Free Republic

What is it about bureaucrats and school personnel that they want to pry into the personal life and habits of American citizens of every age? There seems to be no end to the imperial demands by government and schools to require both grownups and kids to reveal personal information. The use of nosy questionnaires by the public schools has been a bone of contention between schools and parents for years, but New Jersey recently came up with a question that has parents up in arms. Third-graders were asked on a standardized test to reveal a secret about their lives and...

Our bureaucratic overlords don’t know the first thing about running businesses, which are required to make a profit without printing money or stealing it. But they do know how to ram egalitarian ideology down people’s throats. The results are hardly profitable: Salon and barbershop owners are fuming over the enforcement of a provision that requires them to charge men and women the same prices. Managers complain that it can take much longer to cut a woman’s hair. Bureaucrats counter these arguments by pointing out that men and women are exactly the same, because moonbat ideology says so.

The federal government on Friday extended its deadline for hotel and guesthouse owners to make pools accessible to people with disabilities. It was good news for Florida Keys lodging owners, many of them still scratching their heads over how to interpret the new rules. The previous deadline for compliance was Monday, but it has been postponed until Jan. 31, according to documents published Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice, which administers the 1991 Americans with Disabilities Act. The extension was granted as a result of questions, confusion and concerns about the requirements of the pool accessibility rules that require...

To Key West Housing Authority officials it was seen as a necessary task, the chopping down of banana trees Richard "Diver" Overman nurtured daily with his fingerless hands, outside the windows of his public housing apartment on Amelia Street. To Overman it was a massacre. "They were just nubs when I planted them," the 67-year-old retired lobster diver said. "Now I am so disappointed. That was my pastime -- the only pastime I've got. Now they took them away and I feel like nothin'." Housing Authority Director Manuel Castillo said he and his staff tried to work with Overman, but...

The House on Tuesday passed legislation giving hunters and fishing enthusiasts access to certain public lands to pursue their sport and also blocked the Environmental Protection Agency from banning lead for use in ammunition and fishing tackle. The Sportsmen’s Heritage Act passed on a mostly party line vote of 274 yeas and 146 nays. Republicans argued that the ability of sportsmen and women to fish and shoot on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service is being threatened by the Obama administration and environmentalists through bureaucratic regulations. Republicans also said that banning lead bullets...

Scientists announced this week that they had found ten billion habitable planets in the Milky Way. The announcement was cheering, raising the possibility that there was some intelligent life somewhere in the universe in a week where it was clear there was hardly any in the Capitol. I'm talking about the three day argument before the Supreme Court on the 2,700 page wonk wet dream, ObamaCare. As you recall a Democrat Congress rammed this legislation down our throats on Christmas Eve led by Nancy Pelosi (soi-disant Catholic Theologian and Constitutional Scholar, San Francisco), aided by some high kicking and legerdemain...

Late on February 15, JotForm lost access to jotform.com. The company soon discovered the U.S. government had seized the domain by lodging a request with the site’s domain registrar GoDaddy. Soon after, it had been taken down. Aytekin Tank, co-founder of Interlogy Internet Technologies, and owner of JotForm, later confirmed that he’d been in contact with the agent assigned to his case at the Secret Service. She was busy and couldn’t look at the site for a few days. So millions of web forms and thousands of customers were left without a service and no reason as to why this...

Offended by President Obama's decision to force health insurers to pay for contraception and surgical sterilization? It gets worse: In the future, thanks to ObamaCare, the government will issue such health edicts on a routine basis—and largely insulated from public view. This goes beyond contraception to cancer screenings, the use of common drugs like aspirin, and much more. Under ObamaCare, a single committee—the United States Preventative Services Task Force—is empowered to evaluate preventive health services and decide which will be covered by health-insurance plans. The task force already rates services with letter grades of "A" through "D" (or "I," if...

The US Government continues actions that will result in its own demise. That might seem fitting, except that its failure will seriously harm the citizenry. Government decisions and actions have assured an economic collapse that will result in another depression. Federal debts and promises are too large to be honored, a conclusion based not on economics but on simple arithmetic. The government collapse will likely trigger the economic collapse, although the order could be reversed. Arguably, we are already in a depression which has been disguised by juicing GDP via excessive government spending. This spending has been funded increased government...

DES MOINES — Legislative Republicans proposed Thursday to spend $182 million less than Gov. Terry Branstad’s $6.242 billion budget plan for next fiscal year and about $119 million under majority Senate Democrats’ targets by providing less money to education, human services and economic incentives and requiring state employees and elected officials to pay $200 a month for their health insurance coverage. All three competing and contrasting fiscal 2013 budget approaches offered by the governor and leaders of the split-control Legislature would fully fund spending commitments already approved last session, including a 2 percent “allowable growth” increase for K-12 public schools...

The European Commission has claimed it has secret information about the positive state of EU countries' finances, following a shock downgrade of core member states. Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly made the statement at a regular press briefing in Brussels on Monday (16 January), two days after US-based agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgraded nine EU countries, including France. "We have more information than the ratings agencies and we think there are elements missing in their analysis ... We have monthly updates from member states. We share this information on a confidential basis. The ratings agencies do not have this information,"...

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Newt Gingrich signaled Wednesday that he believes his criticism of Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital is a mistake — and that he’s created an impression that he was echoing Democratic rhetoric. Gingrich conceded the problem when pressed by a Rick Santorum supporter at a book-signing here Wednesday. “I’m here to implore one thing of you. I think you’ve missed the target on the way you’re addressing Romney’s weaknesses. I want to beg you to redirect and go after his obvious disingenuous about his conservatism and lay off the corporatist versus the free market. I think it’s...

As 2011 draws to a close, I wonder: Is freedom winning? Did America become freer this year? Less free? How about the rest of the world? I'm a pessimist. I fear Thomas Jefferson was right when he said, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." That's what's happened. Bush and Obama doubled spending and increased regulation. Government's intrusiveness is always more, never less. The state grows, and freedom declines. But there were bright spots. We don't yet know what will become of what people call the Arab Spring. But this year, for...

PHOENIX — A cancer survivor and former hospice nurse’s assistant is suing the Arizona Board of Cosmetology over rules she says unconstitutionally deny her the right to earn an honest living – while at the same time needlessly denying services to homebound, elderly and bedridden individuals across the state. Lauren Boice opened Angels on Earth Home Beauty, which connects the elderly, sick, and terminally ill with licensed cosmetologists. Homebound individuals desiring a haircut, manicure, or massage call Lauren, who matches them with a cosmetologist who will visit the client’s home or assisted living center. But while Lauren’s clients see her...

Nigel Farage needs no introduction: the famous Euroskeptic is one of very few men who has had the temerity to question, often in an abnormally high decibel fashion, the stupidity of the Eurozone leaders from day one. Now that he has been proven correct, he has every right to gloat, which he does to everyone's delightful amusement in the European parliament. The look on the unelected von Rompuy's face, especially as he watches his decade-long bureaucratic nirvana crash and burn every single day, is quite priceless.

John Scalzi, discussing the outrageous behavior of the adults in the football program at Pennsylvania State University, sets the tone for today's piece. He describes the cowardice of all those who knew of the abuse of the young boys taking place and failed to take the appropriate steps to stop it: I'm a science fiction writer, and one of the great stories of science fiction is "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," which was written by Ursula K. LeGuin. The story posits a fantastic utopian city, where everything is beautiful, with one catch: In order for all this...

(NaturalNews) It is the latest case of extreme government food tyranny, and one that is sure to have you reeling in anger and disgust. Health department officials recently conducted a raid of Quail Hollow Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in southern Nevada, during its special "farm to fork" picnic dinner put on for guests -- and the agent who arrived on the scene ordered that all the fresh, local produce and pasture-based meat that was intended for the meal be destroyed with bleach. For about five years now, Quail Hollow Farm has been growing organic produce and...

Commission on Security Cooperation in Europe (CSCE):  Also known as the Helsinki Commission, their job is to monitor European compliance with the Helsinki Final Act, which served to dilute Cold War tensions. Maybe somebody needs to tell them that the USSR ceased to exist over 20 years ago... and that Obama's already abandoned Eastern Europe to current Russian regime anyway. Federal Citizen Information Center (FCIC):  Visitors to the FCIC website can find useful info on topics ranging from how to purchase a new car to how to save $ for college... and all the same as you can find on zillions...

The federal government has lost another 72 million of your tax dollars. Here we go again. The feds have gambled with your money again, and they've lost it again; this time with a company called Beacon Power. You've probably never heard of this company. Candidly, before the announcement of its bankruptcy filing this week, neither had I. Just as you probably had never heard of Solyndra before its bankruptcy, neither had I. But your government has heard of both. Solyndra and Beacon received loans the government guaranteed -- $535 million and $72 million respectively. In each case, your tax dollars...

I was listening to Neil Boortz last night and he was talking about this new Carbon EPA stuff. He said that the EPA was hiring, get this, 230,000 new employees whose sole responsibility was to process this new paper work. He said that it was going to cost (I think) 1.4 million jobs right out of the box and companies will have to fold, and that some powerplants that we desparate need will be shut down, electricity is going to go through the roof. C02, a natural occuring Gas, is now pollution. He did say that Hermain Cain said the...

The president has found a way to add jobs, after all — 230,000 of ‘em, all within the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s the number of new bureaucrats the federal government will need to hire to implement new proposed greenhouse gas regulations, according to a report by The Daily Caller: The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion...

Neighborhood lemonade stands have for generations served as a training ground for budding young capitalists. Boys and girls eager for their first taste of success have recently watched their dreams dissolve as rulebook-toting authoritarians demand little Timmy and Sally show their permits and papers or face the wrath of the state. Americans are fed up with this nonsense. It’s time for a little lemonade liberation. On Aug. 20, over a hundred people have so far pledged to gather on the Capitol’s west lawn to protest the petty bureaucracy that thinks threatening children with fines is a proper use of taxpayer...

(Excerpt: Full article at link above) You have the right to remain stupid, and what you say and do can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion. Unfortunately, the court of public opinion is expanding into a stupid-is-as-stupid-does joke. And it has a president and gang of thieves in the United States government to represent it. So goes the sheeping of America. Welcome to Euro II. With the level of dishonesty, fraud, abuse of power, corruption, rampant irresponsibility, downright criminal behavior and vehement refusal to be accountable, our government has clearly lost its collective mind...

While 22-year-old Rory McIlroy was teeing up on June 16 during the first round of his historic victory at the U.S. Open, another drama was unfolding outside Congressional Country Club in Bethesda. A Montgomery County inspector busted some kids for running a lemonade stand at which they were setting aside half the proceeds for pediatric cancer victims. The charge? No permit. One of the dads involved got a $500 fine. After a TV station’s tape of the bust went viral, the county backed off, canceled the fine and let the kids set up on a side street. The children decided...

Almost nine months after a Missouri dairy was ordered to stop selling cheese made from raw milk, I share details of another hare-raising story from the Show-Me State: John Dollarhite and his wife Judy of tiny Nixa, Mo., have been told by the USDA that, by Monday, they must pay a fine exceeding $90,000. If they don’t pay that fine, they could face additional fines of almost $4 million. Why? Because they sold more than $500 worth of bunnies — $4,600 worth to be exact — in a single calendar year.

While the possible government shutdown means most federal employees, from the National Park Service workers to those handling your tax returns at the IRS, won't be coming into work, some bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are going to keep punching the clock. At the department's website, HHS has posted its shutdown contingency plan for its employees. Here's the relevant part for the department's Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight: Operations of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight could continue as funding was provided through the Affordable Care Act. This includes insurance rate...

Gov. Corbett's plan to cut $625 million in funds to collegiate bureaucrats and send some of the money directly to students as scholarships has sure caused some shrieks and howls. Among the howlers whose cash cow is being gored are: Penn State University President Graham Spanier whose salary is $620,000 not including benefits;

President Obama's environmental bureaucrats have earned yet another spanking from the federal judiciary over their "de termined disregard" of the rule of law. Federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana excoriated the Obama Interior Department on Wednesday for defying his May 2010 order to lift its groundless ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. Nine months later, not a single permit has been issued. Several deepwater platforms have moved out of the area to take their businesses -- and an estimated 5,000 jobs -- overseas. Billions of dollars in potential oil revenue and Gulf lease sales-related rent have...

Judge Vinson's individual mandate ruling is seen -- properly -- as a defeat for Obama Care and a win for individual freedom. And it is all of that of course. But there's more. Perhaps almost as pleasing as the affirmation of individual freedom and the dismissing of a government run society is the smack down Judge Vinson's ruling gave the concept of "crony capitalism." And that may be just as important in the long run. After all, no government run society is even possible without corporatists and crony capitalists eager to jump into the sack with the statists who will...

The victims of today's excessive government regulatory zeal face the same enemy confronted by the nation's Founders: unconstrained centralized power...

Heading back to work this week, Americans were greeted not only by a new year but also by a whole slew of new laws -- 31,000 of them at the state level -- covering everything from guns to 100-watt light bulbs to, of course, "health care." As usual, most of these laws tell us what we can't do: texting while driving (duh), cyberbullying and smoking in bars. In the near future, everyone will be a criminal for at least 15 minutes, whether they know it or not.

Heading back to work this week, Americans were greeted not only by a new year but also by a whole slew of new laws -- 31,000 of them at the state level -- covering everything from guns to 100-watt light bulbs to, of course, "health care." As usual, most of these laws tell us what we can't do: texting while driving (duh), cyberbullying and smoking in bars. In the near future, everyone will be a criminal for at least 15 minutes, whether they know it or not. But aside from some laws easing state restrictions on lawful gun ownership, precious...

According to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, the president recently told friends, "All I want for Christmas is an opposition I can negotiate with." Well, he had one, briefly, so long as he was willing to cave in to its demands to bust the budget with a massive gift of more than $130 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of the country and the gutting of the estate tax. That cleared the decks for other "victories" and "compromises" and led to widespread insider approval of Obama's ability to "make the system work." Like 13-year-olds at the movies, pundits love...

The text of ObamaCare is dry and legalistic, except when it summons the maj esty of the King James Bible to intone imperiously, "the secretary shall . . . " The secretary in question is the secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, who "shall" and "may" do all manner of things to complete the great unfinished canvas that is ObamaCare. As George W. Bush might say, Sebelius is "the decider." In the discretion she's granted to remake American health care, she rivals Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey as the most powerful woman in America. The New...

Montgomery County's top administrator banks a higher salary than the vice president of the United States. Ditto for Fairfax County's executive. And the District's police chief is paid more than the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and speaker of the House. Dozens of local officials earn better wages than the nation's marquee power players under compensation packages that soar past those for comparable positions statewide, showing that smaller-scale, public-sector jobs don't always come with a pay cut. The benchmark for managers' salaries has jumped well beyond the six-figure plateau, as some command wages around a quarter-million dollars each...

After heading the Culpeper Department of Human Services for the past 21 years, and being elected mayor of the Town of Culpeper last May, DHS Executive Director Calvin “Chip” Coleman is retiring from the post at the end of this month. Since taking the reigns in February of 1989, Coleman has overseen the Department of Human Services’ growth from about 20 employees to more than 180, and the development of a myriad of local programs to help DHS’ clients with everything from finding work and obtaining transportation to accessing affordable childcare.

Ferreting out waste in government is, as you can well imagine, strenuous work. First, there's so much of it. Second, those responsible for looking into the dark corners and recesses of our government for profligate use of the taxpayer coin need to be at their best in order to do a good job. Yeah...but staying at a 5 star resort hotel to find it? Byron York: Members of a key panel created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus bill, have scheduled a meeting on November 22 to consider ways to prevent "fraud, waste, and...

On November 2, 2010, the liberals suffered a defeat at the hands of the people over their policies implemented over the last two to four years. As a result, Many Republicans and Tea Party supporters are jubilant in their celebration, and even the often morose Glenn Beck has been heard to be excited about what he calls a turning point. However, the cold, hard reality is that liberalism suffered a defeat but not a crushing one, and the war is far from won. In the past, victories in these minor skirmishes have resulted in people becoming complacent. The battles that...

Los Angeles City Council Consider Scaling Back PensionsOctober 23, 2010 4:13 PM LOS ANGELES (CBS) — This coming Tuesday, the LA city council is expected to vote to put a measure on the March municipal ballot, allowing voters to decide about scaling back pensions for firefighters and cops. The council heard a report from the actuary who studied the proposed ballot measure Friday, then decided to wait until Tuesday to vote. The council has until Nov. 3 to approve the measure for placement on the March 8 ballot. City Council President Eric Garcetti urged his colleagues to support the initiative,...

Can Society Afford to Pay Promised Pension Benefits? We may find that honor gives way to economic reality Without question, the greatest economic benefit of working for the government — be it federal, state or municipal — is the retirement program. Many governments promise their workers pension and health-care benefits that those in the private sector would define as, well, generous. Take the poll...

Russia will cut its army of bureaucrats by more than 100,000 within the next three years, saving 43 billion rubles ($1.5 billion), Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Monday. "We assume more than 100,000 federal state civil jobs will be cut within three years. The government has already included a schedule for cutting the number of federal civil servants in the draft budget for the next three years and coordinated it with ministries and agencies," Kudrin told President Dmitry Medvedev, who in June ordered a 20 percent cut in the number of bureaucrats.

Russia plans to slash 100,000 bureaucrat jobs by 2013, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Monday, in a drive to reduce costs and modernize the country's bloated bureaucracy. "We expect that in the three years more than 100,000 federal civil servant jobs will be cut," Kudrin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.

A veteran public-schools superintendent resigned yesterday after being outed for having a two-year affair with a subordinate. Queens High Schools Superintendent Francesca Peña -- who has worked for the city's public schools for 28 years, was snared in a probe of her illicit flame, Randolph HS Assistant Principal Milciades "Mayo" Pepin. School investigators found that Pepin had used hidden software to spy on the e-mails and smartphones of Peña and three male principals whom he apparently viewed as competition -- including his supervisor, Randolph HS Principal Henry Rubio. Their probe also showed that Pepin had helped Peña install similar spyware...

It's hardly unusual to hear small-business owners gripe about licensing requirements or complain that heavy-handed regulations are driving them into the red. So when Multnomah County shut down an enterprise last week for operating without a license, you might just sigh and say, there they go again. Except this entrepreneur was a 7-year-old named Julie Murphy. Her business was a lemonade stand at the Last Thursday monthly art fair in Northeast Portland. The government regulation she violated? Failing to get a $120 temporary restaurant license. Turns out that kids' lemonade stands -- those constants of summertime -- are supposed to...

It is 350 years since one of the UK's most famous diarists put pen to paper. But what was Samuel Pepys really like? And why did this modest clerk become so celebrated? A new home for a new man in a new age - on 11 July 1660, a clerk, obscure but already on the way up, was moving into a house.His new home, in Seething Lane near the Tower of London, came with his new job at the Navy Board. Samuel Pepys had been lucky. His patron had been involved with the restoration of the monarch, Charles II, from...

The Department of Defense has sounded an alarm about our access to a strategically vital group of metals called the rare earth elements. A report on the problem prepared by the GAO is not pretty. It concludes the Chinese now control the production, processing and manufacture of final products of these vital metals and now own the patents for many of these processes. The worries of the DoD are well justified; missile guidance systems, smart bombs, night vision gear, unmanned aircraft and much more are dependent on the rare earth elements in some way. Without these metals, our weapons technology...

Once upon a time, government paid less than the private sector. Security was the goal, a reliable income and a small but reliable pension. The work wasn’t hard; there were generous vacations and many holidays. A conservative breed mindful of the taxpayer’s dollar, the bureaucrats functioned in plain, comfortable quarters and retired earlier than elsewhere. Government work was considered a service; workers were servants of the taxpayers. Unions were forbidden; their goals were seen as conflicting with the goal of service to citizens. In 1962, it all changed; President Kennedy signed a new law providing union access to Federal workers....

One local official is voicing his frustration over what he calls a "nine-to-five" attitude by some federal authorities in the face of the oil disaster. Jefferson Councilman Chris Roberts says the parish has a plan to build rock levees to help keep oil out of inland waterways like Barataria Bay. Roberts told WWL First News that after they submitted the proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers last week, Corps officials said last Friday that discussion on the plan would have to be put on hold until the following Monday, because the Corps office would be closed for the...

If you've spent months trying to get a job with the federal government, things are about to get easier. President Obama plans to instruct federal agencies to radically overhaul the process now used to hire government workers. The change is expected to cut in half the time it takes to fill vacancies and allow the government to better compete with the private sector for top talent. It's been a long time coming. The Government Accountability Office has been calling for changes since 2001, and a host of outside voices have criticized the byzantine nature of federal hiring, with its stacks...

Ishmael Jones is the pseudonymous former Central Intelligence Agency case officer who focused on human sources with access to intelligence on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. His assignments included more than 15 years of continuous overseas service under deep cover. He is the author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, published by Encounter Books and just out in paperback. We invited Mr. Jones to write something for us on a theme related to his book. He has followed up with the following post on a subject close to our heart: A challenge to free societies...