Free Republic

Social Security was created in 1935 in order to provide a safety net to Americans without the ability to earn income. Over the past decades, the program has proliferated to the point of insolvency. In particular, Social Security’s Disability Insurance (DI) component has grown out of control and threatens the nation’s finances as well as the fundamental principle that citizens should not be reliant on government. Like many government programs, DI grew rapidly in the years preceding the Reagan presidency. While benefits were collected by less than 800,000 individuals in 1960, 5.22 million people participated in the program in the...

While taxpayers celebrated the Cost of Government Day, Nanny state regulators continued to add to the burden of government over the past two weeks, banning everything from baby formula in hospitals to feeding homeless people in public. On the federal level, 2,695 pages were added to the federal register along with 165 new rules regulating everything from this year’s cherry harvest to hearing aid compatible cell phones. Happy Cost of Government Day! Last Thursday, the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and the Cost of Government Center released their annual Cost of Government Day report, which calculates the day of the...

John Solomon, writing in the Washington Guardian, is reporting today that B. Todd Jones, the Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), released a video last week to all employees. In the video, Jones warns that there would be “consequences” for any employees who report wrongdoing outside their chain of command. Jones was a federal prosecutor when Attorney General Eric Holder asked him to lead the embattled agency after the Fast and Furious scandal. He is supposed to improve morale and instill a new culture in the aftermath of that scandal. Jones' precise words are:...

But the Senate will never ratify, you say? Guess what, they don't need to... Speaking on Fox and Friends this morning, Dick Morris explained that when the US signs such an international treaty, the nation is bound until the Senate rejects it or the President renounces it. In just nine days from now, the terms of this treaty will be finalized. Morris went on to say that this heinous agreement -which would in-affect repeal the the Second Amendment and deny us all of the divine right to self-defense- will likely be signed by Obama... then Harry Reid will simply...

A respected German economics institute has suggested that wealthy people be hit with a capital tax, some of which they could get back with interest. Such a move could raise around €230 billion, it said. The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) suggested that those with a substantial private fortune be forced to hand over 10 percent of what they have over €250,000. This would hit the richest eight percent of the population and would not lead to the feared reduction of consumer demand, it said. The tactic could be adopted to raise money in crisis-hit countries across Europe, the...

[Last week], the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology dragged all five FCC commissioners up to Capitol Hill to oversee the agency on a wide range of issues. As to be expected, there were some notable takeaways on regulation, taxes, spectrum, and more. First, Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) managed to get FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to commit to maintaining a “light touch” approach and not enact new regulations on fiber networks, including price controls. The FCC adopted the policy back in late 2003, noting that such requirements “tend to undermine the incentives of both incumbent LECs and...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Who does Obama think paid the taxes for the roads and the bridges and the stoplights? Who paid for this? Who paid for all of that? People that don't have anything? People who pay taxes paid for all this stuff! Folks, it's a shame that we have to sit here and react to this kind of sophistry and explain to people how this country was built and who did it and why it happened and how it happened. Because we live in a period of time where the president of the United States is trying to rewrite...

The Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association and the National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence plan to meet with Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidates on Monday and Tuesday to discuss potential federal legislation that would require buyers in private gun sales to undergo a background check.

Every year, the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and the Cost of Government Center calculate the Cost of Government Day. This is the day on which the average American has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government at the federal, state, and local levels. In 2012, Cost of Government Day falls on July 15. Working people must toil 197 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government. 2012 marks the fourth consecutive year COGD has fallen in July. From a different perspective,...

A Phoenix man who violated city zoning laws by hosting a Bible study in the privacy of his home has started serving a 60-day jail sentence for his crimes. Michael Salman was found guilty in the City of Phoenix Court of 67 code violations. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail along with three years of probation and a $12,180 fine. A spokesperson for the city attorney confirmed that Salman reported to a county jail Monday afternoon. Members of Salman’s Bible study group posted video of their teacher as he self-reported to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. It was...

CANYON LAKE [CALIFORNIA} (CBS) — A city in Riverside County will consider a plan to force all pet owners to spay and neuter their pets. KCAL9′s Jeff Nguyen reports not everyone in the guarded and gated city of Canyon Lake located just east of Lake Elsinore likes the proposal. Marlene Marich’s dog Skylar is fixed and has a microchip, but she doesn’t like the idea that the Canyon Lake city council is considering a plan to make the spaying, neutering and microchipping of cats and dogs mandatory. “That’s going too far, asking them to do that,” said dog owner Marlene...

Second Amendment: The United Nations is putting the finishing touches on an Arms Trade Treaty that transcends borders and may even trample our Constitutional right to bear arms. Every indication is that the president will sign it. Like the New Start and Law of the Sea treaties before it, as well as the Kyoto Protocol and Agenda 21, the Arms Trade Treaty being finalized at the U.N. this month is one of those feel-good, can't-we-all-get-along pieces of parchment whose net effect is to accomplish little except to eat away at American sovereignty and freedom. Just as the world's worst human...

This devastating photo tells the tragic story of a family dog, shot dead by a police officer as he pursued a robbery suspect on Sunday. Monkey got caught up in the chaos of a foot pursuit along Hodges Street in Lake Charles, Louisiana as officers chased teens believed to have beaten a man in a mall parking lot before stealing his car which they then abandoned. The dog was in a back yard on the street when she heard the commotion and ran out through an open gate.

President Obama is obviously panicked. Last month Obama and his supporters spent a lot more than Mitt Romney, but even with that cash advantage and the media on their side, the polls haven't budged. Moreover, the President and his campaign have been running around frantically trying to find something that will stick to Romney, be it provable lies about his outsourcing and outright smears involving offshore accounts. Still, Obama can't get above 47% and Romney hasn't even started campaigning in earnest or spending the $160 million he has on hand. Today, in yet another desperate attempt to win a news...

With the Supreme Court giving President Obama’s new health care law a green light, federal and state officials are turning to implementation of the law — a lengthy and massive undertaking still in its early stages, but already costing money and expanding the government. The Health and Human Services Department “was given a billion dollars implementation money,” Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana said. “That money is gone already on additional bureaucrats and IT programs, computerization for the implementation.” “Oh boy,” Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute said. “HHS has a huge amount of work to do and the states...

While the nation celebrated the Fourth of July, Nanny State regulators continued their efforts to erode personal liberties, cracking down on hugging or sunscreen use in schools while banning flags on graves. At the federal level, 1,102 pages of new rules and notices were added to the federal register along with 71 final rules regulating everything from the local avocado market in South Florida to the type of fishing equipment used off the coast of Alaska. Fourth of July Banned After Sea Birds File Noise Complaint: If it weren’t enough that government taxes drive up the cost of celebrating the...

The House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved a resolution that urges President Obama to resist any international attempts to regulate the Internet. The United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will meet in Dubai this December and initiatives that will put the Internet under greater government control are expected to be up for vote. The committee-approved resolution, introduced by Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), is intended to show the international community that the United States is united behind an open and innovative Internet, free from government control. But the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), the ITU meeting that will...

PHOENIX -- Voters could get the right to overrule federal laws and mandates under the terms of an initiative filed late Thursday. The Arizona Constitution already says the federal Constitution "is the supreme law of the land." This measure, if approved in November, it would add language saying that federal document may not be violated by any government -- including the federal government. More to the point, it would allow Arizonans "to reject any federal action that they determine violates the United States Constitution." That could occur through a vote of the state House and Senate with consent of the...

I came of age when the word “drive-by” entered the American lexicon. By high school graduation, I lost one cousin to gun violence and another was incarcerated for a gun crime. I know many harmed by guns and even more who feared the possibility. I always wonder if, but for the Second Amendment, there would be a more radical commitment to compromise and peacefully working through easy and difficult issues. In writing the Second Amendment, the Framers didn't envision the kind of gun toting that is permitted across this country today.... I am not naïve enough to believe that doing...

A local libertarian think tank’s recent email blast to 12,000 teachers encouraging them to drop their union membership has further inflamed tense relations between the Clark County School District and the local teachers union.

Led by feckless chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the ObamaCare law by a 5-to-4 decision, with Roberts voting with liberals Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan. While the decision means many harmful things for the American public, the Second Amendment community remains greatly affected, as the law requires Americans’ medical information to be culled and entered into a national database. Centralizing these medical records will allow the FBI to troll a list of Americans for ailments such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to deny them their gun rights, in the same way that the Veterans...

The Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling on Thursday cuts right to the very fabric of the relationship between a once-limited government and a once-free citizen, but the eternal struggle between liberty and tyranny endures. It is a beginning, not an end. As enormously important as the high court’s Obamacare ruling is - and it’s huge - it’s not the final word. The legal and political dust has not yet settled, and it will take some time for the unpredictable ripples to form the powerful waves of history. Yet, history waits for no man, so we begin by asking: What now? First,...

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Why didn't Congress call it a tax, then? SG VERRILLI: Well - CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: You're telling me they thought of it as a tax, they defended it on the tax power. Why didn't they say it was a tax? SG VERRILLI: They might have thought, Your Honor, that calling it a penalty as they did would make it more effective in accomplishing its objective. But it is — in the Internal Revenue Code it is collected by the IRS on April 15th. I don't think this is a situation in which you can say - CHIEF...

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the individual insurance requirement at the heart of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday upheld the first-ever U.S. proposed rules governing heat-trapping greenhouse gases, clearing a path for sweeping regulations affecting vehicles, coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities. Handing a setback to industry and a victory to the Obama administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that carbon dioxide is a public danger and the decision to set limits for emissions from cars and light trucks were "neither arbitrary nor capricious." The ruling, which addresses four separate lawsuits, upholds the underpinnings of the...

Current Law & Expiration The current income tax rate structure was put in place by Title I of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA). EGTRRA is scheduled to sunset on January 1, 2013. The rate structure will then revert to its much higher, pre-2001 levels. Taxable Income 2012 Marginal Tax Rate 2013 Marginal Tax Rate Up to $8,700 for single filers Up to $17,400 for joint filers 10% 15% Between $8,700 and $35,350 for single filers Between $17,500 and $70,700 for joint filers 15% 15% Between $35,350 and $85,650 for single filers Between $70,700 and...

To the disappointment of those who wanted to see reform and fiscal responsibility prevail, Debbie Stabenow’s (D-Mich.) farm bill passed in the Senate on Thursday with a vote of 64-35. The proposed bill fails to reform certain programs like sugar, makes other wasteful programs like dairy even worse, and creates a whole new entitlement program for farmers, while spending 60 percent more than the last farm bill and only cutting a paltry $23 billion from the deficit over the next ten years. This farm bill will leave a wide path of destruction behind it: consumer prices will increase, costly entitlement...

Recently, oil industry insiders have stated that gas prices throughout the country are going to drop as low as $2.50 a gallon due to a drop in demand and high supply. Surely this is good news for drivers in the short run, but if the federal government continues to block domestic production, we will see prices continue on an upward trend. What makes these price increases worse is that a significant portion of what people pay for gas is taxes. The federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents per gallon and the average state gas tax is 26 cents per gallon....

John R. Lott Jr. and Grover G. Norquist are the authors of Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future. Lott, a former colleague of the president’s at the University of Chicago Law School, answers some questions about the depth of the debacle and the way out from National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: John, you say that when you were a faculty colleague of Barack Obama, he tagged you as “the gun guy” and announced that “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.” That...

The Las Vegas City Council today approved an agreement to start housing jail inmates from North Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Detention Center. Tim Hacker, city manager for North Las Vegas, said the change will help his city save about $11.5 million this year and about $16 million annually in future years. Financially strapped North Las Vegas is facing a $33 million budget shortfall.

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales. PICTURES: ATF "Gunwalking" scandal timeline In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder...

With the House committee voting Wednesday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, the stalemate between the Obama administration and Congress ultimately boils down to about 1,300 documents. Congress wants to know who prepared a February 4, 2011 letter where the Obama administration claimed that the U.S. did not knowingly help smuggle guns to Mexico (so-called “gun walking”), including the gun used to kill US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The Obama administration admits the letter was in error, but they have always maintained that the knowledge of these tactics did not reach the top political appointees in the...

A woman from Tulsa, Oklahoma is suing the city’s code enforcement teams after they illegally cut down her entire survival garden. Denise Morrison, who started the garden after becoming unemployed, had over 100 medicinal and edible plants in her front and back yard. She told local Tulsa reporters that she started her garden, after becoming unemployed, as a way to feed herself and treat a variety of medical issues. Instead of relying on government handouts, this woman took matters into her own hands and decided to become self sufficient. She filled her yard with things like, fruit trees, berries, nut...

In this week’s Nanny State Update, not even the most trivial matters are too mundane to escape the attention of lawmakers, from sofas on citizens’ private porches to the songs played at your local kindergarten graduation ceremony. At the national level, 1,934 pages of regulations and notices were added to the federal register as 84 new rules went into effect last week covering everything from rural electricity to the interstate travel of captive elk. Porch Sofa Fines Threaten Southern Comfort Living: One common southern tradition may no longer be acceptable in Durham, North Carolina where the city council just outlawed...

Covering all the bases ahead of a momentous Supreme Court ruling, the Obama administration plans to move ahead with major parts of the president's health care law if its most controversial provision does not survive, according to veteran Democrats closely involved with the legislation.

Army First Lt. Augustine Kim’s finally got the Washington Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to return his guns after two years -- only to find them permanently damaged. The department violated its own regulations on handling firearms in evidence by engraving marks on the sides of the guns, and the city should reimburse the soldier for the loss. The Afghanistan war veteran was wrongly arrested while lawfully transporting his firearms from New Jersey to his home in South Carolina. All charges were later dismissed, but the city refused to respond to repeated requests from the national guardsman to return the $10,000...

An Illinois gun range has been cited for “27 serious violations includ[ing] 13 for violating the lead standard” resulting in proposed fines of $111,000, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced in a news release earlier this week. Illinois Gun Works Ltd. was cited for “failing to implement engineering and work practice controls” following “a Jan. 21 inspection referred by the Illinois Department of Public Health.” The citation, issued on June 6, also included what OSHA defines as “serious violations” that “include failing to implement a hazard communication program, train workers on hazardous …label chemical bottles…administer an effective hearing conservation...

Faced with falling support among blacks, Jews, women and every other group of supporters President Obama is making a play to boost his popularity among Latinos by doing an end run around Congress again. Unable to pass the Dream Act for the past two years, Obama has ordered his Department of Homeland Security to halt deportations of 800,000 young illegal immigrants who overstayed their visas or snuck into the country when they were 16 or younger. In the next 60 days, Homeland harridan Janet Napolitano announced, DHS will begin handing out two-year renewable work permits to illegal youths who haven’t...

US Department of Labor's OSHA cites Illinois Gun Works for exposing workers to lead, other hazards at Elmwood Park, Ill., plant ELMWOOD PARK, Ill. – The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited Illinois Gun Works Ltd. for 28 alleged health violations following a Jan. 21 inspection referred by the Illinois Department of Public Health that found two gun range operators were exposed to airborne lead levels up to 12 times the permissible level. Proposed fines total $111,000. "Illinois Gun Works has a responsibility to protect the health of its employees by ensuring that they operate...

June 15, 2012 Are We in Revolutionary Times? Victor Davis Hanson Legally, President Obama has reiterated the principle that he can pick and choose which U.S. laws he wishes to enforce (see his decision to reverse the order of the Chrysler creditors, his decision not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, and his administration’s contempt for national-security confidentiality and Senate and House subpoenas to the attorney general). If one individual can decide to exempt nearly a million residents from the law — when he most certainly could not get the law amended or repealed through proper legislative or judicial...

Today, the Senate has two hearings scheduled on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The Senate will have had three hearings on the LOST after today—yet, not for the purposes of educating Senators on the flaws versus the benefits of the treaty. These hearings are a pretext for a lame duck strategy to railroad the treaty through the Senate after the November election.The first hearing today is titled “Perspectives from the U.S. Military.” Witnesses include Admiral James A. Winnefeld, Jr, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and representatives from other government stakeholders in navigation on the high...

Among the many strange creatures found in the Australian outback is one called the Frilled-Necked Lizard. He has this umbrella-like structure around his neck which, when threatened, he splays out in an effort to look larger to his adversaries. To complete the effect, his skin grows darker in color; he opens his mouth widely and emits a loud hissing sound while rocking back and forth on his hind legs. It’s quite a sight, and it does make him appear somewhat menacing. The problem is, it’s all for show. If a potential foe makes even a faint move toward him, this...

In Constitutional Government(1908), Woodrow Wilson wrote the following:(pages 169-170) When the Constitution was framed there were no railways, there was no telegraph, there was no telephone. The Supreme Court has read the power of Congress to establish post-offices and post-roads and to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states to mean that it has jurisdiction over practically ever matter connected with intercourse between the states. Railways are highways; telegraph and telephone lines are new forms of the post. The Constitution was not meant to hold the government back to the time of horses and wagons, the time...

As a follow-up to yesterday's GRE: Yesterday was a great day for the family. The attorneys' for the defense of the kids did a GREAT JOB. Out of three motions they only got through (1) which was conspiracy against the government, straw purchasers, money laundering, smuggling etc. The judge was very attentive and very detail- oriented of all the issues brought forward by the government. The attorneys were able to bring up how the government agents lied on federal forms to try to get the kids to make a mistake so the feds could trap them. The judge could see...

The normally-reserved Yves Smith asks whether Obama should be impeached over it. Democratic Senator Wyden – the head of the committee which is supposed to oversee it – is so furious about the lack of access that he has introduced legislation to force disclosure. Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is so upset by it that he has leaked a document on his website to show what’s going on. What is everyone so furious about? An international treaty being negotiated in secret which would not only crack down on Internet privacy much more than SOPA or ACTA, but would...

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday argued against ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty, calling the royalties that U.S. companies would have to pay under the pact “a new idea of enormous consequence.” Under the treaty, industrialized countries would pay royalties to lesser developed nations for profits made while exploiting unclaimed energy resources, Mr. Rumsfeld told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. He said this type of wealth redistribution is a “novelty with no clear limits” that also could be applied to space resources in the future.

While Army 1st Sgt. Matthew Corrigan slept inside his Northwest Washington home, Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) response teams were gathering outside. Dozens of SWAT and explosive-ordnance-disposal officers spent hours preparing a full-scale invasion of the residence in the middle of the snowstorm of the century. It was not an operation to protect the public from a terrorist or to stop a crime in progress. It was to rouse a sleeping man over a secondhand report that he might have an unregistered gun. It all started a bit before midnight on Feb. 2, 2010. Sgt. Corrigan had called the National Veterans...

As another hearing is scheduled for this Thursday at 10:00am on the Senate floor and we get closer to a June vote on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), I would like to call out attention on the remaining 20 Republican Senators that have not yet signed the letter to Sen. Reid which would block the passage of this bill. Yes I wrote about this few weeks ago in hopes that RedStaters would help prod their Senators into getting on board to stop this UN agenda. There has been some success since my last diary, probably due to your...

I know what you’re thinking: what does a piece of legislation guiding American agriculture programs have to do with broadband access? And you’re right to be asking that question since the answer should be: nothing. As we’ve frequently written, the USDA has long run a program to hand out taxpayer-subsidized loans to rural broadband companies. This time, however, some lawmakers are finally questioning the program’s value. Little positive can be said about USDA’s Rural Utilities Service broadband loans. With a budget that hovers around $800 million, the program has a long history of waste, fraud, and abuse. The USDA’s Inspector...

Yesterday I posted about how Alan Dershowitz alleged that Zimmerman prosecutor Angela Corey called up Harvard Law School complaining about Dershowitz and treatening to sue for libel based on Dershowitz’s criticisms of her handling of the case. The whole incident seemed strange, and reflected conduct that should be off limits for any prosecutor and certainly for a senior prosecutor on a high profile case. It appears, however, that the Dershowitz incident was no isolated incident. According to Ron Littlepage, a columnist for the (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, Corey has done this several times before: "Last December when I wrote a column...