Free Republic

One of the ongoing discussions on this website is the degree to which the government is you and me, the citizenry, us. Many people hold that when we pay taxes – for instance – we are really just paying back into society, of which we are a part. We are contributing to the coffers of the great American village. Taxation isn’t theft because who is taking the money? The government, which is elected by and composed of citizens. It’s all just a big circle. We’re just paying ourselves. I even had a neighbor tell me once that he actually “enjoyed”...

Could the leaders in Washington please tell us which rules we are allowed to not follow? Please? This is getting confusing for the average American. Since 2005, the United States State Department has had very clear rules that employees cannot use personal email for official business. In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent out an internal directive reminding State Department employees that they could not use personal email addresses for government business. Likewise, she removed a United States Ambassador for using personal email for government work. Now we are learning that prior to becoming Secretary of State in 2009,...

Watch this entrepreneur explain how he was targeted and raided by the federal government for breaking a law, despite language in the law that explicitly said he was acting legally. Bradford Councilman had a business, Interloc, Inc., that utilized an internet database for customers to upload their inventory of rare and out-of-print books while other customers could search the database for books they could not find elsewhere. One day, armed federal agents burst into Councilman’s office and forced him to wait while they searched the premises. The government charged him with creating a separate copy of an email every time...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A federal judge has entered a final ruling barring an Indiana law that changed the classification of abortion clinics in a way that opponents say targeted a Planned Parenthood center in Lafayette that provided only drug-induced abortions. U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson entered a permanent injunction and final judgment Wednesday siding with Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky and barring the 2013 law because it violated the constitutional Equal Protection Clause. She ruled preliminarily last month.

The recent surge in abortion laws -- more were enacted between 2011 and 2013 than in the previous decade -- met both success and defeat in court challenges in 2014. That fight over women's access to abortion likely will continue in the months to come, as both houses of U.S. Congress will be Republican-led, as will even more state houses. What issues will be at the battle lines? Ten states have laws in place banning abortion after 20 weeks; Nebraska was the first to pass theirs, in 2010. Proponents argue that 20 weeks is when a fetus can begin to...

LITTLE ROCK — In its first regular session after passing one of the strictest abortion laws in the country, the Arkansas Legislature is expected to consider several more proposed restrictions on the procedure. In 2013, the Legislature enacted a bill to ban most abortions at 12 weeks or later into a pregnancy, overriding a veto by Gov. Mike Beebe. The law’s fate is now in the hands of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, which is considering the state’s appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that partially struck it down. In the meantime, several state legislators...

The U.S. Navy announced Wednesday that a new laser weapon deployed into Persian Gulf earlier this year performed seamlessly during testing that wrapped up in November, and declared the weapon a success. Deployed for the first time aboard the U.S.S. Ponce in September, the Office of Naval Research released a video Wednesday of the LaWS (laser weapon system) taking out two test targets

NASHVILLE — The approval of a constitutional amendment to give the state Legislature more power to regulate abortions in Tennessee may have opened the floodgates to proposals from Republican lawmakers in the upcoming session, but Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey said Thursday that he doesn't expect most of them to be enacted.

December 03, 2014 So Like Everyone On the Right is Now Outraged by the Garner Death Just Like They Were Outrage by the "Militarization of Police" in Ferguson I'm a dissenter. Frankly, I think everyone on the right is looking to prove "We're not one of those sorts of people who automatically defends anyone who kills a black person." And we did that in three Racial Incidents running. I know my first reaction in both Trayvon Martin's case, and in Michael Brown's case, was to side with the black victim. And maybe this is the wrong time to put my...

The big Republican gains in the November elections strengthened and enlarged the anti-abortion forces in the House and the Senate. But it’s the GOP victories in the statehouses and governor’s mansions that are priming the ground for another round of legal restrictions on abortion. Arkansas, for instance, already has strict anti-abortion laws. But with a Republican governor succeeding a Democrat who had vetoed two measures that would have banned most abortions beyond a certain stage of pregnancy, lawmakers plan to seek more restrictions — such as barring doctors from administering abortion drugs through telemedicine. Republican gains in the West Virginia...

Even as abortion advocates in Tennessee try to find a loophole to invalidate the legitimately passed Amendment 1, lawmakers are wasting no time responding to the bill’s passage. First up is a an ultrasound bill, prefiled by Rep. Rick Womick, R-Rockvale. The Tennessean reports that the “main requirement of the bill calls for a woman to receive an ultrasound within 24 to 72 hours of when she plans to have the abortion.” Womick noted that currently abortion facilities do ultrasounds anyway and that this bill would simply say, “look, let the mother see the picture and hear the heartbeat, that’s...

Alabama has become the seventh state to ban Sharia law via a ballot measure that prohibits its courts from considering foreign, international or religious law. Tuesday night, the ballot measure, called the “American and Alabama Laws and Alabama Courts Amendment,” passed overwhelmingly with 72 percent of voters in support. The ban clarifies the state constitution to say that other state laws or foreign law cannot be used in ways that violate state law or rights under the Alabama Constitution or the U.S. Constitution. In 2012, an unsuccessful ballot measure, also proposed by Republican state Sen. Gerald Allen, would have explicitly banned...

Hear the story of George Norris, a 67-year old hobbyist, was convicted and sent to prison for failure to comply with obscure laws involving his small business – selling orchids from his backyard. George Norris, a 67-year old hobbyist, developed a small business selling imported orchids out of his backyard greenhouse. Norris did his best to make sure he was in compliance with laws and regulations regarding his hobby. That’s why he was surprised to come home one day to find his house being raided by armed federal agents. After spending his life savings and borrowing what he could to...

I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot,” Abigail Borah, a youth delegate to the 2011 Durban climate negotiations, yelled from the conference floor. “I am scared for my future,” she cried, silencing Todd Stern, the Obama administration’s chief climate negotiator. “We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious, and legally binding treaty.” Now the Obama administration is signaling that there will be not be a new climate treaty. According to a report in Wednesday’s New York Times, the path to a treaty has come to an end, 14 months before the...

Linette LopezAugust 20, 2014Muted headlines about bond swaps aren't doing justice to the announcement Argentina's president made last night. With her attempt to pass a law nullifying a U.S. Court's ruling that the country pay all its creditors, Argentina is effectively turning its back on the rules governing international finance. If Argentina's congress passes this law, the country could enter a place where rules no longer matter and negotiation with the hedge funds to which it owes over $1.3 billion in sovereign debt are all but impossible. What this law does is put debt that was once legally governed by...

Meet the Press featured a segment this Sunday that illustrates the planted liberal axioms that dominate our political culture. The topic was Congress’s failure to “get anything done” this term. NBC News’s chief White House correspondent, Chuck Todd, set the stage: New polling from NBC News, the Wall Street Journal, and Marist . . . shows that three out of four voters agree that Congress hasn’t done much this year . . . And guess what? The public’s right. Congress hasn’t been productive. In fact, this Congress . . . is on track to be the least productive in...

"Oversight Dems to America: “You Don’t Have the Right to Know” about White House Spending Taxpayer Dollars on Political Activity" Committee votes to reject White House claim that head of political office has absolute immunity from Congress Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved a resolution to reject White House assertions of “absolute immunity” for political affairs office head, David Simas, who has failed to appear before the Committee twice. This morning, the White House declined Chairman’s further accommodation to allow Mr. Simas to comply with his obligations under the subpoena. Yesterday, Chairman Issa offered White House Counsel Neil...

Ahh, government: In this week’s “Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t” file: A Southern California couple received a letter from Glendora city officials threatening to fine them $500 if they don’t get their sun-scorched brown lawn green again, reports AP. Which Laura Whitney and Michael Korte would gladly do, except for one thing: They could also be fined $500 if they water their lawn too much; they’re currently only watering twice a week. With more than 80% of California in an extreme drought, according to the Los Angeles Times, the state water board voted this week to...

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama laughed off an offer of a joint. A legal one, mind you, since this was Colorado. We’ve come a long way, baby, since five years ago when the exact same president was making cheap stoner jokes in response to serious questions about changing drug policy. These last few years have seen — and continue to see — an amazing pushback against the excesses of the drug war. Like the Berlin Wall, the war on drugs seemed like it would stand forever. The arguable “tear down this wall” moment for drug policy came in November, 2012,...

Why is it that democracies so often generate public policies that are wasteful and unjust? Why do such policies persist over long periods of time, even when they are known to be harmful? Assuming that you’ve pondered those questions, you’d probably also like to understand why, on rare occasions, bad policies do get repealed. If you have entertained those questions, or now see that they are worth entertaining, here is a book you’ll want to read. In Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers, economics professors Wayne Leighton (of Universidad Francisco Marroquin) and Edward Lopez (of Western Carolina University) take readers on...