Free Republic

Wherever Hillary Clinton is going, she needs at least a Gulfstream G450 to get there. The once nearly “dead broke” former First Lady now makes steep demands when she gives speeches to corporations, groups and universities, according to emails between Clinton’s agent and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where Clinton will earn $225,000 for a 90-minute speech in October. The school received a bit of a break from the $300,000 Clinton requested during initial negotiations, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which obtained the emails that were sent last year. The correspondence showed that Clinton normally requires “round-trip transportation...

President Barack Obama's decision to play ball with some little leaguers en route to a fundraiser snarled rush-hour traffic in Washington, D.C., on Monday evening. A press-pool report written by McClatchy's Lesley Clark noted Obama made "an unscheduled side trip to visit and chat" with young baseball players in Friendship Park en route to a fundraiser shortly before 6 p.m.

Regardless of party affiliations, true conservatives have made the old fashioned light bulb—an unassuming household item—into a symbol for something much larger. But what, exactly? At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it has become symbolic of the fight between liberty and tyranny. The light bulb ban provides a useful window into the mindset of liberals. Here’s how they see the issue: energy-saving bulbs are better, therefore the others should be illegal. The pattern repeats itself in nearly every other realm: they determine the best policy, then impose it in a top down manner with no regard for states, localities, or...

The U.N.’s $100 billion Global Climate Fund, currently establishing itself but struggling to attract donor support, has adopted a travel policy that will allow eligible board members to fly business class on trips of more than nine hours’ duration. “The Fund is committed to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions [carbon dioxide and other substances blamed for climate change] arising from its travel operations,” reads the policy, adopted at a GCF board meeting in Paris this month. It mandates economy class for flights shorter than nine hours, and encourages train travel “wherever this is a viable option.” A World Bank study...

If you heard one theme that Obama has been on about at the beginning of both of his terms, it’s infrastructure. During his last campaign, Obama even described it as “Nation Building at Home”, implicitly admitting that he beat down America to the level of Iraq or post-war Japan. All the bridges, we were told, were seconds away from falling down. The highways were full of potholes. The schools were leaning farther than a Pisan tower and if we didn’t build light rail across California, all the illegal aliens would have no choice but to run down pedestrians without a...

Canadians produce more garbage than anyone else Conference Board calls Canada an 'environmental laggard' Canadians use far too much energy and water, and they produce more garbage per capita than any other country on earth, a report from an influential think-tank says. The Conference Board of Canada gave Canada a C grade on Thursday and ranked it in 15th place among 17 developed nations studied across a host of environmental-efficiency metrics. "Our large land mass, cold climate and resource-intensive economy make us less likely to rank highly on some indicators of environmental sustainability, but many of our poor results are...

Wondering why rail traffic has been somewhat surprisingly consistent despite uncertainty? Concerned at government's tenticular reach into each and every aspect of our lives? This somewhat stunning anecdotal report from OilPrice.com might shed some light: A cargo train filled with biofuels crossed the border between the US and Canada 24 times between the 15th of June and the 28th of June 2010; not once did it unload its cargo, yet it still earned millions of dollars... The companies “made several million dollars importing and exporting the fuel to exploit a loophole in a U.S. green energy program.” Each time the...

The global warming alarmism that has pretty much faded from public concern always has been transparently fraudulent for those who care to look closely. And now as the world’s nations desire to carve up the carbon footprint profit, you have to love the arguments. “BONN, Germany — Another round of U.N. climate talks closed without resolving how to share the burden of curbing man-made global warming, mainly because countries don’t agree on who is rich and who is poor,” reports the Associated Press. For those who haven’t been keeping score...

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 Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), which mandated a steep rise in domestic ethanol production, is causing unforeseen negative consequences for food prices while failing to live up to the desired gasoline results and other expectations, concludes a Texas A&M University research team headed by an economics professor who studies energy issues.James Griffin James M. Griffin, director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics & Public Policy, which is part of Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, and Mauricio Cifuentes Soto, a graduate student assisting him, say in their report that the goal of...

Almost eclipsed by the PR disaster of his lavish vacation at Martha’s Vineyard was the PR debacle of President Obama’s “listening tour,” in which he blasted through small towns in a gigantic motorcade dominated by two million-dollar Canadian buses, pausing to give political speeches before hand-picked audiences. Although clearly a part of Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, this was all funded by the U.S. taxpayer, and the expense was enormous. It turns out it might have been even more enormous than we thought, because the whole “bus tour” was a gigantic fraud. As related by Rob Port at Say Anything: White...

Obama administration officials are riding in style. A new report from a watchdog group shows that the number of limousines owned by the federal government rose by 73 percent during the first two years of President Obama's administration. The State Department was the recipient of most the new luxury vehicles. The "Limousine Liberals?" report from iWatch News, part of the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, showed that government data pegged the number of limos in the federal fleet at 412 in fiscal 2010, up from 238 in fiscal 2008. Some of the details are a bit hazy. Most of the...

The global warming mania that swept the nation is subsiding, but in its wake it’s left a horde of unnecessary and counterproductive laws, and more than a few unintended unpleasant consequences. Exhibit #1 – “Federal officials have told a solar developer to stop work on two-thirds of a construction site in northeast San Bernardino County because no more tortoises can be disturbed,” . . .

Remember when the Gaia worship got under way when we were young? The first Earth Day in 1970 came at a time the green radicals were feeling their oats, which hadn’t yet been considered as subsidized crops for ethanol. There’s a snarky book on the shelves these days that we don’t necessarily endorse. (We don’t care for snarky comments much, unless we’re making them.) This book, 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy, actually has a delightful entry for Earth Day. . .

As we celebrate Lenin’s birthday today, oh, make that Earth Day, it’s always worthwhile to interject a little perspective to the fury. President Barack Obama. True believer? Or convenient opportunist? You may recall . . .

Berkeley Scientist: Marijuana Causes Global Warming By Noel Sheppard Created 04/14/2011 - 9:36am Nobel Laureate Al Gore's favorite money making myth suddenly has some competition for the wackiest reason the planet has warmed in recent years. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Marlo Lewis reported Tuesday, a University of California, Berkeley, scientist believes that the indoor growing of marijuana is responsible - at least partially, of course: A new study by Evan Mills of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory finds that indoor Cannabis production has a very large carbon footprint. If you’re too far gone to read the study, man, then,...

With a schedule as hectic as President Obama's it must be hard to stick to a training regimen without help -- but why does he insist on having his old trainer fly out from Chicago to D.C. regularly when Obama and his wife exhort the rest of us to drive less? And in a recession? According to Ashley Parker at the New York Times, Obama's fitness czar Cornell McClellan comes out to D.C. every week: Mr. McClellan grew up practicing martial arts, eventually earning a black belt, and as a college student realized that he had a knack for working...

With a schedule as hectic as President Obama's it must be hard to stick to a training regimen without help -- but why does he insist on having his old trainer fly out from Chicago to D.C. regularly when Obama and his wife exhort the rest of us to drive less? And in a recession? According to Ashley Parker at the New York Times, Obama's fitness czar Cornell McClellan comes out to D.C. every week: Mr. McClellan grew up practicing martial arts, eventually earning a black belt, and as a college student realized that he had a knack for working...

    Promises of Electric Vehicles?  Vlado BevcSynergy Research Institute, P.O.Box 561, San Ramon, California 94583  The promotion of General Motors Chevy Volt by three mayors (Contra Costa Times, November 6, 1010) merits some mundane evaluation from the energy standpoint. Electric vehicles –with an internal combustion engine assist – are compared to a “typical car” using 13 cents of $3.00/gallon gasoline per mile, that is one that makes 23 miles per gallon. (13/300 = 0.0433 gallon/mile) In a conventional car 25 percent of 37 kWh from a gallon of gasoline gets into traction (because of losses in the engine and drive train)....

Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, wrote in January 2010 on the Huffington Post that President Barack Obama was “The Greenest President Ever“. Weeellll….maybe not. You see, today we have these headlines:....