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This summer, thousands of fast food workers around the nation walked off the job, demanding to be paid $15 per hour for work that traditionally pays about half that. As Wendy's striker Kaye Smith told NY1 recently, "I have to live with my mom ... because I wouldn't be able to support myself on $7.25, you know?" We can debate whether her living arrangements are Wendy's responsibility any more than they are that of New York's landlords or grocers. Either way, Smith's is a novel concept of unskilled jobs in America. Fast food wages have never been expected to support...

Video at source. A proposed federal rule that would require black boxes or event data recorders (EDRs) in every U.S. automobile may mean “Big Brother” could be in your passenger seat for every drive. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rule requires all light passenger vehicles be equipped with an EDR by Sep.1, 2014. Ninety-six percent of new cars already have them - measuring such inputs as speed, lateral acceleration, pedal effort, seat belt use, wheel spin, steering wheel turn and direction. Black box data retrieved from U.S. car accidents in a single day would provide more information than a...

(Reuters) - A U.S. judge ruled on Monday the New York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" crime-fighting tactic was unconstitutional, dealing a stinging rebuke to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who vowed to appeal the ruling. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin called it "indirect racial profiling" because it targeted racially defined groups, resulting in the disproportionate and discriminatory stopping of tens of thousands of blacks and Hispanics while the city's highest officials "turned a blind eye," she said. "No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the activities of daily life," Scheindlin wrote in her...

The Legacy Lives On! Mark’s Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation “Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” --Mark Levin in Liberty and TyrannyWelcome to “The Levin Lounge”… Step in and have a virtual FRink.Taking the country by storm, one radio station at a time – and kicking the BUTTS of the competition… it’s America’s Clean-Up Hitter! Welcome all, to the most FUN LIVE THREAD on FreeRepublic.com! You can call Mark’s show: 1-877-381-3811

The Third American Revolution has begun. Mark Levin’s The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic is the revolutionary blueprint millions of Americans have been waiting for. Released today, Levin leads the charge for “restoring constitutional republicanism and preserving the civil society from the growing authoritarianism of a federal Leviathan.” Carefully and powerfully written, the book uses the Constitution itself to illustrate how to reform the Constitution itself. To finally turn the tables on progressives and liberals — Statists, to use the term Levin has brought back to life — who have spent the last century slowly and not so slowly...

Rep. Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican, told constituents at a townhall over the weekend that the House of Representatives would “probably” have enough votes to impeach President Obama. Farenthold was in Luling, Texas on Saturday, and after stepping past a question about the president’s birth certificate, suggested that the House would have the votes to impeach the president, but the Democratic Senate would kill the effort. “A question I get a lot — ‘If everybody’s so unhappy with what the president’s doing, why don’t you impeach him?’” Farenthold said. “I’ll give you a real frank answer about that. If we...

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) on Monday signed into law one of the nation’s most wide-ranging Voter ID laws. The move is likely to touch off a major court battle over voting rights, and the Justice Department is weighing a challenge to the new law. The measure requires voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls and shortens the early voting period from 17 to 10 days. It will also end pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-old voters who will be 18 on Election Day and eliminates same-day voter registration. Democrats and minority groups have been fighting against the...

From the Monday edition of the Morning Jolt: Why the Cuccinelli vs. McAuliffe Race Matters to You, Even If You Don’t Live in Virginia First, does anyone want to argue that Ken Cuccinelli — Virginia’s attorney general, and current GOP candidate for governor — is not a conservative? Led the legal challenge to Obamacare.Defended Arizona’s immigration enforcement statute.Filed legal challenges to the EPA’s findings on greenhouse gases’ being a threat to human health and thus an emission they have the authority to regulate.Supports right to life from conception until death, supported and pushed several pro-life bills while in the state...

The Virginia Tea Party Patriots have invited me to speak before them along with the Executive Director of the Black American Leadership Alliance(BALA) and Congressmen Peter King on the dangers of amnesty. As a member of the BALA, I have committed myself to fighting against amnesty as we were lied to in 1986, when we were told it was a one time deal! The Pro-Amnesty Forces have been using all types of misleading tactics and bald-face lies to achieve their goal of open border and amnesty for all. The Pro-Amnesty are using every underhanded tactic to get the Senate Bill...

Following in the well-worn footsteps of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Blueprint for Federal Action on Illegal Guns, this week the Council on Foreign Relations released a memo urging the Obama administration to disregard the will of the American people and Congress and unilaterally enact a series of gun controls. Entitled, A Strategy to Reduce Gun Trafficking and Violence in the Americas, and written by CFR Senior Fellow for Latin American Studies, Julia F. Sweig, the memo pins the ills of Central and South America on U.S. gun owners and urges the president to curb our rights to...

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DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. (CBS Atlanta) - ”At around 1:30am [sic] my family and I were awaken [sic] by the sound of loud and aggressive banging at our front door. The [a]ggressive nature of the banging frightened us so I walked into the guest room that looks over the front of our house and was shocked when I saw 3 large DeKalb County Sheriff SUV’s with large flood lights pointed at our house and windows.” That is the beginning of the description offered for a video posted to YouTube that accuses several officers with the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office of harassing...

Against all logic, some prominent conservatives continue to promote the absurd proposition that right-wing candidates who fail to win over GOP voters in Republican primaries would magically succeed on November ballots. This assumption enables them to retain a naive faith in the claim that "true conservatives" who can't mobilize their own base to win nominations will somehow triumph in general elections by drawing support from moderates and liberals. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has most recently voiced this idea. "You know, if you look at the last 40 years, a consistent pattern emerges," Mr. Cruz observed in a July interview with...

Whether it was finding the solid ground in writing the Declaration of Independence that would justify and drive a revolution or defining the core rights that would guide the crafting for our Constitution, our Founding Fathers held firmly to core principles that would help them navigate through unchartered waters. Every improvement is the result of change, but not every change is an improvement. Our Founding Fathers had to find a compass to give them a true north as they sorted through the choices and changes our emerging country faced. After more than two centuries, it is understandable that our citizens...

MIAMI GARDENS – Library closures, treating the mentally ill and the state of the fire-rescue service took center stage Tuesday when Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez hosted a town hall meeting at the North Dade Regional Library to discuss his proposed $6.3 billion budget for the new fiscal year. “What are your priorities and what do we cut?” asked Marilyn Lieberman, a self-styled community activist. . . Linnea Pearson, a Florida International University professor and former teacher of Travon Martin’s brother Jahvaris Fulton, said one of the reasons Trayvon got into trouble was because he was suspended. “As an educator, one...

There are no polls showing Ted Cruz leading the 2016 Republican presidential field in the Iowa. A PPP survey last month found Cruz in sixth place in the state, behind Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio. But after a particularly well-received appearance at a conservative event in Ames, Iowa over the weekend, there seems little doubt that Cruz, who has been in the U.S. Senate all of eight months, is zooming toward the front of the GOP pack in the nation’s first-voting state. The gathering, sponsored by the social conservative organization Family Leader, featured appearances...

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A federal court handed a big defeat to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York Police Department today, ruling that the controversial “stop and frisk� program infringed on constitutional rights. Judge Shira Scheindlin appointed a federal monitor to oversee the NYPD and “reform� the practice, although that might prove impossible: A federal judge appointed an independent monitor Monday to oversee changes to the New York Police Department’s contentious policy known as stop, question and frisk, a significant judicial rebuke for what the mayor and police commissioner have defended as a life-saving, crime-fighting tool. …Four men had sued saying they were...

Fannie and Freddie have been in operation for decades without problems until recently. Fannie began in 1938 as a quasi-governmental agency making affordable homes available to people by making the financing easier and funds more readily available by establishing a secondary market for mortgages. Previously banks had held onto their mortgages in a system called portfolio mortgages and were made mostly to their own account holders. With the homes as collateral, the banks then lent out that same money again to other local borrowers. If you remember the scene from It's a Wonderful Life when there is a run on...

Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel, told The Daily Caller on Sunday that the talk took place, but he declined to provide any details. Early this year, Boehner swore off future closed-door negotiations with Obama, after Obama used his post-election clout, plus his allies in the media, to force a tax increase through Congress.

The “phony scandal” at the IRS keeps growing. E-mail correspondence unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee reveals that Lois Lerner, the figure at the center of the scandal, may have committed a felony by divulging information about a conservative group to the Federal Election Commission, in an incident that dates back at least to 2008, before President Obama took office. Though some conservatives have eagerly sought evidence that Obama’s White House instigated the IRS’s targeting of tea-party groups, the latest evidence suggests that an anti-conservative bias may instead be an endemic feature of the federal bureaucracy. And now,...

Lovers of Big Government and apologists for debt like Paul Krugman have tried to paint Milton Friedman as a contradiction. They say that Friedman’s insight that more Fed intervention might have mitigated the Great Depression is inconsistent with his view that the Depression would have been less severe without the Fed. Krugman can typically be discounted because his partisanship diminishes his perceptiveness. It is, however, disappointing when National Review joins the fray and publishes opinion claiming that Friedman “would likely have supported a much more aggressive monetary response to our economic downturn.” Professor Ivan Pongracic of Hillsdale College explains that...

Reiterating a theme he presented two weeks ago at an Iftar dinner celebrating the end of Ramadan... . ."For many of us, respect for God’s creation in almost every scripture really demands and translates into a duty to protect and sustain God’s first creation," said Kerry.

Prohibitions on the carrying of knives in general, or of particular knives, are unconstitutional. There is no knife which is more dangerous than a modern handgun; to the contrary, knives are much less dangerous. Therefore, restrictions on the carrying of handguns set the upper limit for restrictions on knife carrying. Read the rest here http://westernshootingjournal.com/editors-blog/are-knives-considered-arms-protected-by-the-second-amendment/

Judge rules New York police's 'stop and frisk' tactics unconstitutional 9:52am EDT By Bernard Vaughan NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York City Police Department's controversial "stop and frisk" crime-fighting tactics violate the U.S. Constitution, a federal judge ruled on Monday. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said the city police adopted a policy of "indirect racial profiling" by targeting racially defined groups for stops. The practice resulted in disproportionate, discriminatory stopping of blacks and Hispanics that the city's highest officials "turned a blind eye" toward. "No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to...

>Plutarch, the first-century Greek moralist who outlined four stages of a civilization, said that a society that has become libertine is in its next-to-last stage before its final descent into tyranny. When tyranny is mentioned, most people, if they are old enough to remember, think of Mussolini and his secret police or Hitler and his jack-booted thugs. After all, dictators are essentially cowards who not only operate in ambiguity but invariably get underlings to do their bidding. Under the current Obama administration, government bodies such as the National Security Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency,...

As evidenced by the troubled thoughts of delusional liberals on the American Thinker site, many on the left seem to be confused about history -- and particularly the Reagan years. A comparison between Reagan and Obama seems in order. We'll start with an electoral analysis. Reagan won the 1980 election by 10 percentage points in the popular vote over an incumbent president, also carrying 44 states and taking 91% of the electoral college. In 1984, Reagan was re-elected with an over 18% margin in the popular vote, carrying 49 states (and losing only Minnesota, by 3,761 votes [0.18%], to prevent...

Here's something I'll wager that we don't hear about from Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson, or Sheila Jackson Lee, or Jeremiah Wright, or Barack Hussein Obama, or the NAACP, or any Democrat for that matter. Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), a Democrat and civil rights icon, speaking while aboard Air Force One about his "Great Society" to two sympathetic governors, said, "I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years."

And why not? If we go on defining human life down, we’ll end up determining that anyone can be killed at any time in the name of the greater good.That’s where this road of warped ethics inevitably leads. The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born. You know, if you’re going to call for murdering babies, maybe you...

Chanting "sí se puede!" – "Yes we can!" – with their fists and hands raised high, 1,000 people packed Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on Sunday to cheer 11 pilgrims who will march 285 miles from Sacramento to Bakersfield calling for a change to immigration law.

In his new book—The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic—nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin, who served as chief of staff in the Reagan Justice Department, argues that the Constitution should be amended to put tax day and election day back to back. “I would move tax day to the day before election day,” Levin said in an interview on CNSNews.com’s Online With Terry Jeffrey. “I think this is very important, because if you’ll notice, election day and tax day are about as far apart as they can get, like seven months apart,” said Levin. “So we’re voting on the...

Attorney General Eric Holder is calling for major changes to the nation’s criminal justice system that would scale back the use of harsh prison sentences for certain drug-related crimes, divert people convicted of low-level offenses to drug treatment and community service programs and expand a prison program to allow for release of some elderly, non-violent offenders. In remarks prepared for delivery Monday to the American Bar Association in San Francisco, Holder said he is mandating a change to Justice Department policy so that low-level, non-violent drug offenders with no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels won’t be charged with...

The rise of ‘smart gun’ technology, which utilizes an RFID interface to allow for both the government and the manufacturer to remotely render the gun useless at any time, is the upcoming new tactic used by anti-Constitution control freaks in the effort to take away legal firearms from the hands of law-abiding citizens.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) And these smart guns are coming much sooner than you think. TriggerSmart, the manufacturer of the Orwellian weapons that already exist in various European regions thanks to branding that smart guns are the ‘safer’ alternative to real weapons, hopes to start selling smart guns within the United...

Trust Google? The National Security Agency, which routinely collects its data, does. After all, it’s one of the companies from which Washington apparently routinely pulls data about what Americans are reading, doing, seeing, researching, hunting and contemplating. So an entrepreneur says he has started an alternative service, which offers encryption services to keep your details, well, your details. Out of Google’s files. And away from the NSA. The website is called Zeekly.com and founder Jeffrey Sisk explains it doesn’t retain search history, and also runs on 2048-bit SSL encryption to keep private what Internet users don’t want public.

Does it seem plausible that the true spark of the American Revolution was the religion of peace—Christianity? In fact, how could it be any other way in a country expressly founded to establish Christian religious liberty? Colonial America was one of the most intensely evangelized and churched societies in history. For example, according to Harry Stout in The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England, the typical colonists probably listened to 7,000 hours of sermons in their lifetime. For many colonists, their instruction in religion, science, history, politics and most other subjects were delivered only by...

Joseph E. Schmitz' Perspective: The Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, and 19 House colleagues co-sponsored H.Res. 153 on April 12, “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 violates article I, section 7, clause 1 of the United States Constitution because it was a ‘Bill for raising Revenue’ that did not originate in the House of Representatives.” The Supreme Court has never before addressed an Origination Clause challenge that was so blatantly obvious. The only surprise is that no one raised...

Tea party groups have publicized their desire to find primary challengers for Republicans they don't like as well as vulnerable Democrats who are already in office. Here are a few tell-tale signs that a tea party challenger might jump into a race near you.

It’s no secret that one hundred years of progressivism has twisted the American mind. A once proud and independent people have become increasingly meek and dependent on the decisions and goodies disbursed by faraway masterminds. Part of that twist shifted our attention and expectations from the dispersed power in our states, and toward a single focal point, Washington, DC. For any real or imagined problem, the perceived answer no longer resides within our communities or states. No, there must be a national program to deal with and regulate everything. This top-down imperial approach, that treats the fifty states no better...

Parts of Northern Europe have had a bit better luck than some other sectors across the pond during the economic troubles of the past decade, but they still have had to deal with the legacy of welfare states and costly entitlement programs. Earlier this year, Mary Katharine looked at Sweden’s attempts to deal with rising debt and costly entitlements, while Erika covered some steps being taken in Denmark to deal with their long term financial issues arising from the same core issues. This sense of realism and worry about the future seems to be spreading across the region, and John...

A majority of Americans say they think gun crime has increased over the past 20 years, even though it has actually fallen dramatically, a recent Pew Research Center survey shows. The infographic below provides a closer look at some recent numbers.

On Fox News Saturday morning, former Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, explained to host Eric Bolling that she would choose Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. over Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J. “I am on Team Rand,” Palin said. “Rand Paul understands, he gets the whole notion of ‘don’t tread on me’ government, whereas Chris Christie is for big government, you know, and trying to go along and get along in so many respects.” Palin said that Christie was mistakenly thought of as a governor that “goes rogue” but suggested that the New Jersey governor had created “a shtick” by setting up controversial moments...

The website Ars Technica points us to this rare release by the NSA that seeks to justify its snooping. It is obviously self serving, and I find it strange that they would use the numbers dodge to try and reassure us about surveillance. It doesn't matter how little or how much of the internet they "touch." What matters is who they touch and why. On the same day that President Barack Obama spoke to the press about possible surveillance reforms--and released a related white paper on the subject--the National Security Agency came out with its own rare, publicly-released, seven-page document...

The bids of Larry Summers and Janet Yellen to replace Ben Bernanke just took a hit. Ron Paul, the famously libertarian politician and former presidential candidate, has his own choice for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, and it isn't Summers or Yellen. Paul's pick for the next Fed head: No one. Here's what Paul had to say via a spokesperson: "Dr. Paul would prefer we get rid of central economic planning via a central bank. All mentioned candidates believe that one person or a committee has the knowledge to dictate the correct interest rate and rate of growth...

The U.S. Department of Justice has said it will not oppose a lawsuit filed by a Michigan-based Christian-run business that is seeking suspension of enforcement of the abortion pill mandate against it. In the lawsuit by Trijicon, which manufactures sights and scopes for the military, law enforcement, and hunter, the Justice Department has notified the court it will not oppose the business' request for a court order that would suspend enforcement of the mandate against the company, Alliance Defending Freedom said in a statement on Friday. "All Americans, including job creators, should be free to honor God and live according...

According to Team Obama’s “phony scandal” narrative, when the Internal Revenue Service processed 501(c)(3) tax-exemption applications, it equally tormented liberals and conservatives. No big deal, the argument goes. The IRS suffers from even-handed inefficiency rather than an un-American habit of slamming critics of the president of the United States. Unfortunately for the Obamites, actual facts annihilate their institutional-incompetence defense. New data deepen the suspicion that the IRS is the latest and most worrisome weapon in the left’s arsenal. Using his authority under Internal Revenue Code Section 6103, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) requested and received data...

A legal debate over whether one member of a same-sex couple has spousal privilege that would shield her from testifying against her partner is at the heart of a capital murder case in politically conservative Kentucky. Geneva Case, 49, does not want to testify in a Louisville court against her partner, Bobbie Jo Clary, 37, who is accused of beating George Murphy, 64, to death with a hammer in 2011 and then stealing his van. Prosecutors say Case must testify because of her value as a witness, since she heard Clary admit to the slaying and also saw blood on...

A prosecutor has dropped criminal cases against three more defendants charged in an undercover ATF sting in Milwaukee last year — the latest setback for the beleaguered operation. Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Karen Loebel said in court she was dismissing the cases to protect informants who arranged gun and drug deals for federal agents. She blamed the publicity surrounding the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sting, saying it made it too dangerous to proceed with the cases. The ATF is usually keen on getting publicity for its operations, but not the kind the Milwaukee sting has...

Former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said on Saturday New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie just isn't "rogue" enough for her taste. Palin sided with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul in his continuing feud with the popular New Jersey governor. “I’m on team Rand," Palin told Fox News. "Rand Paul understands. He gets the whole notion of 'don’t tread on me government.' Whereas Chris Christie is for big government and trying to go-along-to-get-along in so many respects." -snip- ... she dismissed Obama's comments about greater transparency regarding the National Security Agency and its surveillance operations at his news conference on Friday....

The Internal Revenue Service is still targeting tea party and conservative groups in their applications for tax-exempt status, a full three months after the scandal first erupted. "In plain English, the IRS is still targeting tea party cases," an aide to Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told The Washington Examiner.Camp, a Michigan Republican, released a transcript of testimony from an IRS agent who told a Ways and Means investigator that the agency was still targeting such groups, the Examiner reports. The testimony was given in a closed-door session on Aug. 1, according to the...

Putin talks NSA, Syria, Iran, and Drones in Exclusive Video