Free Republic

"The government's goal of boosting organ donation is a good one. Unfortunately, though, the plan put forward this week by Tommy Thompson, the secretary of Health and Human Services, will not work," writes Arthur Caplan, Ph.D. on the MSNBC.com Web site. "The ideas Thompson presented Tuesday about how to get more organs involve a partnership with private businesses to promote organ donation among employees, a medal to honor donor families, more teaching about organ donation in teen driver-education classes and a national donor card that makes it clear that anyone who has a card can serve as a donor even ...

Major contributors in the International Space Station project joined the United States yesterday in opposing the upcoming flight of an aspiring space tourist, according to CNN. California financier Dennis Tito, 60, paid $20 million for a roundtrip ticket to the orbiting outpost. A former NASA rocket engineer, Tito plans to fly with two Russian cosmonauts in a Soyuz spacecraft to the space station at the end of the month. Representatives of nations building the station were to discuss the Tito standoff via a teleconference yesterday, but the meeting was abruptly cancelled, according to U.S. and Russian space agency officials. In ...

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide a pair of cases about the scope of the decade-old law protecting the disabled from "job discrimination," according to The Washington Post. The cases address the issues of when a disability is severe enough to allow workers to sue their employers and how the rights of disabled workers should be balanced against those of other employees. The first case deals with whether an impairment that prevents a worker from doing certain tasks in a particular job counts as a disability entitling the employee to protection under the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). ...

The Environmental Protection Agency said today that it would leave in place a Clinton administration rule that would expand protection for tens of thousands of acres of wetlands across the United States, according to The New York Times. The decision is a big defeat for developers, who have contended for years that the action would impose restrictions far beyond those authorized by Congress. A challenge to the rule by the National Association of Home Builders is pending in Federal District Court in Washington. In the Regulation Magazine article, " Swamp Rules: The End of Federal Wetlands Regulation?" Jonathan H. Adler ...

California taxpayers will not pay a cent for the billions of dollars the state has been spending on power during its crippling energy crisis, Gov. Gray Davis said in an interview published on Saturday, according to Reuters. While the Democrat added summer blackouts remain a very real possibility, he said a plan to issue more than $10 billion in bonds will be enough to repay the money the state has been spending to keep the lights on as well as to finance future power purchases. "We will not only be paid off for all our expenses to date, we'll have ...

Dear Friend: I am sure you paid the federal government more in taxes this year than you care to remember. And I bet you want some tax relief. Your elected officials will return to Washington in one week. Before they return to Washington, you need to let them know you want them to support President Bush's full $1.6 trillion tax relief plan. Many of your Congressmen and Senators are conducting town hall meetings today and the rest of the week. It is important that you attend a meeting and that you encourage 5 friends to join you at the meeting ...

California was urged yesterday to fight back against a "sellers cartel" that is blamed for driving up wholesale electricity prices in the state and to form a "buyers cartel" with energy-starved neighbors Oregon and Washington, according to Reuters. The call was made in a report co-authored by economist Peter Navarro of the University of California-Irvine and Michael Shames of the San Diego-based consumer group The Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN). In the report, the authors argue that if sellers failed to produce ample power at a price set by the "buyers cartel", California should seize in-state power plants. In Power ...

Cato Daily Dispatch April 6, 2001 http://www.cato.org/ DAVIS STILL WON'T SOLVE CALIFORNIA'S ENERGY PROBLEM California Gov. Gray Davis outlined his plan to solve California's energy crisis yesterday, calling for restructured consumer rate hikes and a statewide program of conservation to keep the lights on this summer, according to Reuters. Davis, who had vowed not to stick California consumers with the bill for the state's botched 1996 power deregulation scheme, said he was now convinced that consumer rate hikes were necessary -- although not at the average 40 percent rate that state utility regulators proposed last week. He also called on ...

Boxer Reintroduces Regional Rate Cap Bill Urges uniform price caps on electricity sold across the western United States --------------------------------------------------------- January 22, 2001 Washington, DC -- Senator Boxer (D-CA) today reintroduced the California Electricity Consumers Relief Act to ease the California energy crisis by bringing stability to the state's high electricity prices. Boxer began calling on FERC to establish a uniform rate cap across the Western United States in August of last year and introduced legislation to that effect on September 21, 2000. The measure is a companion to a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative Bob ...

FARMERS AT THE FEDERAL TROUGH--AGAIN American farmers need more than $10 billion in a congressional bailout this year to survive low grain prices and rising production costs, 21 senators said yesterday in a letter to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), according to The Washington Post. (http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34252-2001Mar20.html) The letter was the latest appeal to congressional budget leaders for a new, large farm subsidy package. Lawmakers have enacted nearly $25 billion in aid since late 1998, when grain prices collapsed under the weight of a global glut. In "The Farming of Washington: How U.S. Agricultural Policies Affect the American ...

Dear Friend: President Bush's historic tax refund plan passed through the U.S. House last week. Now the plan is before the U.S. Senate, where it faces a tough battle. Washington liberals are working overtime to oppose the plan in the Senate, so that they can spend more of your money on big government programs. It's up to us to stop them. Help us pass President Bush's tax refund by becoming a REFUND ACTION LEADER by signing up at http://www.bushtaxrelief.com/leaders.asp. Twice a week for the next month, as the Senate considers the tax cut, we'll send you an action item. These ...

PRICE CONTROLS WILL WORSEN ELECTRICITY CRISIS Governors of the states hardest hit by the power crisis in the West have asked the Bush administration to set price controls for wholesale electricity. The answer was no. As many as eight of the 11 governors of the western states were seeking some kind of relief from federal regulators for the skyrocketing prices for wholesale electricity in the deregulated market. The spike in wholesale costs has doubled consumer rates in some areas of the West and filled leaders in the region with fear that their economies are suffering and that soon their constituents ...

California Screamin' ... About Electricity Deregulation by Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren Jerry Taylor is director of natural resource studies, and Peter Van Doren is editor of Regulation. Skyrocketing wholesale electricity prices and the daily threat of brownouts and blackouts in California have cast a pall over the regulatory enterprise. California Gov. Gray Davis, like most pundits and the press, blamed deregulation for the crisis in his recent "State of the State" address. He warned that the California meltdown is a harbinger of things to come, not only in national electricity markets but in industries throughout the economy if ...

What happened to the daily countdown to the end of our long national nightmare? I haven't seen it for ages. I demand that the persons responsible for that long running FR feature resume it immediately in the form of an hourly countdown, and then when the hours get down to, oh, let's say 2, it must be converted to a minute by minute countdown. I would apologize for being so clintoooonesque in these self-centered demands, but I feel I have been empowered by the outgoing president.,p>

As I looked more deeply at certain documents about the beginning of the revolutionary career of Feliks Edmundovich, I became, from day to day, more and more proud, and more and more frightened. Yes, that was exactly the way it was; I felt great pride in the first Chekist, pride in his great and broad open- mindedness, in his transparency, in his ideological firmness, at the great heights of his party loyalty, at his sensitivity and tenderness, his goodness, his even-mindedness, but at the same time, I felt terror: could I at all even reach for some understanding of such ...

January 4, 2001 Bush's Opportunity David Boaz David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and co-editor of the "Cato Handbook for Congress." George W. Bush and Al Gore battled to the closest popular vote since 1960, the House and Senate are as evenly split as they have ever been, and a large percentage of the American people think the Bush presidency is illegitimate. Under the circumstances, can President Bush govern? Obviously, he needs to reach out to some of the people who didn't vote for him. He can do that symbolically, with White House meetings and unexpected ...

The U.S. attorney for Massachusetts sued two U.S. movie chains today, saying their theaters with stadium-style seating discriminate against people with disabilities, according to Reuters. U.S. Attorney Donald Stern accused National Amusements Inc. and Hoyts Cinemas Corp. of violating the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and relegating handicapped people to inferior movie seats, according to separate lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Boston. With seats built on a series of steep risers, the theaters provide a clear line of sight to the screen but make it difficult for people who use wheelchairs or have other disabilities to find good ...

WILL THE SUN PLEASE SIGN THE KYOTO PROTOCOL? Scientists at Armagh Observatory claim a unique weather record could show that the sun has been the main contributor to global warming over the past two centuries, according to the BBC. The weather observations, made almost daily since 1795, comprise the longest climate archive available for a single site in Ireland. Dr. John Butler, the astronomer in charge of the project, told BBC News Online: "We can see global warming taking place over the past two centuries that suggests that changes in the sun are at least partially responsible." "I suspect that ...

VIRGIN, Utah, Nov. 6 — This tiny southern Utah town has enacted an ordinance requiring a gun and ammunition in every home for residents’ self-defense. Most of Virgin’s 350 residents already own firearms so the initiative has lots of support, Mayor Jay Lee said. The ordinance was passed June 15. Residents had expressed fear that their Second Amendment right to bear arms was under fire so the town council modeled a similar measure passed by a Georgia city about 12 years ago. Huh? The move has some Utah residents perplexed. Utah’s Safe to Learn, Safe to Worship Coalition, which ...

H.L. Mencken quipped in the 1920s that the name "Justice Department" was an oxymoron. Attorney General Janet Reno has vindicated Mencken and given solace to cynics across the land. In July, controversy erupted over "Carnivore," the FBI's e-mail wiretap software which reportedly can vacuum up vast amounts of private e-mail - regardless of whether the feds have a search warrant. FBI officials "explained" the program's ominous name by stressing that they never thought the public would learn of the program's existence. Janet Reno took charge by announcing that she would require the FBI to change Carnivore's name.