Free Republic

As the junior senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum shepherded welfare reform through the U.S. Senate in 1996. Given his limited tenure — he’d been elected to the Senate only two years before — the fact that Majority Leader Bob Dole selected Santorum to lead the effort is nothing short of remarkable, Santorum’s former colleagues say. It also is a testament to an overlooked virtue of the ex-senator’s: his pragmatism.

Washington - Republicans should base their 2012 campaign on an agenda so bold and ambitious that victory would hand the party a transformational governing mandate, House budget chair Paul Ryan told a gathering of conservative activists here Thursday. "This election cannot be just a referendum on President (Barack) Obama's failed leadership," said Ryan, of Janesville. "Americans deserve a choice - a choice between two dramatically different visions for our country's future. As conservatives, we owe Americans that choice." The Conservative Political Action Conference kicked off its annual event Thursday, a mecca for presidential candidates, leading lawmakers, conservative celebrities and the...

Tennessee and Georgia resist health care reformby Mariann Martin published Sunday, February 5th, 2012 With less than a year before state legislation must be in place to implement a critical part of national health care reform, Tennessee and Georgia, along with 18 other states, have not made substantial progress toward meeting federal deadlines, according to reports from several nonpartisan organizations. In states with conservative leadership, such as Georgia and Tennessee, the deadlines have put state leaders in a Catch-22. They hope the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the Affordable Care Act this spring or summer or that the election of...

What a great time for the Wall Street Journal to bring up this topic. After all, the Republican candidates in the nomination battle have focused their arguments on actual competition-based reform and results, right? Oh, wait … we’ve been too busy discussing 1997, 2003, and the finer points of class-warfare attacks on private enterprise and consulting. That may be the reason for the WSJ’s attention: Louisiana is already one of 12 states (including Washington, D.C.) that offer school vouchers, but its program benefits fewer than 2,000 students in New Orleans. Governor Jindal would extend eligibility to any low-income student whose...

There are already many Bills of Rights for Students. Most emphasize how schools or teachers should treat students. Typically, that would be gently. Heaven forbid we should place any burden on these delicate minds. Here is the problem from an educational point of view. At the end of the day, if all these rights are accommodated, the children could still end up as ignorant as they were a year earlier. A Bill of Rights for Students 2012 emphasizes skills and knowledge that the students are ENTITLED to learn, and that schools must teach. A Bill of Rights for Students 2012...

TOPEKA -- Police chiefs from nine Kansas universities and colleges Thursday came out against a measure that would allow concealed handguns in government buildings. “We are absolutely convinced the risk created by firearms on campus exceeds any actual benefit for self-protection,” said Richard Johnson, chief of police at the University of Kansas Medical Center. “It is our professional conviction that firearms do not enhance university security, but will contradict many of the best practices already in place.” Johnson represented a group that included police chiefs from the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Wichita State, Pittsburg State, Johnson County Community...

State Reps. Ron Maag (R-Lebanon) and Andy Thompson (R-Marietta) have introduced two bills that seek to reform, or "de-Taft," portions of Ohio's concealed carry law. House Bill 422 seeks to repeal requirements that a concealed carry licensee inform an approaching law enforcement officer that the licensee is a licensee and is carrying a concealed handgun. According to rep. Maag, Ohio is one of only four states that have such a requirement. The idea for repealing the notification provision has been the subject of frequent discussion since last June, when Canton police officer Daniel Harless was caught on dash cam video...

PHOENIX — Education-reform advocates won a key victory today, with a judge upholding the constitutionality of Arizona’s first-in-the-nation education savings accounts. The Maricopa County Superior Court rejected a legal challenge by the Arizona School Boards Association and the Arizona Education Association against the accounts, known formally as empowerment scholarship accounts (ESAs).   “Though this is only the opening round of a protracted legal battle, it is gratifying to start with a victory for the kids,� declared Clint Bolick, vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute, who argued on behalf of the Institute before Judge Maria Del Mar Verdin.  ...

“My Time at Walmart” looked at the incredible and outrageous abuses of the welfare system that I observed while working summers at Walmart. My follow-up looked at how those who didn’t like my message made me the message. This one will blow your mind. Some like to make the issue of welfare a complicated mess, filled with statistical anomalies and outliers. The solutions, while not always politically correct, are simple. And they meet the standards of common sense. 1. Welfare recipients should pass a drug test before they receive benefits of any kind. I had to be drug tested to...

Rick Santorum - “I wrote the welfare reform bill in the Contract with America. I was the ranking member on that subcommittee. And when I came to the Senate, through a quirk, I ended up managing the bill on the floor of the United States Senate and working with President Clinton and getting a bill signed after he vetoed it twice to end welfare. We bloc-granted the program, got rid of the federal entitlement -- the only one in the history of the country that’s ever been done. And I was the principal author of it in the United States...

Lawyers Harry and Charles Binder began representing applicants for Social Security disability benefits in the 1970s, when the field was a professional backwater. Last year, their firm collected $88 million in fees for guiding clients through the system, government data indicate, making it the nation's largest Social Security disability advocate by far. "We'll deal with the government," a cowboy-hatted Charles Binder proclaims in his firm's ubiquitous television ads. "You have enough to worry about."

House liberals cheer proposed Obama administration immigration reformBy Mike Lillis - 01/08/12 05:40 PM ET Several senior House liberals are cheering President Obama this week after his administration proposed new rules making it easier for some illegal immigrants to remain in the country while they apply for citizenship. "The President deserves credit for setting in place another essential building block through administrative action – moving us closer to a common sense immigration policy – that puts America, its families and its economy first," Rep. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Friday in a statement. The...

Imagine if your child’s assigned elementary school had puddles of urine in the bathroom, mouse droppings in the cafeteria, and clogged water fountains. Now imagine if your complaints were rejected by the principal. Parent Revolution, the Los Angeles-based group at the center of the “Parent Trigger” or “Parent Empowerment” movement, reports that these were the deplorable conditions at Washington Elementary School in Lynwood, Calif., when parents organized to help turn things around. The parents put pressure on school officials and formed a committee to help develop solutions. This idea — empowering parents to take ownership of reforms long overdue at...

To say that the past two weeks have been a little crazy would be like saying Ronald Reagan “squeaked by to win reelection” in 1984. I had my first television interview, I’ve appeared on countless radio shows, and was featured on The Blaze, National Review, and HotAir.com. The Associated Press ran a story about me throughout the country. Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Dana Loesch, Mark Levin and Howie Carr all gave my blog post either a shout-out or an on-air discussion. To say I’m floored would be an understatement. This has been the most exciting week of my life. One...

Leaders of the resurrected radical group ACORN are lobbying the Obama administration in what appears to be a concerted effort to game the electoral system to help Democrats, new evidence suggests. At least five Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now leaders have visited the White House this year alone. One of those ACORN officials has been involved in vetting Department of Justice hires who may help to enforce the voter fraud-enabling National Voting Rights Act (NVRA), also known as the Motor-Voter law. The Department has come under fire for refusing to enforce Section 8, which requires states to remove...

This past summer, Missouri passed a law that, among marking a great many other advances in gun rights, made firearm sound suppressors (popularly, but inaccurately, referred to as "silencers") far easier to legally own. Previously, only those with a federal firearms license (FFL), as is required for gun dealers, could own suppressors in the state. Missourians are still, of course, unfortunately under the thumb of the onerous federal laws regulating suppressors ($200 tax stamp for each suppressor, detailed background check with fingerprints, the legal jeopardy one places oneself in by owning both suppressors and "Chore Boy" pot scrubbers, etc.). The...

One month ago Ohio voted with its heart against reforms portrayed as an attack on public workers. Ohio, DC, and New York union bosses spent more than $30 million drenching the airwaves in images of sad firefighters, sad police officers, and evil Republicans, convincing voters to overlook a broken status quo.A month later, how are local governments celebrating the union victory on Issue 2?Middletown is laying off 9 firefighters, despite the city’s police and fire budgets both increasing by nearly 1/3 in the past decade. In Hamilton, a $5.9 million death tax haul will delay the inevitable: Inflation coupled with...

The radical is always the more glamorous. People wear Che Guevara tee-shirts. They don’t wear Samuel Gompers, A. Phillip Randolph, Edouard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, or Jean Jaures tee-shirts, yet those largely forgotten social democratic and labor heroes achieved far more benefit for reform and workers without murdering a lot of people. Rosa Luxembourg, the nastiest rich spoiled brat in Zamosc, is fondly remembered though her career was a disaster and helped create the conditions that eventually brought about Nazism. Who knows about Frances Perkins, who did far more to help workers and was the first woman ever to be in...

November 2011 Re: Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) Dear Fr. Pete, With reference to yesterday’s conversation, thank you for permitting me to: Lay out some context about the dangerous situation Catholic institutions in the U.S. are facing right now; Show how this is tied in to distortions in our concept of mission, including --- in context ---CCHD’s over-all projects and priorities, which I would say are problematic in themselves; and Do a fast review of the most glaring “short term” CCHD grantee problems: there are only a handful of these, but they flow almost inevitably from flaws in the...

Saving $1,756 Billion, Overnight -By: Larry Walker, Jr. -“There is no doubt that many provisions in the Tax Code benefit narrow groups of taxpayers, but the dirty little secret is that the largest special interests are us – the vast majority of U.S. taxpayers. Virtually all of us benefit from certain exclusions from income, deductions from income, or tax credits.” ~National Taxpayer AdvocateAccording to Article I, Section 7 of the United States Constitution, “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.” And,...

Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is disappointed with fellow Democrat President Barack Obama’s treatment of the financial industry. That’s a sector that Spitzer frequently took on as New York state attorney general. “The president embraced a very status quo vision of Wall Street,” Spitzer told Al Jazeera news service. “He did not lead an effort to fundamentally reform the way our financial sector operates. He put Tim Geithner in as Treasury secretary, and Geithner and [National Economic Council Director Lawrence] Summers together were very much status quo voices.”

I always like to report progress on a subject close to my classical liberal heart -- namely, the reform of our grotesquely dysfunctional K-12 public school system. School reform (from a classical liberal perspective) involves at least two things: school choice (i.e., putting the resources for education in the hands of parents, not the educational bureaucrats -- preferably by vouchers) and school employee accountability (i.e., tying teachers' compensation to their actual performance). Of the two, school choice is fundamental, because allowing parents and students to choose where they want the students to attend forces school administrators to worry about student...

Cardinal Peter K. A. Turkson and Monsignor Mario Toso, President and Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the Vatican, released a note last week entitled "Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems In the Context of Global Public Authority." The PCJP shares its reflections on the demands that integral development, globalization and the financial crisis make on society. It expresses the considered opinions of its authors and the Council. As with all communique's involving Catholic Social Doctrine, this one focuses on the common good and human dignity, the pillars on which CSD conceptually rests. Like...

The ban on property sales took effect in stages after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959. Parents were able to pass property on to their children, but buying and selling property was not allowed. The rules have meant that for decades Cubans could only exchange property through complicated barter arrangements, or through even murkier black-market deals, often involving illegal payments and bribes. With the new law, Cubans will be allowed to own a maximum of two properties - their main home and a holiday home. A popular aspect of the law will be the abolition of the...

Two drug-related police scandals inadvertently have helped The City prepare for an influx of inmates under the state’s recently implemented prison realignment plan. The inmate population at San Francisco’s jails dropped sharply in early 2010 after the Police Department’s drug lab scandal came to light and again this year after allegations began surfacing about police misconduct during drug raids at residential hotels, Sheriff’s Department statistics show. By Oct. 3, when courts began redirecting prisoners convicted of minor offenses to county jails instead of state prisons, San Francisco jails were running at just 60 percent of capacity. “The crime lab fiasco,...

Latino leaders say the administration hasn't done enough to push for comprehensive immigration reform in Congress, while deporting too many immigrants. Still, the administration has sued to overturn tough immigration laws in two states, and is weighing challenges in others. For the president, it's a difficult political balancing act. President Obama came into office with strong Latino support, having won two-thirds of the Latino vote, according to exit polls. But for some, that support has turned to disillusionment. "There's a deep sense of betrayal and disappointment towards the Obama administration," said Sarahi Uribe, coordinator of the National Day Laborer Organizing...

In further support of Ed’s theory that the third-rail curse is behind us, a CNN/ORC poll released yesterday evening shows that a majority of Americans think Social Security is either “in crisis� or has “major problems.� Perhaps even more importantly, a majority of those polled said they favor at least partial privatization.Twenty-two percent said the Social Security program is “in crisis,� up from just 17 percent in 2005, while another 49 percent said the program has “major problems.� A full 52 percent said they favor “a proposal … that would allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes...

Ohio concealed carry licensees, and gun owners in general, benefit from multiple changes in Ohio laws that take effect this Friday, September 30, 2011. Prior to explaining the changes in the laws, I must first take care of some personal business. As readers of this website are aware, last fall I had concerns about John Kasich's commitment to these two bills, should he be elected governor of Ohio. (Both bills were pending in the last legislative session, during the last Ohio gubernatorial election.) I wrote very confrontational posts on this website expressing these concerns. People are "quick to damn and...

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich will officially release his 21st Century Contract with America this afternoon. The former Speaker of the House says the plan to "fundamentally change the trajectory of America" would most likely take a President Gingrich two full terms to implement and includes new choices in how Americans would buy health insurance, pay their income taxes and save for retirement.

Pelosi for tax reform only if it increases revenueBy Mike Lillis - 09/15/11 01:21 PM ET The top House Democrat warned Thursday that the GOP's push for sweeping tax reform would win Democratic support only if it increases overall revenues. Republican leaders have been highly critical of the nation's 35 percent corporate tax rate, and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is expected Thursday to ask the budget supercommittee to overhaul the tax code as part of its deficit-slashing mandate. But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) preempted Boehner's speech Thursday with the stipulation that any such tax overhaul would have to...

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama signed legislation Friday that will overhaul the U.S. patent system for the first time since 1952. "We have to do everything we can to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit wherever we find it," Obama said at a signing ceremony at a high school in Arlington, Virginia. This measure "cuts away the red tape that slows down our inventors and entrepreneurs." Obama used the occasion to promote his $447 billion jobs plan, calling patent reform a "part of our (larger) agenda for making us competitive over the long term." Among other things, the measure, dubbed the America...

Now that’s something we’ve been hearing for years…we have to fix entitlements to get control of the budget. Government revenues can’t keep up with growing demands.Revenue...if I hear another politician use the term revenue I’m going to go nuts. Tell me, what good or service does the government produce that generates revenue? Absolutely nothing!Government obtains funding through taxation – which means they are funded by the people. Why don’t they call it what it really is, an allowance. And much like the weekly allowance provided to a child, once it’s gone you have to wait until it’s replenished!The problem with...

Major changes in Show-Me State gun laws will take effect Sunday as Governor Jay Nixon signed House Bill 294 into recently. While many of the changes will affect concealed carry permit holders, the new law provides for several other significant provisions all of which tend to favor gun owners. The most significant change brought about by the new law deals with the age at which Missouri residents may apply for a concealed carry permit. Prior to this change, those interested in obtaining a permit had to wait until they reached the age of 23. The new law lowers it to...

It is an ideological milestone that the emerging Republican front-runner is as skeptical of the New Deal as anyone in his position since the New Deal. During the 1936 election, Republican nominee Alf Landon called Social Security "unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed." Now, according to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" that tells young workers a "monstrous lie." It is a "failure" that "we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now." It is true that Barry Goldwater, during the 1964 campaign, said, "I think Social Security ought to be voluntary."...

Even with House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) deciding not to enter the fray for the GOP presidential nomination, his entitlement-reforming budget resolution, approved by the House earlier this year, is almost certain to play a prominent role in the race. Whichever candidate Republicans select will be forced to either defend it against the inevitable onslaught of Democratic “Death to Granny” scare tactics, or put forward a compelling alternative plan of his or her own. If the conservative uproar following Newt Gingrich’s comments on Meet the Press in May — in which he called Ryan’s plan “radical” and...

Immigration advocates in Texas were heartened last year when the Republican governor, Rick Perry, flatly stated that Arizona's crackdown on illegal immigrants "would not be the right direction for Texas."

President Obama has again acknowledged the necessity of doing something many Democrats fiercely oppose -- reforming entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Social Security. On a Midwest bus tour stop in Minnesota, Obama spoke in favor of changes to entitlement programs being eyed by the 12-member congressional committee charged with finding budget savings that will get past partisan gridlock, stave off future credit downgrades and increase the federal debt. "There have been times when our side, when Democrats aren’t always as flexible as we need to be," Obama said. "Sometimes I do get frustrated when I hear folks say, 'You...

A Mableton man who is in the 40th day of a hunger strike to protest Georgia’s new immigration law is seeking an audience with Gov. Nathan Deal as his condition weakens, Channel 2 Action News reports.Salvador Zamora was in a wheelchair, accompanied by supporters, as he delivered a letter Tuesday to Deal’s office in the state Capitol. Zamora is protesting HB 87, the Georgia immigration law that took effect July 1, the day his hunger strike began. “These laws are not good not only for the immigrant community, but are not good for Georgia,” Zamora told Channel 2. “We need...

High-stakes negotiations force people to reveal what they really care about, and in the 11th-hour deal to stave off a federal financial default, President Obama and congressional Democrats and Republicans each made clear their top priorities. For Republicans, it was preventing any tax increase to upper-income families. For Democrats, it was ensuring no cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and a handful of other programs that aid the elderly and the poor. And for Obama, it was getting a deal that would end the threat of an economy-shaking default until after the 2012 presidential election. None of the key players was...

As reported in The Dispatch (“Bill can expunge gun-crime record,” June 17), the legislature recently gave a small and specific group of people the opportunity to clear their records of particular concealed-carry firearm violations. This is part of Senate Bill 17, which clarifies where and how Ohio’s concealed-carry permit holders can carry a licensed firearm. The majority of states allow permit holders to carry concealed firearms in vehicles. Unlike most other states, Ohio’s concealed-carry law had a number of additional complex rules regarding how a weapon must be carried in a car. As a result, some law-abiding citizens unintentionally violated...

Mr. 0bama seems to think he can order Mr Speaker Boehner to write a spending bill to his personal liking. well mr 0bama: that ain't how it works here: you ARE NOT a DICTATOR and mr harry reed: you need to debate the bill that was sent to you and respond. anything less under these circumstances in malfeasance

First and foremost, Republicans were able to eliminate a $5 billion differential between what Gov. Dayton wanted and the final $34.3 billon general fund budget without raising taxes. Republicans even eliminated a tax – the 2 percent provider tax hidden on every patient bill issued in Minnesota – a $10 billion savings to patients over 10 years. Beyond controlling taxation, the Republican budget controls spending. The budget bill signed into law by Gov. Dayton contains significant government redesign and reform that increases the efficiency of the way government does what it does and more significantly, also changes what government does,...

~ Pass The Monetary Reform Act ~By: Larry Walker, Jr. ~The Obama Administration’s solution for fixing the nation’s impending destruction, due to its own out of control deficit spending, is to increase the debt ceiling now, and worry about spending cuts later. The Obama Administration is under the impression that more borrowing power will enable the nation to maintain its AAA Credit rating. The Catch-22 is that an instant increase in the debt ceiling will result in an instant downgrade to the nation’s credit rating. You see, the problem is not the level of the nation’s debt ceiling; the problem...

The Two Step Plan to National Economic Reform and RecoveryStep 1: Directs the Treasury Department to issue U.S. Notes (like Lincoln’s Greenbacks; can also be in electronic deposit format) to pay off the National debt.Step 2: Increases the reserve ratio private banks are required to maintain from 10% to 100%, thereby terminating their ability to create money, while simultaneously absorbing the funds created to retire the national debt.These two relatively simple steps, which Congress has the power to enact, would extinguish the national debt, without inflation or deflation, and end the unjust practice of private banks creating money as loans...

So what are Republicans, particularly those in the House, going to do? Debt ceiling deadlines are fast approaching. And many in the GOP leadership, particularly in the Senate, think the party’s anti-tax resolve will dissolve if markets start to tumble... [Snip] It now looks like somewhat of a strategic error for Republicans to have pushed for so much in exchange for a hike in the debt limit. The Obama White House seems perfectly willing to take negotiations right up to — and past – the Aug. 2 deadline because it thinks it can win the political fight. [Snip] But perhaps...

IT isn’t news anymore when an Arab ruler facing mass protests pledges sweeping reforms. But Morocco’s July 1 constitutional referendum may be the most significant development in the Arab world all summer. For the first time since the Arab Spring began, a population broadly embraced its leader’s reforms and scaled back antigovernment demonstrations. In the weeks before the referendum, over 100,000 people had taken to the streets; after the vote only about 10,000 did. A sizable majority of Moroccans approved the new Constitution, which calls for King Mohammed VI to cede half his power to a prime minister appointed from...

America’s 200-year-old patent system is about to be reformed, and the changes will cut out the very heart of innovation in this country, warn many independent inventors, small business owners, and manufacturers, angel investors and venture capitalists. “We are playing Russian roulette with the basis of the American economy, which is innovation,” said Kevin Kearns, president of the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC). Critics say the reforms will devastate opportunities for the disruptive innovators of the future—the start-ups and independents who could invent the next iPhone challenger, for example. It will also promote the domination of patents, and patent...

An Empire Built on Sand ~~ By: Larry Walker, Jr. ~Those of us who lived through the financial crisis of 2008 are most familiar with the drawbacks of fractional-reserve banking. It's core theory, that wealth is created through debt, is now so ridiculously out of control, that every newborn American citizen today enters this world more than $46,000 in debt. Those naive enough to think that America’s most pressing problem started in January of 2001, or some other arbitrary date, need to look back a bit further, to 1913 to be precise. In America, taxpayers have been the suckers, while...

- By: Larry Walker, Jr. -The interest that U.S. taxpayers pay on behalf of the federal government, for the privilege of having money in our wallets, and to cover irresponsible deficit-spending, is only the beginning of our woes. When it comes to our personal credit needs, American citizens are once again shackled and sold down river. With regards to borrowing and lending, we may be able to take a few pointers from Islamic banking. I know what you’re thinking, but just bear with me. Let me make one thing clear, I am a Christian, and I do not agree with...

~ By: Larry Walker, Jr. ~The rich rule over the poor. The borrower is servant to the lender. ~ Proverbs 22:7 ~Free Our Money - So what’s the problem? You know, you think about it all the time. It’s debt, debt, debt! The way our economy is set up now, the only way it can grow is through incurring more debt, either by government, business or consumer borrowing. Our economy cannot grow without increasing its money supply, and the only way that new money can be introduced, under the present monetary system, is through debt. But growth through debt really...