Free Republic

The federal government is looking to pay someone as much as $111,000 a year to do outreach and social media work. In Uganda.Where 12 percent of the population uses the Internet occasionally or owns a smartphone. The job posting is just one example of how social media's rise in popularity is being accompanied by a rise in federal spending on it. Uncle Sam is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to pay for social media-related services and to fund grants for research into the habits of the Twittersphere and other online worlds. Exactly how much the federal government...

Some news to report out of Las Vegas where Donald Trump sat down with Field & Stream magazine for an interview during the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s annual SHOT Show. First up, the GOP front-runner came out against letting states control public lands now run by the federal government saying, “I don’t like the idea because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do."

Loretta Lynch's DOJ looks to further federal control of elections in ways that benefit the Democrats. The Obama Justice Department has quietly launched an effort to erode traditional state powers over elections. In the first instance, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has drafted and sent a bill to Congress which would force state election officials to turn over power to tribal governments to determine the location and number of polling places on Indian reservations in state-run elections. In the second instance, the DOJ is seeking to erode the power of states to prohibit the mentally incompetent from voting, as long as...

(Update: Adding more on opposition to Core, where Duncan spoke) U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” Yes, he really said that. But he has said similar things before. What, exactly, is he talking about? In his cheerleading for the controversial Common Core...

"......Feeding South Florida is just one of 202 food banks in the country hit hard by the Washington, D.C., stalemate. With 47 employees, it’s the largest of nine in Florida, responsible for 30 percent of statewide distribution. The agency distributes 35 million pounds of food a year from its 70,000-square-foot warehouse, everything from bananas and pears, to turkeys and hams, to soups and nuts, even baby formula. The USDA funding accounts for more than one-third of Feeding South Florida’s supply chain. On Thursday, its six open loading bays were filled with volunteers heaving food into U-Hauls and other trucks. The...

Barack Obama appointed Tuesday to help lead the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, Robert F. Bauer, said during the 2012 election that voter ID laws are a Republican tactic to suppress lawful votes. During the 2012 election, the Obama team tapped Bauer to lead the legal teams for the campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Among his initiatives: fighting voter ID laws enacted by a number of states in an effort to combat voter fraud. During his time as the team’s organizer, Bauer told the Associated Press that he believes that the GOP is enlisting these new laws to impede...

MADISON –Nearly three years after state Superintendent Tony Evers signed off on implementing the Common Core State Standards, the Assembly and Senate committees on education got around to holding a public hearing to get the facts on the changes in Wisconsin classrooms. The room was packed Wednesday, mostly made up of ‘stop Common Core’ advocates with signs and red T-shirts. There was no mixing up these Common Core opponents with the suit-wearing government bureaucrats and experts asked to testify. Some attendees were shipped down the hall to an overflow room to watch the hearing. The showing at the Capitol could...

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves. The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land. Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.” “Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read,...

July 18, 2011: "With the signature of Gov. Rick Perry today, Texas has joined three other states stating their intention to enter into a health care compact. The compact, which would challenge the authority of the federal government to dictate the terms of the federally and state funded Medicaid program, was part of a wide-ranging health care reform bill, Senate Bill 7, passed by the Texas Legislature in its recently concluded special session. Georgia, Oklahoma and Missouri have already signed onto the compacts movement, with Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signing a bill into law on Thursday. The law establishes Texas,...

Just two weeks after a bipartisan federal budget deal ended an eight-month impasse over $830 million in federal education funding, the U.S. Department of Education today agreed to send Texas the money that previously had been in dispute. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan quietly made the announcement late on Good Friday. But Texas Republicans immediately declared victory in a two-front political war that had been waged for many months. ....[Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville]..said he received word of the aid reversal during a conversation with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who had condemned the attempt by Texas congressional Democrats to attach strings to...

Bush Flying Blind on Armed Pilots IssueDr. Michael S. BrownJuly 17, 2002 President George W. Bush must be preoccupied with overseas strategy, because he has allowed his administration to take a politically disastrous position against the arming of airline pilots. Polls show strong support from both pilots and the public for allowing guns in the cockpit. Last Wednesday the House of Representatives bowed to public opinion and their own instincts by passing, 310 to 113, an ambitious plan to arm any pilot who volunteers for training. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., explained that many members of Congress fly every week and...