Free Republic

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” That’s the full text of the First Amendment. But (with apologies to the old Far Side comic), this is what many in the press, academia, and government would hear if you read it aloud: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, blah blah blah, or abridging the freedom of the press, blah...

John Steinbeck's 1942 novel The Moon is Down is about people of a small  village occupied by Nazi forces somewhere in Northern Europe. They become sullen and their obedience is bought at an increasingly high price. Free people cannot remain conquered.Re-reading The Moon is Down left me with nagging questions about the extent to which the People of the United States remain free. Those questions did not arise when I first read it, many years ago. It now seems obvious that we are less free than we once were; yet perhaps (one can at least hope that) there are still enough to make...

KMOV (Channel 4) fired Larry Conners after a social-media controversy, prompting St. Louis' longest-tenured anchorman to defend his claim that IRS "pressure" followed his 2012 interview of President Barack Obama. Freed from a KMOV gag-order Wednesday, Conners said his statements on Facebook were simply questions about the possibility of an Internal Revenue Service vendetta in the wake of national stories about the agency. "I never said that's what happened, and I'm still not saying it," Conners said. "I'm only asking that question." Conners also said a televised statement he made about the situation last week — which he conceded damaged...

Memorial Day, 2013. The year is 2013. 337 years after we declared our independence from the reigning monarchy of Great Britain. What are we memorializing this government-sanctioned three day weekend, which was precisely at one time, May 30th, the actual date? Are we memorializing our war dead, specifically those Unknown Soldiers, who died defending what today might be looked upon by many, as our 'lost rights'? Are we memorializing those that died, who believed that America, in their time on Earth, was 'the land of the free, and the home of the brave'? Or, are we, now, memorializing car purchase...

Alice Area Alliance of Christian Churches introduced The Power Team to the community Wednesday night at the Alice High School Auditorium.

In light of the ongoing IRS scandal, and who knows what else these folks are up to, doesn't it make it plain to see why we need the Second Amendment? If a government can ask what kind of prayers are being said in an organization there is practically no limit to what else they can ask.

Eau Claire (WQOW) - There's no debating that obesity is a serious problem in this country. What may be open for debate is what the government can do to address it. Eau Claire's Comprehensive Plan has a health chapter. It's a lengthy document designed to encourage healthy living. There are many ways a city could go about doing that. One of several ideas the city is proposing is an "obesity map". City of Eau Claire Associate Planner, Ned Noel, says, "So that the map would describe possible areas that people are more overweight." It's a unique step that's never been...

Few things are more polarizing in American culture than guns. There is no scarcity of opinions on the issue, but a voice that we have perhaps not heard is that of a younger generation, specifically those who are 18 to 29 years old. They fall under the millennial generation, and will make up the future of gun ownership. So, what do they think? St. Louis Public Radio’s Sean Sandefur reports.

Some days one can't help but look at the headlines and think of Ayn Rand. With all the destructive measures by desperate governments from Cyprus to Argentina, it seems sometimes like we're reading from the pages of her seminal work, Atlas Shrugged. But what we're seeing now seems to have far surpassed Atlas Shrugged. We're definitely into 1984 territory. We've recently learned that the US federal government has (a) secretly tapped the Associated Press's phone records, and (b) used the nation's tax authorities to target opposition political groups. This is the same sort of thing one would expect from Belarus...

Some days one can't help but look at the headlines and think of Ayn Rand. With all the destructive measures by desperate governments from Cyprus to Argentina, it seems sometimes like we're reading from the pages of her seminal work, Atlas Shrugged. But what we're seeing now seems to have far surpassed Atlas Shrugged. We're definitely into 1984 territory. We've recently learned that the US federal government has (a) secretly tapped the Associated Press's phone records, and (b) used the nation's tax authorities to target opposition political groups. This is the same sort of thing one would expect from Belarus...

The time has come for Americans to stop bending to the will of the PC enablers and define the Obama Administration for what it is; The Obama Reich. How else to describe the eerily similar parallels of Barack Obama and Adolph Hitler? There are numerous comparisons to be made. In writing this, I focused on four of them.

The Department of Justice issued a vague response to an Associated Press report Monday that the DOJ had “secretly obtained” two months worth of phone records of AP reporters and editors. AP reported that the government would not give an explanation for why it had sought out the phone records, but noted that the DOJ had previously stated that it was looking into who leaked information to the AP for a story in May about a terror plot that was successfully deterred. In the story were details about “a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the...

Barack Obama asking a group of college students to ignore the warnings of government tyranny is the equivalent of criminals telling you not to lock your doors. As long as human beings walk this Earth - vain and aspiring men and women - tyranny will forever be synonymous with government, but more profoundly, humanity. The fundamental premise of this nation's founding was to defend individual liberty, natural law, at all costs against the proven, historic dangers of big, unnecessary and intrusive government: socialism, communism, fascism, totalitarianism. Truly, nothing was more offensive to our forefathers, the Constitution, or America itself. Mr....

In a survey launched by Young America's Foundation and conducted by the polling company, Kellyanne Conway, Inc., more than 60 percent of college-age students feel that government should not take an active role in their day-to-day-lives, and half of respondents believe that the federal government is mostly hurting economic recovery. If history teaches us anything, a lower tax rate, less spending, and less regulation is the recipe for success. When President Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act in 1981, 20 million jobs were created, inflation plummeted, and net worth of families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 increased by nearly...

The Boston Bomb Massacre has become a cultural watermark for terrorism, self-defense and freedom of speech. Americans are now openly doubting and debating the doctrines and efficacy of the leftist cultural movement called Political Correctness (PC).

I was shocked when I heard that Sen. Harry Reid had proposed background checks for people who want to buy firecrackers/explosive powders: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3012168/posts Do you all realize the danger to your freedoms and those of your children, now and in the future? Americans need to wake up and pull their heads out of their behinds. Politicians cannot protect your freedoms. Only pro-freedom citizens groups, who ensure that all congressional legislation complies with the constitution, can help preserve freedom. Since 9-11, Americans have given the indication that they love safety more than freedom. Did you know that Nazi Germany had very...

A friend of mine sent this survey to me over the weekend. It is one of the most comprehensive surveys I've seen since the gun control issue boiled over late last year.It is fascinating reading on how police officers and other law enforcement personnel feel about these issues. PoliceOne is an online resource for the law enforcement community with 450,000 members.Here is a link to the PoliceOne.com site and the survey page. Here is a link to how the survey was conducted.Reprinted with permission of Doug Wyllie, PoliceOne Editor in Chief.In March, PoliceOne conducted the survey of American law enforcement...

The live stream event will start May 3. Friday, May 3 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM CT: ILA Leadership Forum 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM CT: NRA News | Cam & Co on Sportsman Channel Saturday, May 4 9:50 AM – 2:00 PM CT: NRA Members Meeting 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM CT: Special Saturday Edition of NRA News | Cam & Co 7:20 PM – 10:30 PM CT: NRA Stand and Fight Rally Sunday, May 5 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Special NRA News Wrap-Up Show

President Barack Obama had better clear this up today, right now. Surely he is just allowing his handlers to throw up this kind of ridiculous, amoral, un-American trial balloon. I call on Obama to address this immediately with the American public, clear it up, and renounce these reports as the nonsense they surely in God's name must be. - Sarah PalinBreaking: Pentagon Confirms May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith

If taken at great cost, it often lasts for quite a while. If inherited, not that long. If given, it is even more readily perishable. The United States gained their freedom, by force and at great cost, from those who used military might to prevent them from having it. Even many in the United States who inherited their freedom seem to have forgot how and why those from whom they inherited took it and the costs they bore. Those "given" freedom should know by now that it does not long endure unless cherished and defended, by force if that is the only...

Gun Store Running AR-15 Giveaways on Facebook Sees Page Shut Down —And Facebook Hasn’t Contacted Him to Say Why When TheBlaze first spoke with Erik Lowry, he was running a contest on Facebook to give away an AR-15. Now, a couple months later, the fan page for Pittsburgh Tactical Firearm, Lowry’s store, has been shut down, along with a secondary page he established to replace it a couple days ago. “I still don’t know what’s going on,” Lowry told TheBlaze in a phone interview Sunday afternoon. Lowry said three days ago he awoke to calls and emails from fans...

A cross trampled. WASHINGTON, D.C., April 18, 2013 (Acton Institute) - The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has been studying the steady rise of hostility towards religious expression and religious liberty worldwide. In fact, they found that restrictions on religion rose in every major area of the world, including the United States, since the study began in 2009. Citing what the Pew Forum calls “social hostilities� (as opposed to government hostilities), the study found that Pakistan, India, and Iraq were the most hostile countries to religious freedom. The Social Hostilities Index (SHI) measures acts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations and...

Unfortunately, in our ever-”progressive” culture, being Christian has fast become a most dangerous proposition. As each homofascist demand is checked from liberals’ sin-centric wish list, it only gets worse.

I saw this at iOwnTheWorld (with a much more hilarious post title) and thought it was brilliant, I would love to know how their policies, for these reasons, don't create a prison for the American psyche.I wanted to try to make it more evocative than the original, and I got this.

Is America a two party Dictatorship? A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual: a dictator . It has three possible meanings: 1. A Roman dictator was the incumbent of a political office of legislate of the Roman Republic . Roman dictators were allocated absolute power during times of emergency. Their power was originally neither arbitrary nor unaccountable, being subject to law and requiring retrospective justification. There were no such dictatorships after the beginning of the 2nd century BC, and later dictators such as Sulla and the Roman...

The words are written in crayon, in the haphazard bumpiness of a child's scrawl. "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure." They're the words that Florida father Aaron Harvey was stunned to find his fourth-grade son had written, after a lesson in school about the Constitution. Aaron Harvey's son wrote as part of a school lesson, "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure." TheBlaze has redacted the child's name. Harvey's son attends Cedar Hills Elementary in...

Do not annoy Jay-Z. The rapper has recorded a song that appears to take on those who criticized his recent trip to Cuba with wife Beyoncé.

Those who favor “universal” background checks on gun buyers make some ridiculous arguments. For example, opponents correctly point out that gun buyers with criminal intent will always find channels that require no background check. Gunrunning is among the oldest professions, and the black market will always be with us. Thus the promise of universal background checks -- even if that were a legitimate government activity -- is a fraud, because universality can’t possibly be achieved. Supporters, however, challenge this argument by contending that it proves too much: If requiring background checks is futile as a crime-fighting measure, they ask, why...

Rankings - Overall 1. North Dakota +4 2. South Dakota -1 3. Tennessee = 4. New Hampshire -2 5. Oklahoma -1 6. Idaho +11 7. Missouri -1 8. Virginia +1 9. Georgia +11 10. Utah

A majority of Americans — including large majorities of Republicans, independents, whites and men — said they disapprove of the way President Barack Obama is handling gun policy, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Monday. The poll showed that 52 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of gun policy, while 45 percent said they approve. A huge majority of 86 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents, 61 percent of men and 61 percent of white Americans said they disapprove of Obama on the issue. But the President drew support on the issue from his own party, along...

...Obama offered a lift Monday to the families of those slain in the Newtown massacre last year.

Glenn Beck says that proponents of marriage equality have won because they made the issue about freedom "and the principle of it is right."

Dateline Salem Oregon – April 5, 2013: ”You don’t know what freedom is because you never lost it!” With a pointed finger Manuel Martinez called out Anti-Gun Committee Leader Floyd Prozansky during heated testimony on Friday. You can bet Prozansky got the message. To quote Mr. Martinez: “malicious individuals, masquerading as Democrats,.. established … a dictatorial regime … in my nation called Communism, Socialism, Stalinism, Marxism, and whatever other named -ism you want to put on it. The reason why it was done was to take away the guns from the People.” Mr. Martinez escaped the brutal Communist regime in...

Hat tip to Fubar at illinoiscarry.com, who wrote: Great Video under 5 minutes. "You don't know what freedom is because you never lost it!" With a pointed finger Manuel Martinez called out Anti-Gun Committee Leader Floyd Prozansky during heated testimony on Friday. You can bet Prozansky got the message. To quote Mr. Martinez: "malicious individuals, masquerading as Democrats,.. established ... a dictatorial regime ... in my nation called Communism, Socialism, Stalinism, Marxism, and whatever other named -ism you want to put on it. The reason why it was done was to take away the guns from the People." Mr. Martinez...

"You don't know what freedom is because you never lost it!" With a pointed finger Manuel Martinez called out Anti-Gun Committee Leader Floyd Prozansky during heated testimony on Friday. You can bet Prozansky got the message. To quote Mr. Martinez: "malicious individuals, masquerading as Democrats,.. established ... a dictatorial regime ... in my nation called Communism, Socialism, Stalinism, Marxism, and whatever other named -ism you want to put on it. The reason why it was done was to take away the guns from the People." Mr. Martinez escaped the brutal Communist regime in Cuba in 1954. His testimony included how...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama says former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was both a great champion of freedom and an example to women everywhere. In a statement issued Monday by the White House, Obama said Britain's first woman prime minister showed "our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can't be shattered."

BRECKENRIDGE (CBS 11 NEWS) – A firearms company that makes AR-15 style rifles for the iconic brand Colt, will open a plant in Breckenridge in Stephens County. Oregon company Bold Ideas confirmed the development Friday. Bold Ideas goes by the name Colt Competition, making high accuracy rifles for competition shooting. The company has not officially announced the opening, but employment applications are already available at the Breckenridge Chamber of Commerce. A non-specific, help wanted ad appeared in the local newspaper classifieds earlier in the week.

**SNIP** The theme of this year's event is "Freedom Must Never Be Defaulted, It Must Forever Be Exalted!" "This is directly in line with the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior over 50 years ago, which committed itself to never defaulting on the issue of freedom," a press release from the Detroit NAACP said.

I took the time to create a survey related to the Federal Bill of Rights. I am very curious as to how the current crop of Conservative / libertarians feel on this issue. I would be most gratified if you all could take the time to answer the six or so questions that I created. It has no marketing value or anything like that. Instead, it is designed to test the waters, so to speak, as to whether Americans have just simply given up or are still reared up and full of piss and fight.

Superstar Beyonce’s visit to Cuba with her equally famous rapper hubby Jay-Z on Thursday raised eyebrows in South Florida. The question now: Will their vacation in Havana impact ticket sales...

Beyoncé and her hubby, Jay-Z, recently jetted off to Cuba to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. Whilst touring Old Havana, the couple needed a body guard to keep the locals at bay, who were all storming for a chance to catch a glimpse of the famed pair. (

As a Marine I served this country of mine honorably upholding the U.S. Constitution and everything that comes along with it. I can’t for the life of me understand why it appears you aren’t doing enough to combat these attempts by State and Federal governments along with the corrupt media who seek to subvert the very Rights guaranteed by the Constitution. As you know, Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rode Island, and New York have all illegally passed so-called gun control laws. I keep hearing and reading by way of social media and some of the corrupt news outlets the majority of...

PRAESTANTIA SCRIPTURAE Motu proprio of Our Most Holy Lord Pius X., by Divine Providence Pope, on the decisions of the Pontifical Commission on the Bible and on the censures and penalties against those who neglect to observe the prescriptions against the errors of the modernists: In his encyclical letter "Providentissimus Deus," given on November 18, 1893, our predecessor, Leo XIII, of immortal memory, after describing the dignity of Sacred Scripture and commending the study of it, set forth the laws which govern the proper study of the Holy Bible; and having proclaimed the divinity of these books against the errors...

The purpose of our government is to protect us from lawlessness, but history tells us that governments themselves can become lawless. When this happens we need local officials with wisdom and courage to impose on our behalf. That is why I am pleased to know Carroll County Commissioner Richard Rothschild, who is an elected official willing to stand and do his duty. I am asking you to give your attention and your support to Commissioner Rothschild. – Michael PeroutkaAcross Maryland, people are scared. They fear their government has become perverted and our Constitution is being shredded.People ask, “Why do they...

We have to start somewhere and this is where it starts. I have attended Tea Party meetings at the same location the Queens GOP calls home. However, we were never included in anything that the GOP was doing. We were never invited to any rallies, never had any of the Queens GOP leaders stop in and speak, and now I see why. In a time where American citizens are struggling to even put food on the table, my own party is willing to give up their seat for Mayor for a couple of dollars. Politics has become about money and...

Obama’s actions throughout his “presidency,” and the active support of Democrats, have made it crystal clear that he and the party hate free Americans. Everything they have colluded on has been aimed at harming We, the People, as free citizens of a capitalist, constitutional republic. From the daily attempts to shred the Constitution, to the total fraud of ObamaCare and the use of it to attack Christians, to the looting of the treasury and redistribution of our money to Big Banks and Big Unions, to the raising of already out-of-control taxes, to the destruction of our energy industries and much,...

President Obama is the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office. The national debt, which he is intent on increasing, has passed $16 trillion. He believes that more government borrowing and spending are the solution to every problem. He seems unaware that the free-enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system devised by man. The president has launched a war on Americans' Second Amendment rights. He has launched a war on religious freedom. He has launched a war on fossil fuels. He is working to nationalize one-sixth of the economy with job-killing...

American gun rights advocates said Thursday that they remain determined to block a far-reaching U.S. agreement on international arms sales, warning that the pact could lead to a national firearms registry and disrupt the U.S. gun market, even as the accord ran into an unexpected last-minute snag in negotiations in New York. In its budget debate last weekend, the Senate approved a nonbinding amendment opposing the treaty offered by Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, with eight Democrats joining all 45 Republicans backing the amendment. Despite the Senate vote, numerous groups have pressured Mr. Obama to support the treaty. Amnesty...

Burdensome taxes and regulations, further taxes disguised as fees, and a reputation as a nanny state have finally reaped rewards for New York State: They’ve been heralded by a George Mason University study as the worst state in the nation for such things as fiscal, regulatory, and personal freedoms. Here are the final rankings: Fiscal Freedom – 50th Regulatory Freedom – 47th Personal Freedom – 48th Overall Freedom – 50th Via the New York Post: New York’s big government — with its hands deep in taxpayers’ pockets and regulations controlling everyone’s lives — has made the Empire State the worst...

...None other than the legislative haunt of Gov. Andrew “confiscation could be an option� Cuomo and loathsome nanny-state Mayor Bloomberg, of course. George Mason University's Mercatus Center just released the third edition of their comprehensive "Freedom in the Fifty States" study, ranking "the American states based on how their policies promote freedom in the fiscal, regulatory, and personal realms." The researchers calculated in factors ranging from the states’ levels of government spending and debt, tax burden, property rights protection, and health insurance freedom all the way to their policies on alcohol, tobacco, gambling, marriage, and firearms. North Dakota, South Dakota,...