Free Republic

Employees of the City of Chicago are being given the opportunity to voluntarily sign up for a new “wellness” program. Those who don’t sign up will be assessed a $600/year penalty—a protocol remarkably similar to the “tax” levied by the IRS on those who fail to purchase insurance under Obamacare. Mayor Rahm Emanuel praised the program saying “it will change lives. Left on their own, too many people degenerate into massive blobs of flab. It is our job to see that this doesn’t happen.” The program will require employees to go through a physical and mental health assessment, comply with...

From WSJ: After David Hubbard underwent a routine echocardiogram at his cardiologist's office last year, he was surprised to learn that the heart scan cost his insurer $1,605. That was more than four times the $373 it paid when the 61-year-old optometrist from Reno, Nev., had the same procedure at the same office just six months earlier. "Nothing had changed, it was the same equipment, the same room," said Dr. Hubbard, who has a high-deductible health plan and had to pay about $1,000 of the larger bill out of his own pocket. "I was very upset." _____________________ Why? Because the...

Embattled GOP senatorial candidate Todd Akin received some words of encouragement from his opponent, sitting Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo). “I know a lot of people have been urging him to bow out,” McCaskill observed. “But really, why should he? Look, he’s obviously confused about biology. As the President said, he must have missed science class. But there are worse things to be confused about.” “A worse thing to be confused about is ethics,” McCaskill went on. “President Obama, for example, opposes giving aid to aborted babies that survive the procedure. I mean, once the child is outside the mother how...

This post requires an understanding of r/K Selection Theory in Evolutionary Biology, and it's relation to our political ideologies. For a quick rundown of this, please see our main page here. In a previous post we posited that homosexuality may be an extreme form of the reversal in sex specific behaviors which is seen in r-selected populations, where females become more “masculine,” so as to better protect and provision the young they raise alone, while males become more effete, so as to avoid the conflict which is dangerous and disadvantageous under conditions of r-selection. In that post, we examined the...

Those arguing over the constitutionality of Obamacare have consistently ignored the fact that Obamacare conflicts with the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade. The Court's decision to uphold Obamacare may provide statements that could be used to justify regulating and possibly even prohibiting abortion. The Court wouldn't need to refer to Roe v. Wade to in effect overturn it. The justices could inadvertently overturn Roe v. Wade by making statements that conflict with it. Attorneys could use such conflicts to argue that Roe v. Wade is no longer consistent with the Court's interpretation of the Constitution. I'm going to...

The Department of Justice, responding to an Executive Order issued by President Obama, issued a memo to all sections encouraging them to hire more persons with “targeted disabilities.” Among the disabilities targeted are people with “severe intellectual disability,” “psychiatric disability” and other “current severe physical, intellectual or mental conditions.” Attorney General Eric Holder defended the Order saying that “the President doesn't just talk the talk, he also walks the walk. From his selection of Joe Biden to be his running mate President Obama has taken a strong stand on behalf of the rights of the mentally disabled. It is his...

Planned Parent is an odd duck. On the one hand, it claims to be a stalwart defender of the dignity of women. On the other hand, this is what Planned Parenthood is billing to attendees of the Democratic National Convention as its “signature party” — with main speaker Cecile Richards:“Sex, Politics and Cocktails.” My, doesn’t that just scream respect for women?I’ve been comparing and contrasting the various things happening at both political conventions this year. From Cardinal Dolan giving the closing benediction at the GOP convention to abortion and gay marriage being the centerpieces of the DNC convention. Consider this...

Those promoting the "Keep Home Care Safe" ballot proposal want people to believe the constitution changing plan would create a benefit to allow disabled people to be taken care of in their homes. The thing is, that protection and a program to ensure it continues already exists. The federal Home Help Program would continue to exist in Michigan regardless of the constitutional amendment change that's being proposed. However, passing the proposed amendment in November would lock the forced unionization of home health care workers into the state constitution and ensure that the Service Employees International Union continues to get about...

The U.S Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans has ruled that Texas CAN enforce a new law that cuts off Taxpayer Funding of Planned Parenthood, and abortion provider. This has been a roller coaster ride for Texas. Soon after Texas passed the new law last year, Planned Parenthood sued. President Obama also responded by threatening to terminate funding for women's health services in Texas in response to Texas refusing to fund Abortion Providers like Planned Parenthood as part of the Texas Women's Health Service Program.  A liberal activist judge ruled that Texas cannot enforce the new law....

Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin thinks that, as a scientific matter, Jenni Maas shouldn't exist. Mitt Romney thinks that, as a legal matter, Jenni didn't have the same right to exist as the rest of us do. Many others seem to think her mother should be ashamed that Jenni exists at all. Jenni was conceived when her mother was raped by a boyfriend as a teenager. She is a human reminder of an uncomfortable truth denied and minimized by people on all sides of the abortion issue: Rape can result in pregnancy, which means it can create innocent babies. "A...

The funniest thing about the r/K divide within our species is how pervasive it is. Everywhere I look, I see aspects of it manifesting in our culture, our behavior, our history, and even our future. Here is a free abstract from an interesting study examining the “balancing selection hypothesis” of homosexuality. Let me rephrase this, so it makes more sense. There may be a gene which produces women who are more fertile, have more offspring, and want to deal with children less. At the same time it makes men more feminine (and more promiscuous, since that correlates with homosexuality). (There...

As predicted here, the Romney campaign has not only pulled-ahead nationally following the selection of Paul Ryan as his running-mate, but has now leaped to a double-digit lead in Florida (54-40%) according to Foster-McCollum-White, a Michigan-based pollster- the margin for error is 2.53%. Although highly reliable Rasmussen has Romney up by only two in this week's Florida poll of likely voters, the FMW's astonishing numbers may suggest a trend of some magnitude has already begun. Earlier polling had found that the numerous senior-citizens of the Sunshine State were -regardless of 'progressive' drivel to the contrary- far more terrified of Obamacare...

Hi, Well I guess here we go again. Luckily, I drove my sister down last week to her beach house and we got to have some time talking alone (for a big change). She got very tired alot - had just finished her radiation for the cancer on her brain, so we figured it made her tired. (BTW, just as she was finishing radiation, she had to euthanize her German Shepherd. It's been that kind of month - there's even more to it than that, but suffice for now.) So today my mother calls me to say they took Barb...

Image:Medicare and Medicaid GDP Chart. What happens if we don’t end Medicare as we know it?The following is copied and pasted here from the 2012 Medicare Trustees Report. Keep in mind that the Trustees include the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Commissioner of Social Security. Take the time to read this carefully. I have placed in bold several statements that are of special interest. Do you think Medicare can or should continue as we know it?From the Trustees Report: The financial outlook for Medicare is also uncertain because some...

Joe Biden's gaffes are famous, not just for the self-inflicted foot swallowing that he is most known for, but also for the liberal media's obvious ignorance and non reporting of those said numerous gaffes. Its just the same as when Franklin Delano Roosevelt's crippling polio paralysis was hidden from the American public - as FDR's staff members would prop him up into a standing position - just to show how able-bodied he was. It was all a charade aided and abetted by the press, which had just as many communist sympathizers then as they do today. But Senator Biden's problem...

Code Pink members attend We Are Woman rally in vagina costumes Mainstream media outlets struggling to find a tasteful way to cover the “Pussy Riot” protests in Russia have another challenge on their hands, this one much closer to home. Representatives of Code Pink (as identified by the poster of the image) attended today’s “We Are Woman” rally dressed as vaginas. This clearer photo identifies at least two of the vaginas as representatives of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Feminist Campus project. The costumes did garner attention, if not necessarily respect.

Last month, Jeff Sadighi and the Southeast Texas Tea Party organized a Health Care Town Hall. Little did they know that their Obamacare Forum would lead to national attention. This Texas Healthcare Forum made big waves after a local Papa John's owner, Ms. Judy Nichols, spoke at the forum and told the audience that Obamacare might force her to stop expanding, and even fire employees. This is all thanks to the fact that she will not be able to afford the increased expenses that Obamacare would force upon her business by having over 50 employees. The youtube video of this statement by Ms....

Mitt Romney has chosen as his running mate U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the author of an ill-conceived budget plan that he ambitiously named "The Path to Prosperity." In fact, Ryan's budget plan aims to put more money in taxpayers' pockets through massive cuts to many programs that have a direct impact on the quality of life in the United States. There is more to "prosperity" than money in our pockets. Financial prosperity does no one any good if there is not concomitant happiness or, at least, contentment. The ability to lead a happy and satisfying life is the best measure...

It has been coming for some time, but the top voices in bioethics–by which I mean those who inhabit the top floors of the ivory tower–are almost all blatant eugenicists.  That sure is from whence the first eugenics came from–and the pattern is repeating itself.  First, anti human exceptionalism cultural poison spouted from the top universities.  Then, money from rich private foundations to fuel the advocacy: Philanthropists fueled the first eugenics, just as the secretive Ira W. DeCamp Foundation paid to bring Peter Singer to his academic chair at Princeton. And then, move the cancer from the academic press and symposia into the popular culture. Everything...

President Barack Obama's youngest Kenyan half-brother George had to beg for help from conservative author Dinesh D’Souza because his famous brother refused him aid. Moved by the man's plight, D’Souza paid $1,000 to cover the medical bills for the man's son. The President's seeming callousness toward his own relative was defended by Press Secretary Jay Carney as “a matter of principle. Anyone who knows the President knows him as a man of infinite sympathy for the downtrodden of the world. Yes, he could easily have afforded the $1,000. But paying out of his own pocket would've undermined his belief that...