Free Republic

Incentives: Doubling down on industrial policy failure, the administration decides to bump up the taxpayer subsidy for Government Motors' touted electric car. Who said its range wasn't enough to drive us to the poor house? Tucked away in the recesses of President Obama's 2013 budget, a budget that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he will not bring to the Senate floor, is a nugget that speaks volumes about the troubles we're in: While delaying the Keystone XL pipeline, the administration plans to increase the subsidy for the Chevy Volt and other "new technology" vehicles to $10,000 per car. "We...

Scandal: A drug enforcement agent says other agencies knew in 2009 about the Justice Department's gunrunning operation and even tried to interdict the weapons flow. And, yes, it was a gun-control plot. The notion that Fast and Furious was a localized operation run out of the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives of which few, particularly the arguably clueless Attorney General Eric Holder, were aware continues to be exposed as the lie it is. "In 2009, I became aware that ATF was walking guns," Tony Coulson, who was in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency-Tucson...

Energy: While our president sleeps on the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada’s prime minister is in Beijing signing a series of trade deals to ship additional petroleum to China. Halftime in America? We need a new quarterback. While Clint Eastwood, in that thinly disguised infomercial for President Obama's re-election campaign, was promising that the world would soon hear the roar of our engines, China's economy will soon be revving up with petroleum that should and could be flowing south in a pipeline the Obama administration won't build. Prime Minister Steven Harper is making good on his warning that Canada would seek...

Hoaxes: New research shows that the world's greatest snow-capped peaks have lost no ice in the last decade and that polar ice is melting at a much lower rate than warm-mongers say. The new study was conducted by scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder, published in the journal Nature and based on satellite observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite. GRACE, which was launched as a joint project between NASA and Germany in 2002, orbits the earth at an altitude of 500 kilometers (315 miles), so it sees everything from the highest peaks down to the mouths...

Constitution: The Air Force removes a reference to God from its logo as the Army forbids Catholic chaplains from reading an archbishop's letter to those in uniform. What's next, the crosses at Arlington National Cemetery? 'It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle," read the letter from Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services to the Catholic chaplains in the U.S. military. The letter that the Army's Office of the Chief of Chaplains kept from being read to...

Journalism: When the abortion giant's funding was in jeopardy, the media provided 24/7 coverage with a decidedly liberal slant. When the feds assaulted First Amendment religious freedom, you could hear the crickets chirp. Secular progressive bias in the media was never more evident than in the past few weeks with the difference in coverage of two major news stories — the temporary cutoff of funds from the Susan G. Komen Foundation to Planned Parenthood and the ultimatum from the Obama administration that the Catholic Church and its institutions had a year to find a way to violate their consciences and...

Taxes: The Senate hasn't passed a budget in over a thousand days, yet it has time to consider one member's bill to make the no-growth logic of the administration's favorite billionaire the law of the land. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat from the state ranking among the highest in foreclosures and unemployment, would prefer leaving the ship of state to drift rudderlessly. "We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it's done, we don't need to do it," Reid told reporters Friday. Reid's idea of getting things done is punting to a supercommittee...

Nanny State: The food police who've targeted everything from salt to Happy Meals now set their sights on regulating sugar as a controlled substance to fight obesity. The fat we should fear most, though, is overweight government. The pursuit of happiness, one of those unalienable rights endowed to us by our Creator, is under assault once again by those who spend every waking moment worrying that somebody somewhere is actually enjoying his or her life without government supervision. In an article titled "The Toxic Truth About Sugar," published in the journal Nature, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco...

1st Amendment: Catholic bishops on Sunday issued a response to ObamaCare's mandates on providing contraception in violation of conscience and religious freedom. The message was simple: We will not comply. It was hardly a profile in courage when the Obama administration, hoping to kick the issue down the road past the November election, announced last Friday that Catholic hospitals and other religious institutions will have an extra year to comply with a new requirement that most health plans provide contraceptive benefits at no cost to their members. On Sunday, America's Catholic bishops in an open letter to their parishioners and...

Energy: Small- and medium-size businesses serving Louisiana's energy industry are shedding employees, dipping into personal savings or moving elsewhere to stay afloat. The administration's war on fossil fuels is taking its toll. The federal six-month moratorium on drilling that was issued in May 2010, after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, has been officially lifted, but it might as well still be in effect. The glacial permitting process put in place in the aftermath in the name of public safety is killing an industry pledged to wean us from the "energy of the past" will not mourn. A...

Green Politics: Golden State regulators have passed sweeping emission standards requiring one in seven new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle. What can go wrong? Plenty, for if we've learned anything in recent years, it's that industrial policy and telling consumers what they need and must have vs. what they want and find useful doesn't work. Only the marketplace can accurately pick winners and losers. The government, having no competition, usually picks losers. We have also learned that climate change is an overhyped fantasy based on ideology rather than science. Yet the...

Hypocrisy: As the great investor's secretary sat with the first lady at the State of the Union, the president spoke of economic "fairness." Is it fair to make a supporter wealthier at the expense of the American people? During the 2008 campaign, candidate Barack Obama cited billionaire Warren Buffett as one of his economic muses. In the 2012 State of the Union address Tuesday night, the president returned to his advocacy of the "Buffett rule," a proposed minimum tax on millionaires and billionaires. To highlight his theme of "fairness," there in the first lady's box sat Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek,...

Election 2012: After a stunning South Carolina primary victory, the former speaker of the House rightly defines the battle ahead as one between the America envisioned by our Founding Fathers and the radicalism practiced by our president. Alinsky, the far-left father of modern community organizing, is not a name you'll see falling from the lips of the liberal media elites. Newt Gingrich said during a recent debate he was tired of their defending the failed administration of President Obama. They're more concerned about Gingrich's ex-wives than with the ideological roots of an administration led by a former community organizer steeped...

Big Labor: Indiana unions, opposed to becoming the first right-to-work state in the Rust Belt, may disrupt Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis. Their unnecessary roughness will cost the Hoosiers needed jobs. On Friday, as the Indiana Senate was scheduled to take up legislation supported by Gov. Mitch Daniels to make Indiana the 23rd right-to-work state, Indiana unions considered copying the disruptive and coercive tactics of Occupy Wall Street to disrupt arguably America's premier sporting event, the Super Bowl, to be held in Indianapolis on Feb. 5. As in Wisconsin, where embattled GOP Gov. Scott Walker faces a recall election over...

Election '12: As Mitt Romney's loss in Iowa to Rick Santorum shatters the "historic" mantra, Rick Perry withdraws to endorse the former House speaker. The fat lady has not yet sung. What a difference 24 hours can make in the political arena. One minute Romney looks to be sailing toward the GOP nomination with a third straight win in South Carolina's primary. Now it may only be one of three. We may never really know who won the Iowa caucuses, but we do know that Romney's "historic" wins in both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary deserve an...

Free Speech: In the name of stopping online piracy of copyrighted material, some propose giving the federal government power to shut down websites without due process and control the greatest mode of free speech ever invented. Call them "sons of net neutrality," for while the Software Online Piracy Act (SOPA) working its way through the House of Representatives and its Senate companion, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), are shrouded in seemingly worthy goals, they would grant government power it should not have and arguably pose a threat to our First Amendment rights. Online piracy is a real problem, and the...

Media Bias: A presidential infomercial posing as a news magazine distorts the record to shamelessly shill for a failed administration. Why do we criticize the man who made the high-speed trains run on time? Political campaigns call it free media: when candidates can make their case and communicate their message through interviews and outlets that don't cost a dime. It helps when a mainstream media sycophant like Andrew Sullivan gets to write a puff piece in Newsweek with the subtle title of "Why Are The President's Critics So Dumb?" The Democratic National Committee couldn't have said it better. Calling the...

Politics: The day after the president announces he would reward businesses that bring jobs into the U.S., the Chamber of Commerce asks: What about the pipeline from Canada that would bring both jobs and energy? The irony was mind-boggling when President Obama addressed a group of business leaders at the White House last Wednesday on his plans to reward "insourcing." "There are workers ready to work right now," he told them. "In the next few weeks, I will put forward new tax proposals that reward companies that choose to bring jobs home and invest in America — and eliminate tax...

Politics: The DNC's chairwoman, a champion of Occupy Wall Street, once again associates the tragedy in Tucson with an end to civil discourse caused by the grass-roots Tea Party movement. Has she no shame? There she goes again. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla, head of the Democratic National Committee and the "Debbie Downer" of American politics, has repeated the canard that somehow the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., a year ago at a Tucson event is somehow linked to hatred spawned by the Tea Party. "We need to make sure that we tone things down, particularly in light of...

Campaign 2012: By choosing to head his policy council with an open-borders advocate and former leader of the Hispanic activist group favoring amnesty, the president has signaled a divide-and-conquer re-election campaign . In another move aimed at aiding his re-election, President Obama on Tuesday announced that Cecilia Munoz, a former senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), would replace Melody Barnes as head of his Domestic Policy Council. Hispanics are a key part of the coalition Obama and a key part of his re-election strategy will no doubt be to portray Republicans and others who advocate...

Appeasement: From ObamaCare to recess appointments, honoring the Constitution has not been an administration hallmark. But when it comes to betraying secrets to mollify the Russians, it becomes a document the president hides behind. It was bad enough that the 2012 defense authorization bill signed by President Obama set America on a downward spiral of military mediocrity. He also issued a signing statement, something he once opposed, saying that language in the bill aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on the U.S. Standard Missile-3 — linchpin of our missile defense — might impinge on his constitutional foreign-policy authority. Section 1227...

National Security: Portrayed as just a shuffling of priorities, the president's defense cuts reduce our two-war strategy to maybe one war and cross your fingers. Champagne corks are popping from Beijing to Tehran. Imagine a scenario in the not-too-distant future when an Iranian Shahab missile mated with an unexpectedly ready nuclear warhead is test-fired and detonates somewhere over the Indian Ocean. The next day Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz as China announces a blockade of Taiwan. The administration's defense cuts, or shifts in priorities as President Obama would have us believe, leaves us woefully unprepared for the unexpected in...

Defense: The administration announces a leaner version of our military involving the cutting of tens of thousands of ground troops as a leading defense contractor closes a major plant due to budget cuts. In an unusual appearance at the Pentagon on Thursday, President Obama laid out his plans for a "leaner" military based on the need "to renew our economic strength here at home, which is the foundation of our strength in the world." In other words, failed domestic policies require us to cut our military in a dangerous world. Obama insisted that even after the currently budgeted $460 billion...

Energy Policy: Congress let the corn-based fuel's tax credits expire when it adjourned, but continuing mandates for its use means pump prices will go even higher and the money saved will be spent elsewhere. Subsidies for ethanol expired over the weekend, ironically just days before the Iowa caucuses. In their 33 years of existence, ethanol subsidies, the original poster child for crony capitalism, with an estimated cost of at least $45 billion and an annual price tag in recent years of $6 billion, have been a political sacred cow, letting farm state politicians bring home the bacon in exchange for...

Energy Independence: As our enemy Iran threatens to close a vital waterway for the shipping of oil, plans for a secure, job-creating supply from our ally Canada gather dust on the president's desk. The blustering threat from the quite mad Iranian mullahs and their supremely mad leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may be just a bluff, but then again it might not. It may just be an attempt to intimidate and poke the eye of an American president perceived as weak and whose failure to support and exploit the "Iranian Spring" of 2009 may come back to bite us. These are not...

Suffrage: Fresh from using his race as a defense in the Fast and Furious scandal, the attorney general blocks South Carolina's voter photo ID law as discriminatory. Tell that to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Palmetto State can't seem to catch a break from this administration. First, the right-to-work state gets harassed by the National Labor Relations Board over Boeing's expansion into a new plant. Now the Justice Department has blocked a voter ID law passed in May and signed by Gov. Nikki Haley. Both federal actions, along with a Justice Department investigation into Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have...

Islamofascism: Scores of Christians attending Catholic mass in Nigerian churches were slaughtered in their pews by massive bomb blasts on Christmas Day. While decried as "un-Islamic," a frightening number of Muslims believe the bombings are justified. The year that began with a New Year's attack on an Egyptian Coptic Christian Church that killed 21 worshippers is ending with attacks on two Nigerian churches that killed 35 and injured at least 57. While such attacks are officially condemned, they are part of a campaign of violence and suicide bombings for which 34% of Nigerian respondents in a Pew Global Attitudes Project...

Religious Freedom: As our nation celebrates Christmas, Christians in the nations we shed blood and treasure for to establish democracy face extinction. For Christians in Iraq and Afghanistan, it may be the last Christmas ever. Christianity faces the threat of actual extinction in Iraq and Afghanistan as a consequence of systematic, sustained and sometimes violent persecution, according to the chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. According to USCIRF head Leonard Leo in an interview with CNSNews.com, the Iraqi government has not taken adequate steps to protect Christians or prosecute those who attack them. The precipitate U.S. withdrawal...

Green Policy: A think tank crunches the subsidy and bailout dollars and puts the true cost of Government Motors' electric car at a cool quarter-million. And the few sold have been largely bought by the 1%. At a time when Democrats are blaming the GOP for blocking a payroll tax cut deal that will add $40 in the average paycheck, they have no problem taking that worker's tax dollars to make and subsidize what we once called an electric Edsel bought by a precious few with an average income of $170,000. "Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as...

Energy Policy: Canada's prime minister restates that if there's no Keystone XL pipeline in the works, not to worry. Our northern ally will still be our friend as it sends its tar sands oil to Asian markets. 'I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to Asia. I think we have to do that," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a Monday interview with Canada's CTV National News. It was the latest warning from our impatient northern neighbor that has used its energy resources to advance job creation and growth and...

Justice: The attorney general says he and the president get criticized because they're African-American. He once said we need an honest discussion about race. OK, let's talk about him hiding behind his. Times have changed since the evening of April 7, 1775, when Samuel Johnson said that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel . In the supposed post-racial era ushered in with the election of President Obama and the appointment of Attorney General Eric Holder, racism has replaced it as the ultimate defense against charges of incompetence and misguided policies. In an interview with the New York Times...

Equity: The administration that refused to enforce voting rights law in the New Black Panther case is going after America's best-known sheriff for what it calls discriminatory policing practices involving Hispanics. Coming soon after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Arizona's immigration and border enforcement law, the Justice Department's release of a scathing report Thursday accusing Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio of violating federal law and the Constitution in his department's handling of Hispanics smacks of retaliation. With a thoroughness not seen in Justice's handling of the "Fast and Furious" federal gun-running debacle that resulted...

Military Spending: The head of the House Armed Services Committee says already enacted and looming defense cuts could cost the economy a million and a half jobs. It could cost the nation much more than that. As we've written, the upcoming mandated cuts in defense spending, on top of already enacted cuts,are real cuts, not cuts in the rate of growth. They are deep cuts in the budget baseline that will impair military readiness and our ability to meet our commitments and respond to crises around the world. They will also take a toll on the nation's job picture. Rep....

Energy: After admitting there's no documented evidence of groundwater contamination due to a technique used to extract oil and gas from shale, the EPA tries to manufacture a crisis in Wyoming. At a House Oversight Committee hearing in May, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson confirmed that, despite fears that hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as "fracking," would lead to contamination of ground water, there was no independently documented instances that it had occurred. Jackson told the committee: "I'm not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water." Suddenly the liberal group Pro Publica is...

Jobs: The president says that extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut will create more jobs than an oil pipeline from Canada. There are at least 20,000 members of the 99% who would disagree. You can see why the economy is in trouble. Vice President Joe Biden, the stimulus sheriff, says he turned first to MF Global's Jon Corzine for economic advice and President Obama thinks 20,000 people getting extended unemployment benefits does more for the economy than 20,000 people getting paychecks to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. In the president's view, extending the payroll tax cuts...

Scandal: The House committee probing government gun-running now sets it sights on possible money-laundering involving drug cartel funds run in the name of drug enforcement. Why should we believe DOJ this time? It's an old adage that when investigating criminal activity you should follow the money. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has announced an investigation into a money-laundering operation allegedly run by the Drug Enforcement Administration. We may need to follow the people following the money. Just as Fast and Furious was allegedly intended to track and interdict gun-trafficking into Mexico, this operation,...

Politics: One former speaker of the House warns another that she will unleash privileged information if the architect of the ’94 GOP tsunami gets his party’s nomination. Culture of corruption, Nancy? Look in the mirror. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose legislative excesses helped spawn the Tea Party movement that made her the ex-speaker, has fired a shot across the bow of former Speaker Newt Gingrich: Win the GOP nomination for president and I will unpack your baggage in public. Except that she can't and she should know it. "One of these days we'll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich," Pelosi...

Scandal: The Justice Department has formally withdrawn a letter to Congress denying it sanctioned or allowed guns to be transferred to Mexico because it contained "inaccuracies." That's one way of putting it. Back in February, Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch, in response to the investigations by Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Fast and Furious gun "walking" program run out of ATF's Phoenix office, wrote a letter stating that the "allegation that ATF 'sanctioned' or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons is false." The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Welch contended, "makes every...

Economic Systems: The former head of the Service Employees International Union says capitalism is on the ash heap of history and sees China as our role model. We have seen his future, however, and it doesn't work. President Obama once reportedly told aides, according to the New York Times, that things would be easier if he were president of China. Presumably he meant there would be no pesky things like a Congress, free elections and a free press to deal with. Former SEIU chief Andy Stern, who may still hold the record for visits to the White House under this...

Almost exactly three years ago, during that clearance sale for the Illinois Senate seat once held by Barack Obama, there were sinister suggestions that the about-to-be-president and staff had somehow been involved in those dark dealings that lead to the impeachment of Democrat Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Under public pressure and numerous media inquiries, President-elect Obama announced an investigation by President-elect Obama's staff lawyer.

Scandal: The Justice Department has sealed court records detailing the circumstances of a border patrol agent's murder by a Mexican drug cartel, including the fact U.S. agents were being hunted with U.S.-supplied weapons. The murder of Border Patrol Agent Bryan Terry by Mexican drug cartels with weapons provided by his own government is a national disgrace. Attorney General Eric Holder, who professes being out of the loop regarding Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF program that got Terry killed, is doing his best to keep the American people from the truth. Holder's Justice Department has abruptly sealed court records in...

New Energy: The latest salvo in the administration's war on energy may be new rules and permits to regulate a process to get oil and gas from porous rock, sacrificing jobs and economic growth while under review. There are a few areas of the U.S. that are booming. Two of these are in North Dakota and Pennsylvania, states that sit atop two massive shale rock formations, the Bakken and the Marcellus. Extraction of oil and natural gas from these formations have created jobs and economic growth in the midst of a stagnant and parched economy. The oil and gas is...

Energy Policy: The same administration that says we can and should get oil from the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is blocking a bridge needed to get it to market on environmental grounds. In his May 14 weekly radio address, President Obama called for annual lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), not necessarily out of any conviction that increased domestic energy supply is good for prices and national security, but basically to perpetuate the myth that the oil companies refuse to drill in leased or leasable areas. While he restricts oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and...

Industrial Policy: The investigation into the safety of electric car batteries intensifies after additional fires involving the flagship of a proposed electric vehicle fleet. Central planning doesn't work for cars or insurance. When the Toyota Prius was being accused of having overlooked design flaws that were causing accelerators to get stuck with fatal results, the owners of Government Motors, a competitor, wasted little time pushing for a recall and congressional hearings while accusing Toyota of cutting corners for the sake of corporate profits. We wonder if the same sense of urgency will prevail in the wake of new safety tests...

Industrial Policy: The administration's electric car represents both the genius of American technology and the stupidity of its government. Imagine Rube Goldberg with $50 billion. Buy now and get a free 40-mile-long extension cord. It wasn't exactly Michael Dukakis riding in a tank wearing a Snoopy helmet, but it was close. President Obama, who reportedly hasn't driven an inch himself since taking office, visited a GM plant in Hamtramck near Detroit on Friday to drive a Chevy Volt 10 feet off an assembly line. It was a perfect image, as the American economy is being driven off a cliff by...

Green Technology: Government Motors' all-electric car isn't all-electric and doesn't get near the touted hundreds of miles per gallon. Like "shovel-ready" jobs, maybe there's no such thing as "plug-ready" cars either. The Chevy Volt, hailed by the Obama administration as the electric savior of the auto industry and the planet, makes its debut in showrooms next month, but it's already being rolled out for test drives by journalists. It appears we're all being taken for a ride. When President Obama visited a GM plant in Hamtramck near Detroit a few months ago to drive a Chevy Volt 10 feet off...

Corruption: The Secretary of Energy takes responsibility for and defends the granting of a half-billion-dollar-loan guarantee to an imploding solar panel maker. But that's not where the campaign donor buck stopped. In testimony Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Steven Chu, caught in a tangled web of administration deceit regarding a $535 million guaranteed loan to Solyndra, tried but failed to continue the administration line that the affair was just a good-faith bet that went bad. "As the Secretary of Energy, the final decisions on Solyndra were mine, and I made them with the best interest of the...

Environmental Impacts: An investigation is launched into the possibility of battery fires occurring in crashes involving Government Motors' touted electric car. Industrial policy meets the law of unintended consequences. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced an investigation into the safety of electric cars using lithium batteries, particularly the Chevy Volt, after a battery fire occurred after a side-impact crash test. It has asked other manufacturers who make electric cars or that plan to do so for information on how they handle lithium-ion batteries. The request also includes recommendations for minimizing fire risk. The feds say this is only...

Industrial Policy: Not only do taxpayers subsidize failing green energy here, they may soon be on the hook for a Department of Energy loan to a firm owned by a Russian billionaire. Just say nyet. When a foreign firm wants to build a facility in the U.S. that hires American workers and pays American taxes, we welcome it. We'd prefer they do it with their own money, not rely on this administration's failed industrial policy to provide them with a huge taxpayer-backed loan — especially when it's owned by a billionaire who doesn't need the help. The administration's latest green...

Politics: The character assassination of GOP candidates by the MSM continues as CBS casts a jaundiced eye on the Texas governor's alleged "bizarre" speech in New Hampshire. Perhaps they prefer liberals drunk on power. When Lincoln appointed Ulysses Grant as general of the Army in March 1864, the selection bypassed more than 200 senior generals. As the story goes, when one of the president's aides pointed out that he had picked a man who was well known for his alcohol consumption, Lincoln, mindful of Grant's battlefield accomplishments, is reported to have said, "Find out what brand he drinks and send...