Free Republic

Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, seeking to revive efforts to pass gun-reform legislation in Congress, warned lawmakers opposed to reform that Americans aren't on their side. "The country has changed" since the deadly shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Biden said during remarks delivered on Tuesday afternoon in the White House's South Court auditorium. Lawmakers "will pay a price—a political price ... for not getting engaged and dealing with gun safety." Two months after the Senate failed to support the expansion of background checks for gun purchasers despite intense pressure from the administration, victims rights groups...

A Tennessee community college professor ordered her students to wear ribbons in support of gay rights and said those who supported the traditional definition of marriage are just “uneducated bigots” who “attack homosexuals with hate,” according to a legal firm representing several of the students in the class. Students in a general psychology class at Columbia State Community College were directed by their professor to wear “Rainbow Coalition” ribbons for an entire day and express their support for the homosexual community, said Travis Barham, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Barham is calling for the college to punish Dr....

Everyone has now heard stories about conservatives who’ve been punished by “non-political” agencies like the IRS for their beliefs, but it happens at the state level, too. Back in 2011, I wrote about Rachel Alexander, who was targeted by the liberal State Bar of Arizona for having the audacity to work with other conservative lawyers to fight corruption in the state. Rachel Alexander was collateral damage in a liberal fight to ruin her former boss, then-Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. Thomas attempted in 2009 and 2010, with the help of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, to stop corruption by some judges and...

Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, billionaire, desiring to rewrite the constitution, and countrywide buttinski suffered a major "gun control" loss on Thursday in Nevada. He and his pet group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), "spent hundreds of thousands of dollars" to buy passage of the Nevada state legislature's bill SB 221, another dangerous piece of gun control legislation dressed up to look palatable by applying the innocuous-sounding "background check" label to it. Bloomberg lost, and lost big-time, not because of a paid opposition wading in money, but because of a viral grass-roots effort organized by average Americans provided...

In a Politico article, Chuck Schumer explains how an anti-freedom ad should be structured to obtain support of normally pro-freedom people. He advises this approach: “Now I’m an NRA member. I’m proud of that,” Schumer narrated, taking on the persona of a Nevada gun shop owner. “My daddy was, his daddy before him, and my kids are going to be NRA members. But on this one? Background checks? They’re wrong. That background check ain’t gonna affect me. I’m a law-abiding citizen. It’ll just affect felons, spousal abusers, people [who are] mentally ill. So on this one, I don’t agree with...

Liberals just can't help themselves. They'll do anything to protect the White House. With the latest scandalpalooza in Washington D.C., Obama's most loyal supporters are struggling to defend the President's agenda. So what are they doing instead? Calling opponents of that agenda "Obamaphobic." First it was New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who called Texas Senator Ted Cruz "Obamaphobic" for opposing Amnesty. “Well, I think he has Obamaphobia,” Menendez said of Cruz on MSNBC. “The reality is that it is the Gang of Eight that came together — four Democrats, four Republicans — and said that we need a path to...

Sarah Palin didn’t mince any words after “comedian” Bill Maher called her son Trig, who has Down Syndrome, “retarded.” According to reports, Maher called Palin’s 5-year-old son Trig “retarded” this past weekend. “Maher made the remark during a stand-up comedy show at the Palms Casino Resorts in Las Vegas Saturday, where he is in the middle of a residency. Trig suffers from Down Syndrome, a genetic disorder that can cause physical problems and intellectual disabilities in humans,” the report said. “One brave audience member, Ron Futrell, did fight back in Palin’s defense, and according to his blog ended up being...

Children who don’t get a pre-kindergarten education, ideally from birth to age 5, might fall behind and “may as well drop out” by third grade, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said on Wednesday at an event to garner support for President Barack Obama's $75-billion proposal to increase pre-school enrollment across the country.

This week brought more bad news for Joshua Welch, the Baltimore-area second-grader who was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a breakfast pastry into something resembling a gun. School officials have denied an appeal to have the suspension expunged from the boy’s permanent record, reports The Baltimore Sun. Robin Ficker, the attorney representing Welch and his family, said he will now take the matter to the Anne Arundel County school board. Under local regulations, he has 30 days to do so. “If this school can’t educate a seven-year-old without putting him out of school, how are...

The family of the 7-year-old boy from Ann Arundel County elementary school who was suspended for making a gun shape out of a pastry has tried to clear the boy’s record. This story made headlines across the country as the gun control debate has taken center stage among many elementary schools as some school administrators flex their muscles with a “zero tolerance policy” that excuses itself from common sense. But according to the Baltimore Sun school officials denied the boy’s family’s appeal on Monday, not allowing the boy’s record to be expunged of the incident. Robin Ficker, attorney for Park...

... Bill Hemmer asked the judge what he thinks we need to understand about what Snowden is telling us. Judge Napolitano explained that the government has granted itself this sweeping authority without a national debate about how much privacy Americans are willing to sacrifice... He said the government wants Americans to sacrifice liberty in return for the promise of security... ...

. . . In the meantime, there are a number of actions President Barack Obama can take that do not require approval by Congress. We urge the administration to take additional actions using its existing authority both to improve the federal government’s ability to prevent dangerous individuals from acquiring or possessing guns and to enhance law-enforcement investigations of gun-related crime. . . . .

(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Thursday that health insurance premiums will go up under Obamacare because people who did not buy insurance before, and thus had no premium at all, will now be forced to buy insurance. She also urged people to be “optimistic” about Obamacare. “You just see,” Pelosi said. “I mean be optimistic about it. It is a very, very exciting enterprise.”

Portland State University College Republicans screened the film “Obsession” this week at a campus event. The film focuses radical Islam’s fascination and war with western civilization. During the screening a large contingent of socialists and Muslims stormed into the room and interrupted the show. The Islamo-leftists intimidate and shout down the College Republicans, effectively bullying them out of their own campus event. Then the videographer was escorted out of the public event.

A Texas high school silenced its Valedictorian’s microphone during his speech when he diverted from his pre-approved remarks and instead spoke about the Constitution.

In lieu of guns, people who find themselves in dangerous situations at or near the University of Arkansas should defend themselves by glancing and nodding, said a university safety expert. Earlier this year, the Arkansas legislature approved a concealed carry law, but gave school administrators permission to override the law and ban guns on campuses. Most Arkansas universities, including the University of Arkansas and Arkansas State University, opted to prohibit concealed carry, according to The College Fix. But disarmed faculty and staff members are vulnerable to attack when traveling to and from campus, according to a chain of emails sent...

Bioethicist Peter Singer June 5, 2013 (Pop.org) - Bioethicist Peter Singer compared women and children to cows overgrazing a field and said that women’s reproductive rights may one day have to be sacrificed for the environment. He made the remarks at the global Women Deliver Conference last week, hailed as the most important meeting to focus on women and girls’ human rights in a decade. The controversial Princeton University professor, known for championing infanticide and bestiality, was a featured panelist on Thursday at the three-day Women Deliver conference attended by Melinda Gates and more than 4,000 abortion and contraception activists...

Americans might generally think that if someone forges a document and uses a Social Security number that does not belong to them, they should go to jail. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., believes if you are an illegal alien and you do these things, you should become a U.S. citizen. He made his case for this in the Senate Judiciary Committee. When the committee was considering amendments to its immigration "reform" bill on May 20, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, pointed to a report published by The Associated Press in March. This report told the story of Candida L. Gutierrez, a Houston...

There have been a lot of news stories recently about young children being punished for talking about guns, making toy guns, owning toy guns, and drawing guns. This new story takes the cake: a group of students from Chase Lake Elementary School in Edmonds, Washington, asked their teacher if they could bring Nerf guns to school. The teacher gave permission, but the school punished the children with suspension anyway. The students even had a perfectly legitimate reason to bring the guns to school; they wanted to fire foam darts 100 times as part of a probability experiment. The school...

He’s basically accusing them of making a mountain out of a molehill, emphasizing that no matter how egregiously the IRS behaved, they couldn’t stop the groups from operating without tax exemption. They could still go out there and preach the tea-party gospel; they’d just have to do it, at least for awhile, without the benefit of 501(c)(4) status that liberal groups have comparatively little trouble obtaining. Tough it out, wingnuts. Presumably, if a high-school student applied for federal college loans and the application was held up for discriminatory reasons, McDermott would shrug and say, hey — no one’s stopping the...

Well, right on cue, Politico arrives this morning like the cavalry with an appallingly dishonest (but expected) piece of reporting that falls right in line with what Congressional Democrats did yesterday. It is as pure a piece of coordination and left-wing propaganda as you will ever read. And this is the only kind of investigative reporting Politico ever does. Imagine if Politico poured these same resources into investigating the IRS's connections to the White House or the shaping of the IRS talking points by the State Department. But today's Politico piece is all about changing the subject. All it looks...

President Obama supports many things he opposed as Senator Obama—such as unlimited terrorist detention—but for flip-flopping with a high degree of artistic difficulty nothing beats his judicial filibuster ultimatum on Tuesday. If Republicans don't confirm his three, yes, three, new nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, he'll unleash Democrats to gut the Senate's filibuster rules. Mr. Obama didn't explicitly state the threat portion of that ultimatum—he's leaving that dirty work to the reliable Harry Reid. But everyone knows that's the subtext of Tuesday's announcement, which is a political attempt to realign the balance of power on an appeals...

CAPITOL POLICE SUDDENLY WANTS TO SEE TEA PARTY WEBSITES BEFORE PROTEST APPROVED. And they are taking weeks to grant the request.The Tea Party Patriots were planning a rally in Washington DC on Wednesday June 19th. But they ran into a wall. The Capitol Police want to see their websites first. Kevin Mooneyhan from the Tea Party Patriots described this latest assault on the Tea Party: Below is the timeline of events surrounding our June 19th rally at the Capitol. We haven’t done anything to publicize this event yet because we wanted to make sure we had the permit in hand....

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) not only blamed the victims of the IRS's targeting on Tuesday--he also implied the IRS would have been justified targeting conservative and Tea Party groups if the agency did so based on what the groups stood for instead of on the words in their names. At a House Ways and Means hearing in which six leaders of organizations the IRS had targeted were testifying, McDermott said the "mistake here was the staff used the names of the organizatiions instead of the work they do." [video] McDermott lashed out at the witnesses, saying "each of your groups...

Connecticut lawmakers who passed strict new gun control measures in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre approved a package of revisions Monday to reduce confusion about the new rules and expand the list of officials who can legally possess restricted firearms. Both chambers of the state legislature voted to adopt changes and exemptions to the bipartisan deal that strengthened the state’s assault weapons ban and banned the sale of high-capacity magazines. The legislation emerged from a bipartisan working group that sought to refine the original gun control bill, which proponents hailed as one of the most far-reaching in...

Click Here! Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed a motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals seeking a 30-day delay of a mandate for the state to enact a concealed gun carry law. In a statement Monday, Madigan says she filed the motion in order to give Gov. Pat Quinn time to review the legislation passed last week. "The current stay of the Court’s mandate expires in less than one week, which significantly shortens the time set in the state Constitution to allow the governor to review legislation," said Madigan. "This request for an additional 30 days would allow...

Here is a copy of the Democratic talking points at the House Ways and Means Committee hearing today in Washington DC. Democrats handed this out to the press before the hearing. Democrat Sander Levin, the ranking member on the committee, said the IRS targeting scandal is not a partisan scandal.

Here is a contemporary political truth: Every time you think that the left and its political party have hit moral bottom, they will eventually prove you wrong. The most recent example occurred last week in Louisiana. The head of the Louisiana Democratic Party, State Senator Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, stood before her colleagues in the state Senate and announced the reason people oppose Obamacare. "You ready?" she asked three times. It is President Obama's color. "It isn't about the administration, and it should not be about the administration of the state nor federal level when it comes to Obamacare,"...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa appeared to be getting under the skin of Democrats as they hit back hard — bringing up the congressman's past from more than four decades ago. Issa's allegations about what the White House knew about the IRS targeting conservatives rattled Democrats into sending out a barrage of counter claims. Former senior Obama aide David Plouffe ripped Issa in a Twitter message, referring to allegations from as far back as 1972 when Issa was still a teenager. "Strong words from Mr Grand Theft Auto and suspected arsonist/insurance swindler. And loose ethically today," Plouffe tweeted. Plouffe's...

To follow up on the recent story about a five-year-old boy suspended for showing a cap gun to his friend on a school bus, Investor's Business Daily relates a charming collection of similar anecdotes regarding such child abuse at U.S. re-education camps -- oops, I mean public schools. Each tale involves a very young child receiving severe punishment for the offense of imagining he had a gun. In the most recent case in question, a kindergarten student in Maryland shows his cap gun to a friend, and is browbeaten for two hours by school officials, without his mother even being...

In a bizarre op-ed in The Charleston Gazette last week, journalism professor Christopher Swindell argued that the National Rifle Association “advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America.” Stirring words, to be sure, but Swindell was hardly done — not even close. He also said that the NRA is guilty of “treason” “worthy of the firing squad.” “To support the new NRA president’s agenda of arming the populace for confrontation with the government is bloody treason,” Swindell charged in his wacky essay. After briefly playing the race card and alluding to the Civil War,...

Though he had no idea what it was, the annual “Bush Center Warrior 100K� mountain bike ride, which took place over the Memorial Day weekend, upset Bill Maher. “I guess they walked or ran or something on their prosthetic limbs,� Maher sneered about George W. Bush’s ride around his Texas ranch with 20 servicemen, “and I found this to be nauseating. I mean, first he sends them off to war to get their limbs blown off and then he has them over for a barbecue.� Maher then equated the former President with Ariel Castro, the kidnaper who held captive multiple...

Watching the celebration at the NRA convention over the defeat of background checks was the most nauseating experience of the day. I am not a New York gun control liberal, either. I support a shotgun for home defense, a handgun for limited conceal/carry, and an assortment of hunting rifles to balance West Virginia's exploding deer population (as evidenced by hourly collisions with cars). So, I am hardly out of the mainstream. But, the gun safety debate is B.S. This foaming at the mouth, Obamar is coming for the guns, Nanny Bloomberg is a bad billionaire, and most despicable of all,...

This California proposal that will probably become law is going to be very popular in pro-gun control states. LA Times: Californians who want to buy ammunition would have to submit personal information and a $50 fee for a background check by the state, under a bill passed by the Senate. The state Department of Justice would determine whether buyers have a criminal record, severe mental illness or a restraining order that would disqualify them from owning guns. Ammo shops would check the name on buyers' driver's licenses against a state list of qualified purchasers. The goal of the bill is...

CARSON CITY, Nev. — John W. Griffin is a fast-talking, whiskey-loving, fifth-generation Nevadan who spends his days as a lobbyist courting lawmakers in Stetsons. He advocates for luxury casinos, once brokered a dispute between a brothel and a nightclub, and has helped feuding families resolve tussles over cattle crossings. Now he is representing the ultimate city slicker, Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, who, undaunted by defeat in Congress, is taking his campaign for stricter gun laws to the nation’s state capitals, including here, where a bill to expand the use of criminal background checks is before the...

After I graduated college and before I landed my first real-deal job that included insurance benefits, I took out my own independent health insurance plan that covered all of the bases a young and healthy person like myself might need. It cost me about ninety dollars a month, and seeing as how I didn’t have any regular health care needs, it was pretty much just catastrophe insurance in case I happened to break my leg or get into a car accident or catch malaria or some other relatively unlikely scenario. I felt secure about the situation, knowing that I would...

One constant we have experienced under the reign of Barack Obama has been government and non-governmental agency (NGO) lies and distortions about the statistical state of our nation. Believing the unemployment numbers, for instance, has become an exercise in suspension of disbelief. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has used a fabricated dysfunctional formula for counting our unemployed neighbors for so long that people have forgotten they are being lied to, if they ever knew the difference. Recently a new insidious lie was quietly slipped into the public area. Under cover of Obama’s multiple scandals the Brookings Institute, a reliably liberal...

Progressive shareholders and environmental groups to call for the firing of Chevron CEO John Watson at tomorrow's annual shareholder meeting. Here's why.

We have put together what might be called a basic “timeline of tyranny.” A timeline that connects the dots of IRS behavior in the Obama administration not just to the specifics of the IG’s timeline, but to other events of a similar nature. Events that set the stage for what was to come, and most importantly events that illustrate the mindset of the American Left when it comes to free speech, to dissent — and how that mindset plays out when married not just to money but to a perceived or very real access to serious government power. Drawing on...

But then something unexpected happened. Some of the senators who’d voted “no” faced furious voters back home. Even before Erica Lafferty, the daughter of murdered Sandy Hook Elementary principal Dawn Hochsprung, confronted New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte at a particularly tense town hall, Ayotte’s disapproval rating in the state had jumped from 35 to 46 percent—half the respondents said her “no” vote made them less likely to support her.

Dick Durbin: Are bloggers and tweeters entitled to constitutional protection? Share By Doug Powers • May 26, 2013 05:53 PM **Written by Doug Powers Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin has in the past had a very subjective and abstract view of the Constitution, and on Fox News Sunday he once again wondered which people might be “entitled” to constitutional protections and which people might not: “You’ve raised an important point and I heard Sen. Graham call for special counsel,” Durbin said. “I’m not ready to do this at this moment. I would like to know if Holder has any conflict in...

It seems like only yesterday that IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner was claiming she knew nothing about the dastardly work of those shadowy "low-level employees in the Cincinnati office" - who somehow remain shadowy to this day, despite having been blamed for the worst abuse-of-power scandal in living memory. The Incompetence Defense beloved of this administration, and so effective with a media that would never accept it from a Republican official, was deployed with gusto. Lerner was shocked, shocked, to discover gambling against Tea Party groups going on at Rick's Tax Exempt Organizations Cafe American. But now National...

Speaking about Democrat threats to break Senate rules to change longstanding minority protections, Sen. McConnell said, "What I fear is the Majority Leader is working his way toward breaking his word to the Senate and to the American people, and blowing up this institution and making it extremely difficult for us to operate on the collegial basis that we've operated on for over 200 years. He wants to have no debate. Do what I say, and do it now. This is the culture of intimidation that we've seen at the IRS, that we've seen at HHS, at the FEC, at...

The full face of political evil and arrogance showed its ugly features when progressives went up against the folks. And what we saw were the cruel, prideful, insensitive machinations of an Obama administration whose mantra involves the ends justifying any of their means. Showing no interest in their oath to maintain the public trust, these progressives revealed in real time television their demonic minds at work. When the outgoing IRS chief smirked at one Congressman’s question, hid behind the bureaucrat’s trompe l’oeil of “I don’t know,” and then used the intellectual’s latest, snarky transitional word “So,” we saw how he...

The Progressive believes in precisely two things: his own magnificence and the constructive power of brute force. In combination, they lead him naturally from the role of pestiferous busybody to brutal dictator. Where the productive man dreams of the things he might create if only left alone by his fellows, the Progressive dreams of the world he could create if only the lives and property of his fellows were at his disposal. The roots of his pathology lie in that oldest and most destructive of all human vices, the desire for the power to rule over other men. As...

Looks like yet another left-winger missed the meme on the New Civility. Attorney and "Ring of Fire" radio show co-host Mike Papantonio, guest-hosting on Ed Schultz's radio program yesterday, revealed two things -- he hates old people and wants tea party retirees to hurry up and die. Don't take my word for it, listen to Papantonio's remarks after a caller said he saw "one of these baggers" push a woman during dueling protests over the weekend in Madison, Wisc.

Perhaps no other IRS official is more intimately associated with the tax agency's growing scandal than Lois Lerner, director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division. Since admitting the IRS harassed hundreds of conservative and Tea Party groups for over two years, Lerner has been criticized for a number of untruths—including the revelation that she apparently lied about planting a question at an American Bar Association conference where she first publicly acknowledged IRS misconduct.

"Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don’t matter." -- Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” -- Ayn Rand One of the most disturbing things about...

(article photo) In one of the less rational attacks on the NRA to date, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence's Josh Horwitz used his May 20 column to make the case that the NRA doesn't understand the Constitution or the man who wrote it--James Madison. According to Horwitz, this was proven at the NRA's Annual Meeting in Houston during the first weekend in May. There, speakers gave speeches on what "sounded a lot like vigilantism and anarchy" and very little like the adoration for governmental power that Horwitz claims our Founding Fathers enshrined in the Constitution. To back up his...

The sheriffs thought they were being summoned to the Capitol to discuss ideas for changes to New York's gun control law, the SAFE Act. Instead, Gov. Andrew Cuomo told them to keep quiet. (...) Cuomo invited its leaders to the Capitol last month, people briefed on the meeting said. The group included Sheriffs' Association Executive Director Peter Kehoe and Chemung County Sheriff Christopher Moss. "We didn't get a response (to the analysis) from him, but we could tell after the budget was passed that none of those recommendations were taken into consideration," Moss said. "When we got there, we never...