Free Republic

At 2 PM EST on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, was the US Capitol building in Washington DC open to the public?

The real national emergency is capable of consuming the national boundaries, the national civility, and eventually, the very soul of America. There truly is a National Emergency in 2019! As the nation celebrated Presidents’ Day on Monday, the people are in the midst of sorting out the “National Emergency” that President Donald Trump declared this past Friday. But, despite the various “insights” and numerous concerns over the wisdom of the president’s actions, the real question remains as to whether the United States is facing a national emergency at the southern border or whether it is not. Despite whether the Border...

If you feel like your First Amendment rights as an American are being trampled on, it might be because a staggering number of people don’t know what they are. According to a recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, a mind-boggling 37 percent of respondents either didn’t know or couldn’t name any of the five First Amendment rights guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution: speech, religion, press, assembly and petition. The survey was conducted August 9-13 among a group of 1,013 U.S. adults who were 18 years old and older. Respondents were from...

A federal appeals court, in a strong rebuff to local law enforcement agencies that aggressively pursue people they suspect of being illegal immigrants, ruled Wednesday that the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office did not have the right to arrest Roxana Santos, a Salvadoran dishwasher who was seized while eating a sandwich outside her workplace in the fall of 2008 and jailed for the next 45 days. The ruling, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, appeared to clarify and strengthen a somewhat ambiguous Supreme Court decision last year in Arizona v. United States

On May 8, Maria Melendez, Melendez's daughter, Melissa Quair, and Quair's boyfriend reportedly witnessed about a half-dozen Kern County, Calif., highway patrol officers beating and kicking 33-year old David Silva in front of Kern Medical Center. Silva, the father of four young children, died early on the morning of May 8, presumably from the injuries he sustained from the incident. Melendez recorded the entire episode on her phone, as did her daughter's boyfriend. But before she could send the videos to news media outlets, she later told reporters, detectives from the Kern County Sheriff's Office, acting without a warrant, confiscated...

Well now we know, for those who have been holding out “hope” that Obama will veto the 1031 Indefinite Detainment Bill against holding U.S. Citizens without rights to a trial or lawyer or charges for the rest of their lives…. It was Obama who required the bill have the language of U.S. Citizens being held without rights in the bill! The only reason he would veto it, is because it does not give him the absolute power as he wants!...Here is Senator Levin on the floor of the Senate revealing it was Obama himself who Demanded U.S. Citizens be part...

Businesses looking for H1-B employees can now do a job-search in secrecy and hire foreign workers without considering American candidates. If they were required to operate openly, American job-seekers would have a better chance and public pressure might lead to a change in company policy. This is a letter I sent to my congressman and Rep. Tancredo, and I ask you to do the same (after editing the first paragraph to fit your personal circumstances), and to send a shorter version to the editor of your local newspaper. Dear Mr. Tancredo: My husband was recently laid off. Many of the...

Last month, Brian Kelly of Carlisle, Pa., was riding with a friend when the car he was in was pulled over by a local police officer. Kelly, an amateur videographer, had his video camera with him and decided to record the traffic stop. The officer who pulled over the vehicle saw the camera and demanded Kelly hand it over. Kelly obliged. Soon after, six more police officers pulled up. They arrested Kelly on charges of violating an outdated Pennsylvania wiretapping law that forbids audio recordings of any second party without their permission. In this case, that party was the police...

The murky diplomatic status of a proposed Mexican customs clearinghouse in Kansas City has gotten murkier. Since last spring, local officials and the Washington office of Sen. Kit Bond all have insisted that the matter was moving through government channels. But U.S. State Department spokesman Eric Watnik said that the agency has never been formally asked to consider the proposal. “It’s off the radar screen,” said Bill Anthony, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security. Border Protection was engaged in the early planning and was widely thought to have endorsed the project and moved...

Something happened in Boston in the winter of 1773 that served as evidence that the final straw had been laid on the camel’s back … and the spark for a revolution against tyranny and aristocracy was ignited. What happened in Boston spread, and other colonial seaports defiantly followed the example set by Sam Adams (‘It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds’). When the news spread of what Sam Adams and a handful of Boston patriots had done, other seaports all down the Atlantic coastline followed...

WASHINGTON — A controversial proposal to create civilian militias to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border was greeted with criticism Thursday by immigrant rights groups that said the amateur force of volunteers could lead to vigilantism. Republican lawmakers in the House, led by Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, filed a bill last month that would use $6.8 billion in homeland security funds to train the militias, which would serve under the command of border state governors. Militia members would operate as sworn peace officers and be allowed to carry arms, make arrests and "use any means and any force authorized by state law...

The Minuteman Project gained notoriety in April when volunteers policed the Arizona desert against illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico. Nearly 2,000 miles north of that first effort, a small number of Chicagoans who volunteered in Arizona are bringing the fighillegal immigration with incendiary rhetoric against some immigrant advocates, whom they call communiLindenhurst, co-founder of the Chicago proje Biesada, an ex-Marine who runs a trucking company, said he could relate to the original Minutemen, colonists who said they were ready to fight at a minute's notice during the Revolutionary War. He considers many current politicians to be committing treason. "In the...

Liberals and criminals alike are anxiously awaiting the verdict on Illinois’ newest gun ban, HB 2414. Honestly, it’s hard to tell who’s more excited. I guess liberals figure if they can’t keep Americans from buying guns, they’ll try putting people in prison for owning them. Meanwhile, thousands of law-abiding citizens in Illinois are forced to imagine being incarcerated for legally purchasing and owning a gun. That’s the idea behind The People’s Republic of Illinois House Bill 2414, in which gun owners would have 90 days to surrender their legally purchased semi-automatic firearms to the police, or face felony prosecution and...

Floridians could shoot anyone who invades their homes or cars with the intention of harming them, under a bill that got preliminary approval today in the Senate. The bill by Sen. Durrell Peaden, R-Crestview, basically says that you don't have to back away from a confrontation. Under existing law, people can be prosecuted if they don't first try to find a way to escape from a confrontation. Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallendale, unsuccessfully tried to amend the bill so that it would only apply to homes, cars and other private locations - not confrontations on the street. Geller said he supported...

 Bill would let workers sue if boss hires illegally Federal law prohibits the hiring of the thousands of foreign workers who sneak into the country each year, but many businesses turn to illegal immigrants to fill construction, agricultural and service industry jobs. A frustrated Arizona lawmaker says he will push a proposal next year to give American workers the right to sue companies that fire them while keeping illegal immigrants on the payroll. Violators would have their state business licenses suspended.Supporters say the low pay illegal immigrants accept drives down wages for American employees, and businesses that follow the law...