Free Republic

The Obama administration hopes to save the bees by feeding them better. A new federal plan aims to reverse America’s declining honeybee and monarch butterfly populations by making millions of acres of federal land more bee-friendly, spending millions of dollars more on research and considering the use of fewer pesticides. While putting different type of landscapes along highways, federal housing projects and elsewhere may not sound like much in terms of action, several bee scientists told The Associated Press that this a huge move. They say it may help pollinators that are starving because so much of the American landscape...

MADISON (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tells a German audience that young people around the world will be stronger if a new trade agreement between the United States and the European Union can be reached.Walker made his comments Tuesday at the Hannover Messe trade show.A recording of his comments provided to The Associated Press shows the likely Republican presidential candidate voiced his support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP. Negotiations between the U.S. and EU began on it in 2013 but many Europeans remain skeptical over concerns about environmental protections, labor security and other issues.Walker referenced...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia reaffirmed his commitment to defending the Constitution while speaking to the Federalist Society in his home state of New Jersey on Friday. Scalia, the preeminent conservative firebrand of the court, told the audience it is the structure of the government under the Constitution and not the liberties guaranteed under the Bill of Rights that makes us free. As reported by The Daily Signal: “Every tin horn dictator in the world today, every president for life, has a Bill of Rights,” said Scalia, author of the 2012 book Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts. “That’s...

Reflections on the May 12, 2015 Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia... First Day at School You’re a gym teacher at a new school, in charge of 30 kids in a gym, on your first day at work. You can’t keep your eye on all of them at once. While you were helping a couple of kids improve their free throws at one end, you hear a shout at the other end of the gym; one kid knocked another down. Scenario 1: You don’t know either kid at all, so you objectively ask the kids to all explain what happened. You...

With the nation’s economy at its healthiest since the Great Recession, a surprising trend is emerging among the states—large budget gaps. An Associated Press analysis of statehouse finances around the country shows that at least 22 states project shortfalls for the coming fiscal year. The deficits recall recession-era anxiety about plunging tax revenue and deep cuts to education, social services and other government-funded programs. The sheer number of states facing budget gaps prompted Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service to call the trend a sort of “early warning.” …

The former Arkansas governor understands something important about GOP voters: They aren’t opposed to welfare spending as long as it’s for them.For his opening pitch to Republican voters, Mike Huckabee channeled a little of Elizabeth Warren’s fiery populism. Washington, he said in his video announcement, “has done enough lying and stealing. I’ll never rob seniors of what our government has promised them and even forced them to pay for.” He hit this note again in his first campaign speech, with a few shots at his GOP competitors for good measure. “There are some who propose that to save the safety...

In case you missed it yesterday, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee announced another run for the White House. In an already crowded GOP field, there are many questions surrounding whether Huckabee can successfully make it through the primary. Putting the horse race aside, pundits seem to be forgetting a very important and devastating decision Huckabee made during his time as governor. In 2000, despite objections from prosecutors, Huckabee granted clemency to a man named Maurice Clemmons. Background from the Arkansas Leader: Several prosecutors around the state are upset with Gov. Huckabee for grant- ing clemency to violent criminals, but he...

You can call it a bureaucratic blunder … or a Washington blooper. But any way you slice it a move by the federal government to make the city remove Times Square’s iconic billboards falls in the category of “whose bright idea is this?” It is known as the “Crossroads of the World,” the “Center of the Universe” and “the Great White Way,” but Times Square could become like the “Black Hole of Calcutta” if the federal government has its way, CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported Tuesday. The feds say many of Times Square’s huge and neon-lit billboards must come down or...

Mike Huckabee had a pretty good record as governor. It’s too bad he can’t run on it. Better known in recent years for saying occasionally outrageous things as a commentator, Huckabee governed Arkansas for more than a decade as a pragmatist, devoting his attention to basics such as roads, schools and health care. On those issues, though, Huckabee generally took positions too liberal to suit a Republican presidential prospect in 2016—posing a conundrum for him as he plunges this week into the 2016 presidential race. “Mike Huckabee was the consummate conservative populist,” says Jay Barth, a political scientist at Arkansas’s...

In previous essays in this series, I have tried to emphasize that genuine constitutional republican government rests upon a foundation of the rule of law, which restrains government to fulfilling only certain, constitutionally-defined roles. Within legitimate governments, these roles are, in turn, defined by the principles of natural law and should serve to reinforce, rather than to undercut or overrule, the natural rights of the citizens. Our American Constitution was designed by our Founders to operate within this system of limits upon the power of government, as were the governments of the several States through the constitutional stipulations that each...

In oral arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the government defend its kleptocratic behavior while administering an indefensible law. The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 is among the measures by which New Dealers tried and failed to regulate and mandate America back to prosperity. Seventy-eight years later, it is the government’s reason for stealing Marvin and Laura Horne’s raisins. New Dealers had bushels of theories, including this: In an economic depression, prices fall, so a recovery will occur when government compels prices to stabilize above where a free market would put them. So Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “brains trust”...

Republican Sen. Rand Paul split with senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to vote for a healthcare bill Tuesday night that will add about half a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next several decades.Paul sided with the overwhelming majority of senators and representatives who voted for the bill, in a decision almost certain to come up in the primary race, where he is currently joined by Cruz and Rubio.The “doc-fix” bill solves a recurring problem in the way Medicare payments are made to doctors, extends a children’s health insurance program, and requires higher-income seniors to pay higher...

The federal government taxed away more money, spent more money and ran a bigger deficit in the first half of fiscal 2015 than it did in the first half of fiscal 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office. “The federal government ran a budget deficit of $430 billion for the first half of fiscal year 2015, CBO estimates—$17 billion more than the shortfall recorded in the same span last year,” the CBO said in its Monthly Budget Review for March 2015, which was published April 8. “Both revenues and outlays were about 7 percent higher than the amounts recorded in...

Experts in health care and information technology agree on the future’s biggest opportunity: the creation of a new computational model that will link together all of the massive computers that now hold medical information. IBM is today staking its claim to be a major player in creating that cloud, and to use its Watson artificial intelligence to make sense of the flood of medical data that will result. The new effort uses new, innovative systems to keep data secure, IBM executives say, even while allowing software to use them remotely. Big Blue is certainly putting some muscle into medicine. Some...

A record number of American voters think they pay too much in taxes. In addition, they think government is more often the source of America’s troubles—not the means of fixing them. The latest Fox News poll shows by a 67-18 percent margin, voters agree that the assessment by Ronald Reagan of the nation’s woes in 1981 applies today as well: That government is not the solution to our problems—government is the problem. The portion seeing government “as the problem” is up 14 points from 53 percent in 2008. Even 51 percent of Democrats describe the government as the problem. Larger...

Continuing my meditation on Brad DeLong’s meditation on the fiscal future. Brad doesn’t just argue that governments should be bigger in the future; he also argues that governments have historically not had enough debt, and should have more. Why? Because, he says, r-g—the difference between the real rate of interest on government debt and the rate of economic growth—has been consistently negative. Why is this significant? Well, we normally imagine that if a government engages in deficit spending now, it will have to engage in compensating austerity of some form later—even if it doesn’t plan to pay off the debt,...

PALMETTO -- Gripping a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer in her gloved hands, school food bus driver Debra Valdez called to four children shyly making their way toward the brightly colored school bus with mom pushing the youngest one forward. "Y'all ready to eat?" Valdez asked with a smile. The four children were the first of more than 70 students who ate a free lunch Tuesday courtesy of the Manatee County School District Food and Nutrition Services Department. The district retrofitted a school bus last summer to feed students and brought the program back for spring break this week. The...

There’s nothing that excites someone to vote like being forced to do it. But federal force is one of President Obama’s favorite things, so his recent announcement that mandatory voting might be a good idea is hardly a surprise. Normally, Americans have an aversion to being told what to do. Imagine if a president had proposed mandatory prayer for all Americans. Most previous presidents thought prayer was a good idea, so why not prayer for everybody — by mandate? Mandatory voting is just as unappealing. After all, part of the right to vote we hear so much about also includes...

President Barack Obama says he’s going to push the limits on presidential power as far as he can go during the last two years of his tenure. “Where [elected Republicans in Congress] are not willing to work with us, we will do it administratively or we will convene the private sector,” he said in a friendly interview with The Huffington Post. “By hook or by crook,” he added. Obama said his big-government push would “make sure that when I leave this office, that the country is more prosperous, more people have opportunity, kids have a better education, we’re more competitive,...

New federal grants will help 10 states test programs to help food stamp recipients find jobs, from using career coaches to quicker training courses to mental health assistance. The grants, announced Friday in Georgia by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, come as the Republican Congress is exploring ways to cut the program, which cost $74 billion last year—twice its cost in 2008.Some in the GOP have proposed stricter work requirements as a way to do that. But the Obama administration sees better worker training as an alternative to cuts or stricter work requirements. Vilsack said the grants will help USDA identify...