Free Republic

Having decisively placed his stamp on foreign policy by failing to make numerous decisions recently, President Obama is preparing for his staring role in a new television reality series, InDecision Time, scheduled to begin early in 2013. Former President Carter will be the master of ceremonies. Former President Obama, former Secretary Clinton and former Director of Intelligence Clapper will constitute the indecision panel and various celebrity dictator guests will appear in costumes of their choice. There will, of course, be a suitably multicultural studio audience. As each celebrity guest comes on stage, he will do his best imitation of el...

Before there was Obamacare, there was RomneyCare/MassCare. Before there were Obamacare waivers, there were RomneyCare/MassCare waivers. And just as the SEIU Purple Army is smack dab in the middle of exempting itself from Obamacare, it is smack dab in the middle of deciding who does and who doesn’t have to follow the RomneyCare/MassCare rules in the Bay State. Via the Boston Globe (h/t reader Shannon): Massachusetts regulators granted more exemptions last year to residents who said they could not afford the health insurance required by the state, waiving the tax penalty for more than half of those who appealed, according...

After the State Supreme Court here stunned the nation by making this the first state in the heartland to allow same-sex marriage, Iowa braced for its sleepy judicial elections to turn into referendums on gay marriage. The three Supreme Court justices on the ballot this year are indeed the targets of a well-financed campaign to oust them. But the effort has less to do with undoing same-sex marriage — which will remain even if the judges do not — than sending a broader message far beyond this state’s borders: voters can remove judges whose opinions they dislike. Around the country,...

During his first year in office, President Barack Obama won praise from environmental groups for a wide range of decisions, from toughening gas mileage rules to spending billions on renewable energy projects. But now there's grumbling on his green flank. A growing number of environmentalists are clashing with the administration over its management of America's struggling wildlife populations and what they call its reluctance to use the nation's most powerful environmental law, the Endangered Species Act, to stand up to industry. Last week, five conservation groups, led by the Sierra Club, sued the federal government after the U.S. Fish and...

A majority of Americans believe an increased government role in health care would lead to more government corruption, while a plurality of Americans think that scientific data supporting man-made global warming is “mostly falsified.” That is what a new poll by Survey USA reveals. The poll also shows that 58 percent of Americans believe that decisions by the Obama administration have been “bad for America,” as opposed to 37 percent who think Obama’s decisions have been “good for America.”...

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” — Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001 The above assertion and the rest of a remarkable speech to a Hispanic group by Sotomayor — widely touted as a possible Obama nominee to the Supreme Court — has drawn very little attention in the mainstream media since...

The administration was facing a grim international incident in what's believed to be the first pirate attack on an American ship in 200 years as the drama continued to unfold off the coast of Somalia on Wednesday. The majority of the crew of 20 American nationals were able to capture one pirate and negotiate their release, according to calls placed to the Associated Press by the free crew members, but the ship's captain and a crew member reportedly remained in the hands of Somali attackers. The U.S. flagged Maersk Alabama is home-ported in Norfolk, Va., and was carrying emergency food...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A Lebanese minister says the Cabinet has reversed measures against Hezbollah militants that triggered the worst violence since the country's 15-year civil war. Hezbollah has demanded the government reverse the decisions last week to sack an airport security chief for alleged ties to the Shiite group and to declare the militants' private telephone network illegal. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the moves amounted to a declaration of war and shortly after, he unleashed his fighters on the streets of Beirut. The clashes left 54 dead. Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said the Cabinet revoked the decisions "in view...

Doctor Who? Are Patients Making Clinical Decisions? ScienceDaily (Feb. 12, 2008) — Doctors are adjusting their bedside manner as better informed patients make ever-increasing demands and expect to be listened to, and fully involved, in clinical decisions that directly affect their care. In a study just published in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, Dr. J. Bohannon Mason of the Orthocarolina Hip and Knee Center in Charlotte, NC, USA, looks at the changes in society, the population and technology that are influencing the way patients view their orthopaedic surgeons. As patients gain knowledge, their attitude to medicine changes: They no longer...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29, 2008 – The number of troops needed in Iraq, the length of the tours for those troops, the kinds of troops they need to be, and other such decisions rely on the conditions on the ground in Iraq, Defense Department officials said today. Officials in Iraq, at U.S. Central Command and at the Joint Staff are working to assess conditions in Iraq and to plan troop deployments and redeployments for the future, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said at a news conference here. This time last year, conditions in Iraq were terrible. Al Qaeda was growing,...

This is the title of an article in the current issue of Forbes. It is written by John J. Parris: Jesuit Priest and Professor of Bioethics at Boston College. The article starts with a problem. In 1999 a patient was admitted with Lou Gehrig's disease. The patient indicated she should be kept alive until she could no longer enjoy her family. She eventually became unresponsive. Her daughter refused the hospital's wish to terminate life support. A lengthy (10 month) court battle ensued. The daughter opposed but eventually was faced with the hospital taking the position (Court approved) that the daughter...

WASHINGTON, May 11, 2007 – Legislators serving in the Iraqi Council of Representatives have accomplished much in the body’s first year of existence, but additional important and difficult decisions still need to be made, according to a Multinational Force Iraq statement. “The council’s most important work lies ahead of it,” officials said in a statement the command released yesterday. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took command of the Baghdad-based command on Feb. 10, is the architect of the current surge of U.S. and Iraq forces into Baghdad and parts of western Iraq to tamp down insurgent violence and...

In courtrooms across the nation an extraordinary thing has happened: In a spate of decisions, judges have deferred to important policy judgments rendered by democratically elected legislatures or by the people themselves in referenda. It obviously hasn’t been easy for judges to give up their self-appointed role as super legislators, fit to rewrite any laws based on the whimsy of the hour. They have done it only reluctantly and by narrow margins. But, for now, the popular will on the issue at hand in these decisions — same-sex marriage — seems safe from arbitrary judicial override. At least until the...

AS liberals try to articulate a post-Bush foreign policy, some are feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance. They have always thought of themselves as idealistic, concerned with the welfare of humankind. Not for them the ruthlessly narrow focus on national self-interest of the “realist” foreign policy school. That school’s most famous practitioner, Henry Kissinger, is for many liberals a reminder of how easily the ostensible amorality of classic realism slides into immorality. Yet idealism has lost some of its luster. Neoconservatism, whose ascendancy has scared liberals into a new round of soul-searching, seems plenty idealistic, bent on spreading democracy and...

George W. Bush is the first president with an MBA (from Harvard Business School, no less), but it's not clear that being a master of business administration has made him a better chief executive.[...] Business schools are a relatively new institution. The MBA was invented in the Progressive era as a way to abort future generations of robber barons. The idea was to train a class of business administrators (the ethos was anti-entrepreneurial) who would expiate capitalism's sins by managing their corporations in keeping with higher morality. The higher morality was whatever the spirit of the age revealed to professors...

by Ken Concannon Other Articles by Ken Concannon Roe v. Wade: A Not-So-Super Precedent 04/20/06 On the second day of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in September 2005, pro-choice Republican committee chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania introduced the subject of stare decisis, a Latin term meaning "to stand by that which is decided.” In This Article...A Grim AttachmentIf the Print Is Small Enough They Won’t NoticePlease Don’t Confuse Us With the Facts A Grim Attachment It’s a maxim that abortion supporters, like Specter, cling to dearly because most constitutional scholars are well aware that the Roe decision...

Close window Published online: 16 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060213-9 Why you should go with your gutStudy says unconscious consideration yields most satisfying decisions.Helen Pearson Which would you choose? Studies say you should list the pros and cons, then sleep on it.© Punchstock The best way to make a tough decision is to put your feet up and think about something else. So says an investigation of people shopping for cars, clothes and furniture. Many people assume that the best way to tackle a difficult choice is to list the pros and cons and ponder them deeply. Others believe we...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2005 – The Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission wrapped up four days of deliberations in final actions Aug. 26 and 27 by voting to turn Pope Air Force Base, N.C., into an Army airfield and recommending sweeping recommendations to revamp the Air National Guard and consolidate its operations. The nine-member commission deviated significantly from the Pentagon's proposed plan to realign the Air Guard, passing a recommendation that would ensure every state with an existing Air Guard unit would retain at least some Guard aircraft. Specific details of the plan, including charts used in the deliberation, are...

WASHINGTON - Thousands of pages of newly released documents from John Roberts' first government job show a highly intelligent, politically savvy young man, wrestling with charged legal and political issues on behalf of the deeply conservative Reagan administration. As a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith in 1981 and 1982, Roberts advocated positions and drafted memos on issues from judicial restraint to voting rights to affirmative action, which were as controversial then as they are now that Roberts is no longer a twenty-something aide but a nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court. Roberts generally took strongly...

Senate Democrats are preparing to play to the cameras once more while raking Supreme Court nominee John Roberts over the coals, but the fight may not be as fierce as some Liberals want. There's bound to be some huffing and puffing during the confirmation hearings, as many of the radical groups controlling the Democrats demand they fight a battle that cannot be won. Though Democrats will probably use the "we need more documents" dodge to avoid an outright filibuster, Roberts will surely be confirmed in the end. One almost has to feel sorry for the Democrats, pushed into this fight...