Free Republic

The 1913 Income Tax In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It was a fairly short amendment, as such things go, weighing in at a whopping 30 words. It reads as follows: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census of enumeration. It was a simple little thing, with rather large consequences for the republic. Prior to the income tax being instituted, the United States government managed to fund itself with various excise taxes, and...

WHY does anyone in government or any of the news media, to include Fox, even pretend that we still have a Constitution?

What a way to celebrate the 220th Anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Each member of Congress, before assuming office, took an oath swearing to protect the Constitution, yet here we now have a Congress which has instead decided to ignore the fact that they are guardians of the Constitution. Instead they have approved an act which now permits indefinite detention of anyone deemed a terrorist in America.... Essentially, Congress has granted the President the power to ignore the Bill of Rights and detain Americans without due process. So, a brief recap, since terrorists threaten the lovely liberties we wrap...

David Hochstetler doesn’t want to be in the limelight. “I’d rather just be left alone,” he said. As a producer of raw milk, though, Hochstetler — operator of Forest Grove Dairy south of Middlebury — finds himself at the center of controversy. He’s faced repeated inspections by federal regulators, apparently, and his situation prompted Elkhart County Sheriff Brad Rogers to intervene, advising the feds to watch their step or face arrest by his department. “With Mr. Hochstetler, he’s had harassment and ongoing visits that were unreasonable,” said Rogers, who told federal officials in a Dec. 2 email that they would...

As a heated issue among the American public, gun control has undoubtedly become one of the most salient topics in relation to law and public policy. Additionally, as a response to the wave of campus crime and gun violence through the recent decades, many universities have adapted the policy of a gun-free zone for their campuses. Setting aside the Constitutional intent on the issue, empirical results on college campuses have consistently illustrated the harm that gun-free zones pose.

I remember my Prof. reading this to us, back in the day... It may be that every American “knows” the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a Bill of Rights as a guarantor of various liberties, and this belief may be so deeply ingrained in the national psyche that virtually every famous political actor in the country has attested to the framers’ wisdom in their crafting of the great bill, but the plain, historical and undeniable fact of the matter is the framers overwhelmingly rejected any notion of a bill of rights. When the proposal was put forth during the Constitutional...

John Jay, the co-writer of the Federalist Papers and the first chief justice of the United States (1789-95), wrote in a 1786 letter to Thomas Jefferson that he was worried that under our evolving founding document that became the Constitution, Congress would have exorbitant power. “These three great departments of sovereignty,” he told Jefferson, “should be forever separated and so distributed to serve as checks on each other.”

Sometimes in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to muddle through the confusion and reveal the basic premise of an object. Such is the case with the First Amendment of the U. S. Bill of Rights, and more specifically, the establishment clause. The First Amendment has fallen under a barrage of hyperbole surrounding what it means and what it doesn’t mean. So-called experts in the field of interpretation have managed, over the years, to drape a veil of confusion and distortion over the First Amendment. This confusion and distortion can easily be corrected by simply recalling our basic...

The home secretary has called for the Human Rights Act to be scrapped, less than a fortnight after Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said it was "here to stay". The act enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. But Theresa May told the Sunday Telegraph she "personally" would like to see it go because of the problems it caused for the Home Office. ..... Prime Minister David Cameron said he agreed with Mrs May that the act should be scrapped and replaced with a British Bill of Rights.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.Article. I. Section. 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. Section. 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the...

The Inspiration In developing the 9C1 pistol and visiting with gun dealers for feedback, we found these small businessmen and gun enthusiasts patriotic and intensely passionate about American Freedoms, Liberty, and our enviable Rights. We also found this group more knowledgeable of our history and of America’s Constitution than average citizens. So much so we were embarrassed over our own ignorance and endeavored to learn more about our history and that document so meticulously constructed by the brightest minds among America’s Founding generation. It is this evolution that inspired us to engrave the Bill of Rights on the 9C1...

We're losing our Bill of Rights. The reason why is so basic it's overlooked; though Thomas Jefferson warned us about this threat to individual liberty when he wrote, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Jefferson said this in a letter to Colonel Charles Yancey on January 6, 1816. It was the basic truth that we can't retain our liberty unless we first grasp it that impelled me to write Saving the Bill of Rights. After two years spent in the National Archives researching...

THIS spring was a rough season for the Fourth Amendment. The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow GPS tracking of vehicles without judicial permission. The Supreme Court ruled that the police could break into a house without a search warrant if, after knocking and announcing themselves, they heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. Then it refused to see a Fourth Amendment violation where a citizen was jailed for 16 days on the false pretext that he was being held as a material witness to a crime. In addition, Congress renewed Patriot Act provisions on enhanced surveillance powers...

House Chamber, Washington, D.C. February 15, 2011 M. Speaker: Last year I voted to extend the PATRIOT Act for one year. I regret that vote and was glad to have been able to correct it, although I am pained that the House voted otherwise yesterday. During this past year, I have become convinced that the provisions of the so-called PATRIOT Act are an affront to the Bill of Rights and a serious threat to our fundamental liberty as Americans. The Fourth Amendment arises from abuses of the British Crown that allowed roving searches by revenue agents under the guise of...

In Federalist No. 84, Alexander Hamilton writes: I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? I can see both sides of this argument: By listing certain rights, other are ignored and those...

One of the fiercest gun-control advocates in Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), pounced on the shooting massacre in Tucson Sunday, promising to introduce legislation as soon as Monday. McCarthy ran for Congress after her husband was gunned down and her son seriously injured in a shooting in 1993 on a Long Island commuter train. Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady, a Democrat from Philadelphia, told CNN that he also plans to take legislative action. He will introduce a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a...

December 15 is Bill of Rights Day. This year is the 219th anniversary of the adoption of the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution—the Bill of Rights. Few Americans notice Bill of Rights Day. That isn't surprising, since we have done such a poor job of upholding and abiding by its provisions. (From my perspective, only the Third Amendment is completely intact, while the Seventh, Ninth, and 10th have been most completely ignored. Check them out for yourself.) Rather than debate individual amendments, let's consider a more fundamental problem: We poorly understand the elementary concept of rights. Many...

If you look at the values and the historical record, you will see that the Founding Fathers never intended guns to go unregulated, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer contended Sunday. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court's decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case "D.C. v. Heller." Breyer wrote the dissent and was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He said historians would side with him in the case because they have concluded that Founding Father James Madison was more...

The notion that only by implementing a “Second Bill of Rights” can we have a fair and just society is based on the premise that “rights” are something the government bestows upon us. The U.S. Constitution begs to differ. Although the proposal certainly has good intentions, it conflicts with our founding document. In order to implement the bill, for example, we would have to entrust the government to administer these “rights” that are very different from those guaranteed by our Constitution. Our constitutional rights protect us from government and guarantee our right to pursue happiness without interference. Furthermore, FDR’s Second...

President Obama's editing out of the words "...by their Creator..." from the Declaration of Independence Friday night (video and transcript here) is a remarkable act for sitting president. It suggest that the purported constitutional law expert needs some remedial education. The Declaration of Independence was drafted by Thomas Jefferson (when he was 33 years old), based on a list of points laid out by a 5 person committee which also included Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. The most famous part (for good reason) of the Declaration of Independence reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are...

One would think that with the evidence of academic bias stacking up more overwhelmingly by the decade that the higher education establishment would welcome any attempt to introduce a bit of intellectual diversity to their campuses, especially since they claim to be committed to same. Guess again. “Since the students who hosted me were almost invariably conservative, it was also my custom to ask them how many professors they could identify who were likely to sponsor their group,” author and activist David Horowitz discloses in his latest book. “The question provided me with a rough estimate of the number of...

Israel’s Bill of Rights by Ari Bussel “Who is happy and blessed? He who is content with what he has!” Israelis have so many rights that I almost envy this tiny democracy along the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean. She is only 63 year old and yet her people have amassed so many rights in such a short period of time. Israelis should celebrate, for riches beyond their wildest imagination. No, it is not the rich gas reserves recently discovered or the strength of the Israeli Exchange. It is not even the real estate market that continues to rise beyond...

For some reason, the entire RKBA Universe is focused on exactly one copy of the handwritten Bill Of Rights which, for equally mysterious reasons, has three commas in the 2nd (Fourth) Amendment. Here is another copy of the Bill Of Rights from the same time transcribed by a different clerk who, for some reason, wrote the 2nd (Fourth) Amendment with ONE COMMA.

John Hancock: A Neglected American Hero July 3rd, 2010 by Dr. Gary Scott Smith As we celebrate the Fourth of July this year, our attention will once again turn to such luminaries as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Samuel Adams. However, another founder who made substantial contributions to American independence, John Hancock, is typically overlooked and underappreciated. Although he served as the first president of the Continental Congress, did more than any other man except Robert Morris to finance the American Revolution, presided over the Massachusetts convention that ratified the Constitution, and played a major role...

I saw March After The March on Fox Cable News the other day and finally researched it. It looks like a neat idea that is growing in support. Tore Dietrich is the creator of Freedom March. The Fox News Interview is HEREThe idea is simple. After the main body of the parade passes your position, immediately jump right in, following the parade with your own patriotic signs. The roads will already be blocked off so a few more minutes won't make a difference. My guess is that typical Tea Party signs will do but ones that stress our Constitution, the...

Second Amendment: In the "living Constitution" era, the Supreme Court rediscovers original intent and rightly rules that the right to bear arms applies to all Americans just as the rest of the Bill of Rights does. It's hard to conceive how the justices could have decided otherwise. But by the narrowest of margins — 5-4 — they have reaffirmed that keeping and bearing arms is an inalienable and individual right like speech and religion, and that it applies to all individuals as the Founding Fathers intended. Why anyone thinks the Second Amendment does not apply to all Americans is a...

The cry, "That violates the separation of church and state!" has been the centerpiece of the secularist drive to marginalize Christianity in the public sphere since the 1940s. The real -- and often neglected -- question is what precisely that separation means and how it should be interpreted and applied.The secularists' interpretation of the establishment clause -- the line of the First Amendment that reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" -- ultimately rests upon anti-Christian prejudice and involves cherry picking from certain founders' writings. In recent years, we...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - Earl Taylor has spent 31 years teaching that "the Founding Fathers have answers to nearly every problem we have in America today." Only in recent months has he found so many eager students. On a recent Saturday, he held the rapt attention of 70 of them. The eight-hour seminar held at a roadside inn here was one of half a dozen "Making of America" sessions nationwide that day, all sponsored by a little-known organization based in Idaho. Two years ago, Taylor, president of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, made about 35 trips to speak to small...

Second Amendment: Chicago is deciding whether to prosecute a great-grandfather and Korean War veteran under its handgun ban. He refused to be a victim, and now there's one less armed thug roaming the streets. What's the problem? If the 80-year-old vet living on the city's West Side didn't have the gun the city said he shouldn't have, he and his 83-year-old wife and 12-year-old great-grandson might have joined those victims of gun violence about whom gun-control advocates constantly chirp. The vet obtained the gun in violation of the city's handgun ban after a prior incident in which the couple was...

Gun Rights: Not happy with interfering in our internal affairs by savaging Arizona's new immigration law, the president of Mexico wants to shred our Second Amendment too. And the mayor of Chicago wants to help. There stood Mexican President Felipe Calderon before Congress, blaming America for the violence on his side of the border and, among other things, the guns that fuel the Mexican drug war that has claimed more than 23,000 Mexican lives since he took office in 2006. Rather than taking responsibility himself, he shoved the blame on America. It would all stop, he implied, if America would...

Demand for copies of the U.S. Constitution is skyrocketing. The increased interest comes amid the rise of the Tea Party movement and as both parties cite the Constitution to advance their agendas. The pocket edition of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence ranked 10th on the Government Printing Office’s (GPO) best-seller list in March. Since September 2009, the GPO has sold more than 8,700 copies of the pocket Constitution to the public, according to GPO spokesman Gary Somerset. That is a higher sell rate than in recent years. Those sales are in addition to the thousands of copies given to...

The climate of fear, created out of the well exaggerated Times Square incident last week has allowed Joe Lieberman and fellow establishment lawmakers to introduce a bill that would drive the final nail into the coffin of the Bill of Rights. Lieberman says the bill is design to “close loopholes” that allow individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list purchase firearms, explosives and to have basic rights of due process if and when they are tried for a crime. The dangers of Lieberman’s legislation are vast. Despite the fact that the FBI’s terror watch list has been repeatedly found to...

As one reads our founding documents, our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, it’s truly remarkable how elegant and inspiring these documents are. Our Declaration has shone like a beacon of Freedom and Liberty worldwide and has inspired men in other nations to stand up and demand their own God Given Rights of Freedom, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It’s the most significant political document ever written. Our Constitution is the envy of the world. Our Constitution is designed to allow Americans the chance to excel, to succeed in ways others can only dream of. It places maximum emphasis on...

We hear a lot about the Constitution today. The “Tea Party� has been bringing up the Constitution along with many talk radio personalities like Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Lavin, and Sean Hannity. I have been writing, and speaking about the Constitution for years. But two questions must be asked; 1) Who cares? & 2) Why should we care? These are very important questions since it is clear that at least 50% of Americans are clueless (I am being generous, there are a lot more that are clueless) about the principles of liberty and the founder’s brilliance in forming our...

As the Obama administration continues its plan to usurp the rights of the American people with regard to commerce, energy, immigration and other key issues of our time; we should remember the warning of one of our nation's founders with regard to our rights and the document that was supposed to safeguard them. What many, especially those educated in the "modern" American public school system, may not know is that the founders strongly disagreed on whether or not to include the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution.

As part of today's rally to stop the Democrats' health care reform legislation thousands of protesters descended on the lawn of Capitol building. But many more were also using the occasion to visit the their congressional representative and tell them what they think of the bill. However, Capitol Police recently stopped allowing any of the peaceful protesters to enter into congressional buildings. Crowds are now gathering in front of the House and Senate offices, demanding that they be let in to air their constituent concerns.

As seen in "Rights, Responsibilities, and Communitarianism," the existence of a right implies a duty in others. The opposite of a duty is liberty, which implies no right in others. The identification of things for which there are no rights is thus an additional means of securing Liberty. The following is a list of no rights (or "non rights") that has been circulating on the Internet. It is sometimes said to have been written by State Representative Mitchell Kaye from Cobb County, Georgia. Now I am informed that it was really written and copyrighted by an active Libertarian from Mississippi,...

There have been some very interesting papers written that say that the constitutional right, for instance, of the senate to make it’s own rules superceeds the two thirds, that you can’t change the rules, but only when congress writes new rules at the beginning of each congress, every two year period when we reorganize ourselves. Um, that’s something we want to explore.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – Bill of Rights, Article 3, the Constitution of the United States of America (1791) If you believe in the U.S. Constitution is at all valid, you would be adamantly opposed to the liberal monstrosity known as government-run health care, otherwise known as Obamacare, in all its current form. You would oppose it for any...

Hillary Clinton will not easily be mistaken for Sir Winston Churchill, but our nation’s Secretary of State borrowed a metaphor from old “Winnie” recently when lecturing on the importance of freedom on the Internet. As the former British Prime Minister warned of the communist “iron curtain” descending on Eastern Europe at the beginning of the Cold War, Secretary Clinton has warned of an “information curtain” falling in those nations where governments have used modern technology to suppress and plunder, rather than facilitate, the flow of information among peoples and nations. The Secretary made her comments in Washington on January 21,...

Otis McDonald, 76, stands before the Supreme Court, which Tuesday heard arguments in his suit to overturn Chicago's handgun ban Gun Rights: Otis McDonald, 76, an Army vet who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thinks the Constitution gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he protected his country. We think so too. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of four Chicago residents led by homeowner McDonald, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association to overturn Chicago's three-decade-old ban on owning handguns. In a 5-4...

Washington (CNN) -- Their message is loud and clear: Big government is out of control; states need to take back their constitutional rights. A movement has been growing over the past two years of urging states to exert their rights under the 10th Amendment. The Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." A number of states have passed resolutions that assert their rights. While the resolutions have no legal teeth, they're...

With the signing of an under-publicized amendment to Executive Order 12425, Barack Obama has fundamentally altered your constitutional rights. His actions are undermining your rights to protect personal privacy from a foreign internationalist police agency named Interpol. A one-paragraph executive order may seem inconsequential to many, but this action has far-reaching implications and threatens the sovereignty of America. Obama's secretive executive order amended an order issued by President Reagan in 1983. Reagan's order recognized Interpol as an international organization and gave it privileges and immunities commonly extended to foreign diplomats. Reagan opened the door to allow Interpol to operate in...

From the very same folks who wonder why is there anything done for those who are not happy why nothing is done. From the “why don’t they do something” file, we have the federal government stepping in to ensure airlines don’t leave passengers inside of aluminum tubes sitting on airport taxiways more than three hours.More feel good legislation that will ripple through the industry and make travel worse than it already is. Last week the President Obama’s United States Department of Transportation decreed … there will be an airline passenger bill of rights, and passengers will no longer be inconvenienced...

Self-Evident Truths: Sen. Dianne Feinstein says it comes under the Commerce Clause. Rep. Steny Hoyer says it's mandated by the "general welfare" clause. Despite liberal wishes, health care is not a right. The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing. Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of...

Bill of Rights Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Amendment II A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Amendment III No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor...

The Bill of Rights should be mourned, not celebrated. It is defunct. Intended as the bulwark of the right of decentralized self-government, it now serves mainly as an excuse for the opposite: a roving judicial veto of state policies that federal judges dislike. So, if the people of virtually every state ban flag burning or regulate abortion, provide capital punishment or support prayer in school, that does not settle the matter. Unlike 200 or 100 years ago, today the federal judiciary is apt to step in to stop state legislatures from adopting policies like this. The people never consented to...

Politics, religion, and atheism in North Carolina are coming to a head. Cecil Bothwell, atheist, is soon to be seated as a City Council member in North Carolina. However, there is a problem: Under North Carolina's constitution politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office. Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are using that law to argue.... Federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution. While Article 6, section 8 of the North Carolina state constitution says: "The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny...

On Wednesday the Obama administration took its first major step in a plan to ban all firearms in the United States. The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress. Once the US Government signs these international treaties, all US citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments. These are laws that have been...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. --...