Free Republic

The term "pedestrian" has a derogatory meaning because peasants walked while nobles were "equestrians" and rode horses. The industrial revolution eliminated this class difference, as it did so many others, by making car ownership available to the masses until eventually Herbert Hoover was able to boast that "Republican prosperity has reduced and increased earning capacity” to "put the proverbial 'chicken in every pot' and a car in every backyard to boot." Democrats have spent two generations trying to get those cars out of every backyard. Biden is trying to bring back Obama's mileage standards that were estimated to raise car...

President-elect Joe Biden announced Tuesday he was nominating Samantha Power, a former Obama administration official and key unmasker of Trump campaign staffers, to a top position in his incoming administration. “Ambassador Samantha Power is a world-renowned voice of conscience and moral clarity — challenging and rallying the international community to stand up for the dignity and humanity of all people,” Biden said in a statement. “As USAID Administrator, she’ll be a powerful force for principled American engagement.”

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/289290-jeff-bezos-neil-degrasse-tyson-join-pentagon-innovation-board July 26, 2016 - 02:15 PM EDT Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jeff Bezos join DOD innovation board By Rebecca Kheel Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson were among the big names Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Tuesday as joining the Pentagon’s recently formed Defense Innovation Advisory Board. “I've given them the very specific task of identifying innovative private sector best practices that could be of use to DOD [the Department of Defense] — not unlike our recent Hack the Pentagon pilot program, which invited hackers to help find vulnerabilities in our networks," Carter said during an...

Obama Issues Executive Order for the government to use individual's behavioral data.

It has been reported that Samantha Power, while serving as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, requested or initiated a request for more than 260 unmaskings of Americans whose conversations were picked up during surveillance. But today, according to Rep. Trey Gowdy, Power denied making anything close to that number of unmasking requests. Here is what Gowdy told Fox News’ Bret Baier: BAIER: You are also looking, and have talked to the former Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power. We reported that she requested or her officer requested 260 plus efforts to unmask, in other words, get who was...

Even as Democrats publicly and loudly decry corporatist political “dark money,” billionaire Democrats and other donors funnel hundreds of millions to radical and violent causes.   Barely a week had passed after Donald Trump’s historic upset in the November 8 presidential election, but some of the world’s richest individuals were already launching a counteroffensive. George Soros and his fellow deep-pocket funders of the Democratic Party and left-wing causes gathered with a lineup of party activists and luminaries from Hollywood, K Street, and Wall Street for a three-day “investment conference” (November 15-17) at the luxurious Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C....

"Devastated by Justice Scalia's death. One of the most important justices ever, a defender of the Rule of Law, and a truly wonderful person."

A group of veteran security experts and former White House officials has been selected to conduct a full review of U.S. surveillance programs and other secret government efforts disclosed over recent months, ABC News has learned. The recent acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell, will be among what President Obama called a “high-level group of outside experts” scrutinizing the controversial programs. Joining Morell on the panel will be former White House officials Richard Clarke, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire. An announcement is expected Thursday, a source with knowledge of the matter told ABC News’ Jon Karl....

RUSH: Snerdley is pointing out to me that all hell broke loose in the last 24 hours. Let me guess. I assume you’re talking about Trump’s interview in the New York Times. You’re talking about what he said about Sessions. You’re talking about the Mueller investigation. It’s getting ridiculous. And it’s just confirming everything I have thought about what’s really going on here between the establishment and Trump. You know, not only is this program’s 30th anniversary coming up a week from Tuesday, today is an anniversary, folks. Today marks Donald Trump’s sixth month in office. And you know what...

On September 15, 2015, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order with the intent on implementing “Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People.” The Executive Order (EO) is based on a “growing body of evidence demonstrating that behavioral science insights — research findings from fields such as behavioral economics and psychology about how people make decisions and act on them — can be used to design government policies to better serve the American people.” Furthermore, the EO continues, “Where Federal policies have been designed to reflect behavioral science insights, they have substantially improved outcomes for the individuals, families, communities,...

When Americans think about the Confederacy, they often think about Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 classic, Gone With the Wind. Inspired by recent debates over the Confederate flag, I decided to give the book a try. I confess that I did not have high hopes. I expected to be appalled by its politics and racism, and to be bored by the melodrama. (Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, and Ashley Wilkes? Really?) About twenty pages, I thought, would be enough. I could not have been more wrong. The book is enthralling, and it casts a spell. Does it make a plausible argument for continuing...

The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues. The contract calls for the development of "Persona Management Software" which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.Click here to view the government contract (PDF)According to the contract, the software would "protect the identity of government agencies" by employing a number...

The Scrapbook was understandably intrigued when Cass Sunstein, a former Obama White House official and former Harvard law professor, published a Bloomberg.com column headlined “How the Alger Hiss Case Explains the Tea Party.” If you know anything about the famous perjury trial of the high-ranking State Department official and Soviet spy, the headline might seem to suggest that Sunstein is admitting the Tea Party has correctly identified insidious political threats. Needless to say, that is not Sunstein’s point. He spends most of the column recapping the saga of how Time magazine writer Whittaker Chambers accused Hiss, who was one of...

Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History by Richard J. Evans (Brandeis University Press) As everyone knows, the supreme court 
ruled six–three for Al Gore in the great dispute over the Florida recount in 2000. As everyone also knows, Gore emerged as the ultimate victor in that recount, and with his poetic and moving inauguration address he managed to unify a badly divided nation. For a long period, the Gore years continued the peace and prosperity established under President Clinton, punctuated by the successful prevention of an apparent terrorist plot in 2001, by the enactment of health care reform in 2003 (mocked...

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s former regulatory “czar” and one of the smartest and most devious thinkers on the left, has a highly revealing Bloomberg column out this week reporting on the results of a study of the way China has attempted indoctrination in its school system. This column and the underlying study (it’s an NBER paper, behind a paywall unless you have academic access) are useful as background reading for everyone who is rightly concerned about how Common Core standards will likely become the means of nationalizing a liberal school curriculum. (What? You mean you aren’t reassured by the promises from...

WASHINGTON — After a public backlash to government spying, President Barack Obama called for an independent group to review the vast surveillance programs that allow the collections of phone and email records. Now, weeks before the group’s first report is due, some lawmakers, technology organizations and civil liberties groups are concerned that the panel’s members are too close to the Obama administration and its mission too vague to provide a thorough scrubbing of the National Security Agency technologies that have guided intelligence gathering since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------snip---------------------------- The members of the review group are Richard Clarke,...

Billionaire investor George Soros, 83, will marry 42-year-old Tamiko Bolton today, followed by a huge party at his Caramoor Estate in Bedford, with 500 guests. We’re told the couple will say their vows in front of a select group of friends and family before they celebrate with hundreds from 4:30 p.m. onward.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, allowed on NPR this morning that American action in Syria might not be legal:

excerpt: In 2009, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein published a book, called “Nudge,” on how government and other organizations could induce people to avoid common errors. Last year, Sunstein gave the Storrs Lectures at Yale on the topic, which will soon be published as a book called “Nanny Statecraft.” Last month, the Obama administration announced that it is creating a new team to explore applications of this sort of empirical research to policy-making.

Mara ShankarYalie20-something The New Boss of Everything Maya Shankar is a senior policy advisor at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. Her mandate is to supervise the organization of a federal government 'nudge squad' that will subtly change the behaviors of bureaucrats -- and the rest of us. When does a nudge become a shove? Americans may find out, as the federal government is setting up a 'behavioral insights team' to tinker with the way we accomplish everything from saving money and staying in school to losing weight and becoming more energy-efficient. The Obama administration's grand plans...