Free Republic

One might expect that the extra scrutiny applied to conservative political groups by the IRS would have ended after the practice got exposed three months ago. At least according to a recent deposition from the House Ways and Means Committee investigation into the scandal, IRS agents still are being directed to automatically apply extra scrutiny to applications mentioning the Tea Party, even if no other political activity is indicated in the application: Q: “If you saw – I am asking this currently, if today a Tea Party case, a group – a case from a Tea Party group came in...

This Fall, Harvard University Press will release The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler, by the 35-year-old historian Ben Urwand. Alexander Kafka previewed the book in The Chronicle Review. “Urwand found that Nazi officials considered some American films ideologically useful—among them Gabriel Over the White House (1933), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), Our Daily Bread (1934), and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)—and that the studios expressly marketed certain titles in that vein,” Kafka writes. “ For instance, Gabriel Over the White House, an American fascist fantasia about a fed-up, divinely inspired president dissolving a chaotic Congress and whipping the...

As every Constitutional scholar knows, the First Amendment includes a clause that strictly forbids mockery of the President of the United States, depending on who it is, and which party he belongs to. It’s in one of the penumbras of the Constitution, or maybe it’s an emanation. I always get those two mixed up. Thus it became essential for the forces of freedom and democracy to crush an impertinent rodeo clown who dared to put on a mask of our Dear Leader, President Barack Obama, and ask spectators if they would like to seem him get run down by a...

Move would allow Obama administration to institute policies that would better integrate communities The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a new plan to change U.S. neighborhoods it says are racially imbalanced or are too tilted toward rich or poor, arguing the country's housing policies have not been effective at creating the kind of integrated communities the agency had hoped for. The proposed federal rule, called "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing," is currently under a 60-day public comment period. Though details of how the policy would specifically work are unclear, the rule says HUD would provide states, local governments...

WICHITA, KS, August 9, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Numerous mainstream and left-leaning media outlets have highlighted the “Abortion Rights Freedom Rides,” a caravan of activists now traveling to 14 states to support "Abortion on demand and without apology." However, no media outlet has reported that the event is being conducted by the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, a cult-like Maoist sect that calls for “millions of people to rise up in mass armed revolution” against the United States “when the time is right.” The abortion freedom rides are being led by Stop Patriarchy, a front group for the Revolutionary Communist Party USA...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a new plan to change U.S. neighborhoods it says are racially imbalanced or are too tilted toward rich or poor, arguing the country's housing policies have not been effective at creating the kind of integrated communities the agency had hoped for. The proposed federal rule, called "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing," is currently under a 60-day public comment period. Though details of how the policy would specifically work are unclear, the rule says HUD would provide states, local governments and others who receive agency money with data and a geospatial tool to...

The email service reportedly used by surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden abruptly shut down on Thursday after its owner cryptically announced his refusal to become "complicit in crimes against the American people."Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply with government surveillance."I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or...

The highly encrypted email service reportedly used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden has gone offline - and its administrator claims the company is legally barred from explaining why. On Thursday, the homepage of Lavabit.com was changed to a letter from the company’s owner announcing that the site’s operations have ceased following a six-week long ordeal that has prompted the company to take legal action in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Now in the midst of an escalating fight from the federal government aimed at cracking down on encrypted communications, one of the last free and secure services has thrown...

A Vietnamese father and his son who fled to the jungle during the war four decades ago have been persuaded to leave, officials say. Ho Van Lang and his 82-year-old father reportedly shunned contact with the outside world after his wife and two children were killed by a landmine. For most of their time in the jungle their whereabouts was unknown. They were discovered living in dense foliage in central Quang Ngai province and were barely able to communicate. Mr Ho was said by officials to only know a few words of the local Cor dialect. Vietnamese media reported that...

The federal government has determined that obesity is a national health epidemic, and while obesity-prevention goals were established at the national level in 2012, the question now is how to determine if those goals are being met—not just nationally, but in your very own neighborhood. The federally funded Institute of Medicine (IOM) has just released a report listing 83 ways to “assess the progress made in every community”—and at the national level—in the fight against obesity. Some of the benchmarks would require new legislation or executive action to change the way we live and work. …

WASHINGTON — As hundreds of commuters emerged from Amtrak and commuter trains at Union Station on a recent morning, an armed squad of men and women dressed in bulletproof vests made their way through the crowds. The squad was not with the Washington police department or Amtrak’s police force, but was one of the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads — VIPR teams for short — assigned to perform random security sweeps to prevent terrorist attacks at transportation hubs across the United States. “The T.S.A., huh,” said Donald Neubauer of Greenville, Ohio, as he walked past the...

Eco-couple told to pull down their 'hobbit home' made entirely out of natural materials . . . but without planning permission Family of three is made homeless by planning inspector's decision They built their home from scratch, but have been ordered to tear it down The couple admit they built it without first getting planning permission Their labour of love was branded 'harmful' to the countryside A young couple have been left heartbroken after planners ordered their unique 'hobbit home' to be bulldozed, effectively leaving them homeless. Charlie Hague and Megan Williams, both 25, built the roundhouse from scratch with...

Surveillance Society: The government says spying on U.S. citizens is acceptable since it's merely a means of fighting foreign terrorists. But what if the government used espionage in investigations of common criminals? The program is so sneaky that officials are trying to cover it up. "Law enforcement agents," says Reuters, "have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin — not only from defense lawyers, but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges." Criminal investigations should be launched, and suspects deprived of liberty, only "when there's a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent...

Obama wants all Americans to now report voluntarily to the government regarding any foreign travel. The program is currently voluntary, but the word on the Hill is there are those who are suggesting this should be mandatory to protect Americans of course. The program is called STEP “Smart Traveler Enrollment Program.” Today, most Americans are willfully blind. They refuse to connect the dots and think the government would never do anything really to harm the people. This is not about harming or protecting anyone. Look at Benghazi. They asked for help and it was not sent in for political reasons....

TWO beliefs continue to shape debate on Obamacare. First, pre-existing medical conditions shouldn’t prevent people from obtaining affordable health insurance. And second, people who don’t want health insurance shouldn’t be forced by the government to purchase it. These may seem to be reasonable positions. But they are incompatible. That’s been shown by historical events, and it’s now being strikingly confirmed by recent experience in the emerging Obamacare insurance exchanges. The crux of the matter is what economists call the adverse-selection problem. Uninsured people with pre-existing conditions often face tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket medical costs...

Massive border security and E-Verify are central provisions of the Senate immigration bill, and they are supported by many in the House. Both provisions signal how wrong-headed much of the immigration-reform effort has become. E-Verify is the real monster. If this part of the bill passes, all employers will be forced to use the government-run, Web-based system that checks potential employees' immigration status. That means, every American will have to obtain the federal government's prior approval in order to earn a living. E-Verify might seem harmless now, but missions always creep and bureaucracies expand. Suppose that someone convicted of viewing...

Until Wednesday morning, you'd probably never heard of something called "XKeyscore," a program that the National Security Agency itself describes as its "widest reaching" means of gathering data from across the Internet. According to reports shared by NSA leaker Edward Snowden with the Guardian, is that in addition to all of the other recent revelations about the NSA's surveillance programs, by using XKeyscore, "analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the Internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used." David Brown, who co-authored the recent book "Deep State: Inside the...

If someone, especially a public figure, praised Hitler, he would certainly be called all names under the sun, and in particular "nazi" and "fascist". How is it, then, that top political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic can express admiration for the worst communist dictators and killers with impunity, as if they had eulogized great statesmen or munificent philanthropists? If commending Hitler makes you a nazi, doing the same with Ho Chi Minh should make you a communist. Fair is fair. But not in the world of the left-dominated media and "progressive" elites. This is exactly what Barack...

North Korea might be said to be the exact opposite of the Free State Project. In this talk, north Korea expert -- and Kim Jong Il "autobiographer" -- Michael Malice will give a libertarian perspective on the history, culture, and propaganda behind the world's least-free state.

President Obama sought Wednesday to reassure Democrats nervous about the impact of his health care law and the prospects for immigration legislation, telling them "You're on the right side of history." In the first of two closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill, Obama focused on financial gains as the economy emerges from the worst downturn since the Depression. He was warned about nominating former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers as chairman of the Federal Reserve and faced questions about his health care law. Some lawmakers complained that three years after its passage, the law still baffles many Americans. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo.,...

Be careful you don't fall off the Obamacare "cliff" when the boss asks you to put in some overtime. Working more could ultimately mean thousands of dollars less for you under a quirk in the new health-care law going into effect this fall. This could prompt some people to cut back on their hours to avoid losing money. "Working more can actually leave you worse off," the price-comparison site ValuePenguin.com notes in a new analysis. "It's sort of an absurd scenario," said Jonathan Wu, ValuePenguin.com's co-founder. "It's something for people to be aware of." In that scenario, an individual or...

When it comes to Vietnam, I'm all for moving on, putting the past behind us, looking forward, letting bygones be bygones, but doing so requires honesty about the past, lest history be forgotten and the memory and honor tarnished of the 60,000 Americans who died in that war. On his visit to Washington last week, President Truong Tan Sang of Vietnam told President Obama the late revolutionary Ho Chi Minh was inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution and by the words of Thomas Jefferson. In an ad in the Washington Post, President Sang even claimed Jefferson's vision...

During a joint meeting with current Vietnam President Truong Tan Sang, President Obama praised hard-core Vietnamese communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh as “inspired by our founding fathers.” According to Obama, “Minh adopted key tenets of the program for liberty advocated by America's revolutionary heroes—free public education, progressive income taxes, centralized banking, and the foundation stone of universal equality: from each according to ability, to each according to need.” President Obama expressed optimism that “the growth of mutual respect and trust between our two countries will enable a greater cooperation on a wide range of issues.” President Truong offered his “sympathy...

At a ceremony in Havana last week, UNESCO (U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) honored Che Guevara by enshrining his writings in its hallowed “Memory of the World Register.” The ceremony included several members of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s family. “UNESCO’s work is part of our support for freedom of expression as an inalienable human right set down in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” declares the UN’s mission statement. But not far from where this UNESCO/Guevara ceremony took place Cubans were being starved and beaten in pestiferous torture chambers for the crime of quoting the UN Declaration...

" ... we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson." President Obama talking to reporters alongside Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang. It may come as some unwelcome news to the families of the nearly 60,000 Americans who died in the Vietnam War that the whole thing was just a misunderstanding. That was the impression President Obama gave on Thursday when he spoke to the press after his meeting with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang. Sang brought Obama a copy of a letter sent...

Bush-Rubio 2016; Graham-Rubio 2016;...or how about this nice twist on an oldie but goodie: McCain-Rubio 2016? Freepers, how about coming up with a RINO Dream Team for 2016? The Republican Establishment - Karl Rove, the Democrat Party and Main-Stream Media are all trying to do it for us...how about if we make some recommendations for them?

People’s World is the flagship publication of Communist Party USA, and the successor publication to the Daily Worker. It recently carried back-to-back articles that were very revealing of a dubious but old tradition among the American left. To wit: America’s communists have always found allies—useful idiots, dupes—among the liberal/progressive left, the mainstream Democratic Party, and (especially) the religious left. As to the latter, I’m ever reminded of the words of the late Herb Romerstein, who told me: “The religious left; they were the biggest suckers of them all.”

Since when is it a president's place to advise people in their personal moral and spiritual journey? For five years, he's been preaching to white people on how they should act. Yesterday, President Obama piped up once again on how the Trayvon Martin tragedy should move us all to be a little less racist. Predictably, he threw in Malia and Sasha as paragons of virtue for being "better than we were on these issues." Coming from a communist father, a hippie, secular humanist, socialist mother who abandoned him, and raised by fellow travelling grandparents, a sexually perverted communist mentor "Uncle...

What are you going to say? Nothin', that's what. What is there to say? This is just the socialists attempting to avoid the natural consequences of the monstrosity they have birthed and called "the New America."

In every democratic country in the world, law-abiding citizens have the right to defend themselves, when they are being subjected to violent attack. When the shooting was initially reported to the police, the cops took one look at Zimmerman's injuries, and they realized that they did not have evidence to take the case to trial. The outcome of the trial was predictable. But, now, the Justice Department wants to put Zimmerman on trial afresh, for civil rights violations. Sen. Harry Reid is supporting calls for Zimmerman's prosecution: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/14/naacp-asking-obama-administration-to-pursue-zimmerman-civil-case/ Is America still a free and democratic country?

Bear in mind that Big Labor went to bat for ObamaCare in a big way throughout the months-long debate over its passage. When Tea Party activists demonstrated to raise opposition to the legislation, unions like the Teamsters counterprotested, sometimes violently, in an attempt to intimidate conservatives into acquiescence. Unions spent big money in the 2010 election hoping to protect Democrats from the consequences of their votes on ObamaCare, arguing that the bill would help the working class by sticking it to insurers and fat cats. Now that the law is about to be implemented, though, it suddenly looks awful to...

It was the kind of meeting that conspiratorial conservative bloggers dream about. A month after President Barack Obama won reelection, top brass from three dozen of the most powerful groups in liberal politics met at the headquarters of the National Education Association (NEA), a few blocks north of the White House. Brought together by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Communication Workers of America (CWA), and the NAACP, the meeting was invite-only and off-the-record. Despite all the Democratic wins in November, a sense of outrage filled the room as labor officials, environmentalists, civil rights activists, immigration reformers, and a panoply of other...

The U.S. Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration-reform plan, as well as a strikingly similar plan now being backed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and a bi-partisan House “Gang,” both offer the “roadmap to citizenship” originally conceived and carefully developed by members of the Communist Party USA working within the Democratic Party and the radical left activist network for the purpose of using amnestied illegals to build a “permanent progressive majority.” That is the inescapable conclusion readers will draw after reading the forthcoming book by acclaimed researcher and blogger Trevor Loudon, titled “The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the...

Ron Kelly, a 20-year Army veteran, recently tried to buy a .22-caliber rifle at the Wal-Mart in Tomball, Texas. He was turned away because he failed the FBI background check. He appealed the rejection, and last month he got a Justice Department letter explaining that he was legally disqualified from owning guns, after handling them in defense of his country for two decades, because of a 42-year-old marijuana conviction. As a high school student in Durham, North Carolina, he had been caught with a small amount of pot and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession, receiving a sentence of probation because...

President Obama has just nullified, all by his lonesome, a provision in a duly-enacted law: the employer mandate in ObamaCare. It's one thing to give priority to enforcing one law over another, such as stressing interdiction of cocaine over marijuana. But to just cancel a law is quite another matter. In "Obama's never-mind presidency" on July 5 in the Washington Post, George Will writes: Although the Constitution has no Article VIII, the administration acts as though there is one that reads: "Notwithstanding all that stuff in other articles about how laws are made, if a president finds a law politically...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NCLF) has announced plans to challenge North Carolina's ban on marriage for same-sex couples. The civil liberties group says it will amend a federal lawsuit filed against the state last year on behalf of six same-sex couples and their children. The lawsuit challenges North Carolina's ban on second parent adoptions. The ACLU is asking North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to agree to allow an additional claim challenging the state's ban on marriage for same-sex couples to be added to Fisher-Borne v. Smith, a lawsuit filed...

Each time we get news from Pravda through Mr. Xavier Lerma, it comes as no surprise that Russia is now leading the world in laughing at the United States and the very weak “leaders” we now have! Russia has all but called Barack Obama a phony and a liar, but some of the people in the United States have also seen this. How Russia and the rest of the world now view the United States should cause all Americans to wake up, become aware of what’s actually taking place and then stand against the current administration. On July 1, 2013...

Gay activists protest the Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2012. Owner Jack Phillips now faces charges for not baking a cake for the gay couple. (Free Republic)Gay marriage was banned by the Colorado constitution in 2006. But this didn’t stop the Colorado Attorney General’s office from filing a discrimination complaint against Masterpiece Cakeshop for not baking a cake for a gay couple. The Advocate reported: A Denver bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple is about to face the legal heat. The Colorado Attorney General’s office last week filed a discrimination complaint against the owners of Masterpiece...

Rafael Cruz, the father of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, invigorated the crowd during tonight’s FreedomWorks Free the People event. Describing his own personal journey escaping Cuba and working hard to build a life for himself in the U.S., the elder Cruz noted comparisons that he believes exist between Fidel Castro’s governance and President Barack Obama’s executive actions. Upon rising to power, he said that Castro, like Obama, spoke about hope and change. While the message sounded good at the time, it didn’t take long for socialism to take root in his home country. And he paid the price.

China took aim this week at prices of two high-profile necessities—first baby formula, then medicines—as the country’s communist leaders try to contain surging living costs that threaten to inflame political tensions. A probe into possible price-fixing by foreign milk suppliers prompted at least two companies—Nestlé SA and FrieslandCampina—to announce a price cut. On Friday, news reports said a Cabinet agency is looking into the cost of drugs made by 60 foreign and domestic suppliers. There was no indication of wrongdoing, but the probe could be a prelude to a cut in government-set caps on prices. The action could help the...

The illiberalism of student radicalism in the 1960s shaped the world we live in today.SDS leader Mark Rudd at a Columbia University protest, 1968It is now 45 years since that momentous year 1968, one of the turning points of contemporary world culture, if not quite of contemporary politics. Not unlike 1848–49 in Europe, 1968 was marked by events that involved student and political protests in several places. There was a dire sense of crescendo and momentum: the heightening of protest against the Vietnam War, the violent turn of the civil-rights movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the utopian libertinism...

Rev. Wojciech Giertych VATICAN CITY, July 2, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com, Papal Theologian Rev. Wojciech Giertych, spoke of the need to treat persons with homosexual inclination with dignity, adding that dignity means telling them the truth.  What truth? “Homosexuality is against human nature.�  And what is needed is to “pastorally help such people to return to an emotional and moral integrity.� (see video of the interview) Appointed in 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI, it is Fr. Giertych’s job - Theologian of the Papal Household - to review the texts given to the Pope for his speeches...

Looks like that many Christians forgot that Russian Orthodox Church was and is controlled by KGB. Their priests were and are KGB agents. Yes, they want to conquer world, not with Russian Christianity but with long range planned Russian Communism which they exported successfully with Communist religion "Theory of Evolution" to the West. Now they are pretending that they are good guys with their phony Christianity. Wolf change clothing but never his nature and useful idiots getting hooked on this Putin's "Christianity" hoax. Lenin, the founder of the first Communist state, put it simply: "First we will take Eastern Europe,...

President Barack Obama toasted the founding dictator of post-colonial Tanzania on Monday, who collectivized the nation’s low-tech agricultural sector, established a one-party state and left that African nation’s economy in ruins.“[Y]ou might say an American child is my child. We might say a Tanzanian child is my child,” Obama said after quoting the Tanzanian saying “my neighbor’s child is my child.”“In this way, both of our nations will be looking after all of our children and we’ll be living out the vision of President [Julius] Nyerere,” Obama continued. “The core values that he proclaimed for Tanzania also describe what both our...

While doing my usual survey of People's World, Communist Party USA's (CPUSA) successor publication to the Daily Worker, a particular headline caught my eye, "Beatrice Lumpkin's extraordinary book about her extraordinary life." Given my research in this area, "Lumpkin" rang a bell -- for reasons I need not elaborate upon here. Suffice to say, Beatrice Lumpkin is still with us, an old communist (literally) at age 94 -- and today in the tank for Barack Obama. Her life and relationship with our president is illuminating. For the record, People's World doesn't mention Lumpkin's relationship with Obama. That isn't surprising. I...

just wondering.

"Ted Cruz Exposes the Amnesty Bill… $5000 Penalty for Hiring Citizens Over Legalized Aliens… SERIOUSLY!!!" We can’t possibly expect our Senators to read a 1200 page bill before voting on it. Can we? Well Thank God Ted Cruz read it. Not only did Cruz read it but he schooled anyone who would listen from the Senate floor on Tuesday. Cruz found a loophole that actually penalizes an employer $5000 for hiring a citizen over a legalized alien. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up. Senator Cruz was quoted as saying: “I filed an amendment that would have corrected one of...

The Obama administration, already under fire for the IRS scandal and National Security Agency snooping of the computers and cellphones of Americans, is also spending millions to have private contractors conduct a dragnet for confidential and personal credit and bank transactions without a warrant. Newly obtained documents from the Obama-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reveal that the administration has OK'd a project to accumulate the personal financial data of some 5 million and share it with other agencies to build a "nationally representative panel of credit information on consumers for use in a wide range of policy research projects." The...

In the near future, Americans who own or want guns likely will be subject to rafts of new questions from social scientists, medical researchers and law enforcement officials intent to discover just what guns they own, why they own them and what they intend to use them for — not to mention where and how they keep them. They will also likely have more researchers poring over such issues as whether childhood education programs against gun violence actually work; whether there actually is any relationship between violence in the media and in real life; and whether the safety plans that...