Free Republic

I have believed for close to 20 years that the 16th amendment was never properly ratified and that the IRS and all the shenanigans we citizens go through every year is ILLEGAL. For all of my adult life, I have spent 6 months dreading tax season and then 6 months worrying if maybe I had done something wrong when filing them. This year, when our tax preparer (for the first time in my adult life, we actually hired a preparer as I believed that a citizen should NOT have to pay someone else to do their taxes, as it should...

At the end of 2014, Nikon issued a notice saying that fake D800E DSLRs have been discovered during service center repairs. Technicians found that the cameras were actually ordinary D800 DSLRs (a few hundred dollars cheaper) that had their covers replaced with D800E shells. Nikon issued an update today saying that other models are being faked as well, namely the D610 and D4S

Dear EarthTalk: What is the best way to measure how close we are to the dreaded "point of no return" with climate change? In other words, when do we think we will have gone too far? — David Johnston, via EarthTalk.org While we may not yet have reached the “point of no return” - when no amount of cutbacks on greenhouse gas emissions will save us from potentially catastrophic global warming - climate scientists warn we may be getting awfully close. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution a century ago, the average global temperature has risen some 1.6 degrees...

Judiciary Federal court: no liability for PA judge who made up criminal charge By Rachel MartinPublished April 13, 2015watchdog.org A federal court recently told a Lawrence County woman she’s simply out of luck and can’t sue local officials, including a Common Pleas judge who apparently made up a criminal charge that was used to place her on electronic monitoring. A judge has absolute civil immunity, even if the action “was in error, was done maliciously, or was in excess of his authority,” the three-judge panel ruled in its six-page opinion. Judge Thomas Piccione had ordered Lynn Van Tassel to report...

We endorsed Chuck DeVore in the GOP California Senate primary over Carly Fiorina. We did so because of DeVore’s proven record of staunch conservatism — which he continues fighting for now, having just helped kill a California open-carry ban — but also because we didn’t really trust or know anything about Fiorina. Carly’s conservative record was thin to nonexistent, and there were many troubling signs that she held liberal views. From her praise of Jesse Jackson, to her playing the race and gender cards against DeVore, to her support for the Wall Street bailouts, to her qualified support for the...

The U.S. Postal Service issued a new limited edition "Forever" stamp Tuesday, honoring the late poet, author and civil rights champion Maya Angelou, but it carries a quote that apparently originated elsewhere.

Real time reax… 1. That’s an insanely long slogan. Obviously, the result of a compromise between senior advisor Doug Stafford’s harem of super-passive aggressive, power-tripping female staffers… No strategerist in their right mind approves a slogan that long. 2. Team Rand trots out far-left RINO J.C. Watts to prove he’s not racist… 3. Another black guy. Team Rand, subtle as ever…

re you sick of seeing “welfare leeches” in the grocery checkout line with carts stuffed full of junk food snacks, soda and even porterhouse steaks and crab legs? So is Missouri House Rep. Rick Brattin, who has begun pushing for legislation prohibiting welfare abusers from buying foods that most hard-working Americans can’t always afford. After Brattin heard a food stamp recipient say, “This is the way I want to live and I don’t really see anything changing,” he knew something needed to be addressed. “The intention of the bill is to get the food stamp program back to its original...

An undergraduate student at Duke University admitted to hanging a noose in a tree and has left campus while disciplinary actions are considered, university officials said Thursday. School spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said at a news conference that the school would not release the name of the student who admitted to hanging the noose, found early Wednesday in a plaza at the heart of the campus. The person is still enrolled at Duke, but faces student conduct and law enforcement investigations.

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) - Tinley Park squatter living rent and mortgage free The problem with squatters is hitting home in an upscale Tinley Park Subdivision. On Mallow Street where homes sell for $350,000 or more, a woman has been living in a house rent and mortgage free for two years. “It's very frustrating, our property taxes are very high, I work nights to pay mine and to help support my family. And I just see her coming and going without a care in the world it's enormously frustrating,” said neighbor Patti Yara. And no one is more frustrated than...

In 1998, Vijay Chokal-Ingam was “determined to become a doctor,” but his 3.1 GPA significantly reduced his chances. When he realized his application wouldn’t cut it, he came up with a back-up plan — he pretended to be black. Chokal-Ingam, brother of famous actress Mindy Kaling, said he “knew that admission standards for certain minorities under affirmative action were, let’s say… less stringent.” In a blog post, Chokal-Ingam explains how he ended up getting into the St. Louis University School of Medicine despite his low GPA and MCAT score: So, I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes, and applied to...

Most Americans don’t realize we have elected a president whom we know very little about. Researchers have discovered that Obama’s autobiographical books are little more than PR stunts, as they have little to do with the actual events of his life. The fact is we know less about President Obama than perhaps any other president in American history and much of this is due to actual efforts to hide his record. This should concern all Americans. A nation-wide network of researchers has sprung up to attempt to fill in the blanks, but at every opportunity Obama’s high-priced lawyers have built...

Defiant Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is 'outraged' and 'angry' after 14-count corruption indictment charges him with bribery, fraud and helping donor's THREE girlfriends get travel visas An angry Sen. Bob Menendez said Wednesday night that prosecutors who charged him with 14 federal corruption crimes 'are dead wrong.' Menendez, a powerful Democrat accused of using his office to improperly benefit a political donor. A Newark, New Jersey federal grand jury on Wednesday accused the New Jersey Democrat of bribery, honest services fraud, conspiracy, violating the federal Travel Act, and making false statements. 'I am confident,' Menendez said, straining to speak over...

WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday introduced President Obama’s blueprint for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by nearly a third over the next decade. Mr. Obama’s plan, part of a formal written submission to the United Nations ahead of efforts to forge a global climate change accord in Paris in December, detailed the United States’ part of an ambitious joint pledge made by Mr. Obama and President Xi Jinping of China in November. The United States and China are the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters. Mr. Obama said the United States would cut its emissions...

Budget legislation passed by Congress last week includes cuts to some welfare programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The cuts have already attracted backlash from left wing activist groups like the feminist group UltraViolet, which launched a campaign to petition Congress to restore the funding. “Overnight, the U.S. Senate voted for a budget that literally takes food away from hungry children,” UltraViolet’s campaign pleads. “The budgets that have now passed both the House and Senate make deep, painful cuts to the food stamps program.” TurningPoint USA responded with a little digging. Here’s what they found: After a brief...

The further I travel down this rabbit hole, the more I feel divorced from the good conservative people that I choose to call my own. I hold some stories back from our readers. My thought is that people have a hard enough time embracing the basic fact that our government is corrupt on both sides of the aisle. If you knew how corrupt I thought these people really were, I feel like you’d rush to the phone and soon bad men would show up to haul me off in a straight jacket. Do they still do that? Regardless, today I...

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications. The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the United Kingdom, which puts out 277 peer-reviewed journals. A partial list of the retracted articles suggests most of them were written by scholars at universities in China, including China Medical University, Sichuan University, Shandong University and Jiaotong University Medical School. But Jigisha Patel, associate editorial director for research integrity at BioMed Central, said it’s not “a China problem. We get a...

Illinois had the biggest decrease in population according to a new report from the Census Bureau. Between July 1, 2013 to July 1, 2014, the state lost 9,972 people. On the other end, Texas saw the largest population increase adding more than 450,000 people during that time. Cook County saw a very slight decrease in population. It’s one of four counties with a population of more than 1 million to experience a decrease. Others include industrial counties like Wayne County, Michigan; Cuyahoga, Ohio; and Allegheny, Pennsylvania. The rate of people leaving Cook County for other counties has been increasing since...

Investigates has learned that a woman who claimed she was a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing is now facing criminal charges. Joanna Leigh, 41, of Jamaica Plain, has been indicted by a Suffolk County grand jury for allegedly stealing almost $40,000 in charitable donations, including money from the One Fund Boston and benefits from the state’s fund for victims of violent crime. Watch video report According to court records, Leigh allegedly faked injuries to obtain services and money from donors, a doctor, young students and the One Fund which was established with private donations to help the many victims...

Jay Dobyns is suing the Department of Justice, claiming it retaliated against him and damaged his reputation after he blew the whistle on the ATF's treatment of agents. (Fox Business News) A federal judge angrily accused Justice Department attorneys in newly unsealed documents of "fraud upon the court" by intimidating a witness in a case involving a former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent who alleges the agency trashed his reputation. Judge Francis Allegra, who was appointed to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in 1998 by President Bill Clinton, is presiding over a suit brought by former...