One of the great triumphs of the federal welfare reform legislation passed in the mid-1990s was an insistence…
CFIF on Twitter CFIF on YouTube
To Get More Federal Money, States Claiming Volunteer Organizations are a Form of Welfare Spending

One of the great triumphs of the federal welfare reform legislation passed in the mid-1990s was an insistence that states lay down tough work requirements for welfare recipients as a condition of receiving federal assistance. Though the fact is little publicized, however, another provision of the law allows states to substitute increased welfare spending for the work requirements and still receive money from Washington. That, of course, is an invitation to mischief, as reported by CNSnews, quoting Congressman Geoff Davis

"Many States have scoured their budgets to find other current program spending--such as for Pre-K, child care, and after school programs--they could report as TANF [welfare] spending," Davis said at a hearing on Thursday. "Others began counting third-party spending--such…[more]

May 22, 2012 • 01:24 pm

Liberty Update

CFIFs latest news, commentary and alerts delivered to your inbox.
Jester's CourtroomLegal tales stranger than stranger than fiction: Ridiculous and sometimes funny lawsuits plaguing our courts.
Homeland Security
Title Filter     Display # 
# Article Title
1 Eric Holder is Obstructing Justice with Fast and Furious Defense

The best reason to tell the truth is that it’s too hard to remember the lies.  When the U.S. Department of Justice released over 1,000 pages of internal documents last Friday evening, a charge that seemed unlikely to be proven just weeks before appears now all but certain to apply to Attorney General Eric Holder and his top lieutenants:…

2 Debt Ceiling Defense Cuts Are Ticking Time Bomb for American National Security

For all of the drama that accompanied this summer’s deal to increase the national debt ceiling, the entire affair ended up playing out more or less as business as usual – at least by the standards of Obama-era Washington. That meant an agreement was only secured at the last minute, with the corresponding legislation rushed through too quickly…

3 Obama’s Investigation of CIA Interrogators Has No Integrity

Debra Burlingame is the right kind of citizen activist: a force that frightens politicians in both parties.  After losing her brother Charles, a pilot murdered by 9/11 hijackers who then flew his Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Debra founded 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America.  Through it, she’s pressed both the Bush and Obama…

4 The End of Eric Holder

Liberals in the media are busy commiserating with Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to reverse himself on prosecuting 9/11 terrorists in federal civilian courts.  To the chattering classes, Holder’s failed promises to civilize terrorists and close down the Guantanamo Bay prison show his pragmatism.  To the rest of America…

5 Chinese-North Korean Axis Heightening Need for U.S. Missile Defense Shield

During his recent trip to Beijing, Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared that North Korea is no more than five years away from being able to strike the United States with a nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.  With diplomatic understatement, Gates warned that the rogue nation “is becoming a direct threat to the United States…

6 WikiLeaks Exposes Liberal Double Standard on Whistle Blowers

Ever since Daniel Ellsberg and his enablers at The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, liberals have championed the right of so-called national security whistleblowers to be the final arbiters of what’s in the public interest.  Though deserving of zealous prosecutions for endangering American lives, saboteurs like Ellsberg and…

7 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Eric Holder

Attorney General Eric Holder has a morally serious job.  He must; he heads the only cabinet department named after one of the four cardinal virtues. But in his execution of that office, Holder consistently shows a deficiency in the three other ingredients of classical moral probity: prudence, temperance and courage.   Prudence is serviceably…

8 Feds Unveil a “Friends & Funding” Program for American Islamist Mosque

Not content to let Americans indirectly fund Islamic terrorism through gasoline purchases and illegal drug buys, the U.S. Census Bureau and State Department are each engaged in activities that would land most citizens on a watch list: funding and befriending the most controversial mosque in the United States.  The mosque is called the Dar Al-…

9 The Facts About the Failed Times Square Bomber: Why the Liberal Establishment Can’t Face Reality

The more we learn about failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, the stranger the initial reporting about him becomes.  The liberals’ rush to downplay any possible connections to Islam and label him a “homegrown” terrorist were blatant attempts to freeze the story before the truth was known.  Now, the facts about Shahzad…

10 Bloomberg Joins All Who Just Say No to New York City Terrorist Trials

As presidential crises go, the opposition of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to a presidential decision would not normally rank high.  When that opposition is the Mayor’s abrupt about-face on trying confessed 9/11 terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court in New York, it could be the political equivalent of a detonator…

11 Terror and Honesty

From the second that Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano assured Americans that “the system worked” in the aftermath of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to take down a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, it was obvious that the national debate over terrorism was slipping down the rabbit hole to a world of talking…

12 National Security After the "Undie-Bomber"

One of the best reasons to oppose the expansion of government is that it often leads to overlapping responsibilities.  Duplicate enough of the work, and it becomes nearly impossible to figure out who’s in charge.  Maybe that’s why President Barack Obama announced that “the buck stops” with him after a would-be suicide…

13 Remembering Patriot Day

Not to stoke the fires for those of you lamenting being back in your office, but this should have been a three-day workweek.  On Monday, millions of Americans got the day off to commemorate Labor Day – a holiday whose inauspicious origins are rooted in organized labor’s mob violence and vandalism in turn-of-the-century Chicago.&…

14 Federalism Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

The Department of Homeland Security, never known for its institutional elegance (these are, after all, the people who brought us the color-coded terror alert system), reached a new low last week with the release of an Intelligence Assessment Report warning of the dangers of resurgent right-wing extremism in America. The report deservedly drew the…

15 Speaker Pelosi Loves William Jefferson More Than Homeland Security, Ethics and Maybe Even All Those Grandchildren

Last week, Washington's Culture of Corruption went from just plain disgusting to full-out scary. Many Americans missed the turn, consumed as they were by the need to get Anna Nicole Smith buried and justice gone wild in the pursuit thereof. The turn was there nonetheless, as word leaked that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to appoint William J…

 
Question of the Week   
Which one of the following men did the Chicago Tribune describe as: “a bullheaded man whose high place … was won by his ability to waste more money in quicker time on more absurd undertakings?”
More Questions
Quote of the Day   
 
"This week Catholic bishops are heading to federal courts across the country to defend religious liberty. On Monday they filed 12 lawsuits on behalf of a diverse group of 43 Catholic entities that are challenging the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) sterilization, abortifacient and birth-control insurance mandate. ...  The main goal of the mandate is not, as HHS claimed, to protect…[more]
 
 
—Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law School Professor
— Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law School Professor
 
Liberty Poll   

Should the Obama administration authorize the use of aerial drones by local police agencies?