Free Republic

Just in time for the Fourth of July, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it has added a new regulatory weapon to its arsenal. In a Federal Register notice on July 2 titled “Administrative Wage Garnishment,” the EPA stated that by the authority of the Debt Collection Improvement Act (DCIA ) of 1996 it issued a proposed rule that “will allow the EPA to garnish non-Federal wages to collect delinquent non-tax debts owed the United States without first obtaining a court order.” According to the Treasury Department, under DCIA, such debts include “unpaid loans, overpayments or duplicate payments made...

Top Senate Democrats are sick of waiting for the House to take up comprehensive immigration reform. If Republicans don’t act in July, President Obama will, they warn. After all, he still has a pen and phone, right? Via The Hill: "We're at the end of the line," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said Thursday during a press briefing in the Capitol. "We're not bluffing by setting a legislative deadline for them to act. "Their first job is to govern," Menendez added, "and in the absence of governing, then you see executive actions." Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) piled on. Noting that...

A petition drive to divide California into six separate states was active on Saturday and Sunday in Los Angeles, aimed at getting the plan on the ballot in 2016. According to the Los Angeles Times, Timothy Draper, a venture capitalist from Menlo Park, is spearheading the current effort and has injected $2 million dollars into the project so far. The optimistic Draper argues that a truncated California will dissolve bureaucratic gridlock in Sacramento and will be more conducive for business. Draper told the Times back in April that "California has become the worst managed state in the country… It just...

As the news media cranked up the heat on the White House’s disastrous handling of the Veterans Affairs scandal, President Barack Obama decided it was time to change the subject and make the news about him again. So what does he do? Obama finalizes the release of five top Taliban commanders from Guantanamo in exchange for the Taliban’s release of one American soldier. Not just any soldier but “a high value” soldier Sargent Bowe Bergdahl, who deserted his duty in 2009 when he walked off his base in Afghanistan right into the enemy hands of the Taliban. And Bergdahl caused...

Coal-state lawmakers, accusing President Obama of using a back door to impose strict emissions limits on power plants, are rallying to slam that door shut -- claiming the plan would cost jobs and jack up electric bills. In Kentucky, West Virginia, and other states that rely on coal to fuel their own economies -- and that help generate power for everybody else -- officials vowed Monday to introduce legislation halting the newly announced EPA plan. Under the draft regulation unveiled Monday, carbon emissions at fossil fuel-burning power plants would be cut 30 percent by 2030. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., calling...

Local police departments are beginning to look more like branches of the military as surplus equipment such as Mine Resistant Vehicles are seen on the streets of small towns across the country. A report on Infowars.com ties the purchases to what police see as a growing domestic terror threat, specifically war veterans with the knowledge of how to make improvised explosive devices. "When I first started we really didn’t have the violence that we see today," Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department told Fox 59 in Indianapolis for a story titled "Armed for War." Story continues below...

US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' Patent To Amazon from the maybe-someone-at-the-office-checked-the-wrong-box? dept The US Patent and Trademark Office is frequently maligned for its baffling/terrible decisions... and rightfully so. Because this is exactly the sort of thing for which the USPTO should be maligned. Udi Tirosh at DIY Photography has uncovered a recently granted patent for the previously-unheard of process of photographing things/people against a white backdrop... to of all companies, Amazon. I am not really sure how to tag this other than a big #fail for the USPTO, or a huge Kudos for Amazon's IP attorneys....

Internet application and content companies, what some refer to as “edge providers,” are increasingly concerned by the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) newfound ability to regulate the Internet, and rightfully so.

RICHMOND — Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe is considering expanding health coverage for the poor without the approval of the state legislature, a move that would muscle his top priority past Republican opponents but also throw his young administration into a partisan firestorm and uncertain legal territory. McAuliffe and his top advisers have consulted lawyers, health-care experts and legislators on how to bypass the GOP-dominated House of Delegates, according to three people familiar with the discussions. A fourth, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal private strategy, said the office of...

When you allow unlawful acts to go unpunished, you're moving toward a government of men rather than a government of law; you're moving toward anarchy. And that's exactly what we're doing. -- John Wayne All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. -- George Orwell Tell me why any American should respect the law? Because it's moral? Not necessarily. Slavery was once the law of the land. Abortion is the law of the land today. Even in a nation like America, it's not unusual for laws to be unfair, unjust, and even immoral. Is it...

Sending scores of armed agents along with helicopters and dogs to confront an elderly Nevada rancher over grazing fees may seem like overkill, but critics say it’s not inconsistent with the federal government’s recent approach to environmental enforcement. The simmering truce between the Bundys and the Bureau of Land Management comes after high-profile raids last year by armed federal agents on small-time gold miners in tiny Chicken, Alaska, and guitar makers at the Gibson Guitar facilities in Tennessee. That doesn’t include more subtle threats, such as recent efforts by the Obama administration to raise grazing fees or pressure permit holders...

The framers of our Constitution created the critical tension between the branches of government to help ensure our civil liberties and protect citizens from unchecked tyranny. The growing power of the executive branch over the last three decades has been the subject of much concern from both parties when out of power. Campaigning against Bush's use of executive privilege to sign a law but selectively interpret its meaning, Senator Barack Obama asserted, "This is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he goes along. I disagree with that. I taught the Constitution for...

The European Union voted on Thursday to impose sanctions against those held responsible for the violence in Ukraine. The sanctions, unanimously approved by EU foreign ministers at an emergency meeting, include a travel ban to the 28-nation bloc and the freezing of assets held in EU countries. The sanctions will target “those responsible for human rights violations, violence and use of excessive force” in Ukraine, the EU said in a statement. It said the bloc will soon establish a list of those who will be affected by the sanctions. …

On my wife's side, I have a very large family in Fairbanks, Alaska. Culturally, Fairbanks is a lot further from New York City (where I grew up) or Washington, D.C. (where I live now), than the several thousand miles on the map might suggest. Alaska wins a lot of comparisons, and not just the obvious ones such as physical beauty or salmon fishing. For instance, Alaska ranks second best in terms of economic equality (just behind Wyoming) while New York and the District of Columbia compete for dead last. Frankly, I don't much care about the issue of income inequality...

President Obama will announce tonight that he is signing an Executive Order mandating a new $10.10 minimum wage for all future federal contract workers. But it is not at all clear that he has the legal authority to do so. "My understanding is that they are using the president's authority under the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949," George Washington Law School's Associate Dean for Government Procurement Law Studies Dan Gordon told Townhall. "And that calls for measures which ensure 'economy and efficiency' of the procurement process. And I am not sure whether this blanket increase in the...

The left wants the disclosure of private information about conservative donors. Six months after the Internal Revenue Service's inspector general revealed that the tax-collection agency had been targeting conservative organizations for added scrutiny and delaying their applications for tax-exempt status, the IRS has proposed new rules for handling political activity by nonprofits. The proposed rules would plunge the agency deeper into political regulation. The rules would upset more than 50 years of settled law and practice by limiting the ability of certain tax-exempt nonprofits, organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, to conduct nonpartisan voter registration and voter...

In 1958, U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater framed his opposition to the National Defense of Education Act (NDEA) in the form of an old Arabian proverb: “If the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.” Goldwater, the grandfather of the modern conservative movement, understood government at its most basic. Through my years spent inside the federal government, as a former analyst for the CIA, a Reagan-appointed federal prosecutor, and then as a U.S. Congressman -- I can personally vouch for the accuracy of Goldwater’s observation about the true nature of government: No matter how much...

Brussels is guilty of using ‘flagrant’ power grabs to expand its control over British life, according to the Government’s top law officer. In an outspoken attack on Europe, Attorney General Dominic Grieve said ministers are set to go to court to stop the European Commission straying ‘beyond its remit’. He accused Eurocrats of trying to ‘subvert’ the position of nation states and said they have ‘lost touch’ with the people of Europe. Mr. Grieve, usually a moderate voice who urges other ministers to be more positive about Brussels, said he was ‘frankly astonished’ at how EU institutions have attempted ‘to...

Happy holidays from the Obama administration. Federal agencies are currently working on rolling out hundreds of environmental regulations, including major regulations that would limit emissions from power plants and expand the agency’s authority to bodies of water on private property. On Tuesday, the White House released its regulatory agenda for the fall of 2013. It lists hundreds of pending energy and environmental regulations being crafting by executive branch agencies, including 134 regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency alone. The EPA is currently crafting 134 major and minor regulations, according to the White House’s regulatory agenda. Seventy-six of the EPA’s pending...

".......Reid clearly felt strongly about the [filibuster] when Democrats were the minority party in the Senate, and he insisted that as majority leader he would never target the filibuster. However, as the problems with the Obamacare rollout continue to mount, and the president barrels headlong into lame-duck territory amid plummeting poll numbers, Reid is invoking his “right to change how I feel about things.” As is the president, apparently. Reid’s change of heart dates back to October 2011, when he used the nuclear option to scale back the ability of the Republican minority to offer amendments, something he has effectively...