Free Republic

WASHINGTON - The Florida law firm that employs President Joe Biden's brother Frank ran a newspaper ad on Inauguration Day touting the brothers' relationship and shared values, a move that is causing an ethics headache for the administration less than two weeks after Biden took office. Biden has promised to lead a highly ethical administration, which he has pitched as a contrast to his predecessor, and has adopted unusually strict rules for those serving in his administration, although they do not necessarily apply to family members. The two-page "advertorial" ran on Jan. 20 in the South Florida-based Daily Business Review...

JACKSONVILLE, Florida – With just over a month to go until Florida Republicans vote to select their nominee for the governor’s race, Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is pulling ahead of Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, according to recent polling data. Past polling showed DeSantis trailing Putnam by a wide margin. One poll from June 21, conducted by Fox News, had DeSantis down by 15 points. This month’s polling, however, shows the trend is decidedly in DeSantis’ favor. A survey from Remington Research conducted July 2-5 has DeSantis up 17 points. Another survey conducted by pollster Tony Fabrizio has DeSantis up...

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday called NBC News’ report that said the Pentagon was in “damage-control” mode to reassure NATO allies after President Trump’s visit “fiction.” Mattis, during a press gaggle on the way to Oslo, Norway, brought up the report, which claimed that “hours” after Trump departed NATO, U.S. military leaders embarked on a “full-scale” damage-control operation across Europe. The report said U.S. military leaders were “directed by the Pentagon leadership” in response to Trump threatening to reassess U.S. commitments in the region. “That was fascinating. I love reading fiction, so it was stimulating to read it,” he...

It’s not often conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, pro-growth conservative groups and the Teamsters agree on something. In fact, it’s almost unheard of.But when it comes to the federal government’s sugar program – one of the most egregious corporate welfare handouts in a long list of wasteful programs – these strange bedfellows have found common ground.For years, the federal government has kept the price of sugar high by capping domestic production, imposing a de facto government price floor, and mandating that USDA buy excess sugar to sell to ethanol producers at a loss. The U.S. government also places exorbitant...

The collapse of communism brought an end to many of the world’s command-and-control economic systems and central planning by government bureaucrats. But a notable exception is the United States government’s sugar program. A complicated system of marketing allotments, price supports, purchase guarantees, quotas and tariffs that only a Soviet apparatchik could love, the U.S. sugar program has actually lasted longer than the Soviet Union itself. It imposes a hidden tax of billions of dollars annually on consumers and businesses and has destroyed thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs. It substitutes the federal government for the private sector in basic decisions about...

Leading scientists accused the Bush administration last night of putting the interests of powerful American sugar barons ahead of the global fight against obesity. Professor Kaare Norum, leader of the World Health Organisation's fight to prevent millions developing diet-related diseases, has sparked an international war of words with a highly critical letter to US Health Secretary Tommy Thompson. In it he tells of his grave concern over American opposition to the WHO's blueprint to combat obesity. He accuses the US of making the health of millions of young Americans 'a hostage to fortune' because it has failed to take action...