Free Republic

After a barrage of guidance, the IRS finally published its proposed regs on the Affordable Care Act’s “Employer Shared Responsibility” provision, along with a practical Q&A with real-life examples for employers. Here’s help making sense of it all. At this point, virtually every organization knows that all “large” employers — those with 50 or more full-time employees — must provide all full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) with health insurance or pay a “shared-responsibility” penalty. Obamacare considers individuals who work at least 30 hours each week to be an FTE, However, many employers will be surprised by at least one clarification the...

President Barack Obama wants all 50 states to provide pre-kindergarten schools for 4-year-olds, a plan that the White House says will result in better prepared students and ultimately a more educated workforce. … Obama also wants the federal government to give the states incentives to provide full-day kindergarten. …

Sen. Marco Rubio may be giving the Republican response to the president’s State of the Union address this evening and Sen. Rand Paul is giving the Tea Party response, but why wait until the president is done speaking? Sarah Palin is live tweeting her response and well she doesn’t like it. Of course that’s no surprise, but she also created her own hashtag #sotUGottaBKiddingMe She began by countering the president’s claim at the beginning of his speech that “there is much progress to report.” Sarah Palin✔ @SarahPalinUSA Obama: “There is much progress to report.” Oh really? Let's see what the...

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the United States needed to do more to fight climate change and told Congress he would do so by executive action if it failed to pursue a market-based system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago," Obama said, according to the text of his address provided by the White House.

Above: Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who has said “I have only one loyalty, and that’s to the immigrant community.”- by John HillStand With ArizonaWell it looks like crime does pay after all. At least 5 Democrats, including First Lady Michelle Obama, are bringing illegal aliens as guests to the State of the Union on Tuesday night - this despite a U.S. House rule requiring guests to provide their Social Security numbersBut a spokeswoman with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency declined to comment about whether the agency approves of this occurring at the Capitol, where Obama is set to give his annual...

“A Boy Scouts of America national board member, James Turley, who is also global chairman and CEO of the accounting firm Ernst & Young, recently said he “will work from within to seek a change” to overturn the BSA policy that bans gay scouts and leaders.” 1. But is Turley working on his own initiative, or has the White House prodded him with perks and favors? 2. Is it a coincidence that Turley came out swinging against the BSA’s century-old policy to ban gays from leadership and that he has such close affiliations with the pro-gay Obama administration? 3. Is...

Judge Napolitano on Fox: Watch for Obama in his SOTU message tonight to indicate he "can't wait" for Congress to act and thus will use EOs to circumvent the law. He will likely order the EPA to tax ammunition to pay for "the environmental damage and clean-up." In general, he believes Obama will bury Congress in a siege of EOs, knowing that Congress will not stop him. Only Congress can levy taxes, so this sets-up a fight between Obama and the so far eunich House, a fight he wants.

Barack Obama speaks at 9 p.m. EST. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) gives the GOP response after Obama speaks. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) gives the Tea Party Express response around 10 p.m.Sen. Paul's speech can be seen live on the Tea Party Express website.

On November 9th, 2012 erstwhile Maricopa County Cold Case Posse (MCCCP)“Investigator” Mike Zullo signed a massively expanded and updated second “affidavit” concerning his alleged investigation intothe identity documents of President Barack Obama. I refer to it as an “alleged investigation” because there is very little investigative work to be found within the pages of the affidavit. To the extent it recounts lines of enquiry, they without exception all end in futility. To the extent it purports to recount “facts,” they are all recounted second hand, most of them ruthlessly plagiarized from the “work” of other birthers. To the extent that...

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House Speaker John Boehner, in advance of President Obama's State of the Union address, said Tuesday that he doesn't think the president "has the guts" to seriously address the country's debt and deficit. The speaker aired his concerns during a breakfast outside his office on Capitol Hill with anchors and reporters covering Obama's address Tuesday night. He said he's pessimistic about the odds the president will tackle the country's long-term spending problem, which he sees as the biggest threat to America's future. "I don't think he has the guts to do it. He doesn't have the courage to take on...

This white paper will examine a Marxist Revolution under the assumption that the president wants to incite Marxist Revolution in America. When Vladmir Lenin came to power, he introduced a set of socialist policies that literally crashed the Soviet economy by 1921. Socialism failed, so Lenin introduced what was called, “New Economic Policy,” a modified form of socialism more akin to state-capitalism. Various industries were allowed to remain in private hands while others were wrangled into the purview of government control. As we recount the industries over which the government is now in control – healthcare, energy, education, student loans...

Last week, Neil Stevens raised the alarm about Google selling out conservatives on policy issues. He’s right, but a number of conservatives and Republicans think there is an even bigger problem for GOP. Remember that enormous, sophisticated data operation the Obama campaign had? The one that gave them massive daily data on public opinion trends in almost every segment of potential voters. It’s almost as if Democrats had access to some sort of huge database of real time information about what the public was reading or writing online. The kind of breathtakingly large, real-time data that could be used for...

(WMC-TV) – A former Boy Scout leader has been indicted, accused of molesting young boys. For the first time, an alleged victim's mother has issued a warning. MOREAdditional Links Details of William Todd Brewer's indictment were made public Monday after Brewer was served on Friday. Now we're hearing from the mother of one of the alleged victims in court documents. When former Boy Scout leader William Todd Brewer was arrested for sexual battery last July, one mother didn't want to think about what may have gone on inside Brewer's Senatobia rental home with her then 13-year-old son. "I would tell...

The reputed gang member accused of gunning down 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton last month was on the street even though he had been arrested three times in connection with break-ins and trespassing while on probation for a weapons conviction in recent months, the Tribune has learned. In two of those arrests, including one just 2 1/2 months ago, Cook County probation officials failed to notify prosecutors or the judge that Michael Ward had been arrested on the new misdemeanor charges and allegedly violated his probation.

Last week we noted that President Barack Obama has become America’s lawbreaker-in-Chief and few actions exemplify Obama’s propensity for ignoring the will of the people as expressed by the laws Congress passes than his recent executive orders and actions on same sex marriage and federal benefits for same sex couples. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) blocks the federal government from extending spousal benefits to same sex couples. However, on Monday, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expanded a list of benefits to the same sex spouses of service members as well as to the unmarried partners of homosexual service members....

Three years after the White House arranged a hero's welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of. "Betrayed is a good word," former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline." "Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact they've been neglected."...

Fraud and abuse grow after subsidized telephone program expands A federal program subsidizing phones for the poor increased from 6.8 million to 18 million recipients from 2008 — the year it was expanded to include cell phones — to May 2012. And fraud and abuse from the expansion have been far more extensive than expected, to the extent that tougher enforcement of long-existing rules is projected to bring in enough money to finance the expansion of the program to provide low-income users with free Internet service, according to the Federal Communications Commission report released last week. Up to 15 percent...

I haven't been able to pilfer an advance copy of the president's State of the Union address, but I hereby offer some guesses as to what he'll say tonight. The president will assert, against the evidence, that the state of our union is strong. He will boast that during his first term, we averted another great depression, achieved history-making reforms of health care and banking, saved the auto industry and began to conclude two wars. He will caution though, that we face great challenges. Obama will acknowledge that our economy is not as vibrant as it could be and will...