Free Republic

Newt Gingrich spent more than 30 years building relationships in Washington, but relatively few of his old colleagues in town have ponied up for him. His campaign reported pulling in just $278,000 from the Washington metro area last year — a drop in the bucket compared with the $2.5 million raised in Washington by his chief rival, Mitt Romney, who has spent little time there. Those numbers, compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, are for checks of more than $200. Gingrich’s weak showing in Washington is not surprising to many of the former Hill staff, lobbyists and members of...

Attorney General hailed by conservative crowd Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli was awarded the Defender of the Constitution award Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington D.C. Presenting the award, David Keene, President of the National Rifle Associate said Cuccinelli is a champion of conservative values and his view that he is “healthily suspicious of government in all circumstances” embodies the movement to cheers from the large conservative crowd. “The first duty I am obliged to pursue is the defense of the U.S. and Virginia Constitution,” Cuccinelli said. He said many politicians just said the oath so...

The Obama administration's new strategic guidance for the Defense Department guarantees more risk on the Korean peninsula. The Obama administration’s newly released strategic guidance for the Defense Department emphasizes the importance of defending U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific. It’s ironic that elements of the strategy suggest the United States will welcome more risk on the Korean peninsula.With the administration’s focus on dealing with the growing challenge from China, the ongoing necessity of countering militants and preserving stability in the Middle East, and the requirement to cut defense spending, the new strategy offers up changes to U.S. forces that threaten to...

I finally got my gun in Washington, D.C. I brought it home today from the District’s firearms’ registry office. After months of aggravation, hundreds of dollars in fees, countless hours jumping over hurdles, I am now a gun owner and finally exercising my second amendment right to keep arms (bearing arms is still illegal in the nation’s capital). When I first started the “Emily Gets Her Gun” series, I thought I would be waiting in long lines and filling out lots of paperwork. I never could have imagined that the D.C. gun laws made it so unearthly difficult to get...

No matter how you feel about gas drilling, you have to feel it was wrong to ban Pennsylvania filmmaker Josh Fox from a congressional hearing on the controversial natural gas extraction method of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." Fox, who made the Oscar-nominated documentary "Gasland" — which drilling supporters liken to anti-fracking propaganda — was placed in handcuffs and removed from the hearing before it even began. The focus of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee subcommittee session was the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that fracking was probably responsible for the contamination of ground water in Pavillion, Wyo. The reason...

The hypocrisy of opponents of school choice schemes has never been a big secret. But rarely has that quality been so brazenly exhibited as by Vincent Giordano, the head of the New Jersey Education Association, in a recent interview on New Jersey public television. When asked why he opposes giving poor parents the same opportunity to take their kids out of failing public schools and into successful private or religious institutions the wealthy have, the teachers union boss, who makes more than half a million in salary and other compensation, replied: "Life's not always fair." Giordano, who has been a major antagonist of New...

A former Florida congressman who has been a top campaign bundler for President Obama said Wednesday he is taking immediate steps to de-register as a lobbyist for a Florida-based airline so he can continue to raise funds for the president. Ron Klein, who has raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for the president, was registered as a lobbyist last month for Spirit Airlines, a low-cost airline that has been fighting new Obama administration airline regulations. But the Obama campaign has a rule against accepting campaign contributions from federally registered lobbyists. After the Washington Free Beacon website reported on his lobbyist role...

Federal employees can take unscheduled leave or telework from home on Wednesday in anticipation of what many forecasts believe could be a non-event. The Office of Personnel Management made the announcement by email just after 10 a.m. Wednesday, at the same time as the National Weather Service's winter weather advisory began to take affect for many area counties. Flakes have fallen and waned in the Gaithersburg and Frederick areas, and it's snowing everywhere to the west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, reports ABC7 Meteorologist Alex Liggitt. But warmer conditions around D.C. have limited snowfall there. "We're really looking at a...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is returning more than $200,000 in donations from the family of a fugitive casino magnate linked to violence and corruption in Mexico who has been seeking a pardon, Obama’s campaign confirmed on Tuesday. “More than 1.3 million Americans have donated to the campaign and we constantly review those contributions for any issues,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an email after a New York Times report on the decision appeared late on Monday. “On the basis of the questions that have been raised, we will return the contributions from these individuals and...

HEADS UP CPAC 2012 - Occupiers and Unions to Protest There Keep your powder dry at CPAC this week and be ready. From past experience, when the anarchists know there will be push back, they change their plans. In Oakland this past week the cowardly occupiers “occupied” places where they knew the police were not going to be around. Of course the police finally caught up to them and arrested 400. If anyone has a good contact with the Metro police, you might give them a heads up. And let the Marriott and Omni hotels know that they may have...

WASHINGTON — On his second yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis traveled 9,000 miles, patrolled with American troops in eight provinces and returned in October of last year with a fervent conviction that the war was going disastrously and that senior military leaders had not leveled with the American public. Colonel Davis on patrol in Khost Province last August. Since enlisting in the Army in 1985, he said, he had repeatedly seen top commanders falsely dress up a dismal situation. But this time, he would not let it rest. So he consulted with his pastor at McLean...

The “Occupy DC” protest group is planning to disrupt the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference using a range of potentially illegal tactics that could even include violence against participants, Scribe has learned. The planned disruptions at CPAC come only days after U.S. Park Police raided Occupiers’ tent cities at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., confiscating a number of tents, and prohibiting Occupiers from camping out there any longer. During a Thursday meeting at McPherson Square, until Saturday the epicenter of the protests, Occupiers brainstormed tactics for shutting down or disrupting the conference, according to a source who...

A depressed Army reservist who made a phone call for help says dozens of police responded by surrounding his home and arresting him, vandalizing and searching his place without a warrant, seizing his dog and killing his tropical fish. Matthew Corrigan, who lives alone with his dog, sued the District of Columbia in D.C. Federal Court. Confronted with a massive police presence after his plea for help, Corrigan says, he denied officers permission to enter his house, but they entered and trashed it anyway, saying, "I don't have time to play this constitutional bulls**t!" Corrigan says the debacle started on...

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 90 District of Columbia workers have been suspended and may be fired after officials determined they received unemployment checks while holding city jobs. The Washington Post reports Monday that another 60 former D.C. workers have cashed unemployment checks they were not entitled to. Lisa Mallory is director of the city's Department of Employment Services. She says the city has paid about $800,000 in unemployment benefits to working city employees since 2009 (http://wapo.st/yEm9Iw ). Mallory says some employees received as much as $20,000. Others received a few hundred dollars. The fraud is not complicated. Mallory says people...

With the partial eviction of Occupiers over the weekend, McPherson Square is no longer full to the point that the local community cannot enjoy it. Instead, it is a mud-bowl that no one can really enjoy. Occupiers managed to undo most of a $400,000 park renovation that was completed last year with stimulus funding... To give some context to Occupy, here's what McPherson looked like when the very first Occupiers arrived:

Six protesters were arrested in a pre-dawn raid on the Occupy D.C. encampment in McPherson Square Saturday, and police began clearing away tents, debris and some dead rodents. U.S. Park Police on horseback and on foot clad in riot gear swept into the park around 6 a.m. Several square blocks downtown were closed during the raid, which was characterized as “further enforcement” of a no-camping crackdown that began Monday.

I gave the police department my application to register my gun in Washington, D.C. one week ago. So I called today to find out whether the application had been approved. It has. This means that I can soon take possession of a gun that, though I technically own it, has been sitting in a locked safe in the offices of the city’s only gun dealer. Yet things are still not as simple as they seem. I must delve further into D.C. convoluted and undocumented laws and rules before I can actually bring my gun home. To get to this point,...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Mississippi remains the most conservative state in the union, and, along with Utah, Wyoming, and Alabama, is one of four states with 50% or more of its population identifying as conservative. At the other end of the ideological spectrum, 40% District of Columbia residents and 30% of Massachusetts residents identify as liberal; all other states have a liberal population of 26% or less.

A reply to Richard Epstein's take on the right to keep and bear arms In McDonald v. Chicago, its landmark 2010 decision striking down that city’s handgun ban, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies against state and local governments via the 14th Amendment, which declares: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” If you ask most libertarians, they will...

Presidential approval ratings matter more than ever now that swing voters are going the way of the dodo bird. Once, in the time before super PACs and independent expenditures, before blogs and social media made even local elections a national sport, great herds of split-ticket voters roamed the plains. They voted easily for a Democrat for one office, a Republican for the next, with little consideration for future political scientists who would puzzle over their motives. But now, ravaged by decades of hyper-partisanship, the split-ticket voter is becoming an endangered species. For generations, voters handed presidential electors to one party...

Attorney General Eric Holder squared off Thursday with Republicans on a House committee who are demanding that the Justice Department turn over documents about its handling of congressional inquiries into a flawed gun-smuggling investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. At the start of a hearing, chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will do what is necessary to force the Justice Department to produce the information. The attorney general said he will consider Issa's demand. But he said, with one exception, the department was inclined to follow longstanding tradition of withholding internal documents about...

[snip]...Jablonski remained true to his word -- neither he nor Obama showed up for the January 26 hearing. I noted last week that Obama was not scheduled to be anywhere near Atlanta on the date of the hearing, although I had wondered if still, perhaps, Georgia might be on his mind. According to reports in the blogosphere, the president's schedule on the morning of the 26th was open, and according to an unnamed source, Obama watched the live feed of the hearings. Perhaps Obama, as well as the several mainstream media news outlets I spotted at the hearing, were merely...

Yesterday, I attended a public hearing of the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary regarding a new piece of gun-related legislation, Bill 19-614, the “Firearms Amendment Act of 2011.” The hearing provided a perfect snapshot of the way gun politics operate in the District, with the usual cast of characters in lead roles on the pro-gun side. Everyone is familiar with the District of Columbia’s tough gun laws, but the “Firearms Amendment Act” would actually address many of the criticisms of pro-gun activists and eliminate some existing regulations. Specifically, Bill 19-614 would: -- Allow D.C. residents to take their guns...

President Obama's reelection team has spun multiple pathways to an electoral vote majority, but a glance at his state-by-state approval ratings throughout 2011 suggests the campaign has been doing a lot of bluffing. First, the good news for Team Obama: His political standing is in respectable shape in traditionally Democratic Midwestern battlegrounds, like Wisconsin, Michigan and the more Republican heartland state of Iowa (46 approval/46 disapproval). Obama's numbers in Virginia are better than in other battleground states - 45 percent approve, 49 percent disapprove.  And his numbers in North Carolina (44/49 approve/disapprove) and Florida (44/48 approve/disapprove) and even Georgia (45/48...

Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, will speak at the February 3, 2012, “First Principles on First Fridays” lecture program through Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship, at 227 Massachusetts Avenue, NE, Washington, D.C. The lecture, “Blasphemy and Free Speech,” will begin at noon, and is open to the public. A book signing and lunch will follow. Contending that efforts to restrict free speech in the name of limiting blasphemy is a dangerous threat around the world, and one that is growing in the West, Paul Marshall...

Owning a gun in the District of Columbia can be dangerous, because the city’s hastily drafted rules are putting the innocent in jeopardy. A gun owner who has cleared the District’s 17 registration hurdles still isn’t home free. To continue exercising the Second Amendment right to keep arms, individuals have to renew registration certificates every three years and show up at the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) every six years to be fingerprinted. The citizen is responsible for the fees in each case. The city council hastily drafted these requirements after the Supreme Court smacked down D.C.’s handgun ban in the...

I testified on Monday before the District of Columbia Council’s Judiciary Committee about my experiences and reporting on the gun registration process in the city. Below you can watch the video of my oral testimony, followed by the extensive grilling I got from the committee’s chairman, Phil Mendelson, Democrat at-Large. If you want to watch the whole six-hour hearing, click here. The text of my statement is below the video. Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my experiences with you. My name is Emily Miller. I’m a District resident, and I want...

<p>January 30, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After receiving letters from “antiabortion readers” complaining about his paper’s coverage of the March for Life, the Washington Post’s ombudsman has penned a column agreeing with many of their criticisms.</p> <p>Ombudsman Patrick Pexton says that the Washington Post gave an “incomplete picture” of the March for Life in both its print story and online photo gallery.</p>

6 face racketeering charges in $4 million D.C. prostitution ring By: Emily Babay | 01/29/12 8:05 PM Examiner Staff Writer | Follow her: @emilybabay Six people are facing rackeetering charges for operating what federal authorities say was a $4 million prostitution ring in the D.C. area, committing money laundering and using violence to run the business. The six have run a prostitution business disguised as an escort service called Classy DC Escorts since June 2009, according to an indictment filed in federal court in Alexandria. The indictment says they recruited prostitutes; screened clients; set up appointments in D.C., Maryland, Virginia,...

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a federal law making it illegal to lie about being a war hero is constitutional and making false statements is not always protected free speech. ... The Colorado case involves Rick Strandlof, who was arrested after claiming he was wounded in Iraq as a Marine and had received military medals. His lawyers have acknowledged the claims were false.

While my new gun was being transferred to the District from Virginia, I returned to D.C.’s Gun Registry Office to turn in my registration application. As you will see in what follows, this should have been simple step, but it took all day. Like everything else in my effort to get a legal handgun in this city has been far more complicated and time-consuming that it needed to be. DOORMy gun dealer in Virginia provided the UPS tracking number of my package so I knew that it was going to be delivered to our one gun dealer, Charles Sykes, sometime...

Hillsdale College will host an online town hall entitled, “Our Choice Today: Bureaucratic Despotism or the Constitution,” on Saturday, January 28, 2012, beginning at 11 a.m. EST. It will be broadcast from the College’s Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., and can be viewed for free at constitutiontownhall.com. The purpose of the town hall, according to Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn, is “to make clear to Americans that they still have a choice how they will be governed—that the powerful federal bureaucracy which stifles freedom is of relatively recent construction, and remains for now capable...

SIERRA VISTA — At noon, Arizona time, the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chefs of Staff, the top uniform officer in America’s armed forces will be holding a press conference to discuss proposals to reduce the military budget. Part of the proposals include the potential of having two Base Realignment and Closure rounds, one starting in 2013 and the other in 2015 Pentagon sources said. The Defense Department has to reduce its budget, as part of the overall reduction of federal spending to lower the nation’s growing deficit, which currently exceeds $15 trillion. There have been...

Crain’s Chicago Business reports that Alvin Boutte, Jr., the adviser who encouraged the state to invest in Democrats’ beloved ShoreBank as it was failing, has agreed to pay a fine, to have his securities license suspended, and to work under “heightened supervision” in the securities industry for the next year. The ShoreBank scandal erupted in 2010 as Chicago Democrats, particularly Rep. Jan Schakowsky, tried to bail out the bank using any means necessary–whether federal, state, or private money. The bank’s closure was delayed several times–evidence, critics charged, of preferential treatment from the Obama administration. Eventually, under pressure from the Tea...

How big?It is hard to over-estimate the importance of the South Carolina Republican primary. It was the second earthquake to hit the East Coast within the last six months — but this one could have far greater aftershocks.The epicenter is the Republican Party. With its future now radically altered, it could have profound implications for the nation.This could rank with California in 1964, North Carolina in 1976 and New Hampshire in 1980. Barry M. Goldwater in the Golden State, Ronald Reagan in the Tar Heel State and Reagan, again, in the Granite State, all ran as insurgents at crucial times...

After days of calls, emails, tweets, comments and posts, I finally bought the exact gun I wanted, the two-tone version of the Sig Sauer P229 9mm. I’m so excited to shoot my new purchase, but in the nation’s capital, it's not that simple. Buying a gun doesn’t mean you get to have the gun. Washington, D.C. has a list of firearms that are eligible to be registered. The make, model and even the color (two-tone) of the gun I wanted was on the list, but I had a bear of a time finding one with a D.C.-legal 10-round magazine. The...

President Obama has released his first 2012 reelection campaign ad, and it’s a doozy, full of sexy numbers that would have you believe that Obama has figured out a way to make clean energy economically viable. The reality, however, is that Obama’s statistics grossly distort the truth, and the National Republic Trust Political Action Committee has debuted its rebuttal. Citing a Brookings Institution study, Obama’s ad implies that he created 2.7 million clean energy jobs, and that the clean energy sector is growing rapidly. Investor’s Business Daily reveals the dishonesty here: those 2.7 million jobs already existed, and the quoted...

First Lady Michelle Obama is blowing the lid off her “personal” hush-hush White House mission to demystify the halls of power for young women. Shielded from the public eye until now is a program she started to solicit the most brilliant female minds in the White House to mentor high school girls. “It’s very personal,” Obama says in a cover story in the February issue of More magazine. “I mean, growing up the way that I did — kid from the South Side (of Chicago), going to public schools — the more my career developed, I realized how much I...

Given the rather decisive nature of the South Carolina Republican primary -- Newt Gingrich won by about 12 points -- we can be rather brief with the takeaways here. 1) There is no good news buried in here for Mitt Romney. None. As of this writing, Mitt Romney is leading in three counties in South Carolina: Charleston, Beaufort (Hilton Head) and Richland (Columbia). He lost fast-growing, coastal Horry County, home of Myrtle Beach, by 15 points. He lost Greenville and Spartanburg, in the upcountry, by similar margins. He lost Edgefield County by 40 points. Romney likely lost all seven congressional...

The Washington Times editorial board praises, sorta, the D.C. government for updating an out-of-date list of gun training instructors, and councilmember Phil Mendelson for introducing legislation that would allow D.C. residents to get that training in District limits. In July, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals smacked down the city of Chicago over instructional requirements similar to the District’s. The Second Amendment Foundation and Illinois State Rifle Association sued the Windy City for requiring training at shooting ranges that were banned by city ordinance. As The Washington Times has exposed, Washington has created the same impossible situation, requiring residents...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a senior House Democrat from the Catskills, is retiring at the end of this year — a move that could end up saving the congressional seat of either Rep. Kathleen C. Hochul, D-Amherst, or Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo. Hinchey’s spokesman, Mike Morosi, told the Poughkeepsie Journal on Wednesday that the 10-term lawmaker will announce his retirement today in Kingston. Hinchey, 73, had surgery last week for colon cancer, and Morosi said the lawmaker is now cancer-free. Because New York will lose two congressional seats in a reapportionment that the State Legislature must approve this year,...

Prior to 1913, there was no federal income tax. The states had rights and representation in Washington, D.C., there was no Federal Reserve Bank, and the federal government lived under the enumerated powers afforded within the U.S. Constitution. What a difference one year can make... ... Passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution would forever change life in America, and not for the better. ... Further, thanks to the 17th Amendment, also passed in 1913, the states no longer have representation in Washington, D.C. Once again, what seemed like a simple sentence and a good idea to some at...

The nation’s capital is home to some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country. Washington city leaders intentionally crafted convoluted regulations to make it difficult for citizens to own firearms legally. Now that these obstructionist rules are in the spotlight, the D.C. Council realizes it needs to clean up its act. The Washington Times’ Emily Miller has been closely documenting each step required in the process of exercising her Second Amendment right to keep arms. One of these is the mandatory gun “safety” course consisting of four hours of classroom instruction and one hour on the shooting range....

Congressional support for controversial online piracy legislation eroded dramatically on Wednesday in the face of an unprecedented online protest supported by tech titans such as Google, Wikipedia and Facebook. Several key senators withdrew their support from the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA), including Tea Party favorite Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), an elected member of his party's leadership. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who leads the Senate GOP's campaign team, said the legislation should be put on hold, while Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a sponsor and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, retreated from the...

America's taxpayers, already on the hook for watching over the Occupy movement's three-month seizure of Washington's downtown McPherson Square, are getting stuck with another bill to cover the police protection and port-a-potty rentals at today's Capitol protest. For today's protest, where several hundred Occupiers toting signs lingered in the muddy grass of the Capitol Grounds, over two dozen U.S. Capitol Police were assigned to ring the lawn, most on foot, some on bikes, and others in 18 cars, buses, and trucks counted by Whispers. Plus, the government rented 17 bright blue potties from Don's Johns, which were parked across from the Capitol...

The Secret Service was responding Tuesday night to an escalating protest that may have involved a smoke bomb being thrown over the White House fence. An estimated 1,000 protesters have gathered. No arrests have been made, but authorities are on alert. The tense scene outside the White House follows an earlier protest on the West Lawn of the Capitol, in which several hundred protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement decried the influence of corporate money in politics and voice myriad other grievances. Organizers had touted the rally, known as Occupy Congress, as the largest national gathering of Occupy...

Justice Samuel Alito seemed none too pleased last week with the government’s argument in a case pitting property owners against the Environmental Protection Agency. Four years ago, Mike and Chantell Sackett bought property to build their dream home near a lake in Idaho. After obtaining local permits the Sacketts began work, pouring in some land fill. But their work came to a screeching halt when they were visited by officials from the Environmental Protection Agency. The couple was slapped with a compliance order asserting that the land is subject to the Clean Water Act and that they had illegally placed...

An infant girl found wrapped in a towel on the front steps of a Northeast residence late Sunday night later died, and police are investigating the case as a homicide. A resident of the 3000 block of Channing Street, NE, was walking home when he saw the unidentified infant on the steps of another home in the same block, police said Tuesday morning. After finding the baby cold and unconscious, he brought the baby into his home and called 911. Police and Fire and Emergency Medical Services arrived at the scene shortly after 11:30 p.m. and found a neighbor performing...

The agency will not retest the machines or airline passengers ... After years of rebuffing health concerns over airport scanners, the Transportation Security Administration plans to conduct new tests on the potential radiation exposure from the machines at more than 100 airports nationwide. But the TSA does not plan to retest the machines or passengers. Instead, the agency plans to test its airport security officers to see if they are being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation while working with the scanners. News of the test leaked out after the TSA issued a request last month to government vendors to...

I walked into my editor’s office on Monday, a few minutes before our weekly staff meeting at 11 a.m. He was working on his computer. “Whatcha doin’?” I asked. “Buying a gun.” He’s a man of few words, so I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “Seriously?” “Yes. I’m doing it before the meeting. Look at this,” he said, pointing at his screen. I peered over his shoulder at the website called Gallery of Guns. “You just put the gun you want in this box and it pulls up all the options.” He selected a Kahr PM9. “Why...