Free Republic

In state legislatures rather than courtrooms, factual claims about the probable extent and implications of permitting physician-assisted suicide assume a preeminent role in the debate about legalization. Particularly sensitive in these discussions will be the issue of the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide, and how the savings might influence decision making by health care institutions, physicians, families, and terminally ill patients....Many have linked the effort to reduce the high cost of death with the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. One commentator observed: "Managed care and managed death [through physician-assisted suicide] are less expensive than fee-for-service care and extended survival....

After the 2010 census has been held, the number of seats held by each state in the U.S. House of Representatives will change. The National Conference of State Legislatures recently estimated what the 2010 reapportionment will mean for each state. Eight states are expected to lose one seat each, in the U.S. House and in the Electoral College. They are Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. States that will gain will be Texas (3 seats), and one each for Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Utah. If the bill now pending in Congress to expand the...

As if there were not enough things to worry about for the US, what with a dying economy, a spend happy neo-Marxist government in power, a stalemated war in Iraq and a loosing war in Afghanistan, here comes one more issue and the one that may create the final perfect storm: Mexico....By summer of this year, Mexico will enter a full blown war with large scale gun battles in most of the cities. Most civil wars push out refugees. If even 10% of the 110 million living in Mexico, start running north, that will collapse the governments of the American...

President Obama will convene the most ambitious arms reduction talks with Russia for a generation, aiming to slash each country’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent. The radical treaty would cut the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each, The Times has learnt. Key to the initiative is a review of the Bush Administration’s plan for a US missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, a project fiercely opposed by Moscow. Mr Obama is to establish a non-proliferation office at the White House to oversee the talks, expected to be headed by Gary Samore, a non-proliferation negotiator in the...

NORTH NAPLES, Fla. - Naples Police and the Collier County Sheriff's Office were called after a rally marking the anniversary of the Roe Vs. Wade decision got out of hand. Tires were slashed on two cars. All this abortion opponents say happened while they were demonstrating outside of Planned Parenthood in North Naples. "At some point when the march was almost over, we discovered my car, the tires on the drivers side were punctured, slashed or punctured, flattened out," Eileen Hennessey says. Hennessey's car was one of two to get hit. The other was a van owned by the Naples...

Eight Arizona legislators have introduced SB 1158, to require presidential candidates at the general election to submit “documents that prove that the candidate is a natural born citizen.” Since “natural born citizen” is not defined in the bill, nor in the U.S. Constitution, one wonders which documents John McCain would have been required to produce in 2008, if this bill had been law. He was born either in Panama or in the Canal Zone. The bill also requires presidential candidates to submit documents that prove they meet the residency requirement. The Constitution requires presidents to have lived in the United...

Proposed Law: An act to repeal Section 7.5 of Article I of the California Constitution; therefore provisions to be repealed are in strike-through text. Section 1. Title. This measure shall be known, and may be cited, as the "California Marriage Equality Act." Section 2. Section 7.5 of Article 1 of the California Constitution shall be repealed, stricken, and removed as such:

On January 6, bills were introduced in both Houses of Congress to give the District of Columbia a voting member of the U.S. House. They are HR 157 in the House, and S160 in the Senate. The bills would also permanently expand the size of the U.S. House from 435 member to 437 members, effective upon passage. The other new seat would go to Utah, which just barely missed getting another seat in the last reapportionment in 2001. The sponsors in the U.S. Senate are Orrin Hatch and Joe Lieberman. The sponsor in the House is D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes...

Oklahoma Representative Mike Ritze (R-Broken Arrow) has pre-filed a bill, requiring candidates for public office to submit a copy of their Birth Certificates. Ritze is a professor of Forensic Science and a physician, and was just elected to his first term in the legislature in November 2008. Ritze introduced his bill because he does not believe that President-Elect Barack Obama has demonstrated that he meets the constitutional qualifications. Ritze also says that he is trying to persuade U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe to object to counting electoral college votes for Obama, when Congress counts the electoral votes on January 8. The...

DMX has been behind bars since he was taken into custody at the Miami mansion of producer Scott Storch on December 9th by FBI agents. After Sheriff Joe Arpaio offered a $5000 award for the rapper's capture, an unidentified woman in Georgia tipped off the authorities. DMX's bail was set at $120,000 cash but he's opted to enter into a plea agreement. DMX's charges stem from two different cases. The rapper was facing one count of narcotic drug possession, three counts of marijuana possession, three counts of drug paraphernalia possession and seven counts of animal cruelty after a raid of...

Latest home-selling stats from DataQuick — for the 22 business days ended Dec. 16 – show O.C. homebuying running 40.1% ahead of a year ago. December will likely be the 6th straight month of year-to-year sales gains after 33 months of slumping homebuying. Meanwhile, the median selling price in mid-December is off 30.4% vs. a year ago — and it’s been quite a price fall from the top: * Single-family houses are now priced $309,000 – or 42% – below the peak median of $734,000 hit in June 2007. * Condos are now priced $199,500 – or 42% – below...

The pornographic film actor known as Jack Venice has been sentenced to life in prison for raping a woman at a Washington State University sorority. The actor, whose real name is Christopher Jack Reid, will be eligible for parole in nine years. The Reid, 26, a native of Houston, was sentenced Friday in Whitman County Superior Court in Colfax, Wash. after he was convicted in October of second-degree rape and three burglary counts. Reid told the court he is sorry for what happened to the victim but maintains his innocence. His lawyer plans an appeal. The victim told the court...

On Nov. 4, amid all of the excitement surrounding Barack Obama’s election, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit struck down a Pentagon Program that included five-percent set-aside contracting for companies run by racial minorities. The impact of the decision is unclear. On that same day, Nebraska voters supported the anti-affirmative action initiative on their state ballot by a margin of 58 to 42 percent. By doing so, they joined voters in California, Washington and Michigan, who voted to ban affirmative action programs in previous years. After four decades of affirmative action, Obama’s historic...

We've all seen a dog endlessly chase its tail and wonder to ourselves, why do they do that? Now researchers believe those strange animal behaviors may actually be a psychiatric disorder. Deborah Santti was worried about her 10-month-old German Shepherd named Lucas. "It was out of control," she said of his constant tail chasing. Finally she decided to bring him to Tufts University animal behaviorist, Dr. Nick Dodman. The diagnosis: obsessive compulsive disorder. "OCD in pets is a real phenomenon," he explained. It's the same condition that affects millions of Americans who deal with obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors like...

I was intending to write something lighthearted as my last entry for Fox and Hounds in 2008. (F&H will not publish again until January 5, 2009.) But then I read that the California Teachers Association has filed an initiative to raise the sales tax. And another initiative has been filed, I assume by the same group, to lower the vote requirement to raise many other taxes. (You can find the initiatives on the Attorney General’s site numbered 08-0021 thru 08-0023.) Of course, we have the call for permanent tax increases to solve the growing budget deficit. And, then there is...

Suicide bombers are available for a price in Pakistan to settle personal scores, a police investigation into the killing of a parliamentarian has revealed.On Tuesday, the Crimes Investigation Department of the Lahore police said it had arrested five people involved in the Aug 6 suicide attack at the residence of Rashid Akbar Niwani, a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) member of the National Assembly, which resulted in the death of 26 people and injuries to several more. Niwani was only playing the honest broker between two friends who had fallen out over a monetary dispute, the police said. Quoting the police,...

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says scrutiny of racial and ethnic profiling by incoming President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will not deter his get-tough approach to illegal immigration. “I’m not stopping,” said Arpaio. The Republican sheriff said he plans to continue crime sweeps and raids aimed at illegal immigrants and businesses that employ them. The Obama administration and Holder are expected to increase the focus on racial and ethnic profiling by police. Critics of Arpaio’s immigration enforcement argue the sheriff’s office targets Hispanics and such actions take away from more serious investigations. Arpaio said his immigration...

A reigning Mexican beauty queen from the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled guns and ammunition, police said Tuesday. Miss Sinaloa 2008 Laura Zuniga stared at the ground, with her flowing dark hair concealing her face, as she stood squeezed between seven alleged gunmen lined up before journalists. Soldiers wearing ski masks guarded the 23-year-old model and the suspects. Zuniga was arrested shortly before midnight on Monday at a military checkpoint in Zapopan, just outside the colonial city of Guadalajara, said Jalisco state police director, Francisco Alejandro Solorio.

Today’s example of the arrogance of government comes to us from - where else? - California. Attorney General and longtime moonbat Jerry Brown said he will challenge the results of the recent ballot proposition which effectively eliminated gay marriage in California. As you recall, that state’s Supreme Court recently found a right to gay marriage in the state constitution, and invalidated laws which forbade it. So, the citizens do what citizens are enttitled to do - change the constitution to incorporate those principles they find essential. If the constitution says marriage is only available between a man and a woman,...

California's governor initially indicated he would veto an $18 billion package of cuts and tax increases that had been passed last week by the Democratic legislature on majority vote. But yesterday, he said he had made progress in negotiations with Democrats on the package. Schwarzenegger simply wants a rollback of some laws that he thinks restrain economic growth. This package, put together by legislative Democrats, is significant not merely as a response to the ongoing state buget crisis. It's a precedent setter because it involves passing a tax increase without the two-thirds vote required under the California constitution. Republicans are...