Free Republic

More than 40 Catholic individuals, dioceses and universities have sued the Obama administration to prevent trampling of their First Amendment right to practice religion by forcing them to pay for abortifacients, sterilizations, contraception, devices and pills that would violate their religious beliefs. We would be stunned and alarmed if the courts reject their arguments, grounded as they are in the constitutionally protected right to free exercise of religion...

Police officers are trained manipulators. They take classes to learn how to read people’s body language and how to ask open-ended and innocent-sounding questions in order to surreptitiously obtain information they can use against you. They also have a knowledge of the laws that you don’t possess — and laws differ from State to State, and even from one jurisdiction in a State to another. Police have also been known to invent “laws,” place “evidence” that can be linked to you and twist your words into meaning something you did not intend.

Tina Dupuy is mighty sure of herself and, oddly enough (since I have never met the woman), awfully sure of me too. She explains in her piece Why you believe in gun control that we bitter clingers are actually in favor of gun control…we’re just too pig-ignorant to realize it. “If you ask the typical hyper-political gun owner (and I have … at Thanksgiving dinner), why it’s important to own a gun, they’ll bark about the Constitution. Yes, the Second Amendment: ‘The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!’” Tina has a little problem...

PRINCETON, NJ -- U.S. veterans, about 13% of the adult population and consisting mostly of older men, support Mitt Romney over Barack Obama for president by 58% to 34%, while nonveterans give Obama a four-percentage-point edge. These data, from an analysis of Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted April 11-May 24, show that 24% of all adult men are veterans, compared with 2% of adult women. Obama and Romney are tied overall at 46% apiece among all registered voters in this sample. Men give Romney an eight-point edge, while women opt for Obama over Romney by seven points. It turns out...

(CBS News) The U.S. Senate has yet to act on a so-called "concealed carry reciprocity" bill, which would let people with permits to carry a concealed weapon in their home state carry that weapon into virtually any other state. A similar bill has passed the House. Almost every state now allows the carrying of concealed weapons under certain conditions. Colorado, for example, has issued nearly 130,000 concealed handgun permits since 2003. Robert Paulson is getting his permit to carry a concealed gun and says other seniors should do the same. "Yeah, why not?" he asked. Aimee Galvin is thinking about...

Chestnuthill Township supervisors will consider whether a township ordinance prohibiting guns in the township park should be repealed. The ordinance may conflict with a state law that says that municipalities don't have the authority to limit the rights of gun owners as long as the owners act in accordance with state gun laws. The possible conflict of local and state laws was brought to the township's attention by Brodheadsville resident William Gray. Gray doesn't want to fear being punished if he carries a firearm into Chestnuthill Park, he said. Gray said that, among other reasons, he'd like to have a...

A shooting near the Space Needle Saturday that apparently involved an admitted gang member from Kent will almost certainly spark a new effort by the City of Seattle, no doubt with support from Washington Ceasefire, to attack Washington State’s preemption statute. Seattle tried that in the courts and in March, that legal strategy was derailed by the state Supreme Court when it declined to review Seattle’s unanimous loss before the state Court of Appeals last fall. That was 20 months after Seattle lost at the trial court level in an effort to ban firearms from city park facilities. On the...

Meet the Stooges: Larry, Curly and Barack. Bill Clinton meets another member of the Blue Dress Brigade. Larry Flynt: the latest soldier in the Democrats’ war on women. And the Huffington Post declares jihad on sense. All this — plus — Obama eats dogs. Presented in 1080 hi-def, FOR FREE! It’s The Great Eight, from the Personal Liberty Digest™!

The quickest way to divide people is to have them speak different languages. America has always been a nation of immigrants, but one of the things that has always united us as a nation has been the English language. In the past, it was always understood that if you wanted to thrive in the "land of opportunity" that you had better learn English and learn it well. Unfortunately, times have changed. Today, many radical activist groups are actually referring to the English language as a "tool of oppression"... » If you like this article, please subscribe to Right Side News...

(ref: How Banks Bought the Tea Party) Seriously folks. The 15 freshmen Republican representatives in the House Tea Party Caucus each ran in 2010 on a populist anti-Wall Street message, highlighting their opposition to bank bailouts like the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and criticizing Washington for enabling the banking sector as it became “Too Big to Fail.” After winning, all fifteen received significant PAC contributions from the banking industry — and have become a reliable vote and mouthpiece for the financial industry, a ThinkProgress analysis of campaign contributions, voting records and public statements reveals. It would be nice...

I never travel without a loaded gun. I usually carry a Smith and Wesson Model 640 in a bucket in the trunk of my car. Sometimes I carry a Glock Model 23 instead. I was really happy I was carrying the former when I arrived at my hotel room in Amarillo last week shortly after midnight. As I was unpacking my trunk, a man came walking across the parking lot from an adjacent hotel. His largely incoherent introduction began something like this: “Hey, I’m a big scary black man and I need some help. Won’t nobody help me ‘cause I’m...

Today on the U.S. Senate floor, Sen. Rand Paul introduced an amendment to the Food and Drug Administration User Fee Reauthorization bill, which would curb the Food and Drug Associations overreach and abuse of power. Sen. Paul's amendment, No. 2143, would disarm the FDA, put an end to raids on natural food stores and Amish farmers, and stop FDA censorship of truthful claims of dietary supplements.[snip] "Mr.President, today I'm offering an amendment to the FDA. I'm troubled by images of armed agents raiding Amish farms and preventing them selling milk directly from the cow. I think we have bigger problems...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Gay students at America's military service academies are wrapping up the first year when they no longer had to hide their sexual orientation, benefiting from the end of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that used to bar them from seemingly ordinary activities like taking their partners openly to graduation events. For the first time, gay students at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis were able to take a same-sex date to the academy's Ring Dance for third-year midshipmen. The U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., officially recognized a club for gay students this month....

As we reported last week, every gun owner concerned about the future of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms should be aware that the United Nations and the global gun eradication movement are attempting to eliminate our Second Amendment freedoms by drafting a U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. This treaty would cover tanks, helicopters, and other heavy weapons but could also include civilian rifles, shotguns and handguns. The treaty's language will be finalized by the U.N. this July during a four week conference. In an attempt to thwart this serious threat to our sovereign rights and freedoms, earlier this year,...

Nearby today readers will notice excerpts from a memo written to Ronald Reagan by his economic advisers between his November 1980 election and inauguration. We share the memo because it shines a historical perspective on our own economic dilemmas as the Presidential race hits its Memorial Day turn. The memo was sent to us by George Shultz, who later became the Gipper's Secretary of State but had served previous stints at Treasury, Labor and the White House budget office. The signers include some of the last century's most consequential economic figures, notably the great Milton Friedman, tax-cut evangelist Jack Kemp...

The Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization, today blasted Vice President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for bashing ordinary Americans who believe in governmental fiscal responsibility. Jenny Beth Martin, Co-founder and National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, reacted strongly to accusations that the Tea Party Movement bears responsibility for the financial crisis facing our nation: “Only entrenched career politicians in Washington, D.C., would think living within your means is ‘extreme.’ What is truly extreme are the lengths Vice President Biden and Sen. Reid will go to blame everyone else for their lack of courage to...

I guess it's that time of year again. It seems every spring I get stopped by the Portland PD. I got video this time I also wrote an email to the police chief: Chief Sauschuck, On 26MAY2012 at about 17:15 I was stopped by Officer J McDonald. I recorded a video of the stop for my protection. You can view the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfdEbe7e9GE Officer McDonald claimed to have received calls that I was walking around with a holstered firearm. This is a legal activity in Maine. He stopped me, put on gloves, and removed my weapon from me. I...

As part of a recent AIM Report, I wrote briefly about the release of documents last week in the George Zimmerman case. Zimmerman has been charged with second degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. But more has come out since then, and attorney Alan Dershowitz has stepped up his criticism of the special prosecutor in Florida who brought the charges. Here is what I wrote: As we are going to press, a trove of documents was released on the George Zimmerman case that appears to bolster his defense that he is not guilty of second degree murder in...

FORT PIERCE — Before a crowd of approximately 100 people, Patricia Broussard, an FAMU constitutional law professor, explained that because of the immunity clause of the Stand Your Ground Law that was passed in 2005, the controversial law might violate a person’s right to due process. Since that time, alleged perpetrators have invoked this defense 200 times. In Florida, one in every 17 Floridians has a valid concealed weapons permit, and public records show that police and prosecutors continue to apply the self-defense law unevenly. On May 20, Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church was the setting for an educational forum...

If Gov. Scott Walker keeps his seat, the state Senate could be Democrats' consolation prize. With both sides pouring millions of dollars into the Scott Walker recall campaign and the national focus firmly affixed on the Wisconsin GOP governor’s fate, it’s easy to overlook the consolation prize on June 5: the state Senate. Although they’re getting just a fraction of the attention and cash going into the top of the ticket race, the four Wisconsin state Senate recall elections on the ballot are nothing to sneeze at. Democrats need to flip just one of them to wrest control of the...

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has signed a law aimed at keeping the state's courts or government agencies from basing decisions on Islamic or other foreign legal codes, and a national Muslim group's spokesman said Friday that a court challenge is likely. The new law, taking effect July 1, doesn't specifically mention Shariah law, which broadly refers to codes within the Islamic legal system. Instead, it says courts, administrative agencies or state tribunals can't base rulings on any foreign law or legal system that would not grant the parties the same rights guaranteed by state and U.S. constitutions. "This bill should...

In many ways, I’ve never been a big fan of Donald Trump. I saw him as an arrogant snobbish extremely wealthy individual who had no concept what most Americans face in today’s society. However, my opinion of him has been changing over the past year. When he was contemplating a run for the White House, I was skeptical until I started to listen to some of the things he said and as much as I hated to admit it, he made sense. Trump also jumped up a notch in my opinion when he came out in support of Maricopa County...

Interestingly, Gallup didn’t lead with the finding on social conservatism from its latest survey, but that may be because the bounce upward followed two straight declines in the same series. The focus on economic conservatism is a little more dramatic, if consistent: Americans are more than twice as likely to identify themselves as conservative rather than liberal on economic issues, 46% to 20%. The gap is narrower on social issues, but conservatives still outnumber liberals, 38% to 28%. …In the same poll, on Gallup’s standard measure of ideology — not asked in reference to any set of issues — 41%...

... On May 16, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, visited the Miami home of Dr. Philip Frost, the chairman of the board of Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israel-based company that produces many different medicines, including regular contraceptives. Teva is also one of the country's largest producers of generic drugs. ... “At this point, the sentiment of most pro-life leaders and activists I am in contact with is that this election is about avoiding the unmitigated disaster of a second Obama term," said Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life. "This is not the first...

Chris Christie is so not one of us that articles like “Christie Is One of Us” — a new contribution to the genre, from National Review’s Noah Glyn — are churned out regularly as the governor’s smitten admirers, from Ann Coulter to NR staffers, labor to convince us of what they’ve convinced themselves of: that an ostensibly gruff, internally milquetoast, progressive-lite, pro-Islamist Republican must be the second coming of Ronald Reagan because he has managed to make a basket-case blue state marginally less of a basket case. And “marginally” is the operative word. Glyn’s valentine to Christie is unfortunately timed....

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Federal prosecutors on Friday urged a judge to lift her order barring enforcement of part of a new law that permits indefinite military detention, a measure critics including a prize-winning journalist say is too vague and threatens free speech. Manhattan federal court Judge Katherine Forrest this month ruled in favor of activists and reporters who said they feared being detained under a section of the law, signed by President Barack Obama in December. The government says indefinite military detention without trial is justified in some cases involving militants and their supporters. But critics worry that the law...

The Feds have been forced to release their social network monitoring manual, which contains the list of words the government watches on social media and news sites. [snip] Homeland Security Manual Lists Government Key Words For Monitoring Social Media, News Ever complain on Facebook that you were feeling “sick?” Told your friends to “watch” a certain TV show? Left a comment on a media website about government “pork?” If you did any of those things, or tweeted about your recent vacation in “Mexico” or a shopping trip to “Target,” the Department of Homeland Security may have noticed.

Not that there's anything wrong with that! Keynes' theories remain the essential guide to understanding recessions. The real news in Mitt Romney’s interview with Mark Halperin, as Charles Pierce points out, is that Romney openly repudiated the central argument his party has been making against President Obama for the last three years: that he spent too much money and therefore deepened the economic crisis. Indeed Romney himself had been making this very case as recently as a week ago (“he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of dollars to the companies of his friends, and added almost as much...

Americans choose to take to the roads for va- cations and to visit friends and family on Memorial Day. Often, they’ll bring their firearms with them for sport or personal protection, and it’s perfectly legal under federal law. This gets under the skin of a handful of anti-gun jurisdictions that have grown so out of control that they’ll jail an active-duty Afghanistan veteran who’s following the letter of the law. A growing, bipartisan movement in Congress is looking to stop the harassment. Rep. H. Morgan Griffith, Virginia Republican, has sponsored legislation that would amend current law to make it clear...

What's green and blue and grabby all over? President Obama's new pressure campaign for Congress to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The fight over LOST goes back three decades, when it was first rejected by President Ronald Reagan. He warned that "no national interest of the United States could justify handing sovereign control of two-thirds of the Earth's surface over to the Third World." According to top Reagan officials William Clark and Ed Meese, their boss believed the "central, and abiding, defect" was "its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states --...

CALWATCHDOG - Retribution in politics isn’t unusual. Every year we witness members of the Legislature receiving punishment from party leadership, often followed by banishment to a tiny office and committee assignments taken away. That’s the prerogative of party leadership. However, Assemblywoman Norma Torres, D-Chino, has taken aim at a fellow member of the Assembly in a very public way. Torres authored AB 2182, which would require a police officer to arrest anyone for carrying a concealed handgun into an airport without a concealed weapons permit. In the Assembly Monday, Torres said that last year there were 64 such gun incidents...

TEWKSBURY, Mass. – Russ Caswell, 68, is bewildered: “What country are we in?” He and his wife Pat are ensnared in a Kafkaesque nightmare unfolding in Orwellian language. This town’s police department is conniving with the federal government to circumvent Massachusetts law – which is less permissive than federal law – in order to seize his livelihood and retirement asset. In the lawsuit titled United States of America v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts the government is suing an inanimate object, the motel Caswell’s father built in 1955. The U.S. Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for...

The shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman has been the subject of enormous confusion, not only because the facts are not entirely clear, but more because of public misunderstanding of the relevant law. I hope the following will help clarify things. 1. IT'S NOT THE JOB OF THE POLICE TO INTERRUPT CRIMES AND DEFEND CITIZENS. The police exist to do two things ONLY: patrol thereby deterring crime; and investigating already-committed crimes to apprehend the perpetrators. The police cannot be expected to interrupt crime and defend citizens. This is because police are rarely around when criminals strike. The statistics on...

Four years ago this month, FIRE become embroiled in a battle that would end in a decisive victory for free speech in the courts. The controversy first began in March 2008, when Tarrant County College (TCC) student Brett Poulos attempted to organize an "Empty Holster Protest." In conjunction with other protests spearheaded by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus across the country, TCC students would peacefully attend class and perform other daily tasks while wearing empty holsters to signify opposition to state laws and school policies denying concealed handgun license holders the same rights on college campuses that they are...

Launched in Britain, apologetics-training program seeks to give Catholics the skills to spread the faith while disarming opponents.   WASHINGTON — Media coverage of the Health and Human Services “contraception mandate� debate has intensified demand for appealing arguments that win minds and hearts, yet effective spokesmen and women for Catholic teaching are in short supply, giving an edge to those who spin the bishops’ position as a “war on women.� Enter Austen Ivereigh, a British Catholic journalist, community organizer and onetime spokesman for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the now-retired archbishop of Westminster. Troubled by the British bishops’ struggle to counter partisan...

BELLEVUE, WA --(Ammoland.com)- I would like to personally invite you to our 27th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC), which will be taking place September 28, 29, and 30, 2012 in Orlando, Florida at the Hyatt Regency Orlando International Airport hotel. With new battles over individual rights in the age of terrorism, attacks on our gun rights from the UN, a number of Second Amendment cases in the courts and an important upcoming election, your attendance is critical. The theme of Elect Liberty is most important as we set the pro-gun rights agenda for the year to come. This year...

Liberals are waging a war on Christianity. This is the real reason why the Catholic bishops this week filed lawsuits against the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. The Catholic church realizes religious freedom is at stake. If the courts don’t overturn President Obama’s authoritarian regulations, America will slide toward secular tyranny. On Jan. 20, the Health and Human Services Department issued a mandate compelling nearly all religious organizations — including Catholic hospitals, universities, schools and charities — to provide their employees with free birth control, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. This is a direct assault upon the conscience rights of numerous Christian...

This magazine has long specialized in debunking pernicious political myths, and Jonah Goldberg has now provided an illuminating catalogue of tyrannical clichés, but worse than the myth and the cliché is the outright lie, the utter fabrication with malice aforethought, and my nominee for the worst of them is the popular but indefensible belief that the two major U.S. political parties somehow “switched places� vis-à-vis protecting the rights of black Americans, a development believed to be roughly concurrent with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the rise of Richard Nixon. That Republicans have let Democrats get...

Gov. Sam Brownback has signed into law a bill aimed at keeping Kansas courts or government agencies from basing decisions on Islamic or other foreign legal codes...

E. J. Dionne, a liberal columnist for The Washington Post, suggested in a Monday blog post that Catholic leaders who are opposing the Obama administration's birth control mandate could be doing so to help Republicans in the November elections. Dionne was responding to the Monday lawsuits from 43 Catholic agencies. They sued the Obama administration over the requirement to provide coverage for contraception, sterilization and some abortifacient drugs in their health plans. These agencies did not qualify for the religious exemption because the exemption defines religious groups as only those that primarily hire and serve coreligionists, and for which religious...

Dictionaries apparently do have the power to offend. More than 65,000 people have signed a Change.org petition challenging Dictionary.com to “correct” its definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. Dictionary.com currently defines marriage as “the social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc.” and, alternatively, as “a similar institution involving partners of the same gender: gay marriage.” The petition asks that the definition instead describe marriage as “the social institution under which a man and woman, woman and woman, or man and man establish their...

A Blackhawk pilot and flight leader with the Fifth Battalion, 101st Airborne Brigade, CW3 Trevor Baucom was recognized by his superiors and fellow soldiers as much more than just a highly-capable leader. He seemed destined for a great career in the military- until the night his copilot flew their Blackhawk into the ground during a nighttime special forces mission against the Taliban. Three Australian soldiers and one of Trevor's flight crew were killed. Baucom survived, but life changed forever. Paralyzed from the waist down, Baucom's military career was over. That's only the beginning of "Trevor's Story".

It’s one of the clearest, easiest-to-understand provisions in the Constitution. And Harry Reid’s Senate flouts it routinely.The Origination Clause in Article I, Section 7 states: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.� In addition to clarity, this provision has an even greater virtue: It serves a very good purpose.The Founding Fathers required revenue measures to originate in the House because they wanted this authority to belong to the legislative body closest to the people. Plus, the Framers wanted the larger states...

Frankfort, Ky --(Ammoland.com)- Good news! After the disappointments with the General Assembly in the last few years, when several bills that KC3 and other interested gun owners favored were allowed to wither and die without a hearing, this spring has been like a renewal of the spirit of freedom in Kentucky. For the NRA press release about the three bills that were passed, go to this page from the KC3 blog – http://kc3blog.blogspot.com/2012/04/hb-500-is- now-law.html The bill that was most important to us, HB500 from Rep. Robert Damron, is summarized in this way: HB 500, sponsored by state Representative Bob Damron...

"That is what makes it whopper of the year," syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer says of a report that federal spending, under the Obama administration, has risen at the lowest pace in 60 years. "This is an unbelievable distortion of the truth. If you compare it to what was spent in the Bush years, particularly if you take out the emergency spending that the two administrations agreed on in the end -- the bailouts -- then you have an 8% increase, which is historic. You had it in 2009 alone, increases in the agencies of 20% and 50% in some of...

Meghan McCain continued her usual class act Thursday, appearing on Al Sharpton’s “Politics Nation” to whine about how conservatives have ostracized her from the Republican Party for her “moderate” views. “Many people in the Republican Party treat me like I’m a freak,” McCain said, adding that she was “blessed” to be a moderate. But, she said, “if you’re not an extreme conservative in this party, you are not given respect.” A personal note to Meghan McCain: Your political views are not the reason why people don’t respect you. Miss McCain went on to criticize popular conservatives, including author Michelle Malkin...

(Bay City News) A federal judge ruled in Oakland that the state's public-employee pension system must make long-term care insurance equally available to same-sex spouses and partners. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, is unconstitutional to the extent that it limits same-sex spouses of state workers in obtaining the insurance. . . Wilken said the DOMA ban violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal treatment. She wrote that there was no proof the DOMA provision was "rationally related to a legitimate government interest." . . In today's ruling, Wilken...

It wasn’t long after President Obama’s statement... When proponents of same-sex marriage offer theoretical arguments in favor of their position, they often rely on a legalistic view: they frame marriage as fundamentally a package of legal rights, benefits and obligations — which include hospital visitation rights and immigration rights for the foreign spouses of citizens, among others. This position insists on a basic condition of justice — legal parity and equality for men and women who choose a long-term partner of the same sex. ... Many opponents of same-sex marriage counter by arguing that this legalistic view omits the most...

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