Free Republic

Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation Tuesday designed to punish companies that do business with Cuba or Syria. Both nations are on the U.S. State Department list of “state sponsors of terrorism.” For a symbolic flourish, Scott signed the bill, House Bill 959, in the Freedom Tower in Miami, a building that once served as a processing center by the federal government for refugees fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist regime.

This week, the Supreme Court measured Obamacare to see whether it fits within the confines of the Constitution. The big picture is whether the Constitution limits the behavior of the federal government to the plain meaning and historical context of the Constitution, or whether clever lawyers and politicians can interpret language in the Constitution so as to justify whatever Congress wishes to do. Does the Constitution mean what it says? Does it limit the federal government to the powers it has delegated to Congress? Or is it a blank check for Congress to do whatever it can get away with?...

When a 1942 Supreme Court decision that most people have never heard of makes the front page of the New York Times in 2012, you know that something unusual is going on. What makes that 1942 case — Wickard v. Filburn — important today is that it stretched the federal government’s power so far that the Obama administration is using it before today’s Supreme Court as an argument to claim that it has the legal authority to impose Obamacare mandates on individuals. Roscoe Filburn was an Ohio farmer who grew some wheat to feed his family and some farm animals....

We are told by certain members of Congress who have voted to pass America`s Affordable Health Care Choice Act that Congress has the authority to enact and enforce the new law under Congress` power to regulate commerce among the States. But is that true? Was the power to regulate commerce among the States intended by our founders to be a grant of power to allow Congress to enter the various States and interfere with the inalienable right of the people to make their own choices and decisions regarding their health care needs? Is this really within the definition of ``commerce``...

WASHINGTON, March 20 (LID) – The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday will make a preliminary administrative decision on whether to impose additional tariffs of as much as 250 percent on Chinese solar imports.

Add to the private equity firms and airlines that may want to own all or a piece of bankrupt airlines AMR, the name of British Air. It could become partners with PE firm TPG Capital BA is part of the International Consolidated Airlines Group which also owns Iberia Líneas Aéreas de España. BA is also a partner in the One World Alliance which shares routes with AMR to allow passengers an easier way to travel to areas in which either BA or AMR has a large number of airplanes. This is, in turn, a key to customer retention

President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for authority to close the Commerce Department and create a new export agency, an overhaul that could save US$3-billion and help inoculate him against Republican election-year charges that he is a big-government liberal. White House budget official Jeffrey Zients told reporters the reorganization would fold together the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and other trade bodies now spread across Washington, giving businesses a single point of contact and ensuring federal spending goes further to boost exports. Obama was set to deliver remarks at 11:20 a.m. on the new, yet-to-be-named department that...

NEWTOWN, Conn --(Ammoland.com)- Urge ‘Yes’ Vote on Hatch Amendment No. 770 to Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Bill Now Being Debated on the Senate Floor. BACKGROUND Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is seeking to offer an amendment to the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill now being debated on the Senate floor. Hatch’s amendment would permanently enshrine 10 different appropriations “riders” — essentially directions from Congress to the administration about how they must spend, or not spend, funds — into permanent law. Traditionally, each “rider” had to be reauthorized on a year-by-year basis. Some of these riders go back 30 years....

The firearms industry is thriving in Idaho, and business for some local companies is getting even better. The industry employs thousands of people in Idaho, and a new trade group wants to push that number higher. A dozen manufacturers gathered Tuesday at the first event hosted by the Idaho Firearms and Accessories Manufacturers Association. The association won a $25,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the expo and for a report — due to USDA next month — on the economic impact of Idaho’s firearms industry. WHAT IS IFAMA? Four people started the all-volunteer association a year and...

The American Thinker has published as a blog item my review of President Obama’s so-called regulatory review (You call this regulatory reform?). Under the direction of Professor Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s former University of Chicago law school colleague, all federal regulatory bodies were to eliminate regulations which were unduly burdensome to small businesses. Private sector critics promptly called the reforms a drop in the bucket. Let’s look at that. Professor Sunstein claims that the reforms could save businesses over $10 billion in compliance costs over the next five years. The Small Business Administration reports that the total cost of regulation...

Speaker of the House Henry Clay and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman John C. Calhoun pushed legislation known as the Bonus Bill through the House of Representatives. On December 23, 1816 Calhoun introduced the bill to set apart funds for "internal improvements," spending money on roads, canals, or what today would be commonly referred to as infrastructure. The bill had set apart and pledged federal funds "for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive...

An Aug. 4 agreement among federal agencies to provide environmental justice to communities overburdened by pollution is merely another attempt to over-regulate and control the free-market, opponents say. According to a press release, the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder were joined by other government officials in signing the "Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898" (EJ MOU). President Obama's administration states that "environmental justice" means ...go to this link for the rest of the article (copyright considerations): http://www.legalnewsline.com/spotlight/233592-environmental-justice-agreement-over-regulates-critic-says

Should energy consumers pay extra taxes to fund government-mandated and subsidized renewable energy technologies? "Absolutely yes," says John Bryson, President Obama's nominee for Commerce Secretary. He made the remark at a meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California in 2009 and went on to extol the virtues of hidden rates in California, a state encumbered with some of the nation's highest electricity and unemployment rates. Bryson, retired CEO of the electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE) and its parent company Edison International, excused the practice, saying, "That's been a part of the regulatory environment for the investor-owned utilities for as...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Consumer confidence fell in June to the worst level in eight months on concerns about employment and income, the Conference Board reported Tuesday. The nonprofit organization said its consumer-confidence index fell to 58.5 in June from an upwardly revised 61.7 in May. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected a June reading of 60.5. “Overall, we take this as another sign of the cooler economic conditions that we judge likely to prove transitory, but the data does point to downside risks for a rebound in the labor market in June,” wrote David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities...

Aircraft manufacturing heavyweight Boeing Co. has been caught in a firestorm of controversy, pulled between unions and politicians, for a decision to open a non-union plant in Charleston, SC, a move that landed the company in hot water with the National Labor Relations Board and now has ensnared President Obama's nominee to head the Commerce Department. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, announced Monday that he will oppose the nomination of John Bryson, also a member of Boeing's board of directors since 1995, until the president voices support for the aircraft manufacturer. The senator said he wants Obama to "tell the country...

President Obama’s pick to replace Gary F. Locke as commerce secretary faces an uphill Senate confirmation battle. Even before the White House handed in the name of John Bryson for the job, Senate Republicans had vowed to block any nominee over administration foot-dragging on free-trade agreements. The selection of this particular leftist for a business-outreach post is rallying the opposition. “I find Mr Bryson unacceptable as secretary of commerce for the United States, and I will work in opposition to his conformation,” said Sen. John Barrasso, vice chairman of the Republican Conference, to The Washington Times. Mr. Bryson co-founded the...

A top Senate Republican said on Tuesday he would fight President Barack Obama's choice for commerce secretary, former energy executive John Bryson, whom he called an "environmental extremist." "The president has appointed someone who is going to make it harder and more expensive for the private sector to create jobs," said Senator John Barrasso, a member of the Senate Republican leadership. "Instead of appointing an economic leader, he has appointed an environmental extremist," Barrasso said. He cited Bryson's support for climate change legislation that failed to clear the Senate and his role in the founding of the National Resource Defense...

Does John Bryson, Barack Obama’s nominee for commerce secretary, want a world government? Critics say a newly uncovered video of the nominee suggests that he does. In the video – given to The Daily Caller by sources on Capitol Hill – Bryson refers to the 2009 United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen as “the closest thing we have to a world governance organization,” implying it provided the best model for imposing climate regulations on countries around the globe. Bryson also boasts about his role as an adviser to the U.N. secretary general on climate change in the video.

The wise man smiled and proclaimed that government should use "regulatory steps" as well as market forces to intervene in the power generation sector. The man also told his UC Berkeley audience that government should set higher targets for non-fossil-fuel-based energy production and penalize producers that don't comply. The issuer of these decrees was John Bryson, who at the time just happened to be CEO of Edison International, a company whose fortunes would increase under alternative energy mandates. Bryson now happens to be President Obama's nominee to head the Commerce Department. Just another day in Barack Obama's crony capitalist paradise....

John Bryson, the chairman, president and CEO of BrightSource Inc., is President Barack Obama’s pick to head the U.S. Department of Commerce. Despite White House efforts to portray Bryson as an innovative, creative business executive, he is actually, as The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney made clear in Thursday’s edition, another in the long list of crony capitalists who share the belief that government should pick winners and losers in the economy. Success in their world doesn’t come from profitably providing needed goods and services to consumers at affordable prices. Instead, crony capitalists make it by cultivating the right political connections...