Free Republic

This administration’s proposal asks Congress to codify the new rights, which include granting the federal government more police power. The Federal Trade Commission would be empowered with “direct enforcement authority” to ensure consumer data privacy, according to the strategy. Overall, the Obama proposal includes seven principles to protect consumer privacy online, White House aides told reporters last week in a telephone briefing. The proposed rules would also include an “enforceable code of conduct” that Internet companies would have to comply with, or face litigation or civil penalties, under the expanded FTC power. That agency’s power is currently more limited. “A...

Flurry of Anti-gun Bills Saturates the Illinois Legislature -- But one bill would repeal the FOID card! As you are probably aware, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pressing for increased gun controls in Springfield. According to press reports in the state, “Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently called for a mandatory gun registration with a $65 fee [which] would pay for improving a background-checking system that has failed to process 100,000 mental health records.” Of course, including mental health records in the background check means that more military veterans who are suffering from PTSD will be denied their firearms rights. This...

http://www.mittvmitt.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K9njHHyRI7g (half a million hits and climbing)

Critics of conservative host Rush Limbaugh are making a push to get him taken off Armed Forces Radio. A petition on the White House's website requests that Limbaugh's show no longer be aired on the armed forces network, which reaches U.S. troops overseas. As of 7:30 tonight, more than 10,500 people had signed the petition, which was posted to the site Sunday. Limbaugh last week attacked Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke after she testified before Congress in favor of a requirement backed by the Obama administration to require health insurance companies to provide contraception coverage. Limbaugh has since apologized.

Fr. John Hollowell’s truly amazing monologue needs to be spread far and wide. It’s a wake up call, and one of the most encouraging statements I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a Divine battle cry! The talk heats up after minute 2 where he notes in this talk addressed to Planned Parenthood Pres. Cecile Richards that “we have not doubt” that in the future Planned Parenthood will be seen as the “slave traders, the Nazis, the Communists and all those groups that seek to oppress people.” He then warns PP and President Obama: “You better knock us out now....

At a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sebelius confirmed the fears of many pro-life advocates who worry that the recent HHS mandate requiring all insurance plans to cover contraception and sterilization, regardless of an employer’s moral objection, is just the beginning.The same statutory authority of the Administration to mandate contraception could just as easily mandate abortion on demand. The Administration believes in essence that employers are not really paying for contraceptives or abortion since they would be cheaper than providing for prenatal care, childbirth or child care.In an exchange with pro-life Congressman Tim...

LOS ANGELES -- Public employees in several California counties are fattening up their pensions by engaging in "salary spiking" - adding vacation time, educational incentives, car allowances and bonuses to their final retirement salaries, according to an investigation. Partial data from Ventura and Kern counties shows that the practice is draining public pension systems already underfunded by millions of dollars, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday ( http://lat.ms/zFvWyB). CalPers, the state's largest public employee retirement system, banned spiking in 1993 to help control costs. But 20 of California's 58 counties - including Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Kern and San Diego...

Since county officials began questioning firefighters’ use of sick leave two years ago, sick-leave requests in the Clark County Fire Department have fallen by 57,000 hours. A county report obtained in response to a Sun request found that within those 57,000 hours, battalion chiefs’ sick leave fell from an average of 164 hours a year two years ago to about 16 hours last year, a 90 percent decline. For rank-and-file firefighters, the average hours of sick leave taken fell from 227 hours two years ago to 136 hours last year, a 40 percent drop. The staggering decline has saved Clark...

We get on President Obama’s case for neglecting to keep his campaign promises, so it’s only fair to note when he fulfills them. In January 2008, Obama promised to bankrupt coal-fired power plants with his new environmental regulations. Consider this a promise kept: GenOn Energy Inc. plans to close five of its older coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania over the next four years.The company, based in Houston, said Wednesday that tough new environmental rules make it unprofitable to operate the plants, which generate a total of 3,140 megawatts of electricity. The plants are in Portland, Shawville, Titus, New Castle and...

A number of states have joined with industry organizations to challenge new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency on the grounds that they run contrary to the Clean Air Act. Oral arguments began on February 28 before D.C.’s Court of Appeals.Previous cases have not gone so well. In 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court affirmed the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. And last year, the Court unanimously threw out a lawsuit, American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, that was brought by eight states. In its decision, the court held...

I"m a nurse anesthetist, and I just got a work-related email from my boss. Basically it said "please conserve midazolam, fentanyl, morphine, and hydromorphone.....supplies are CRITICALLY short & the hospital is struggling to maintain supplies". Um, ok. The last time I checked, this was the United States, not Crapistan. How are we "critically short" on all of the major anesthesia drugs that we use??? Am I supposed to offer the patient a bullet to bite? Are there any FReepers out there who have ties to the pharm industry and can explain this? Speaking with others throughout the hospital, I have...

This week, talks for updating the treaty on Internet governance will begin in Geneva. This treaty could result in the granting of numerous new powers over the Internet to the United Nations. The push to finalize the treaty by year’s end comes from a number of countries, including Russia, China, and many Arab states. Their aim to give the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) more power is based on a desire to impose international controls and regulations onto the Net, threatening technological innovation, free speech, and the free flow of information. A number of the proposals for these new powers...

First Amendment: The ex-head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops compares the administration take on freedom of worship to the Soviet Union's and says its contraceptive mandate will force church hospitals to close. On the first Sunday of Lent, Chicago's Francis Cardinal George issued his version of the letter issued by the USCCB he recently led. It shredded assurances by the administration that things could be worked out so that religious freedom would not be impaired and painted a bleak future that just might be the administration's intent. Going a bit further than his peers, Cardinal George essentially rejected...

In yet another slight to rule of law, the Obama Administration has asked a federal court to put a press conference pronouncement above official regulation. Last week, the Department of Justice filed a legal response to one of numerous lawsuits currently challenging the constitutionality of the Obamacare anti-conscience mandate. The Administration submitted its response to the legal complaint of Belmont Abbey College, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, to the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. In what the Becket Fund is calling a “remarkable” stance, the Obama Administration argues that the court should dismiss Belmont...

Unbelievable. Yes, this happened HERE. People who are concerned about the spread of Muslim sharia law into American jurisprudence used to be dismissed as alarmists. That won’t happen again for a while, thanks to a Pennsylvania judge who just dismissed assault charges against a Muslim who was videotaped attacking a man dressed as “Zombie Muhammad” during a Halloween parade. The judge, who is a Muslim, didn’t even care to see the videotape, because the assault was entirely justified under sharia law, so the First Amendment doesn’t apply. In fact, the beaten Zombie Muhammad should just be thankful he wasn’t killed,...

Obama Cabinet Secretary: 'The Private Market is in a Death Spiral' By Fred Lucas February 29, 2012 (CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday that the days of private health insurance are coming to an end in the United States. “The private market is in a death spiral,” Sebelius said, contending this would be the case whether or not President Barack Obama's health care law had been enacted. At the Ways and Means hearing, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) asked Sebelius about the administration’s assurances that people who liked their...

Calling pro-family citizens "rabid," the Maryland Attorney General told a homosexual rally in September that if "the right-wing myopic folks" win a vote to overturn the new "gay marriage" law, then the Governor's newly appointed judges will strike down the current one-man-one-woman marriage law as unconstitutional — "so we will win." That's what Douglas Gansler, Maryland's aggressively pro-homosexual Attorney General, told a rally of homosexual group Equality Maryland back on Sept. 7, 2011. As Gansler has acknowledged, "gay marriage" has been universally rejected across the country, by the will of the people. It's only been instituted by judges or legislatures,...

In 1942, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Supreme Courts ruled that an Ohio farmer named Filburn was NOT permitted to raise the amount of wheat he wished on his own farm, for the purpose of feeding his own family. And for 70 years this and a handful of similar, overreaching decisions by the Court have resulted in the wholesale abuse of a power granted Congress in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, namely the “Commerce Clause.” (1) In the Wickard v Filburn case, the Court opened to Congress the nearly unlimited power to exercise legislative authority relating to...

The Justice Department will defend against any legal challenge to the new Obama administration mandate to force employers to provide abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception, even if it goes against their conscience, Attorney General Eric Holder told a House subcommittee Tuesday. The Department of Health and Human Services rule, part of Obamacare, violates the freedom of conscience for Catholics and other religious groups that expressed their objections to the mandate, opponents say. Already there is litigation asserting that the rule violates the First Amendment’s guarantee to free exercise of religion.

Numerous Tea Party chapters claim IRS attempts to sabotage nonprofit status By Perry Chiaramonte Published February 28, 2012 | FoxNews.com Tea Party chapters around the nation are blasting the Internal Revenue Service after the federal agency sent them letters demanding information about their politics, contributors and even family members. In letters sent from IRS offices in Cincinnati earlier this month, chapters including the Waco (Texas) Tea Party and the Ohio Liberty Council were asked to provide a list of donors, identify volunteers, financial support for and relationships with political candidates and parties, and even printed copies of their Facebook pages....