Free Republic

Americans are no longer living under representative government. We are living under government by the screen people, of the screen people, for the screen people. Joy PullmannBy Joy Pullmann OCTOBER 7, 2021 Yes, we’ve heard all about Joe Biden’s alleged vaccine mandate for private companies employing 100 or more people. It was all over the news even before he announced it on September 9. His announcement has jeopardized the employment of millions of Americans and increased worker shortages in critical domains such as health care. There’s only one problem. It’s all a mirage. Biden’s so-called vaccine mandate doesn’t exist —...

‘Just the psychological pressure these kids are facing, they don’t have that ability to really fight for themselves, so that’s why we, as parents, I feel like we don’t have any other choice,’ says father Mike Bell.A group of parents in northeastern Indiana has reached their breaking point with government officials turning deaf ears to their children’s suffering under irrational and scientifically unfounded COVID rules with no clear end point.After spending months trying to work with local officials to get their kids’ lives “back to normal,” only to have their school board allegedly break its own rules to mandate masks...

While the headline states Joe Biden ‘is under fire,’ almost every sentence in the story is designed to defend Biden’s actions, beginning with the rest of the title.A recent Politico article by Caitlin Emma on President Joe Biden’s hold of funding for border wall construction provides a perfect example of the press running cover for the Biden administration. Almost every sentence is designed to excuse or defend Biden’s action, and of course smear the Trump team in the process.Biden’s executive order on Jan. 20 ordered a hold on all funds being used for the construction of the wall along the...

Watching the hysterical reaction of the radical left—such as Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post—to Attorney General William Barr’s thoughtful, well-reasoned, important speech at the Federalist Society convention on the constitutional doctrine of the unitary executive is like history repeating itself. Liberals had the same overreaction to then-Attorney General Edwin Meese’s 1985 speech to the American Bar Association on the Constitution and originalism. Only someone as openly partisan and ill-informed as Marcus could possibly claim that a speech explaining the historical basis of the Founders’ views on the importance of a strong executive is “angrily partisan” and “scary.” So what...

The latest suggestion to end the political rancor in America is…a monarchy! Nikolai Tolstoy writes in The New York Times how a king or queen would make America more stable. Indeed, the modern history of Europe has shown that those countries fortunate enough to enjoy a king or queen as head of state tend to be more stable and better governed than most of the Continent’s republican states. By the same token, demagogic dictators have proved unremittingly hostile to monarchy because the institution represents a dangerously venerated alternative to their ambitions.Reflecting in 1945 on what had led to the rise...

With the prospect of a President Donald Trump or a President Hillary Clinton on the horizon, the growing trend toward the executive acting without the consent of Congress is troubling to all political stripes. Both parties claim to worry about a strong presidency, at least if the other party is in the White House. That trend has been exacerbated by President Obama, but it certainly didn’t start with him. With the exception of Calvin Coolidge, every president of the 20th and 21st centuries contributed to the problem. Many proposals to address the imperial presidency have been floated over the decades....

Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history. In nearly eight years in office, President Obama has sought to reshape the nation with a sweeping assertion of executive authority and a canon of regulations that have inserted the United States government more deeply into American life. Once a presidential candidate with deep misgivings about executive power, Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history. Blocked for most of his presidency by Congress, Mr. Obama has sought...

In the latest rebuke of the Obama administration’s expansive view of executive power, a federal judge has struck down the Interior Department’s effort to regulate fracking for oil and natural gas. Judge Scott Skavdahl of the District Court of Wyoming already had put a hold on the regulations last year, and in a decision released late Tuesday, he ruled that Congress did not give Interior the power to regulate hydraulic fracturing, indeed it had expressly withheld that power with some narrow exceptions.

President Obama is going before Congress to request authorization for the limited use of military force in a battle of up to three years against the Islamic State. On the surface, this looks like a welcome recognition of Congress’s ultimate authority in matters of war and peace. But unless the resolution put forward by the White House is amended, it will have the opposite effect. Congressional support will amount to the ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making. Whatever else they decide, the House and Senate should revise the White House initiative to guarantee that it won’t have this tragic...

Stop President Obama’s Illegal Immigration Action in Court President Obama broke the law. He violated the Constitution. Now we’re taking aggressive action in court. President Obama said he “change[d] the law” when he took unilateral action on immigration. The Constitution is clear: The President enforces the law. He does not make the law. Twenty states are taking a stand to defend the Constitution against President Obama’s imperial immigration action. They’ve filed a massive federal lawsuit to stop his unconstitutional overreach. We’re joining them. We’re preparing to file a critical amicus brief to stop President Obama’s illegal action. We testified before...

Senator Ted Cruz isn’t one to throw a bone to the Obama administration. But a new bill that he introduced would give the government enormous new powers when it comes to national security. It’s called the “Expatriate Terrorist Act” and on the surface its intentions seem good enough. It allows the United States to revoke the citizenship of anyone fighting for or aiding a terrorist group like ISIS. “If we do not pass this legislation, the consequence will be that Americans fighting alongside ISIS today may come home tomorrow with a U.S. passport, may come home to New York or...

With no plans to secure the border, President Obama is considering executive action without Congress to grant Hondurans amnesty and to set up a program to screen "refugees" in the country before green lighting them into the United States, cutting out the process of trekking through Mexico. From the New York Times: The Obama administration is considering whether to allow hundreds of minors and young adults from Honduras into the United States without making the dangerous trek through Mexico, according to a draft of the proposal. If approved, the plan would direct the government to screen thousands of children and...

In January, President Barack Obama outlined his strategy for 2014. "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone," he said. The president planned on using his pen to sign executive and administrative orders and his phone to call outside groups -- not Congress -- to rally behind his pet programs. Obama forgot to mention his third favorite instrument -- the teleprompter. Rather than working with Congress, Obama's second term is all about blaming Congress for whatever goes wrong. In that can't-do spirit, Obama mocked House Speaker John Boehner's threat to take legal action against the White House's imperial ways....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has limited a president's power to make temporary appointments to fill high-level government jobs. The court said Thursday that President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he invoked the Constitution's provision on recess appointments to fill slots on the National Labor Relations Board in 2012.

The US Supreme Court today limited a president's power to make recess appointments when the White House and the Senate are controlled by opposite parties, scaling back a presidential authority as old as the republic.

President Barack Obama believes he is above the law. That's because he is. This week alone, Obama announced that he would unilaterally change student loan rules, allowing borrowers to avoid paying off more of their debt; he signaled that he would continue his non-enforcement of immigration law, even as thousands of children cross the border; he defended his non-disclosure of a terrorist swap to Congress. And, he said, more such actions were in the offing. "I will keep doing whatever I can without Congress," Obama explained. This is not just executive overreach. In many cases, Obama's exercise of authoritarian...

Last week the House of Representatives passed yet another bill with an awkward, acronym-enabling title: the Executive Needs to Faithfully Observe and Respect Congressional Enactments of the Law Act. The ENFORCE the Law Act (get it?) would allow either chamber of Congress to authorize litigation aimed at correcting the president's "failure to faithfully execute the laws." While the bill's name is ridiculous and its mechanism is dubious, the basic premise of its supporters, almost all of whom are Republicans, is correct: As the House Judiciary Committee's report on the bill puts it, Obama has engaged in a "pattern of overstepping...

I promise I will not spend the next 232 days - between now and election day - writing about how the mid-terms are going to turn out. You know my record for prognostication. It's dreadful. Nevertheless, here is what I Tweeted yesterday afternoon: @richgalen Gallup Obama Approval 3-day track = 39-55. One year ago was 50-43. Reason enough for Dems to worry. http://bit.ly/6v3JWW There is not much statistical difference between an approval rating of 42 and 39 (and it is likely to bounce within that range) but, the psychology of one being in the 40s and the other in the...

The White House issued veto threats on Wednesday for a pair of bills reining in executive overreach that debuted and were debated on the House floor. The Executive Needs to Faithfully Observe and Respect Congressional Enactments of the Law (ENFORCE the Law) Act of 2014 puts in place a procedure that would expedite the ability of the House or Senate to sue the executive branch for failure to faithfully execute the laws. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a former prosecutor who introduced the bill, said a three-judge panel at the federal district court level followed by direct appeal to the Supreme...

The United States is at "a constitutional tipping point" and "in the midst of a constitutional crisis." Has President Barack Obama unilaterally overturned the constitutional framework of three branches that is the basis of our unique and successful system of self-government? That question is not just partisan bickering by Republicans and tea party activists. It was spoken in all seriousness in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee by a distinguished constitutional law professor who voted for Obama. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University said that the "massive gravitational shift of authority to the executive branch" is unconstitutional and threatens the...