Free Republic

Here's more fallout from the health care law: Until now, customers could walk into an insurance office or go online to buy standard health care coverage any time of year. Not anymore. Many people who didn't sign up during the government's open enrollment period that ended Monday will soon find it difficult or impossible to get insured this year, even if they go directly to a private company and money is no object. For some it's already too late. With limited exceptions, insurers are refusing to sell to individuals after the enrollment period for HealthCare.gov and the state marketplaces. They...

The Obama administration unilaterally delayed a portion of the employer mandate, but it still takes effect for those employing more than 200 workers at the beginning of January 2015. Large employers have to budget as soon as this summer to deal with those costs. Most of them will start scaling down their so-called “Cadillac” health care plans to avoid the taxes those will accrue by 2016, getting ahead of the curve. Many may choose to give up on offering health insurance at all. The data from HHS after the passage of Obamacare showed that the Obama administration expected as many...

More than any Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama in his writings and speeches has worked out an impressive interpretation of American history that culminates in modern liberalism. It also culminates, not incidentally, in him. As a writer, Obama’s strength is telling tales, and his story of America mixes together social, intellectual, and political history. It begins and keeps contending with the Founding– with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He tries to tell a new story about the country that acknowledges, and then contextualizes, traditional views in ways that are meant to be reassuring but that point...

During my book "tour," radio hosts are forever asking me whether I believe that Obama is intentionally attempting to destroy America. It's a fair question, especially given the title of my book and because so many people legitimately believe he is. I have never been too receptive to conspiracy theories, and I'm not particularly enamored of ones circulating about Obama. But unlike many other such theories, this one is about a truly unprecedented assault on the American idea and on those first principles that have made America the unique experiment in constitutional governance that it has been. Ordinary people --...

Green agenda targets slurry bombers As fire rages out of control on the edge of Colorado Springs, threatening lives and property, it is time we listen to those who have warned us about the negative effect environmentalists and President Barack Obama have had on the federal government’s ability to fight fires. Much of what’s burning is the Pike National Forest, which is federal property. Yet it took almost three days to get federal fire fighting aircraft off the ground to begin dumping meaningful loads of slurry to slow the fire’s growth. Because the Forest Service has a shortage of planes,...

At certain pivotal moments in history, societies have needed the contributions of truly great minds to sort through a flood of information and reconstruct it in a manner that can be properly digested by the general population. Shortly before the American Revolution, as the thirteen original colonies pondered their independence from Great Britain, it was Thomas Paine who solidified the debate and presented it to the public with his timeless work "Common Sense." No less of a historical milestone was embodied in the efforts of John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton as they delivered the set of essays that...