Free Republic

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D., Md.), the second-ranking Democrat in the House, reacted angrily Tuesday to the suggestion by Texas Gov. Rick Perry that Congress become a part-time institution. “Is this a serious proposal he’s making for a country that has very high unemployment, who’s budget deficit is larger than it’s ever been in history, which has two wars that we’re confronting and trying to bring to a conclusion?” Mr. Hoyer said of the Republican presidential hopeful. “If this is what he thinks is pandering to the Tea Party, it is not in my opinion speaking to the issues that the...

BETTENDORF, Iowa - An early copy of Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry's government reform speech shared with the Des Moines Register shows the Texas governor is planning to propose widespread changes for the federal government, including term limits on federal judges and Supreme Court justices, a part-time Congress, and laws criminalizing insider trading. The governor first previewed the reforms in a speech Monday evening at an event by the Scott County Republican Party, where he said, "Washington doesn't need a new coat of paint, it needs a complete overhaul." Today, he will deliver the details of his plan in a...

A discussion has brewed on the right concerning the War Powers of the Executive Branch. I have read both Woods' "smack down" (his words) and listened to Levin's reasoned debate on his radio show, as well as the relevant Federalist Papers, checking back to see who wrote them, and the constitution itself. I have also read Yoo's discussion and the argument for Bush's war powers in the area of the War on Terror. That said, I have no tolerance for the Ron Paul view, nor many of his followers, not because I'm a huge fan (student) of Mark Levin, but...

Many of today’s debates between statists and libertarians are argued on the grounds of efficiency. The libertarians say that when you let the government do something, you invariably get the DMV or the post office. Statists argue that a centralized public service provides better results because it can gain efficiencies of scale and because the lack of a profit incentive eliminates greed. They cite examples like NASA and the Internet to claim that government can do things that would be impossible in the private sector. I am sympathetic to the libertarian argument on this topic, but in this essay I...

It's fascinating that an election as historic and momentous as Tuesday's, one that resulted in the election of the first African-American, indeed the first minority, president in history, is also one of the most complicated and nuanced in memory. Although Sen. Barack Obama won an enormously impressive, 349-plus-electoral-vote victory, Democrats on the other end of the ballot picked up five state legislative chambers (the New York Senate, the Delaware House, the Ohio House, the Wisconsin Assembly, and the Nevada Senate), but lost four others (the Tennessee House and Senate, and the Montana and Oklahoma Senates), with the Alaska Senate going...

All mortgages are defined by a document specifing the exact nature of the property and signed by the buyer and lender. We have been told that these mortgages have been packaged in bundles and sold over and over again. How do we know that the funds for this “BailOut” are backed by any real mortgage documents at all? In other words, “Show me the PAPER!!!” If you feel this bailout is wrong, please contact your Congressman immediately. I have put together a statement that I am going to send out to as many Congressman as I can in the next...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15, 2008 – The passage of a “bundle” of three important laws in Iraq shows a new legislative maturity for the Iraqi parliament, Pentagon officials said here today during a news conference in which they also discussed the redeployment of troops. The three laws – an amnesty law, a provincial powers law and the Iraqi calendar year 2008 budget – passed the Council of Representatives yesterday, said Marine Lt. Gen. John Sattler, the Joint Staff director of strategic plans and operations. Sattler and Army Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, the Joint Staff director of operations, spoke during the news...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE DELTA — Thirty-six judges received laptops equipped with an Iraqi law database and a training program containing Iraqi police procedural information, Nov. 14 and 15 at Forward Operating Base Delta. The database gives the judges access to all Iraqi laws and precedence, according to Capt. Philip Maxwell, the 214th Fires Brigade command judge advocate. “We are trying to make sure they have all the resources they need to prosecute and put away any terrorist or other criminals,” Maxwell said. “The judges are able to follow the laws and do their jobs.” Prior to the distribution of the...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday he will call a special session of the state Legislature to deal with health care, as lawmakers debated a Democratic plan he has pledged to veto. The state Senate passed that plan on a 22-17 vote and sent it to the Assembly shortly after the governor announced his intention. Health care is the governor's top priority this year, and the special session would buy time for him to strike a deal with Democrats on how to cover millions of uninsured Californians. The regular legislative session is scheduled to end this week, and...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30, 2007 – The provincial reconstruction team in Iraq’s Salah ad Din province is hard at work with local leaders to promote organization in governance, economic development, and rule of law, the team’s leader said yesterday. Steven Buckler, speaking with Internet journalists and “bloggers” in a conference call, said the Salah ad Din PRT has about 50 members. “A third of them are our security personnel, who escort us in the Humvees when we go into town,” he explained. The other two thirds, 35 or so, are a mix of civilian and military members. “We're in town five,...

For Immediate ReleaseJanuary 6, 2007 President's Radio Address       Audio      THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Earlier this week, the newly elected members of the House and the Senate took their oaths of office and became part of the 110th Congress. I congratulate them all, and I look forward to working with them over the next two years. Since the November elections, I've had a number of productive meetings with the new leaders in Congress, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. I was encouraged...

Over the past decade and a half, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson has become the one of the most important figures in the state in setting prison policy, or at least trying to change it. Henderson's rulings have placed the judge firmly in control over issues ranging from use of force at Pelican Bay State Prison to internal discipline to improving medical care. They've also put him in position to direct billions in state spending into the correctional system -- with no legislative oversight. The 72-year-old judge's career has just been chronicled in Abby Ginzberg's documentary, "Soul of Justice:...

Legislative leaders on Monday said they had reached a tentative agreement on a roughly $131 billion state budget and hope to bring the spending plan to a vote before Saturday, the start of the new fiscal year. The announcement indicated Republicans and Democrats have broken a logjam over health care funding for children of illegal immigrants and competing plans for using a tax windfall to pay down state debt. Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia of La Jolla and Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman of Fullerton released a joint...

After a helicopter tour of the U.S.-Mexico border here, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger launched a broadside yesterday against House Republican leaders for threatening to scuttle a sweeping overhaul of immigration laws. “It would be totally inexcusable for them to say, 'This year we couldn't do it,'” Schwarzenegger said at a news conference minutes after landing near the border fence, yards away from Tijuana, on a National Guard Blackhawk helicopter. The Republican governor had just completed a 23-minute aerial tour that took him from Brown Field east nearly to Otay Mountain and then west to seaside Border Field State Park. After landing...

PHOENIX — A special legislative panel is preparing to seek an Attorney General's Office investigation into whether the Tucson Unified School District and a guest speaker broke state laws against using school resources to influence elections. A draft report obtained Friday also concludes that TUSD should remove the audio of what the panel called a "hate speech" by Dolores Huerta from its Web site immediately. It also says the district should apologize to students who were at the April 3 assembly where Huerta spoke — and their parents. The preliminary findings by the House Select Committee on Government Operations, Performance...

"Trust the president." That was the Bush administration's main defense of the president's bizarre choice of corporate lawyer Harriet Miers for a seat on the Supreme Court. But the administration also had a backup rationale: as D.C.'s Hill newspaper reported, in an October 3, 2005, conference call with conservative leaders, Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman stressed "the need to confirm a justice who will not interfere with the administration's management of the war on terrorism." It was a bit unsettling to hear that proposition stated so baldly, but no one who has followed the administration's drive to expand executive...

From 1999 through 2002, I was the Vice Chair of the Senate Public Employment and Retirement Committee. During that time, a number of bills presented to the committee increased pension and retirement benefits for state and local government employees. Every single one of these bills were passed and signed by Governor Davis. At the hearing on each of these bills, the lobbyists for the government employee unions showed up and begged the committee members to vote for the bill. In addition, the representative for the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) told the committee that the retirement system could afford...

SACRAMENTO - California lawmakers should scale back a planned increase in education funding, raise the gas tax and let college fees rise, state Legislative Analyst Liz Hill said Thursday in her annual critique of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget. The nonpartisan analyst recommended cutting $2.3 billion from Schwarzenegger's proposed $125 billion spending plan for fiscal 2006-07, including slashing $1 billion from education. Her recommendations, she said, would help reduce the state's long-term structural budget deficit and eliminate some of the "autopilot" spending measures that tie state officials' hands in designing budgets. "If you think of California as a patient fighting...

The 2,234 employees of the California Legislature earn an average of $56,675 annually, up slightly from the year before, in jobs that range from maintaining order in the houses to running the bosses' errands to crafting complex and politically charged legislation. The per-capita average is about $12,000 a year higher than workers in Marin County, which has the highest per-capita income average of California's counties, and nearly triple the level of workers in surrounding Sacramento County. Nearly 200 employees earn $100,000 annually, or more. The figures were compiled by the Legislature at Capitol Weekly's request. A complete listing of the...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades Sunday, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques. --- snip ---- With nearly three-quarters of the populace illiterate, voting was slow as people spent as much as 10 minutes wading through ballots up to seven pages long to find pictures of candidates or symbols that represent them. Each voter dipped a finger in indelible purple ink to prevent repeat voting.