Free Republic

Republicans on Thursday filed a discharge petition to bring a gun bill to the House floor, putting pressure on conservative Democrats to buck their leadership on the issue. Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) filed the petition to bring to a vote a bill by Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) that would erase many of the District of Columbia’s gun laws. Sounder’s move is a follow-up to the recent Supreme Court ruling rejecting the District’s gun ban. The National Rifle Association plans to use House members’ willingness to sign the discharge petition in their scoring for this year’s election. Conservative Democrats who don't...

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the District of Columbia had violated the Second Amendment by making armed self-defense in the home impractical and banning the most popular weapons used for that purpose. Last week the D.C. Council responded by unanimously approving a law that makes armed self-defense in the home impractical and bans the most popular weapons used for that purpose.

Radical optimism is America’s contribution to the world. The early settlers thought America’s founding would bring God’s kingdom to earth. John Adams thought America would emancipate “the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.” Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush preached their own gospels of world democracy. The great illusion of the 1990s was that we were entering an era of global convergence in which politics and power didn’t matter. What Obama offered in Berlin flowed right out of this mind-set. This was the end of history on acid. Since then, autocracies have arisen, the competition for resources has...

WASHINGTON - U.S. health officials urged consumers on Friday to avoid only raw jalapeno peppers from Mexico, narrowing an earlier warning against eating any fresh jalapenos amid an outbreak of salmonella illness. The Food and Drug Administration now believes jalapeno and serrano peppers grown in the United States are not connected to the outbreak that has sickened more than 1,200 people, Dr. David Acheson, FDA associate commissioner for foods, told Reuters in an interview. Investigators seeking the source of the outbreak have been probing clusters of illnesses in various locations.

Seven years after Chandra Levy's remains were found in a Washington, D.C., park, a year-long investigation by the Washington Post offers evidence the congressional intern was murdered by an illegal alien. As suspicion mounted that Levy's boss, Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., might be involved in her disappearance, the case became front-page news in the summer of 2001. But with the Sept. 11 attacks, law enforcement personnel in the capital quickly turned their attention to the the nation's security, and Levy's case became a distant memory for the public. But the Post says that as authorities searched for Levy in Rock...

The National Rifle Association is putting the election-year squeeze on conservative Democrats, demanding that they buck their leadership to support a bill to erase more of the District of Columbia’s gun laws. Democratic gun rights supporters will risk losing their A-plus rating if they don’t sign a discharge petition to be filed Wednesday bringing the gun-rights bill directly to the floor. It will be the first time in more than 20 years that the NRA has “scored” a discharge petition in determining the grades it gives lawmakers before the November election, said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. “We’re making this a priority....

On August 1, 2008, college students from throughout the United States will attend the first Students for Concealed Carry on Campus National Conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., funded by the Second Amendment Foundation. This noteworthy, one-day event will feature many distinguished speakers and guests. Among them will be Dr. John R. Lott, world reputed scholar and author of More Guns Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, and many more. SCCC and SAF will be providing students with one night free at The District Hotel and students traveling over 750 miles are eligible to receive...

There is some irony in the fact that Democrats, after years of deriding Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a hopeless bungler and conniving Shiite sectarian, are now treating as sacrosanct his suggestion that Iraq will be ready to assume responsibility for its own security by 2010. Naturally this is because his position seems to support that of Barack Obama. A little skepticism is in order here. The prime minister has political motives for what he's saying -- whatever that is. An anonymous Iraqi official told the state-owned Al-Sabah newspaper, "Maliki thinks that Obama is most likely to win in...

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning.

Samantha Baskin gets paid to be patient. One of thousands of students across the District who had pay problems in the summer youth jobs program last week, Samantha, 14, said that she doesn't actually do anything at the Washington East of the River Academy. "We don't do nothing," she said. The director "holds us in a room for hours." Although she was owed several hundred dollars, Samantha was paid a nickel Friday and was finally paid in full yesterday. (snip) At least 200 of the 800 students in the academy indicated by a show of hands that they had not...

An idiot caller to "The Chris Plante Radio Show" lost his mind on-air today. This is H-Y-S-T-E-R-I-C-A-L! Click above for direct link, or here: http://www.630wmal.com/Article.asp?id=802992

The government bureaucrats of the DC City Council just can't get over the fact that the Supreme Court has upheld your individual right to keep and bear arms. Poor poor pitiful beltway politicians! So rather than repealing their ban on handguns, the council created a new exception -- the handgun ban does not apply to people who want to register a pistol for use in self-defense in the home. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/PaulWeyrich/2008/07/21/a_persistent_threat_to_second_amendment_rights This means that anyone purchasing a handgun to protect a business or for sport shooting is still in violation of the law. And to make matters worse, another thing the...

United States Capitol Police early Tuesday resolved a situation in the Hart Senate Office Building atrium area, where a man had been threatening for hours to plunge himself from the seventh floor. The unidentified man turned himself over to Capitol Police at approximately 2:00 am, according to police sources familiar with the event. For more than eight hours, the man had stood about 50 feet above the ground on the outside ledge of the glass wall overlooking the building’s atrium as negotiators continued to speak with him through a translator in Mandarin Chinese, according to Capitol Police. He had climbed...

There’s been some confusion about how the Supreme Court’s decision is to be implemented, and what it means for DC’s registration system, going forward. We’d like to clear the air. The handgun that Mr. Heller tried to register in 2002, the registration of which was ordered by the courts, is a nine-shot revolver. It is fully registerable under D.C. law as it stands today, and Mr. Heller will have it registered to him. We are not expecting the city to resist the registration of this firearm. Once the gun is registered to Mr. Heller, he can use it to defend...

It was supposed to be a nice bonus for people who paid $1,500 to attend a fundraiser for U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) -- a ticket to the Bruce Springsteen concert Sunday at Giants Stadium. But the Lautenberg campaign canceled its order for 40 tickets yesterday after it came under review by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which is promoting the concert, and drew fire from Republicans.

(Editor's Note: Follow WTOP's Mark Segraves as he attempts to register for a gun license and buy a firearm. Scroll down to read the rest of his blog.) Despite the fact that they're now legal to own, getting a handgun in the District is going to be impossible -- at least for a while. But this reporter is going to try. At 7 a.m. Thursday, the Metropolitan Police Department will open its doors at Headquarters and begin taking applications for permits. If you already own an illegal handgun, you're in luck. Because of the 90 day amnesty program, you can...

An unidentified Chinese man has been threatening to jump from the seventh floor of the Senate Hart Office Building's inner atrium since around 5:45 p.m., according to U.S. Capitol Police. Police negotiators are conversing with the man through a Chinese translator and are attempting to coax him off of the shallow ledge on the outside of the glass wall overlooking the office building’s atrium. “We don’t know very much right now,” said Senate Sergeant at Arms Terrance Gainer. “We don’t know what his issue is or what office he visited. The police are trying to calm the situation and see...

WASHINGTON -- A 13-year-old boy was killed, seven people shot and a person stabbed within minutes of each other in a spate of violence in the Trinidad section of NE shortly after midnight Saturday. Police said between midnight and four in the morning a person was also stabbed and another shot citywide. DC Police Inspector Rodney Parks says the shootings appear to have taken place in connection with three attempted robberies. Police are looking for a gold or metallic colored car, possibly a Dodge Intrepid, spotted at each crime scene. The police have no suspects in custody at this time....

The Washington D.C. City Council has created so many hoops for handgun owners to jump through before they can exercise their Second Amendment rights, they may require legal counsel just to identify what the hoops are.  This sorry state of affairs is much to the satisfaction of The Washington Post, which called for just such an obstructionist policy in an editorial.  At least one of those hoops is illegal, according to the Supreme Court, but a Post news story spun that fact as the opinion of “opponents of the handgun ban.”  Is editorial policy coloring the news?The Washington Post is...

WASHINGTON -- Dick Heller, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that overturned Washington's strict 32-year-old handgun ban, announced his candidacy on Thursday for the U.S. House of Representatives. Heller, 66, is seeking the seat currently held by Eleanor Holmes Norton. He is gathering signatures to run on the ballot as a libertarian candidate. Heller, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection in the same Capitol Hill neighborhood as the court. "Mr. Heller's challenge to Ms. Norton is welcomed in the spirit of debate, and as...

It shouldn't have come as a surprise that the District of Columbia can and will continue to all but completely disarm its law-abiding citizens after the Supreme Court ruled otherwise. After all, this is the same D.C. that was home to the most restrictive firearms laws in the country - until the Court struck them down. The same D.C. that banned the law-abiding citizens from possessing any handgun. The same D.C. that forced its law-abiding citizens to keep the few firearms they could possess both unloaded and disassembled or locked at all times. And the same D.C. that has disarmed...

...Gradually, he realized he wanted to teach children. After three years introducing middle-schoolers at Sandy Spring Friends School to social studies, he decided on his life's work: starting a school like none the Washington area has ever seen... ..."The model is inspired by the success of home-schoolers," he said. Students will set their class schedules, enabling them to learn at their pace and in their styles. Teachers will act as advisers, not taskmasters... ...Much of Shusterman's plan is inspired by John Dewey, a 20th-century educational philosopher whose devotees have called for teachers to be "guides on the side, not sages...

[...] But we're burying the real news here. It seems that Heller may not have brought his gun with him to register, but he was armed with a load of candidate petitions, Duggan said. Seems that Heller is planning to run for the House seat currently held by Eleanor Holmes Norton. Heller is seeking signatures to be on the ballot as a libertarian candidate. A man identifiying himself as J. Bradley Jansen, who said he was Heller's campaign manager, said Heller must get 3,000 signatures and has until the end of August to collect them.

Mayor Adrian Fenty and his feisty attorney general, Peter Nickles, stood on the steps of the Wilson Building this week ostensibly to announce how the District will comply with the Supreme Court's rejection of Washington's ban on handguns. But really, they were delivering very much the opposite message: With only the narrowest of exceptions, we're sticking with our gun ban. Don't like it? Sue us.

LoRo, Greg, Matthew, TomTheRedHunter Lurker Bill, PleaDeal, Chris, and VAFlagWaver LoRo, a Freeper, has been very busy working as an intern for the Heritage Foundation. She was able to join us on a fairly regular basis last summer. A few weeks ago she did a little recon and saw that we were still out here keeping Code Pink pushed down the street away from the gate. So she sent out an email to all her associates and friends at Heritage and asked if anyone wanted to join her at Walter Reed on the 11th. We were fortunate that she...

It's been barely three weeks since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Second Amendment, tossing the District of Columbia's strict ban on handgun ownership as an unconstitutional infringement on the individual right to bear arms. As you'd expect, D.C. officials have been busy little bureaucrats since then, trying to figure out a way to get around the high court's decision. On Monday, the D.C. council announced emergency legislation designed to update the gun ban. As expected, it's a joke. Instead of simply acknowledging that individuals have a right to own handguns in the district, the legislation would still require that...

The Supreme Court may have confirmed that Americans have the right to own guns for protection, but the gun debate is hardly over. The District of Columbia, whose handgun ban was struck down by the Supreme Court, is still planning on banning most handguns. And the court decision has spurred the media into overdrive to paint guns as dangerous to their owners. No one who has taken even a quick glance at the crime data can seriously argue that the D.C. gun ban lowered murder or violent crime rates. The concerns being raised are not the threat from criminals, but...

"It appears that the city does not yet understand the decision and order of the Supreme Court," said Heller, a 66-year-old a security guard. "An applicant must fill out registration forms, submit fingerprints and pass a written firearm-proficiency test, while police ballistics experts test-fire the revolver. The revolver will then be returned to the owner, but he or she cannot legally use the weapon, even for self-defense, until notified that the registration has been approved. "

Heller attempted to register a semi-auto. Turned down. Source not able to be posted here (Gannett)

WASHINGTON -- The plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that overturned Washington's strict 32-year-old handgun ban was among the first people to arrive at police headquarters to try to register his firearm. Dick Heller showed up early Thursday, the first day that the city began registering residents for handguns, but he did not get to complete the registration process. That's because he did not bring the firearm that he wanted to register with him, News4's Megan McGrath reported. Heller has been keeping his gun in Maryland and does not believe the amnesty program for people who have kept guns in...

Crack House to Coffeehouse by: Audra Taylor, July 16, 2008 Luxurious spas, bed and breakfasts and coffeehouses are now sprouting up in the once poverty stricken, high crime neighborhoods of Harlem, New York. Formerly dilapidated buildings have been stripped down and renovated, transforming these neighborhoods into trendy, attractive places to live. Derek S. Hyra, a community development expert in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, addresses this modern-day transition of predominantly black urban communities in his research, focusing upon two U.S. neighborhoods in New York and Chicago—Harlem and Bronzeville, respectively. Troubled neighborhoods like Harlem, as Hyra explained during a panel...

Energy Policy: Imagine an energy plan that does it all — from allowing more oil drilling to spending billions on alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear. Well, guess what? Been there, done that.'Energy has enormous implications for our economy, our environment and our national security," President Bush said in proposing the plan. "We cannot let another year go by without addressing these issues together in a comprehensive and balanced package." That was in June 2001 — more than seven years ago. His words came just after he first proposed a comprehensive energy bill that included 105 separate...

District Gun Registration Starts Tomorrow D.C. police will start the gun registration process at 7 a.m. tomorrow, when it opens an office at police headquarters at 300 Indiana Ave. NW. It is the start of the 180-day amnesty period in which residents may register handguns they have had illegally, or guns from other states. An officer from the gun unit will meet the applicant at the door and take temporary possession of the gun to ensure safety at headquarters. Officers will tag the gun and run ballistics tests before returning it to the owner. Paperwork indicating that registration is in...

Oil Woes Simplified by: Sandy Linczer, July 16, 2008 On July 15, Brian Kennedy and Dr. Bill Koetzle from the Institute for Energy Research (IER) spoke at the Heritage Foundation on America’s energy crisis. They boiled down complicated oil issues into simple fundamental issues of economics that the government seems to be ignoring. The IER opened a D.C branch a few weeks ago and is a “free market organization that believes that government needs to get out of the way when it comes to energy,” Kennedy said. A large problem with today’s energy policy is the misdirection of blame, he...

Pop Quiz by: Bethany Stotts, July 15, 2008 How much do American high-schoolers know about their literary heritage? A non-profit group called Common Core surveyed 12,000 17-year-olds this year in order to answer just that question. Barely over half (52%) of the surveyed teenagers knew that 1984 was about “a dictatorship in which every citizen was watched in order to stamp out all individuality,” reports Frederick Hess, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Hess authored the Common Core study. Far more prevalent was knowledge of civil-rights-related literature such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Uncle Tom’s Cabin,...

The D.C. Council on Tuesday night approved emergency legislation that will repeal the District's 32-year-old ban on handguns while setting stiff regulations for registering and storing guns inside homes. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill as early as Wednesday, which would allow residents to begin registering guns Thursday. The bill passed unanimously in the 13-member council with minimal discussion, though several council members acknowledged that more work should be done on the legislation, which as an emergency bill will only be in effect for 90 days. "There will be more work to be done,"...

District of Columbia v. Heller was historic, the first Supreme Court decision to clearly hold that the Second Amendment right to arms was an individual one not linked to militia service. But it was historic for another reason: the sheer number of mistakes made in the dissenters' opinions. Given that all four dissenters co-signed the Stevens and Breyer dissenting opinions, this means that the mistakes must have escaped, not only four members of the highest court in the land, but their sixteen research clerks! Case in point: Justice Stevens' dissent claims that he holds true to the Court's earlier, 1939,...

It is equally amusing to think of police officers arriving at the home of some resident who happens to shoot an intruder pressing the homeowner as to how they got the drop on the thief when they had to take the gun out of its case and remove the trigger lock with the criminal being unaware. If the resident explains that the gun was loaded and ready to fire, are they going to be prosecuted for being prepared?

Tony Snow and I traveled parallel paths through Washington. We are a year apart in age –Tony is a year younger at 53 –and both loved politics and debate. Our love of debate may have been due to the fact that we both studied philosophy in college (Tony went to Davidson, I went to Haverford). And before joining FOX News we both spent time as editorial writers. ..... We got together when he came to Washington to be the editorial page editor of The Washington Times. I was working as a White House correspondent, editorial writer and columnist for The...

President Bush held a Press Briefing this morning in the James S. Brady Briefing Room Transcript here Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

The District, rebuffed by the Supreme Court last month in a landmark decision on its 32-year-old gun ban, could soon be headed back to court over a new gun law that could take effect as early as Wednesday. The D.C. Council will vote Tuesday on emergency legislation that will require handgun owners to keep their weapons disassembled or under lock and key in what gun rights advocates see as direct defiance of the Supreme Court ruling. That ruling said the District could not bar residents from "rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense."...

The fallacy of gun registration By Charles Bloomer web posted July 14, 2008 One of the gun grabbers' favorite "common sense" gun control measures is gun registration. As with other gun control schemes, the anti-gun crowd never considers whether or not the particular "common sense" law actually does anything constructive. In actuality, the "common sense" gun laws are grossly deficient in common sense. Last week on WTOP radio's "Ask the Chief" program, Washington, DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier inadvertently admitted that the District's gun registration program was a failure. According to the Chief, "Honestly, there are thousands of handguns that...

WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia Council planned to vote Tuesday on emergency legislation to allow handguns, but only if they are used for self-defense in the home and carry fewer than 12 rounds of ammunition. (snip) The nation's capital would still require all legal firearms — including handguns, rifles and shotguns — to be kept in the home unloaded and disassembled, or equipped with trigger locks.

Wed: Fox News correspondent Molly Henneberg, 34, to Marine Capt. Chris Nagel, 30, in her hometown of Falls Church on Saturday. Met at a Christmas party just seven months ago (turned out they attend the same church and their dads have been friends for decades); got engaged three months later. She's covering the 2008 campaign; he's a military lawyer. First marriage for both.

In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, former Assemblyman Robert A. Straniere was endorsed for Congress last night by the Staten Island Republican Party. That backing comes just four years after Mr. Straniere, then a 24-year incumbent, was defeated in a tense Republican primary and shunned by many of the island’s officials. Mr. Straniere is running for the seat in Congress now held by Representative Vito J. Fossella, a Republican who announced in May that he will not run for re-election this year. “Bob Straniere is now the candidate of the Richmond County Republican Committee,” said John S. Friscia, the chairman...

The funeral service for former White House spokesman Tony Snow will be open to the public. The service will be held Thursday morning at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the campus of Catholic University in Washington, D.C.The White House announced earlier today that President and Mrs. Bush would attend the service.Details as announced by the Shrine:Mass of Christian Burial for Tony Snow Thursday, 17 July 2008 10:00 am - Funeral Mass - Great Upper Church Open to the Public Doors open at 8:00 a.m. (Will Need to Pass through Security Checkpoint Magnetometers) The Most...

Former CIA agent: "We do not face a global jihadist 'movement'" Glenn L. Carle "was a member of the CIA's Clandestine Service for 23 years and retired in March 2007 as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats." In "Overstating Our Fears" in the Washington Post, July 13, he says this: We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda. In a circulating e-mail, LTC Joseph Myers, who has served...

District residents will be able to keep a handgun in the home for self-defense but that right would be limited to the home and not outside it, city leaders said today, announcing new gun regulations in response to the Supreme Court's recent ruling striking down the city's handgun ban. Gun owners will have to pass vision and written tests, provide a photo with their application to register a gun, and submit their weapon for ballistics testing. Guns will also still require trigger locks. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and interim Attorney General Peter J. Nickles announced the regulations alongside D.C....

-snip- The Chandra Levy case is the most famous unsolved murder in modern Washington, a mystery involving sex, power and secrets. At its center is a vivacious young intern who had crossed paths with a handsome, married congressman. The story triggered months of feverish worldwide media attention in 2001, before the Sept. 11 attacks shoved it aside and the investigation stalled. The Washington Post spent a year reconstructing the disappearance of Chandra Levy and the investigation into her death. Reporters interviewed police officials, investigators and suspects, many for the first time, and obtained details about dozens of previously unknown private...

Local toll road activist Terri Hall, the Spring Branch home schooling mom who's campaign against toll roads made her WOAI's San Antonian of the Year for 2007,. is taking her populist campaign nationwide. Hall is among the speakers for Saturday's 'Freedom March,' in Washington DC, organized by supporters of former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and designed to keep alive his message of smaller government and vigilance against encroaching government power. "They wanted someone to speak about the Trans Texas Corridor, and what's happening here, and the eminent domain abuses, and how all these toll roads are tied to corporate...