Free Republic

Traditional American distrust of the centralized state is based on some lessons learned the hard way.Russia’s takeover of Crimea is already so complete that commercial flights to Kiev from the region’s main airport, located outside Simferopol, the regional capital 50 miles from Sevastopol, now leave from the international terminal instead of the domestic one as they did until last week. The shift suggests that Kiev and the rest of Ukraine are now classified as foreign territory. New York Times, March 6, 2014 There is no one who can be trusted with political power. Lord Acton’s famous epigram — “Power corrupts,...

The State of Connecticut says that all citizens must register rifles and high capacity magazines, or be charged will a felony. As many as 100,000 people could face heavily armed police smashing down their doors and be charged with a felony. The legislature of CT says that a registration is needed so they can know where the guns are. Yet at the same time, they are sending threatening letters to gun owners. So they already have records of who has purchased certain guns. The fact is, that the CT legislature fully intends to confiscate hundreds of thousands of firearms anyway......

We’re beginning to see more and more discussions about how the laws, policies and regulations of our federal, state and local governments are working to impoverish the people of this country and restrict their liberties. So much so that even the taboo topic of a potential Ukraine-style collapse right here in America is now being openly discussed in mainstream circles. In a recent panel discussion on Fox News the question of whether or not Ukraine rioting is the future of America came to the forefront and long-time political operative and former Presidential adviser Pat Caddell weighed in. Like many of...

On 16 June 1941, as Hitler readied his forces for Operation Barbarossa, Josef Goebbels looked forward to the new order that the Nazis would impose on a conquered Russia. There would be no come-back, he wrote, for capitalists nor priests nor Tsars. Rather, in the place of debased, Jewish Bolshevism, the Wehrmacht would deliver “der echte Sozialismus”: real socialism. Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the...

And what of the Great Disappointment of 2013? In the promiscuous blending of politics and culture that characterizes our age, the launch of the Obama campaign in 2007 marked the beginning of a politico-spiritual movement that promised a new beginning and a transformation of the nation. It was to be the “moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal [when we] restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.” Faith in the leader knew no bounds. Obamaism spilled out from the college campuses and tony enclaves of Manhattan and San...

In a recent speech in Hawaii, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made some interesting predictions about two of the Supreme Court’s most notorious decisions: Kelo v. City of New London, which ruled that government can condemn private property and give it to other private owners to promote “economic development,” and Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during World War II. On Kelo, Scalia reiterated his 2011 prediction that the decision will eventually be overruled, stating that it “will not survive.” Kelo was a closely divided 5-4 decision (Scalia voted with the...

Republicans are unhappy that President Obama is invoking his executive powers to govern in the face of a do-nothing-in-2014 House of Representatives. To hear them talk, you would think our chief executive is modeling himself on the late Hugo Chavez and wants to seize dictatorial control. This, of course, is nonsense. In fact, Obama has in many ways been less aggressive in his use of executive authority than his predecessors. Take the matter of executive orders. According to the American Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Obama issued 147 executive orders in his first term. This...

Government wants ‘social media analytic tool’ for ‘ongoing monitoring’The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seeking a “social media analytic tool” that will give the government access to “full Twitter historical data,” according to a solicitation released on Tuesday. The agency is seeking feedback for a “possible future acquisition to provide near real time social media analysis.” HHS said it wants to use the tool for “ongoing monitoring” of public health issues. HHS provides a long list of requirements, including “access to real-time social media posts,” and “access to full Twitter firehose.” The agency requires an archive that...

Bureaucracy: The FCC jumped the shark with its outrageous plan to police America's newsrooms. This grasp for a new mission signals an agency that has outlived its purpose. We have a better idea: Just scrap the FCC. There's nothing worse than a federal agency that has lost its original mission, has nothing productive to do and, as a result, is restlessly rustling around for something to justify its existence. That describes the Federal Communications Commission, an old-line agency founded in the 1930s to regulate a limited supply of television airwaves divided among three networks, which is now gone with the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Darren Wolfe gave this presentation at the Citizens for Liberty meeting on August 20, 2013 near Norristown, Pennsylvania. Below are links to source material so readers can do their own research and come to their own conclusions. Many of the quotes used in the presentation are parts of essays or speeches that are well worth reading start to finish. This first series of quotes is from John Trenchard's 1697 book “An Argument Shewing, that a Standing Army is inconsistent with a Free Government, and absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy” (http://www.reformation.org/john-trenchard.pdf): And if we enquire how these...

Apparently it's not enough to use the IRS and FCC to shut down the opposition. What does an aspiring democrat Senator wannabe do when he doesn't like an opposition TV ad? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpjyr1x7mC0Attack the woman cancer victim in the ad, and then threaten to take the station off the air. While Julie Boonstra of Dexter, Mich., struggles to survive leukemia, she now also has to cope with being called a liar by the Democrat who wants to be her next senator. And the campaign of Rep. Gary Peters is also going after television stations airing ads in which her story is...

The Eurasian movement of Putin and his allies draws from both Nazism and Stalinism. Dear Reader (Including the trenchcoat-wearing FCC minister with breath like he’s been sucking a urinal cake looking over my shoulder, tapping his BIC pen on his glass eye, and sighing every time I write something he doesn’t like), I’ve got to bang out this “news”letter pretty quickly. I’m sitting in a too-small fake wicker chair at the coffee shop at the Broadmoor (one of my favorite hotels, btw). The time difference here puts me two hours behind at six in the morning. Plus, I don’t want...

Earlier today, John noted that “everywhere we look, our friends on the right are under attack.” In nearly all cases, the Obama administration is doing the attacking, be it through ridiculous criminal prosecution or harassment via the IRS, the FBI, the EPA, and even OSHA. We shouldn’t be surprised. Obama has been attacking his political opponents through trumped up charges of unlawful activity since he first ran for president. Hillary Clinton’s backers were Obama’s first victims. Again, this isn’t surprising. Clinton was Obama’s first important presidential opponent. As Kim Strassel has pointed out, in the spring of 2008, the general...

The United States is not Ukraine, so, I hope, we don’t find ourselves living in interesting times. 1. Somewhat educated young people with no opportunities are a revolutionary class. Between 1990 and 2006, as Ukraine’s population declined, the number of students entering colleges shot up an unbelievable 60%. According to another source, ” The number of students enrolled in Ukrainian universities grew from 1.5 million in 2001, to 2.5 million in 2009-2011.” Towards the end of this period the student population consisted primarily of those born in the 1990′s when fertility went through the floor. At the same time, the...

The Internal Revenue Service is used to being universally disliked every April 15. But this year, the widespread denunciations have started early, and for good reason. In November, the agency issued proposed new rules that are supposed to keep social welfare organizations from abusing their legal privileges by engaging in excessive electioneering. The effort came in response to complaints from Democrats about a 2012 surge in political spending by such tax-exempt groups, by the conservative Koch brothers and others to influence elections. The IRS wants to curb such efforts, and it doesn't display much concern about the likely effect on...

The U.S. plummeted 13 slots to 46th overall “amid increased efforts to track down whistle-blowers and the sources of leaks,” Reporters Without Borders warned in an annual report. The trial and conviction of Private Bradley Manning and the pursuit of NSA analyst Edward Snowden were warnings to all those thinking of assisting in the disclosure of sensitive information that would clearly be in the public interest,” the organization said.

Last month, President Obama declared he’ll “act on my own,” that he doesn’t need Congress to exercise his power. “We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation. I’ve got a pen . . . and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions,” he asserted. “One of the things that I’m going to be talking to my Cabinet about is how do we use all the tools available to us.” He’s already made good on his promise to act unilaterally — delaying the ObamaCare mandate on businesses again last week and changing the rules...

Obama claims not a smidgeon of corruption in the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, but Mark Levin says it’s now been revealed that the IRS targeted not only the groups applying for 501(c)(4) status, but also began surveilling groups on the right that already had the status. Not only that but 100% of audits that the IRS did of 501(c)(4) groups were all right-leaning groups. All of them. Mark Levin says these are Stalinist tactics being employed by the Obama IRS and later added (not in this clip) that this is why the IRS must be abolished because it...

Colorado health-exchange director on paid leave DENVER — A director with Colorado's health-care exchange is on paid leave after it was discovered she has been accused of stealing from a nonprofit housing organization she oversaw in Montana. Christa McClure is the director of partner engagement for Connect for Health Colorado, the state program that implements the Affordable Care Act. According to the Denver Post, program spokesman Ben Davis says in her Colorado job, McClure does not have access to any of exchange's finances. The eight-count indictment against McClure was filed in U.S. District Court in Billings, Mont., in January.

"My first shot at a hog with an AMAX out of the 300 SAUM was spectacular. Hit in the neck at 258 yards and there was only a little piece of fur holding the body together at that point. Good terminal performance.” - Mark Swab’s appraisal of the Hornady .308 AMAX sniper ammunition round Despite rising unemployment, record number of people on public assistance, the US Government via the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has placed a solicitation for more sniper ammo, in this order – they are requesting 141,160 rounds of ammunition (7,058 boxes) of...