Free Republic

Yesterday, we discussed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's curious reluctance (so far) to ban .50 caliber rifles, despite having, just a few months ago, been the one to propose such a law in the first place. One of the ten new gun laws he did choose to sign last Thursday, though, is arguably a far more egregious assault on liberty than even the gun ban would be. A 3687/S 2485, which, according to the title, "[d]isqualifies person named on federal Terrorist Watchlist from obtaining firearms identification card or permit to purchase handgun," finally achieves at the state level what the...

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...

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...

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.

President Barack Obama insisted Friday that the Senate Gang of Eight immigration bill would pass the GOP-led House, but that “internal Republican caucus politics” were preventing Congress from sending a comprehensive reform bill to his desk. The Gang of Eight’s wide-reaching legislation, which passed the Senate with 68 votes in late June, has essentially evaporated after House Republicans – adverse to many provisions in the 1,000-plus page bill – said they would not take it up. Obama said during his news conference that he was “absolutely confident” that if the Gang of Eight bill was put on the House floor,...

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...

Derrick Washington of Cleveland, Ohio, is suing police for the return of his legally owned firearm. Washington alleges that the police seized the weapon from him illegally in a case for which he was never charged and have refused to return it since February. Washington has filed a lawsuit in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in order to get the gun returned along with tens of thousands of dollars in damages. According to the lawsuit, Washington called the police in order to report a shooting. He later told police that he has a permit to carry a weapon. The police...

Two important documents have been filed with the Supreme Court of Mississippi in recent days in response to an injunction preventing House Bill 2, a law clarifying the definition of “concealed” and characterized by some as an “open carry” bill, from going into effect. A halt, egged on by the Southern Poverty Law Center, was placed on the new law’s implementation by an activist Hinds County Circuit Court Judge at the behest of an anti-gun prosecutor and legislators. Hinds County District Attorney Robert Schuler Smith’s Response in Opposition to the State of Mississippi’s Combined Petition to Vacate a Permanent Injunction...

Now we wait Attorney Lisa Mishune Ross who represents DA Robert Shuler Smith and the handful of Hinds County Constables who have been “confused” by House Bill 2, filed a rambling and mostly irrelevant brief with the MS Supreme Court supporting Judge Winston Kidd’s injunction against House Bill 2. After reading her brief I am concerned that we are left completely uninformed of Ms Ross’ stand on dueling. Ms Ross proposes to address three issues in her brief: A. Whether the phrase “called not be called into question” [ I believe she means "shall not be called into question"] means...

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) recently wrote a book, "Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare", which is an excellent and compelling read. Besides providing a gripping argument as to why Justice Roberts was wrong on the ObamaCare ruling, Lee also gives an excellent history and background on the Court and the health care decision itself. American Thinker had the privilege of interviewing the Senator about his book and ObamaCare. His two main arguments in the book point out how ObamaCare has made federalism extravagant and that there appears to no longer be a separation of power among branches. Senator Lee...

A New Hampshire mother has been banned from praying at her kids' high school. Lizarda Urena has two children enrolled at Concord High School in Concord, N.H. She started praying on school grounds in 2011 after two bullets were found in a restroom at the school. Urena said she prayed aloud as students entered the school every morning. She was recently told by school officials that the prayers were not welcome after someone filed a complaint with the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "They told me, no, no more," the mother of two said, with tears in her eyes. "I stand...

On August 8, 1974, Richard M. Nixon, fearing certain conviction by the United States Senate in an impeachment trial, resigned the office of the Presidency, the only person ever to do so. There were good reasons to impeach him. He had committed the economic sin of signing and managing a leviathanate Democrat hodgepodge of wage and price controls. He had negotiated and signed an Anti-Ballistic Missile reduction treaty that basically advertised that we could not now, and never would, defend ourselves against ICBMs. He oversaw the creation of nanny-state agencies such as the EPA and OSHA. He created the well-intentioned...

Newly uncovered video shows Lois Lerner discussing the political pressure that swirled around the IRS in 2010. Lerner says "everyone" was "screaming at" the IRS to stop the flood of money pouring into the 2010 elections through 501(c)(4) groups as a result of Citizens United. Lerner spoke to a small group at Duke´s Sanford School of Public Policy on October 19, 2010, just two weeks before the wave election that brought the Tea Party and Republicans significant gains in Congress. During her appearance Lerner was asked about the flow of money from corporations to 501(c)(4) groups.

Vid at link

It's been coming for a long time, but during the Obama Administration it may have peaked. I doubt that but hope it will soon.Although President Obama has done much to promote national suffocation by bureaucracy, an article at National Review Online contends, and I agree, that "our" compliant Congress has been a big help. It is far easier for the Congress to leave important decision making up to "non-partisan" administrative wonks. It also gives "our" CongressCritters ample time and energy to do what many seem to consider their real jobs, raising campaign funds and getting reelected again and again. ObamaCare was -- and...

“Judicial Supremacy is the gospel of modern American constitutional law.” (1) It is the dishonest method whereby the nation’s highest court may create–or recreate–the supreme law of the land with each successive decision. Two hundred and twenty three years ago, the Constitution was ratified after the adoption of the Bill of Rights. It was from the beginning a document written not for the judiciary or the legal elite, but by and for the American people. Look at the Preamble: “We the People of the United States” it begins. The preamble of a legal document in 1787 identified the parties involved...

I have long thought that we needed an radio show to address politics from a constitutional angle, one that educates the people on the benefits of our design of limited government and set a foundation for arguing with liberals. Hearing no such shows, I started my own. My second radio show airs tomorrow, Tuesday (August 6, 2013). We will be discussing the constitutional duties of the Executive, his fulfillment of those duties (not!), the cult following that he surfs, the lack of knowledge of his followers, and how to argue these points with the liberal. This is on latalkradio.com The...

Abuse of law enforcement officers and even officers not intended forlaw enforcement by the current administration is reachingunprecedented levels. Despite campaign promises of greatertransparency, clear violations of accepted practices and even lawbreaking are stonewalled or spun away by the current Democratic administration. While the legal and constitutional controversies seem to be popping up with an ever increasing frequency, scandals are nothing new to this administration.

The annual meeting of the National Governors Conference is underway in Milwaukee, WI. Scheduled meeting topics include employment for people with disabilities, health care changes, the National Guard, water infrastructure needs, comprehensive federal tax reform, education, homeland security, prison reform, cyber-security. Governors will also meet in private, off-the-record settings, where I presume the substantive, real discussions will take place. As a sort of sister organization, the National Conference of State Legislatures will meet next week. Navigating the Affordable Care Act, helping military veterans find jobs, improving the election process and regulating drones are among the wide variety of topics state...

Picture in your mind’s eye a day when GOP senators ignore the only slightly veiled public threats of Obama, and the rants of a corrupt media. Imagine a Democrat senate judiciary committee chairman who privately, quietly lets the president know that any nominee with the slightest history of opposition to the 10th Amendment will be rejected for a seat on the federal bench. These are all possible. Among the senate’s unique duties is that of consenting or not to presidential secretarial, judicial and ambassadorial nominees. As opposed to what the left-media and Dingy Harry would have us believe, the senate...

It is abundantly clear that the president, Congress and out uber-secular courts have twisted the Constitution into a pretzel. They also have completely disconnected the Constitution from the document upon which it (and ALL of our laws) were built. So, I propose this Constitutional amendment. I call it the Religious Liberty Restoration Amendment. Religious liberty being essential to the functioning of a free, Christian nation, the rights of Christians to act upon their Christian values and to proclaim the Word of God shall not be infringed. Congress shall make no law contradicting the Law of God as expressed in the...

CNSNews.com) - Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2012 opinion declaring the Obamacare law constitutional was self-contradictory, intellectually indefensible and just plain wrong. Thus argues Sen. Mike Lee (R.-Utah) in a new e-book, Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare: A Conservative Critique of the Supreme Court’s Obamacare Ruling. Lee appeared on Online With Terry Jeffrey to discuss the book, what he sees as the potential long-term ramifications of Roberts’ decision, and what he believes Congress should do to counter it. Terry Jeffrey: Sen. Mike Lee of Utah was elected to the Senate in 2010. He graduated from Brigham Young University and...

Leonard Embody, a gun activist whose open carrying and self-representation in the past have produced legal responses as well as no small amount of criticism from some “pro-gun” advocates, was arrested yesterday in Nashville and charged with possession of a prohibited weapon, WKRN News 2 reported this morning. (snip UPDATE Per Leonard Embody, via email: The Form 3 paperwork for the silencer was in the sealed and locked rifle case. Tenn. law only requires the possessor "retain" the paperwork, not present it to the law enforcement officer upon demand. The NFA documents are federal tax forms. ------------The latest GUNS Magazine...

Two weeks ago, the House Appropriations Committee stripped the scandal ridden Internal Revenue Service of nearly one quarter of its 2014 budget as punishment for its targeting of political groups and its costly boondoggles. Shockingly, Senate Democrats voted to increase the IRS’ budget.Last week, numerous Republicans in both chambers of Congress threatened to cut off all funding for the federal government as of Oct. 1, in response to President Obama’s unconstitutional stance that he can pick and choose which parts of ObamaCare he will implement.On July 3, the Obama administration disclosed that it would not implement ObamaCare’s employer mandate on...

Mark Levin, who hosts one of America's top radio talk shows and is considered by supporters to be the people's pundit on the Constitution, is rallying his 8.5 million-strong audience to demand an historic convention of state governments to halt the "oppressive power" of the federal government. The author of two New York Times bestsellers on the threats to the Constitution, Levin hopes his latest, "The Liberty Amendments," out mid-August, will spark the state lawmakers to tap a rarely used Constitutional provision to institute measures that would brake President Obama's use of executive orders, bar thousand-page laws and collar inventive...

To those who have qualms, here an important question: What is unconstitutional:A president and government that increasingly violate the Constitution, with total impunity? Or,Those who defend that Constitution from being viciously violated, with absolute impunity, especially when all indicates the enemy might at one point declare it obsolete? A peaceful march of millions of Americans towards Washington D.C., will set the tone and send the message also to the world, that the American people will no longer put up with attacks against the Constitution and their Rights. If the trend continues unstopped, it is easy to see that 2016 instead...

After a contentious fight over some of President Obama’s nominees, the Senate confirmed five members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).On Tuesday, the Senate voted to clear all five nominees — Harry Johnson III, Philip Miscimarra, Nancy Schiffer, Kent Hirozawa and Mark Pearce.Republicans agreed to hold up-or-down votes on the NLRB nominees as part of a deal to avoid Senate rule changes limiting the minority's right to filibuster executive branch nominations. Two of the NLRB nominees confirmed were GOP picks — Johnson and Miscimarra — and Schiffer, Hirozawa and Pearce were Obama's nominees. As part of the deal, Obama...

We all know that Barack Obama was a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago. He spent more than a decade lecturing on what is possibly the greatest document ever written by men. Later, when elected to the Senate and then the White House he swore to defend that same Constitution. Despite all of that, one has to wonder, does Barack Obama not actually understand the document he has spent a quarter century studying, teaching and “defending” or is he some kind of self directed progressive Manchurian Candidate? Whichever is the case, one thing is unassailable, Barack Obama is...

What’s more powerful, the right to complain about government, or the right to reform it? Clearly, one right is more powerful, and indeed it’s that one which makes an American citizen who and what they are – a member of a society with the power to alter or abolish what it dislikes about government. You’ll find very few Americans today who want to abolish the government we have, the one with three branches – legislative, executive, and judicial. What the vast majority want is to keep what we have, but address concerns regarding how it currently operates. Polls show as...

Obama Suggests Only Lawyers Understand the Constitution July 29, 2013 - 2:28 PM By Elizabeth Harrington (CNSNews.com) --President Obama suggested in an interview with the New York Times that was published on Saturday that you need to be a lawyer to understand the U.S. Constitution. The president made the suggestion when talking about members of Congress who have argued he does not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally suspend enforcement of parts of the Obamacare law. The Times asked Obama if he “consulted” with his lawyer when making the decision to suspend the employer mandate, which would require businesses with...

Chris Christie, Republican Governor of New Jersey, warned of a “strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now,” and described the political philosophy,  which trends heavily toward a belief in fundamental human rights and fiscal responsibility, as a “very dangerous thought.” Chris Christie is no stranger to alienating segments of his Republican base. In October of 2012, just a month before the presidential election between Barack Hussein Obama, and Mitt Romney, Christie praised Obama’s reaction in the wake of Hurricane Sandy despite extreme delays...

Judge Jeanine Pirro - Opening Statement - Destroys Obama Admin. On 'Phony Scandals' - Exposes The Lies

If Nixon had tried something like this, he would have rightly been branded a “rogue president.” Jackie Calmes, a first-class political reporter working for the New York Times, actually had the gall to ask the president if he had consulted White House lawyers on the constitutionality of unilaterally delaying the employer mandate in Obamacare. Obama’s answer would have been worthy of King George, or perhaps a meglomaniacal dictator — not a servant of the people in a great republic.

Adly Mansour, Egypt’s Interim President, has chosen to begin Egypt’s conversion to democracy by reinstating and modifying ousted President Morsi’s controversial 2012 Islamic Shariah constitution. Finalized just five months ago and widely rejected by Egyptians (more than 70 percent), but somehow “approved” through a referendum “vote”, this dream-come-true for Islamists was the leading cause of Morsi’s overthrow. An historic verdict by Egypt’s judiciary dismissed the constitutional assembly working on the 2012 constitution draft because the assembly was dominated by Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi mainly interested in a religious agenda. This time around, there is no debate that Egypt must have...

A young man was exercising his Second Amendment and Wisconsin Constitutional rights in Wisconsin when he was stopped by police, questioned and arrested for Obstruction of Justice and Disorderly Conduct.  Police allege that initial reports of Mr. Hoffman placed him within 1,000 feet of a school.  It is not clear if Mr. Hoffman was within a 1,000 feet of a school when he was accosted. At opencarry.org, MKEgal has written some cogent comments: 3) Since the WI Supreme Court has ruled that it is NOT obstruction to refuse to give your name, or to remain silent, that charge is bogus...

Think it’s hot in Texas these days? Just wait a few weeks, until the San Antonio City Council ends its summer hiatus and resumes work on a proposed change to its nondiscrimination ordinances that apparently will discriminate against all who take the Bible at its word and follow it.

A government designed to secure our unalienable rights has become something of a black-hole that devours our liberties. In the sum total of our three national branches, fewer than 1,500* men and women push around over 300 million citizens without restraint or fear for their personal safety. What is to be done? If we weigh the potential benefit, meaning the restoration of our republic, against the remote disadvantages of an amendment convention, there is little reason to avoid one. There’s been some hubbub at FR recently over both the necessity and danger of the states calling an Article V Convention....

DETROIT (AP) -- A college student suspended for writing an essay called "Hot for Teacher" has no First Amendment right to express his sexual attraction to his instructor, a judge said Tuesday. Joseph Corlett's lawsuit was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan, who ruled in favor of Oakland University in suburban Detroit. When Corlett referred to his teacher as "'stacked' and graphically compared her to a sitcom character he fetishized in a writing assignment, he brought a pig into the parlor," Duggan said.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said it would be "foolish" to write of Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) presidential chances, despite the hit absorbed by the Florida lawmaker from conservatives upset with his championing of a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Rubio and McCain served as two of the primary GOP negotiators in the Senate's "Gang of Eight," which crafted the upper chamber's bipartisan reform bill. “I think it’s just foolish,” McCain told The Arizona Republic in an interview Friday. “I’m not endorsing anyone, but I can tell you Marco Rubio is an articulate spokesperson for what conservatives believe in, in principle. And...

The Obama-sponsored bill (SB 2386) enlarged the state's 1961 law by shielding the person who was attacked from being sued in civil court by perpetrators or their estates when a "stand your ground" defense is used in protecting his or her person, dwelling or other property. The bill unanimously passed the Democrat-controlled Illinois Senate on March 25, 2004 with only one comment, and passed the Democrat-controlled Illinois House in May 2004 with only two votes in opposition. Then-Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) signed it into law.

The author has served as chief of staff for the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy and as assistant U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. Currently president of Midland University, he has been exploring a U.S. Senate candidacy. Obamacare is a ticking time bomb for Democrats in the 2014 elections. Nobody knows this better than President Barack Obama, which is why over the Fourth of July holiday weekend he unilaterally decided to delay its controversial employer mandate provision until after the midterm elections. No wonder: The $2,000 per-worker fine is disastrously unpopular. Already,...

The American Founders were assiduous students of history. While the well-educated among them read Roman and Greek history in the original languages, some history was well-known by almost everyone, namely the Bible. New Englanders intensely self-identified with ancient Israel—from the first days of settlement in early 17th century (Israel in the wilderness) to the days of the American Revolution, when New England’s “black regiment” of clergymen incited the Revolution as a religious duty, and described the thirteen American colonies as the modern version of the twelve confederate tribes of Israel.[1] Thus, ancient Hebrew militia law is part of the intellectual...

This ban and restrictions appear blatantly unconstitutional under Heller and McDonald.  I am sure there will be court challenges.  Too bad the commissioners will not be held personally accountable for their lack of responsibility.   From the Daily Herald: The Cook County Board Wednesday voted to ban the sale of guns to people under 21, restrict how people with children at home store their ammunition and add firearms to its list of banned so-called assault weapons. The votes come as suburbs have until midnight Friday to approve their own assault weapons bans, though few have expressed much interest in doing so....

Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are deliberately and unapologetically engaging in economic sabotage; simultaneously targeting numerous sectors of the American economy using orchestrated systemic crisis in an effort to overwhelm the U.S. economy and effect the destruction of capitalism and America from within. By using the Cloward-Piven Strategy to promote economic and social change through the exploitation of misfortune, national crisis and disorganization the Left is advancing government as the tool for reorganization. Their tactics and intended consequences include: • Strategically planned "crises" to systematically takeover private industry. • Flooding government with impossible financial burdens until the debt becomes unsustainable....

As Washington Times senior editor Emily Miller seemed to suggest today, Attorney General Eric Holder has pulled out all the stops to persecute (as opposed to prosecute) exonerated Florida armed citizen George Zimmerman by “stealing” his pistol by putting an investigative hold on all evidence from the Trayvon Martin trial, and holding out the threat – like the proverbial sword of Damocles – that a federal civil rights charge might be forthcoming. Miller has just finished her soon-to-be released book "Emily Gets Her Gun -- But Barack Obama Wants Yours."Perhaps the House Judiciary Committee ought to investigate whether Mr. Holder...

KIN BEYOND SEASeptember-October, 1878 It is now nearly half a century since the works of De Tocqueville and De Beaumont, founded upon personal observation, brought the institutions of the United States effectually within the circle of European thought and interest. They were cooperators, but not upon an equal scale. De Beaumont belongs to the class of ordinary though able writers: De Tocqueville was the Burke of his age, and his treatise upon America may well be regarded as among the best books hitherto produced for the political student of all times and countries. But higher and deeper than the concern...

This Fourth of July, I opened up the New York Times, and whammo! I found an extremely misleading ad sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "Celebrate Our Godless Constitution," it read. The ad featured pictures of six founding fathers, and cherry-picked quotes that made it appear that these men were die-hard atheists-or at least, did not approve of Christianity influencing our nascent nation's government. Now, it's quite true our Constitution is secular; the founders were well aware of what can happen when kings and countries force a particular religion on its citizens. Think Iran today. But there's a big...

In order to collect data about nuclear attacks, you must also collect vast amounts of data that have nothing to do with nuclear attacks. The Cold War with the Soviet Union had to do with more than just nuclear exchanges, and the information on what the Soviets were doing -- what governments they had penetrated, who was working for them -- was a global issue. But you couldn't judge what was important and what was unimportant until after you read it. Thus the mechanics of assuaging fears about a "nuclear Pearl Harbor" rapidly devolved into a global collection system, whereby...

Bill Of Rights: A Nevada family files a lawsuit after police literally seize their house to use as a command post after entering without a warrant and assaulting family members. Isn't this what helped start the American Revolution? For those who snoozed through civics class, recent news events have provided an education on the U.S. Constitution, the bedrock of American democracy, assaulted by an administration that views it as obstructionist and irrelevant and by courts that view it as a "living document" — which is to say it means whatever they say it means on any given day. The contraceptive...

Where is the Fifth Amendment? George Zimmerman has been found not guilty of any crime involving his shooting of Trayvon Martin. The State presented its case, and in the eyes of a properly empowered jury, it came up short. The process does not involve exoneration, but Zimmerman is now free to rebuild his life. NBC news trumped up racial charges, Pres. Obama weighed in with dog-whistle racial comments, and the Sharptons of the world exploited the case for their own cynical means. The DOJ may have minimally funded protests aimed at pressuring the State to file charges against Zimmerman. Still,...