...

Santorum's so-called surge is all but gone. Huntsman is catching up.

Students in California public schools may not be leading the nation in their knowledge of the “three R’s,” but they are well on their way to being experts in deviant lifestyles. Under a law signed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), all public schools in the state are now required to promote homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, and same-sex “marriage” at every grade level, including kindergarten — and to do so without parental consent or even notification. Known as the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act, the law adds “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender [LGBT] Americans” to the list...

Ready, aim fire. That’s apparently Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s idea of relaxation before returning to the campaign trail this weekend. Ahead of Saturday night’s ABC News-Yahoo-WMUR debate in New Hampshire Perry took a few moments to himself at an Austin-area shooting range. “Just relaxing a bit @ Red’s Range before we leave for New Hampshire!” @governorperry tweeted Friday along with a photo of himself wearing a green sweatshirt and a baseball cap with a firearm in hand. On the campaign trail, Perry, a staunch defender of second amendment rights, has not been shy about talking about his “long love affair”...

St. Louis Today reported: When is the line crossed between better health and surveillance? In early 2012, wristwatch-like devices called Polar active monitors will be used by older students in PE classes at all 18 Parkway elementary schools. District officials say the devices should help improve the students’ fitness and academic achievement. Later this school year, the district plans to collect data about activity levels and even sleep patterns for a week at a time. It will have the students wear the devices round the clock. Some parents and legal experts are raising privacy concerns about at least that aspect...

President Barack Obama says he won't take "no" as an answer from Republicans, so he's going around them to appoint the head of a new consumer protection agency. Obama says Republicans would just keep holding Richard Cordray's nomination hostage—and the president says that's inexcusable and wrong. He says Cordray must be in place in order for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to start helping consumers deal with unscrupulous mortgage companies, dishonest payday lenders, and others. Obama announced the appointment of Cordray during a stop Wednesday in Ohio, where Cordray once served as attorney general. Republicans are outraged but Obama says...

New Law Forces Older Kids Into Child Seats SAN DIEGO - A new California law that went into effect Sunday increased the age of child required to use a car seat. The new state law indicates any child under eight years old must be in a car seat, and if the child is over eight years old and too small for an adult side seat, they also must be in that seat. It's a change from the previous law for children under six and for those weighing less than 60 pounds. The state insists keeping older kids in booster seats...

From laws banning happy hour in Utah and shark fin sales in Oregon to tougher voter identification requirements in at least four states, a wide range of new legislation is set to ring in the new year. According to The National Conference of State Legislatures, which earlier this week issued its annual list of new laws, the legislation will cover education, drug and alcohol policy, criminal justice and human trafficking, among other areas. In some cases, the laws could add to the cost of doing business. Other new rules will regulate what Americans eat and drink. California, for example, will...

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman has called for states to mandate a total ban on cellphone usage while driving. She has also encouraged electronics manufacturers -- via recommendations to the CTIA-The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association -- to develop features that "disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach of the driver when a vehicle is in motion." That means she wants to be able to turn off your cellphone while you're driving. With very little evidence, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration claims that there were some 3,092 roadway fatalities last year that involved...

A few years after Mitt Romney graduated from Harvard Business School, he returned to share a simple, timeworn lesson in an unusual way. Invited to give a presentation on balancing work and family, he began by telling students that they were like multinational corporations, recalled Clayton M. Christensen, who organized the event. “You have the same question as General Electric,” said Mr. Romney, then a young father and a management consultant. “Your resources are your time and talent. How are you going to deploy them?” He drew a chart called a growth-share matrix with little circles to represent various pursuits:...

Last Thursday — which happened to be the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights — the Senate passed a defense bill that demonstrates just how cavalier Congress can be with our fundamental liberties. Given the opportunity to clarify existing law and confirm that American citizens are not subject to indefinite military detention at the order of the president — Congress punted. After a debate in which key members seriously contemplated empowering the president to "Gitmo-ize" Americans suspected of terrorist activity, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 leaves the question open. Maybe he can, maybe he...

AAs Congress nears approval on a series of 2011 appropriations bills (only three months late, a near-record for recent history), Rep. Sander Levin (D., Mich.) told Fox News that he was encouraged by progress on the bills because “we’re dealing with the lives of people. Those appropriation bills relate to the daily lives of people in middle class of America, and that’s really what this is all about.” Yet, if that is true, and so many Americans have become dependent on the decisions of federal appropriators in Washington, there seems to be something distinctly wrong. During the 2011 debate over...

Freshman Tea Party Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) is incensed that Republicans caved in the payroll-tax debate, and is putting the blame squarely on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “I don’t think there’s a revolt with respect to Speaker Boehner,” Gowdy said Thursday night on Fox’s "Your World With Neil Cavuto." "I think the license tag of the truck that just ran over us has Kentucky license tags. For the life of me, I cannot understand when the Senate is going to find something they care enough about to stand on policy and principle.”Last week, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a...

House speaker John Boehner is set to sign an offer from Obama to accelerate negotiations. Republicans in the House of Representatives have capitulated in the showdown over the payroll tax, handing Barack Obama an important victory going into election year. Under pressure from other senior Republicans for blocking a bill that would extend tax cuts to millions of Americans, the House speaker, John Boehner, is backing away from his insistence that any deal must cover a full year. A deal agreed by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate on Saturday covers two months, to allow further negotiations in January. It...

It was too late for 21-year-old Christina Tarsell and 17-year-old Jessica Ericzon. Both healthy, athletic young women suddenly dropped dead shortly after receiving their final injection of Gardasil, a vaccine developed by Merck to protect girls and young women from cervical cancer caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV). But when Christina’s and Jessica’s shocked families tried to get the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate a vaccine it had inexplicably fast-tracked through the approval process even though only one percent of all cancer deaths are due to cervical cancer, they hit a brick wall. The Tarsells and Ericzons...

The road to gastric hell is paved with first lady Michelle Obama’s Nanny State intentions. Don’t take my word for it. School kids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the east wing chef-in-chief’s healthy lunch diktats. Get your Pepto Bismol ready. The taste of government waste is indigestion-inducing. According to a weekend report by the Los Angeles Times, the city’s “trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop.” In response to the public hectoring and financial inducement of Mrs. Obama’s federally subsidized anti-obesity campaign, the district dropped chicken nuggets, corn dogs and flavored milk from the...

The population of the District of Columbia is growing faster than that of any state in the country, according to a new U.S. Census report that shows an acceleration of a trend in which largely skilled and educated workers have flocked to the city’s resilient local economy and its well-paying jobs connected to the federal government. The city added 16,000 residents between April 2010 and July of this year, more than half as many as it added in the entire previous decade, the report said. In all, the District has added more than 45,000 residents since 2000, the nadir of...

The road to gastric hell is paved with first lady Michelle Obama's Nanny State intentions. Don't take my word for it. School kids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the east wing chef-in-chief's healthy lunch diktats. Get your Pepto Bismol ready. The taste of government waste is indigestion-inducing. According to a weekend report by the Los Angeles Times, the city's "trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop." In response to the public hectoring and financial inducement of Mrs. Obama's federally subsidized anti-obesity campaign, the district dropped chicken nuggets, corn dogs and flavored milk from the...

Mitt Romney has a plan. A plan to solve the “immigration problem.” And it will come as no surprise to those following the GOP presidential debates that the answer of Romney — the former Governor of Massachusetts and father of the “individual mandate” — is more government. At last week’s debate, Romney announced his idea for dealing with the more than 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States in defiance of applicable federal and state laws. On stage in Sioux City, Romney laid out for Republicans his plan for a national identification card system to distinguish between...

The Alaska Senate is about to enter a bruising debate over whether to slash how much Alaska taxes oil companies, with Senate President Gary Stevens calling the governor's tax cut plan a giveaway that could cost the state billions with little in return. "We have been asking the administration (of Gov. Sean Parnell) for months to give us some proof this will do Alaska some good," Stevens said last week. It's a debate likely to dominate the 90-day session of the Alaska Legislature that begins in Juneau on Jan. 17. The state House has already passed the governor's bill so...

Per a recent Chamber of Commerce survey, 89 percent of respondents believe Washington charts the wrong economic course; blaming stagnation largely on taxes and regulatory burdens. America has seemingly forgotten the wellsprings for her vast wealth. Historically, Americans generally enjoyed a stable dollar, relatively low taxes, sacrosanct contracts and respect for property. Free from government interference and confident our rights would be upheld, the pursuit of profit propelled Americans to unprecedented living standards. Affluence comes by aligning talent to capital without having to appease those in authority. In pursuing self-interest, we garner profit through efficiently satisfying customers in manners which...

Democrats lead increase in concerns about big governmentWASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' concerns about the threat of big government continue to dwarf those about big business and big labor, and by an even larger margin now than in March 2009. The 64% of Americans who say big government will be the biggest threat to the country is just one percentage point shy of the record high, while the 26% who say big business is down from the 32% recorded during the recession. Relatively few name big labor as the greatest threat. Historically, Americans have always been more concerned about big government...