Free Republic

Most lawyers trying a case abide by the maxim: Don’t piss off the judge. President Obama disregarded that when he lectured the Supreme Court not to overturn the health care law. Indirectly the President was challenging the entire judiciary and it struck a raw nerve with Judge Jerry Smith, of the 5th Circuit Appeals Court. Judge Smith had, less than two years earlier rejected, in a 2 to 1 decision, the Interior Department request to stay a lower court order lifting the offshore drilling moratorium (Hornbeck Offshore Services LLC v. Salazar) – thus requiring the moratorium lifted. In one of...

An Ohio-based solar company received millions of dollars in state and federal subsidies despite government officials’ knowledge that the company was in financial trouble, and now a local newspaper reports little activity at the manufacturer’s Perrysburg plant. According to a report last month in The Toledo Blade, Willard & Kelsey Solar Group was lent $10 million by two state agencies even though the company showed little more than a half million dollars in revenue for 2009 – that being a grant from the Buckeye State – and a loss of $4.2 million. State officials told the newspaper that loan...

The Financial Survival Network presents another precious metals panic report: Ty Andros, of Traderview and Tedbits, joins us for a precious metals crash report. Gold got slammed-down again, so Ty and I discuss the velocity of money, and the rapid rate at which it continues to fall. The central banks are continuing to print money, but they are actively buying in the futures exchanges. The Chinese have made an art of buying pullbacks, and the US is desperate to mask the monetization of debt. The Federal Reserve has been buying 60%to 90% of all the 10 and 30 year variety...

As reported in a Wall Street Journal column: He spoke slowly, with long pauses, giving the sense that he was speaking with great thought and precision: "Well, first of all, let me be very specific. Um [pause], we have not seen a court overturn [pause] a [pause] law that was passed [pause] by Congress on [pause] a [pause] economic issue, like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce. A law like that has not been overturned [pause] at least since Lochner, right? So we're going back to the '30s, pre-New Deal."Lochner v. New York is one...

My Professor, My Judge, and the Doctrine of Judicial Review By Thom Lambert Imagine if you picked up your morning paper to read that one of your astronomy professors had publicly questioned whether the earth, in fact, revolves around the sun. Or suppose that one of your economics professors was quoted as saying that consumers would purchase more gasoline if the price would simply rise. Or maybe your high school math teacher was publicly insisting that 2 + 2 = 5. You’d be a little embarrassed, right? You’d worry that your colleagues and friends might begin to question your astronomical,...

The defenders of Obamacare, it is pretty obvious, don’t intend to stop with dictating that you buy insurance, and what kind of insurance, and how much you must pay. They want a nationalized health care plan like Great Britain’s. Obamacare is a step, albeit a big step, in that direction. So, what would it be like to put the government in charge of your health care? Isn’t that British system wonderful? Not exactly. But George Orwell would recognize it. “An elderly woman was ordered to find a new GP because the ‘carbon footprint’ of her two-mile round trips to the...

The Illinois Supreme Court has just now released its opinion in Wilson v. County of Cook and it contains ‘slightly’ good news for Second Amendment advocates.

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign website has removed several videos that pitched alarmist messages to African-American voters, following reporting by The Daily Caller and the Fox News Channel. In one video that the campaign yanked from the “African-Americans for Obama” section of its website Tuesday, actress Tatyana Ali seemed to predict that a second Obama term would bring a host of benefits to African-Americans once the president no longer had to concern himself with campaigning.

Republican White House candidate Mitt Romney said Friday that global warming is real and that human activity is among the causes. Reuters reports from New Hampshire: Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change. "I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, N.H. "It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant...

North Carolina has a republican controlled legislature, the first since the War Between the States. And it is driving the democrats wild. NC’s current governor, a democrat, is not seeking reelection after having observed the “handwriting on the wall,” and it now seems certain the GOP will take the Governor’s office, as well, in November. One of the items driving the NC dems mad is the proposed “Marriage Amendment” to the NC state constitution. Basically, it says marriage between one man and one woman is the ONLY kind of marriage to be recognized in North Carolina. Understand that same-sex marriage...

A week ago, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that implementation of the Affordable Care Act stood to “…change the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.” (1) But though Kennedy was probably unaware of it at the time, that “change” is precisely what the authors of ObamaCare have hoped to impose on the American public for decades. For healthcare itself was never the real purpose of the massive, complex and overreaching law, as the following information should make clear. Charged with defending the Constitutionality of the Act before the Court, Solicitor General Donald...

Both Tea Party favorite Allen West and moderate Republican Tom Rooney are noticeable by their inaction on the findings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s definitive six month long investigation into possible “fraud and forgery” of key Obama documents. When asked if they were worried about a man having control of America’s nuclear arsenal when his social security number was not passing an E verify check, press talkers of both sitting U.S. House of Representative members either said nothing or said this isn’t as important as putting Americans back to work or doing something about high gas prices. Besides, as Allen West’s...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The executive director of the Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center called for the arrest of the person responsible for graffiti that might have been racially-charged after it was found on a campus building Thursday morning. The words "Long Live Zimmerman" were found spray-painted on the walls of The Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center, located at 153 W. 12th Ave., on the Ohio State campus, at about 8 a.m., 10TV's Kevin Landers reported. Some said that the graffiti indicated support for George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager...

For baseball’s Opening Day we offer fans an opportunity to tell us which president most resembled Cy Young, and which least looked like a ballplayer. Complete with slide show. =-=-= BEST presidential pitching form goes to...

The re-election campaign of President Barack Obama announced today that its Florida organization’s volunteer phone banks will be targeting Hispanic voters in Orlando with bilingual calls this evening. Similar efforts by Obama for America volunteers will be underway this evening in other Florida cities.

A few weeks ago, Obama senior adviser and seasoned Chicago operative David Axelrod joked on MSNBC about election corruption. Asked whether "vote early and often" scams had come to an end in his shady hometown, Axelrod snarked: "Well, certainly on the air." Yuk, yuk, yuk. Behind the scenes, Democrats have been busy faking petition signatures, forging ballots and enlisting medical professionals to authorize fraudulent doctors' notes for liberal teachers-union operatives protesting Republican opponents. It's no laughing matter. This week, four Democratic officials in Indiana were hit with felony charges related to petition fraud in the state's 2008 primary. The prosecutions...

The face of medical education is changing and patients may not like it one bit. “There is a movement towards principles and concepts rather than specific courses,” Bailus Walker, Jr. of the Howard University School of Medicine said on April 4, 2012 at a conference in Crystal City, VA. “Entrance to medical schools will be based on principles and concepts rather than biochemistry knowledge.” “The old departmental barriers and walls are coming down.” Dr. Walker thinks this is a good thing. He calls it a “convergence of disciplines.” “That will lead to more STEM education,” he said, referring to training...

The president of the Michigan Education Association claims he talked to a teacher with a master’s degree who was eligible for a Bridge card. Steve Cook, the MEA’s president, said that a teacher he talked to was in his second year and had a master’s degree and made $31,000 a year. The problem? Publically available data of salaries for each district doesn’t back Cook’s claim. Cook didn’t respond to an email requesting the school district that paid a full-time, second-year teacher with a master’s degree $31,000 a year. The Michigan Association of School Boards reported in 2011 that a first-year...

Martha Burk is at it again. The director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women’s Organizations is demanding that Augusta National Golf Club invite ladies to join its membership. Nine years ago, Burk waged a similar campaign against Augusta National, host of this week’s Masters golf tournament. While it generated a lot of publicity, it ended unsuccessfully. Burk thought she had a better chance this year inasmuch as IBM, a major Masters sponsor, boasts a female CEO. Since Augusta National had proffered membership to previous IBM CEOs who were male, Burke argued, the golf club should...