Free Republic

Upon hearing that former President Barack Obama recently boasted that he had a scandal-free administration, my first thought after regaining my faculties was: How can I possibly cram all the evidence refuting this in a little bitty column? Then I read that what he actually said was, "We didn't have a scandal that embarrassed us." At first blush, that sounds better, right? Because I assume he doesn't mean he's incapable of being embarrassed. After a little more thought, though, it occurred to me that this construction just highlights the real reason he has apparently deluded himself into thinking he served...

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency violates a clear statute designed to ensure its regulations and environmental standards receive independent scientific review, someone should sue to force the agency to follow the law. ThatÂ’s exactly what Pacific Legal Foundation did when the EPA and the Department of Transportation issued regulations in 2011 to establish greenhouse gas emission and fuel efficiency standards for cars (the Car Rule) and medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (the Truck Rule) without submitting either proposed rule to the federal Science Advisory Board for peer review. Both cases will be debated in federal court for the first time...

Call it the Gruberization of America’s energy and environmental policies.Former White House medical consultant Jonathan Gruber pocketed millions of taxpayer dollars before infamously explaining how ObamaCare was enacted. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” he said. “It was really, really critical to getting the bill passed.” At least one key provision was a “very clever basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.” The Barack Obama/Gina McCarthy Environmental Protection Agency is likewise exploiting its lack of transparency and most Americans’ lack of scientific understanding. EPA bureaucrats and their hired scientists, pressure groups and PR...

Thanks, Environmental Protection Agency! You've required sewage treatment plants, catalytic converters on cars and other things that made the world cleaner than the world in which I grew up. Good work. Today, America's waterways are so much cleaner that I swim in New York City's once-filthy Hudson River -- right beside skyscrapers in which millions of people, uh, flush. The air we breathe is also cleaner than it's been for 60 years. In a rational world, environmental bureaucrats would now say, "Mission accomplished. We set tough standards, so we don't need to keep doing more. Stick a fork in it!...

“…Our energy policy is creating jobs and leading to a cleaner, safer planet.” If only these words spoken by our president during his State of the Union address were actually true. The energy industry is the latest victim of Obama Administration overreach. Under the guise of addressing global warming, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a plan that would require all states to make drastic reductions in carbon emissions. In essence, this forces them to use less coal and effectively mandates a transition to more expensive and less reliable energy sources like wind and solar – regardless...

In January 2008 Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.” He promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to skyrocket. He wasn’t kidding. In January, 2011 the Obama Administration, for the first time ever, blocked an already approved bid to build one of the largest mountaintop removal coal mines in Appalachian history. And, today it was reported that Obama’s energy plans will cause electricity rates to necessarily...

You can chart the course of human progress in terms of how clean our clothing is. In early times people used animal skins, had no change of clothing, and had no soap. By Adam Smith's day soap had improved in quality, was produced industrially, and was becoming available to the common man. In fact, the Industrial Revolution, which is usually discussed in terms of iron, steam, and factories, was actually all about bringing products like soap and underwear — previously only available to the rich — to the common peasants. Only after WWII did electric automatic clothes washers displace hand-cranked...

The Obama administration proposed new guidelines Wednesday that would boost the government's ability to protect streams, wetlands and other sensitive waterways from pollution. Business and property rights groups said the policy would stifle economic growth by generating more red tape for builders of homes and shopping centers, but environmentalists defended it as essential step to provide clean drinking water and protect waterfowl habitat. Administration officials said their goal was to clarify which waters are subject to federal regulation under the 1972 Clean Water Act, a question that two Supreme Court rulings in the past decade have not resolved. "Today about...

Congress is set to vote on a series of amendments aimed to limit the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to impose restrictions on carbon limits without congressional approval. The votes could come as early as next week. Environmental groups have petitioned the FDA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The impact of such an action would be enormous. Such a regulatory action - which has never been approved by Congress - would raise energy price and reduce energy supplies making President Obama's admission that such regulation would cause electricity rates to "skyrocket," reality. A...

Politics: The Senate just claimed the title of the world's most delusional body by refusing to strip unelected EPA bureaucrats of the power to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This was the day freedom died. One wonders why we have a Congress at all. The 53 profiles in cowardice that could not get a cap-and-tax bill through the U.S. Senate voted Thursday to let the Environmental Protection Agency keep the unprecedented power Congress did not expressly give it. It is power that the EPA arrogated to itself through regulation to control every aspect of the American economy and our...

Overregulation: The Senate votes on blocking a government bureaucracy from usurping power never delegated to it by Congress. This administration may put Copenhagen above the Constitution, but we the people have other plans. The GOP's 1994 "Contract with America," a gift that keeps on giving, hopefully will rescue us once again from the clutches of an unelected bureaucracy, the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been allowed by the Supreme Court to regulate every breath we take and every machine we operate. When cap-and-tax legislation was introduced in Congress, the Obama administration threatened that if Congress failed to act, the EPA...