Free Republic

President Obama, in his drive for a national healthcare overhaul, strove to provide a new guarantee that all Americans, no matter where they lived, would have basic protection against sickness and disease, ending decades of variations among states. ..... < snip > Under the court's ruling, states will be free to decide not to cover all their poor residents through their Medicaid programs.That may mean liberal states that have embraced the healthcare law such as California, Massachusetts and Maryland will in 2014 effectively offer all their residents health coverage, a key goal of the law Obama signed two years ago....

In 2007, outside Bangalore, India, an explosion decapitated an industrial worker, hurling his body through a brick wall. In 2005 a routine procedure at a manufacturing plant in Taiwan caused a spontaneous explosion that killed a worker and ignited a blaze that ripped through the factory, shutting down production for three months. Both incidents shared a common cause—silane, a gas made up of silicon and hydrogen that explodes on contact with air. And both incidents occurred in the same industry—solar power. Among other environmental black marks, the process of manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) cells from silicon relies on this dangerous pyrophoric...

Auto Safety: As a Toyota Prius with a stuck accelerator races down a California freeway, no one mourns the victims of the fuel economy standards imposed by Congress. Forced into smaller cars, thousands have died. We can barely imagine the panic felt by James Sikes, 61, as his Toyota Prius accelerated uncontrollably while he drove down Interstate 8 in San Diego County. We can imagine the continuation of the grandstanding by the owners of "government motors" as they further browbeat a competitor of government-run GM and Chrysler. We do not minimize the safety issues here that need to be addressed,...

James Sikes, the San Diego runaway Toyota Prius driver, filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and now has over $700,000 in debt. According to one anonymous tipster, we're also told he hasn't been making payments on his Prius.

<p>GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Some Wisconsin communities that have installed high efficiency traffic lights are discovering the energy-saving bulbs are a hazard in a snow storm.</p> <p>City officials say the LED lights use less electricity and don't give off enough heat to melt ice or snow. So when the snow falls and the wind blows, the traffic lights are obscured.</p>

Update at 8:50 a.m. ET, Nov. 2: Another update on the response to this post. As you can see, there are now more than 1.1 million votes on the survey and 2,100 comments with this post. We've also received several hundred e-mails. Here's a representative sample: -- Chuck Parker: "Conservatives should be allowed to have one Network on their side, that being FOX since the libs have ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC acting as unpaid mouth pieces for Obama." -- Paul Ingram: "NPR should be more objective instead of being a mouthpiece for the Obama administration, What a great...

No matter how you slice it, this is a case of bad governing. Earnest, hard-working teenagers who thought they had steady employment for the summer now have none; camps that have traditionally been positive outlets for youngsters and life-savers for working families during summer months have been closed or cut back; the city's recreation director, an able man with plenty of experience, faces perhaps the most challenging two months of his career. All this because Paterson Mayor Jose "Joey" Torres and his administration used dollars targeted for use under the federal stimulus program not to create jobs but to create...

Female U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have more to fear than roadside bombs or enemy ambushes. They also are at risk of being raped or sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers. "The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq," a book based on 40 in-depth interviews, recounts the stories of female veterans who served in combat zones and tells of rape, sexual assault and harassment by male counterparts. Some were warned by officers not to go to the latrine by themselves. One began carrying a knife in case she was attacked by comrades. Others said they...

Something to contemplate: Assuming Republicans eventually stop acting like wimps, and win an election again - are socialists in their usual megalomanic over-reach, so stepping in it?

With Columbia Gorge turbines pumping out extra electricity, the agency had to quickly adjust its hydro generation Columbia Basin river managers had a close call this week when they were forced to cut back on hydropower after a surge in wind energy blasted through the system. The surge forced them to spill more water over dams, risking the health of migrating fish. For the first time, it also exposed serious kinks in a plan that was supposed to deal smoothly with just such emergencies. As it turned out, the spills weren't heavy enough to harm fish. But the federal Bonneville...

Farewell the age of reason, welcome the idiocracy. Only George Orwell could have invented - and named - the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that came into operation yesterday. It is the latest in a long line of measures intended to ease the conscience of the rich while keeping the poor miserable, in this case spectacularly so. The consequences of the RTFO have been much trumpeted on these pages. It says enough that one car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year, or that a reported one-third of...

As many as 13 potential wind-farm projects in western Kansas could be in danger because of the state's decision to reject two coal-fired generating plants near Holcomb, proponents of the wind farms said. New transmission lines were to be part of the $3.6 billion Sunflower Electric Power Corp. project, which was rejected by Rod Bremby, the state's secretary of health and environment.

WASHINGTON - Strong demand for corn from ethanol plants is driving up the cost of livestock and will raise prices for beef, pork and chicken, the Agriculture Department said Friday. Meat and poultry production will fall as producers face higher feed costs, the department said in its monthly crop report. Ethanol fuel, which is blended with gasoline, is consuming 20 percent of last year's corn crop and is expected to gobble up more than 25 percent of this year's crop. The price of corn, the main feed for livestock, has driven the cost of feeding chickens up 40 percent, according...

Mon 4 Sep 2006 Malodour on the dancefloor NIGHTSPOTS are being forced to pump out perfume because the new smoking ban is failing to disguise body odours. Air fresheners and scented oils are being deployed in a bid to banish smells caused by sweaty revellers. Licensed trade chiefs say venues are turning some people away because of poor hygiene, which was covered up before by the smell of cigarette smoke. Kay Bennett, of Edinburgh city centre nightclub Cabaret Voltaire, said: "If you walk into a club with a few hundred people dancing, you notice a smell. It's a combination of...

Now that smokers have to light up outside Austin restaurants and bars, a new problem is piling up. More smokers are flicking their cigarette butts on the ground and littering downtown streets. “I’ve heard from bar owners and bartenders that the problem has gotten significantly worse after the smoking ordinance,” Brian Block of Keep Austin Beautiful said. That could be causing an environmental problem for the city. It's what happens after the cigarette butts are thrown down that has environmentalists worried. Environmentalists want the city and bars to supply ashtrays to keep cigarette butts from polluting Town Lake. "Those cigarette...

Doctors could face death penalty for illegal abortions, some say By Tommy Witherspoon Tribune-Herald staff writer Saturday, August 27, 2005 Doctors who perform illegal abortions in Texas could be prosecuted for capital murder and face a death sentence under recent changes in Texas law that have resulted in apparent unintended consequences. While officials familiar with the new legislation say such prosecutions are unlikely, the possibility of a doctor on death row, whether intentional or not, puts a sharp focus on the importance of analyzing legislative activity every two years, officials say. That's what Lindsey Roberts, director of training for the...

Once again, the political right and the political left are united by one common objective: the suppression of unorthodox speech that threatens their two-party duopoly. Sneaking in quietly, on little bureaucrat feet, lawyers and other agents of the Incumbent-ocracy are enacting rules that will threaten the economic livelihoods, and possibly even the personal freedoms, of those who express heterodox opinions. On the right, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants criminal penalties for "indecent" speech over the airwaves. Fines weren't good enough. Sensenbrenner & Co. think the likes of Howard Stern should go to jail. Some...

After listening to pundits reflect upon yesterday's extremely inaccurate early exit polls, it becomes clear that either the AP simply threw science to the wind by sending all women pollers to interview all women voters, or that they tried to affect the election and depress the R vote. Personally, I think the latter. After CBS's forged documents and the timing of trumped up "stories" by the NYTimes in the last ten days, I admit that I am cynical enough to believe that early exit poll data was manipulated in order to simulate a Kerry lead. As I said yesterday, however,...

LAGOS, Nigeria - Shivering and sweating feverishly, Felicia Egbuchue took the malaria medicine her doctor prescribed. Although it had cured her in years past, this time it didn't. She was rushed to the hospital, and hooked up to an intravenous drip. "I have no inner strength. I feel like I'm dying," the 30-year-old university student said from her hospital bed. Malaria, the ancient mosquito-borne disease that was rolled back by medical advances in the mid-20th century, is making a deadly comeback. Strains of the disease are becoming increasingly resistant to treatment, infecting and killing more people than ever before —...

Socialism in America's Congress: A Primer [all links provided were current and up-to-date as of the date of posting; I have no control over their effectiveness if they later change or disappear.] "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." (Norman Thomas, 1936 presidential candidate on the Socialist ticket) The war with Iraq has brought out the worst in liberals, all across America. We have witnessed those who preach...