Free Republic

Disaster Can’t Destroy Gun Rights Monday, September 12, 2005 National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre slammed New Orleans authorities Monday for seizing legal firearms from lawful residents."What we’ve seen in Louisiana - the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster - is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves, " LaPierre said."When law enforcement isn’t available, Americans turn to the one right that protects all the others - the right to keep and bear arms," LaPierre said. "This attempt to repeal the Second Amendment should be...

Most visitors just knock on the door. But when a detective approached Troy Levi Miller's home one day last year, he made no attempt to contact anyone inside. Instead, he wiped a sterile cloth over the doorknob and left. A test on the cloth allegedly revealed traces of methamphetamine, and those results helped a narcotics task force get a warrant to search the South Salt Lake house. But now, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball has thrown out the test as a violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. Kimball's ruling was the third one from a...

Some home schoolers say they were having a meeting in Simpsonville Park when an officer started bullying them. The group of home schoolers included 6 mothers and about 15 to 20 kids, every Wednesday for the past 5 years the group has come to Simpsonville Park to socialize and meet with each other, but they say this past Wednesday was like no other. One of the mothers in the group, Jan Blanchard says, "We were just sitting there talking..." "I heard a man yelling take your hands out of your pocket and I turned around and he was yelling at...

It appears the Brits have climbed the Cliffs of Insanity and taken a collective nosedive into the River of Outright Absurdity. My friend, author Michael Z. Williamson, and I used to laugh about Britain, their unreasonable ban on armed self defense and their hysterical attempts to further correct the problems caused by said ban by implementing yet more stringent and bizarre restraints on people's rights. Mike was born in the UK. I used to kid him about the future of Great Britain. I used to tell him that soon, sharp implements will be banned, and people will be forced to...

Camera's first catch gets felony drug charge As Marcus D. Jackson smoked dope in a blue Chevy Caprice, he had no idea anyone was watching, police say. But about a block away, officers were monitoring his every move on a surveillance camera set up at Augusta and Pulaski to target crimes both serious and minor that bring down the neighborhood's quality of life. When they swooped in and arrested Jackson, the officers allegedly found $20 worth of pot and Ecstasy, a so-called "club drug," valued at $60. The 1:30 a.m. Saturday bust was the first one for Operation Disruption, which...

<p>Watch your mailbox -- and pray you haven't been chosen.</p> <p>Internal Revenue Service officials have begun sending letters to taxpayers chosen largely at random for special audits later this year and next year. These audits, the first of their kind in more than a decade, are designed to give agents a fresh look at how much cheating exists, what types, how to spot it and how to reduce unnecessary audits in the future.</p>

Court: IRS Owes Millions for Fraud Washington (Jan. 22, 2003) – A federal appeals court has ruled that attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service committed "fraud on the court" after giving secret deals to two pilots in return for their testimony against 1,300 other pilots who bought into the same tax shelters. The federal appeals court on Friday overturned a previous Tax Court ruling against the pilots, who were found guilty of tax evasion and ordered to pay a collective sum totaling more than $2 billion in penalties. The appeals court ruling requires the IRS to pay tens of millions...

VANCOUVER -- Riding high after U.S. states rejected measures to relax drug laws, drug czar John Walters came to Canada this week to talk tough about a new front in the drug war. Marijuana poses a greater danger to the United States than heroin, cocaine or amphetamines, said Mr. Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, in an interview yesterday in Vancouver. About 60 per cent of six million people who need treatment services for drug abuse in the United States are dependent on marijuana, he said. Earlier this month, Mr. Walters campaigned against...

— WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Countering a basic principle of American anti-drug policies, an independent U.S. study concluded on Monday that marijuana use does not lead teenagers to experiment with hard drugs like heroin or cocaine. The study by the private, nonprofit RAND Drug Policy Research Center rebutted the theory that marijuana acts as a so-called gateway drug to more harmful narcotics, a key argument against legalizing pot in the United States. The researchers did not advocate easing restrictions in marijuana, but questioned the focus on this substance in drug control efforts. Using data from the National Household Survey on Drug...

<p>NEDERLAND, Colo. -- It was an honest mistake. What seemed to be a crazed man firing a gun at officers turned out to be a frustrated motorist banging on the hood of his broken-down truck.</p> <p>Ronald Cobbley, 37, was on his way home around 3 p.m. Friday when his temperamental blue pickup stalled. Irritated, Cobbley jumped out and began to curse and beat his fists on the hood.</p>

Big Governor Is Watching You Terror From On High Cloaked in the favorite conservative lingo of states' rights, the Bush administration has drawn up a proposal that ought to give even the president's staunchest backers the willies. Presented as a draft, the "Model State Emergency Health Powers Act," written by the Centers for Disease Control, sets forth procedures and rules so that a state government could respond to a sudden outbreak of smallpox, anthrax, or other form of bioterror attack. Granting governors the power to declare a "bioterrorism emergency," the proposal, as originally written, would have allowed them to quarantine...