Freedom Line Blog

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Lee:  2012 May Be Even Brighter for Conservatives Than 2010
Senik:  Four Surprising Lessons from the Midterm Elections
Ellis:  Election Results for Candidates Profiled by CFIF
Release:  2010 Midterm Elections: Net Neutrality Winners and Losers

Freedom Minute Video:  The Way We Were: A Look Back at Liberal Rule, 2009-2010
Podcast:  International Author Shares Diary from World War II
Jester’s Courtroom:  How Not To Rob a Bank

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

With the midterm elections having come and gone, CFIF’s Renee Giachino takes us on a trip down memory lane to the way things were under liberal rule.  2009-2010:  In their own words.

Interview with Belgian-born author Joseph M. Callewaert, Knight of the French Order of Merit, on his book, Lights out for Freedom:  Four Years under the Nazi Boot, a personal account of growing up among the upheaval of war and the fear, hunger and oppression suffered by so many during the Nazi occupation of Belgium.

Listen to the interview here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Wondering what some liberal icons will be wearing this Halloween?  CFIF’s Renee Giachino presents you with a speculative guide on what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Vice President Joe Biden and others with be posing as this October 31.

In an op-ed published today on The Hill’s Congress Blog, CFIF Vice President Timothy Lee warns that “regardless of what occurs on November 2,”  the EPA’s regulatory agenda moving forward threatens to hit consumers and business hard and right where it hurts: their pocketbooks.

Lee writes:

When we ring in the New Year in just two short months, next week’s elections will be in our collective rear view mirror. However — regardless of what occurs on Nov. 2 — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) campaign to impose its new round of economy-wide environmental regulations will continue in 2011. That should worry every American, because EPA’s wish list will hit consumers and business where it hurts: their pocketbooks.

Supported by an administration that has suffered defeat after defeat on Capitol Hill in its attempt to pass wholesale climate change legislation, EPA instead seeks to impose its costly and burdensome regulatory agenda through the back door. From overly complex new greenhouse gas rules to more stringent ozone standards to new mandates for recycled coal ash, unelected EPA bureaucrats hope to decree through regulatory fiat what they can’t enact through the democratic or legislative processes.

If successful, EPA’s agenda could cost American families $3,000 per year, according to Heritage Foundation estimates. …

Read the entire piece here.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Lee:  2008 – 2010: From “Yes We Can” to “Shove It” in Two Short Years
Senik:  Obama Betrays a Dream, Disappoints a Nation
Ellis:  The Costs of Over-Regulation

Freedom Minute Video:  A Liberal Halloween
Podcast:  Physician Discusses Role of Patients in Repealing ObamaCare
Jester’s Courtroom:  Mom Sues “The Tyra Banks Show” for Daughter’s Bad Decision

Editorial Cartoons: Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz: Question of the Week
Notable Quotes: Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Interview with Dr. Scott Barbour, a board certified orthopaedic surgeon and member of the Board of Directors of Docs4PatientCare, on voter backlash against ObamaCare and the importance of repealing it  before the doctor-patient relationship is ruined forever.

Listen to the interview here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Release:  CFIF Launches TV Issue Ads  Urging End to Reckless Gov’t Spending, Rising National Debt and Job-Killing Agenda
Senik:  Where Do We Go From Here? An Immediate Agenda for a New Republican Congress
Lee:  Tea Partiers Actually Better-Educated, Less “Afraid” Than the General Public
Ellis:  Venezuela, Iran & Russia: A VIRUS to American Foreign Policy

Freedom Minute Video:  The American Public is the Real “Party of No”
Podcast:  Organization Calls on Women to Get Out the Vote
Jester’s Courtroom:  From No Restroom to the Courtroom

Editorial Cartoons: Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz: Question of the Week
Notable Quotes: Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses a new Gallup poll on how the American people view the federal government.  Here’s a hint:  The three most common phrases used were “too big,” “confused” and “corrupt.”

Interview with Sonja Eddings Brown, President of The Kitchen Cabinet and a longtime grassroots organizer, on her organization’s planned “October Surprise” to drive conservative women to vote early and to vote absentee to send a message to Congress on the economy and spending in Washington. 

Listen to the interview here.

In an op-ed published today on Foxnews.com, CFIF’s Troy Senik makes the case for a Constitutional Amendment to force Congress to rein in excessive federal spending.  Such a Constitutional Amendment is being pushed as part of CFIF’s “One More Vote” project:

If, as expected, a new generation of economic conservatives join the ranks of the United States Congress in the wake of the upcoming midterm elections, they will face a momentous challenge: how to finally deliver on the promises of fiscal restraint that have so often eluded recent Republican majorities.

To do so, they will need to understand how past congressional failures have set us on the road to reckless spending and how dire the consequences will be if we don’t change paths soon.

In 1995, Congress came within inches of passing a Balanced Budget Amendment.

In that moment, we stood on the precipice of long-term fiscal responsibility. But the amendment failed — by one vote.

Fast-forward to the present and it becomes obvious that the fateful decision not to discipline our spending habits has saddled the nation with an unsustainable economic burden. Since the Balance Budget Amendment failed, our national debt has climbed to more than $13 trillion.

By 2020, the total gross federal debt, including liabilities for Social Security and Medicare,– is anticipated to reach 122 percent of GDP. Even without factoring in entitlement obligations, this will translate to a debt burden of more than $170,000 for every American family. …

Senik goes on to note:

If this trend continues unbroken, the United States will find itself poised for the same kind of decline that has beset nations like Greece and states like California. But there’s still a limited window left for us to stave off disaster.

Any serious approach to our economic travails will have to tackle three issues simultaneously: the need for balanced budgets, the danger of tax increases during a time of recession and the prevention of an expansion of the nation’s debt load. The current national consensus for common-sense budget reforms provides leaders in Washington the impetus and the opportunity to address all three.

What’s needed is a Constitutional Amendment requiring 60 percent of the Senate and House of Representatives to vote in the affirmative for any piece of legislation that increases the debt ceiling, raises current taxes or imposes new taxes. The Constitutional Amendment should also require Congress to pass a balanced federal budget annually.

By embracing balanced budgets, these common-sense reforms embrace the legacy of the original Balanced Budget Amendment campaign of the mid-1990s. But they also recognize that balancing the federal ledger is a necessary, but not sufficient, step to getting our fiscal house in order.

Read Senik’s entire piece here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Senik:  The Cheney Way: Why Washington Needs More Anti-Heroes
Lee:  Latest IRS Data: Wealthier Americans Again Paid More than Their “Fair Share”
Ellis:  The Scourge of Public Employee Compensation

Freedom Minute Video:  Liberals Running Scared from the Conservative Comeback
Podcast:  SCOTUS Opens October 2010 Term with New Face and New Cases
Jester’s Courtroom:  Born to Golf

Editorial Cartoons: Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz: Question of the Week
Notable Quotes: Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.