Free Republic

WASHINGTON — I BELIEVE that killing an American citizen without a trial is an extraordinary concept and deserves serious debate. I can’t imagine appointing someone to the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully understanding that person’s views concerning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens.

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit against Obama administration officials for the 2011 drone-strike killings in Yemen of three U.S. citizens, including an al-Qaeda cleric. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer said the case raises serious constitutional issues and is not easy to answer, but that “on these facts and under this circuit’s precedent,” the court will grant the Obama administration’s request.

Lawmakers in New Hampshire are telling the federal government to back off because plans for a federal handgun license, "hate crimes" laws to regulate Christians' speech about their own religious beliefs on homosexuality, President Obama's youth corps for mandatory public service and the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" to "balance" talk radio are none of them constitutional. Such plans by the bureaucrats and administrators in Washington, D.C., are "altogether void" and if mandated, "shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States," the lawmakers are warning.

NAPLES, Fla. — Several months ago, economist David Hale had a private meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who was trying to ward off a recession by lowering interest rates and increasing the money supply in the economy. The problem with that approach is that the value of the dollar plunged against foreign currencies, causing crude oil prices to skyrocket because oil is pegged to the dollar. It affected food prices, gasoline and family budgets. "Ben, you are playing a very unique role in world economic history," Hale recalled telling Bernanke, an expert in the Great Depression. "You are...

A federal judge denied the White House's last-ditch attempt to block a former aide from testifying before Congress as part of the investigation into the U.S. Attorney scandal. Today's ruling by Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is expected to pave the way for former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, who returned to her old law firm in Texas, to testify before Congress in the coming months. It also urges the White House to turn over documents subpoenaed from former chief of staff Joshua Bolten.

Texas Two-Step Leaving Dems Flat-Footed The Clinton campaign may go to court. The Obama campaign wants to take its delegates and get out of town before sundown. The Texas Two-Step is overheating an already fired up Democratic presidential contest. The Newsblog mentioned this on Wednesday but there is a very good chance that winning the Texas primary might not mean that Sen. Hillary Clinton gets to take away the most delegates. That because after the primary -- which she won 51-47 percent -- come the caucuses and it looks like Sen. Barack Obama may win those. Here's where the delegate...

President Thomas S. Monson was named Monday morning as the 16th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Henry B. Eyring and President Deiter F. Uchtdorf were named as first and second counselors, respectively, in the First Presidency.

Todd Venlue says it would be a serious mistake to tease a police dog by barking at it and then get in a fight with its handler. "Is anybody stupid enough to take a swing at a police officer who has a trained K-9 at his hand?" Venlue said Wednesday. Authorities in McHenry County say Venlue did just that Saturday night during an Oktoberfest celebration, said Harvard Police Chief Dan Kazy-Garey.

Makeup bill nets grief for governor Blagojevich ripped over $600 paid by taxpayers in error By Ray Long and Jeffrey Meitrodt Tribune staff reporters Published July 15, 2007 SPRINGFIELD -- Stuck for weeks combing over numbers in the state's fiscal impasse, Gov. Rod Blagojevich found himself the object of ridicule Saturday over a newly discovered $600 bill for a makeup artist he used when he unveiled his budget months ago. "He didn't get his money's worth," said state Sen. Larry Bomke (R-Springfield).

A DRM licensing authority is strong-arming search engines, bloggers and open source advocates in a desperate attempt to stop the spread of a software key that discables copyright protections on Blu-ray and HD-DVD disks. Copyright reform activist Cory Doctorow on Monday decided to remove the information from a group blog to which he contributes after he received a cease and desist letter from the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACS-LA). The consortium is backed by technology vendors including IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sony and the Walt Disney Company. It oversees the AACS digital rights management technology that is used on...

I am not a state secret Having just lost in court, a CIA kidnap victim asks why the U.S. won't admit its error. By Khaled El-Masri, KHALED EL-MASRI, a German citizen born in Lebanon, was a car salesman before he was detained in December 2003. March 3, 2007 ON NEW YEAR'S EVE in 2003, I was seized at the border of Serbia and Macedonia by Macedonian police who mistakenly believed that I was traveling on a false German passport. I was detained incommunicado for more than three weeks. Then I was handed over to the American Central Intelligence Agency and...

...The US is insolvent. There is simply no way for our national bills to be paid under current levels of taxation and promised benefits. Our federal deficits alone now total more than 400% of GDP. That is the conclusion of a recent Treasury/OMB report entitled Financial Report of the United States Government that was quietly slipped out on a Friday (12/15/06), deep in the holiday season, with little fanfare. Sometimes I wonder why the Treasury Department doesn’t just pay somebody to come in at 4:30 am Christmas morning to release the report. Additionally, I’ve yet to read a single account...

CBS) Buried in the fine print is $70 billion, give or take a billion or two. It is one subject members of Congress don’t like talking about: earmarks. The $70 billion covers just this year's crop of earmarks. Earmarks designate money for a multitude of hometown projects that may also benefit lobbyists and the industries they represent. Most of them are buried in the fine print of legislation and are seldom debated. Many say they’re one of Congress’s dirty little secrets, that a good part of that $70 billion is pork – government waste at its worst.

Third-party candidates aren’t getting much attention in House races this year. But with an increasing number of House races becoming competitive in the final days of the election cycle, several minor-party candidates could have an impact in close elections. In at least three highly competitive races, third-party candidates have registered 5 percent or more in recent polls. An overview of close races with significant third-party candidates discovers that some of these contenders are more likely to help Republicans, some will help Democrats, while others will draw evenly from both parties or simply attract new voters to the polls. One race...

After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors -- and a caution against the careless casting of ballots. Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen -- the final voting step. Election officials say they aren't aware of any serious voting issues. But in Broward County, for example, they don't know how widespread the machine problems are because there's no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues...

Bryn Mawr, Pa. - Walter E. Williams, a George Mason University economics professor and author, spoke last Thursday at a lecture organized by the Wynnewood Institute on the role of the federal government in a free society. "I'm going to say many things that break with conventional wisdom," he opened in a speech where he advocated private property, free enterprise and state secession. "I'm going to sound mean and uncaring." Fairness and justice are concepts used to justify growing the federal government, Williams said, but the Constitution doesn't give Congress the power to tax for nearly three-fourths of what it...

Kramnik crowned world chess champion By MIKHAIL SAVINOV Associated Press Writer © 2006 The Associated Press ELISTA, Russia — Russia's Vladimir Kramnik on Friday became the first universally recognized world chess champion since 1993, winning a series of timed, tiebreaking games over Bulgaria's Veselin Topalov to take a tournament that reunified the title. Kramnik secured his victory over Topalov in a fourth tiebreaker of the turbulent, three-week tournament that was fraught with protests and appeals by both sides. His team erupted in joyful shouting after Kramnik's win gave him an edge of 8 1/2 to 7 1/2 points, and he...

City officials want to know why police ejected Jason Peck, Libertarian candidate for the 24th District in the Kansas House, from the Mission Arts and Eats Festival. During the festival's second night, Peck conversed with event goers and distributed campaign literature. Peck said no one objected until Councilwoman Suzie Gibbs approached him with a Mission police officer. "They told me that I had to leave and that if I came back they would cite me for trespassing," Peck said. "I don't know if the decision came from a higher-up or what." Gibbs did not respond to messages left on her...

Annapolis company's systems help to monitor employees' computer use By ANDREW CHLDERS, Staff Writer Marylanders know a thing or two about surviving the tedium of work, ranking among the nation's top time-wasters on the job. But Ermis Sfakiyanudis and Alan Schunemann are just determined to ruin it for everyone. ETelemetry in Annapolis specializes in business intelligence, helping firms to track their own technology infrastructure and people, to find out who's working diligently and who's updating a MySpace profile or rearranging a Netflix queue. The bane of office loafers everywhere, eTelemetry's Metron and Locate network trackers can pinpoint individual "bandwidth hogs"...

DENVER, Sept. 22 -- A judge on Friday chastised state officials for botching efforts to ensure that electronic voting machines are tamper-proof, but he cleared them for use in the November election, saying it is too late now to change course. Denver County District Judge Lawrence A. Manzanares said the secretary of state's office had violated state law by failing to come up with minimum security standards for the machines. He added that the office had done an "abysmal" job documenting which tests were performed on the machines and should not have allowed computer manufacturers to vouch for the security...