Free Republic

<p>Long before the Internal Revenue Service revealed it had improperly targeted conservative 501(c)(4) groups, a group of Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the IRS to do just that.</p> <p>The IRS’s admission last Friday that it had singled out tea party and other groups for extra audits and delays has raised concerns that President Barack Obama’s administration quietly attempted to stymy opponents through intimidation. But many prominent Democrats — including Montana Sen. Max Baucus, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the New York Times editorial board — had been publicly calling for tighter restrictions on 501(c)(4) groups affiliated with the tea party and conservatives.</p>

The woman who ran the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt organizations division has been promoted, and now heads the agency's health-care office, ABC News reported. Sarah Hall Ingram was commissioner of the embattled IRS office from 2009 to 2012, roughly the period that the agency is accused of singling out Tea Party and conservative groups for extra scrutiny, based on nothing but their political bent. As a firestorm grows around the IRS, Ms. Ingram quietly left the tax-exempt office and was made director of IRS Affordable Care Act Division...

Civil rights icon Julian Bond defended the IRS for targeting tea party groups, on Tuesday, labeling them “the Taliban wing of American politics.” “I think it’s entirely legitimate to look at the tea party,” Bond said on MSNBC. “Here are a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who’ve tried as best they can to harm President Obama in every way they can.” Bond was chairman of the NAACP in 2004, when the IRS opened an investigation into their nonprofit status following the group’s convention, where Bond delivered a speech criticizing President George W. Bush, and...

As the IRS controversy over targeting The Tea Party grew even more troublesome over the weekend, Barack Obama and the Democrats were nowhere to be found. No statements. No Comments. No condemnation. Fox News is reporting that the IRS may have been casting an even wider net, saying agents could have unfairly targeted groups that touted better government economic policy and debt pay-down. Also among the targeted: Groups that tried to educate about the Constitution or government policy critics, Fox News said. Unlike the Benghazi scandal, which the mainstream media virtually ignored for eight months, the IRS controversy already has...

A hot mic at a May 9 New Jersey Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing caught state senators mocking gun owners after the meeting ended. The Senators had just finished discussing new gun control legislation when the hearing adjourned. Then a conversation that "appears to be among Sens. Loretta Weinberg (D37), Sandra Cunningham (D31), Linda Greenstein (D14)," and an unidentified member of a senatorial staff, took place. It began by mocking gun owners for fearing confiscation and ends by talking of how gun owners say they want to keep guns out of the hands of "the bad guys," yet they...

Vice President Joseph R. Biden said in a wide-ranging magazine interview that gun-control legislation will pass eventually because several senators who voted against it are experiencing a public backlash. “To use the vernacular, there’s suddenly a lot of senators out there who have seen the Lord,” Mr. Biden told Rolling Stone magazine. “You find out that the senator from New Hampshire [Republican Kelly Ayotte] is in trouble; she voted no. I can name you four senators who called me and said, “Jesus, I guess you were right — maybe we can find some other way of doing this. Can we...

Kelly has thrown down the gauntlet to Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s combative chief executive, on the opening day of the gun lobby’s annual convention in Houston, Texas. Writing in the Houston Chronicle, he accuses LaPierre and the rest of the NRA’s leadership of turning their back on the traditional values of the association in a simple drive for profit.

Outrage After Democrats Insult Nikki Haley's Indian Heritage Saying They'll Send The Republican Gov. 'Back To Wherever The Hell She Came From' 3 May 2013 Conservatives are outraged after a Democrat in South Carolina allegedly insulted Republican Gov. Nikki Haley's Indian heritage at a party gathering in Columbia on Friday. The state's Democratic Party Chairman, Dick Harpootlian, is believed to have said the party will take on the Conservative in the next gubernatorial race and send 'Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from.' Gov. Haley was born in the U.S. but her parents are from India. Read...

Leo Johnson, a black man, has never received an apology from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Not a word. Which is passing strange for a group that proclaims itself to be “a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.” Johnson, the African-American building manager and security guard for the Family Research Council (FRC) was shot and wounded last August 15 by an angry gay activist, Floyd Corkins. Corkins was angry over the FRC’s support for heterosexual marriage. Researching the group on the Internet, he found that...

“I now agree that it’s fruitless to give the benefit of the doubt to people who are so obviously corrupt, so clearly malevolent, so bent on hurting innocent people for their own sick gain,” Aurora Sentinel editor Dave Perry wrote in an April 25 editorial. “No more due process in the clear-cut case of insidious terrorism. “When the facts are so clearly before all Americans, for the whole world to see, why bother with this country’s odious and cumbersome system of justice?” he asked. “Send the guilty monsters directly to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity and let them rot in...

Signs at a gun-control rally in Washington, D.C., January 26, 2013.The gun-control debate is one of the most dishonest arguments we have in American politics. It is dishonest in its particulars, of course, but it is in an important sense dishonest in general: The United States does not suffer from an inflated rate of homicides perpetrated with guns; it suffers from an inflated rate of homicides. The argument about gun control is at its root a way to put conservatives on the defensive about liberal failures, from schools that do not teach to police departments that do not police and...

A new law in Kansas that criminalizes the enforcement of federal gun controls in the state is unconstitutional, Attorney General Eric H. Holder said. “In purporting to override federal law and to criminalize the official acts of federal officers, [the law] directly conflicts with federal law and is therefore unconstitutional,” Mr. Holder wrote to Gov. Sam Brownback in a letter dated April 26. “Federal officers who are responsible for enforcing federal laws and regulations in order to maintain public safety cannot be forced to choose between the risk of a criminal prosecution by a state and the continued performance of...

Additionally, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office was slammed for keeping secret police files on private citizens.

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: "Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense...Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis...”. The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith. (From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians--including chaplains--sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military...

While the left is frequently up in arms about the about the Koch brother’s money funding political and campaign projects, there is no shortage of big leftist corporate and foundation money floating around hot political issues. Both the Joyce Foundation and Google are established players in the anti-second amendment movement as well as other progressive political causes. The Joyce Foundation has injected large chucks of money into the anti-gun movement, including Mayor’s Against Gun Control and the Violence Prevention Center. (Aside: Who was on the Board of the Joyce Foundation? None other than President Barack Obama who keeps assuring us...

<p>The Democrats scoff when we remind them that the second amendment was intended by the founders for the people to defend against government tyranny.</p> <p>"What? Are we tyrannical?," They innocently exclaim.</p> <p>And the answer is yes.</p> <p>When you elect an admitted Marxist to the presidency who claims the constitution (that he is supposed to uphold) is a flawed document and pledges to "transform America" by importing European spread-the-wealth around Marxism to ensure "economic justice," that is tyranny!</p>

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was glum after background checks went down April 17. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) A week after gun legislation suffered a stinging defeat in the Senate, an uncomfortable realization has settled over the Capitol that it will likely take another mass shooting or similar tragedy to reignite momentum for gun control. President Obama called last week’s vote “round one.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pledged that it was “just the beginning.” But gun-control advocates, both inside and outside of Congress, have identified no immediate path forward to alter a political landscape that left them five...

VIDEO at link. Family Researh Council employee Leo Johnson who was shot by a gunman but still managed to subdue the shooter on Aug. 15, 2012, in the lobby of the conservative organization's building in Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) –Domestic terrorist Floyd Corkins told the FBI that he found the Family Research Council as a target because they were listed online as an "anti-gay" group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Corkins walked into the FRC's Washington, D.C., headquarters last Aug. 15, carrying a pistol, 100 rounds of ammunition and knapsack filled with 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. He later admitted that he...

HARRY REID: We have a situation where this country has been driven by the Tea Party for the last number of years. When I was in school, I studied government and I learned about the anarchists. Now, they were different than the Tea Party because they were violent. But they were anarchists because they did not believe in government in any level and they acknowledged it. The Tea Party kind of hides that.

The United States Army has blocked the website of the Southern Baptist Convention from government computers, saying the Christian site contains "hostile content." An Army officer assigned to a U.S. base said he tried to access SBC.net from his government computer, but instead, he got a message that said the site was being blocked by "Team CONUS": Team CONUS protects the computer network of the Department of Defense. "So the Southern Baptist Convention is now considered hostile to the U.S. Army...it just corroborates the recent string of events highlighted by AFA," the officer wrote in an email to American Family...

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the well-funded group co-founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is seriously considering a months-long television, radio and direct-mail campaign against Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, one of four Democrats who opposed expanding a background check for guns. The goal: Make an example of him. Senior members of Mayor’s Against Illegal Guns met at length Sunday to debate potential responses to the failure of President Obama’s gun regulation package, including a watered-down background check provision that fell five votes short. In addition to Pryor, three Democratic senators abandoned Obama: Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska...

Lexington Board of Selectmen wave victory flag for marathon attacker On April 16th the Lexington board of selectmen called an “emergency meeting” to discuss permit suspension for The Muster On The Battle Green. The permit was revoked under the guise of public safety. Video content can be viewed here. (at site) -- The “emergency meeting” assembled at 6:00PM but turned out to be a smoke and mirror show. The Lexington Patch reported that the permits have been revoked at 3:22PM April 16th. That is 2 hours and 38 minutes before it got voted on. As the organizer of this rally,...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg ripped the U.S. Senate for failing to pass a bipartisan effort to expand background checks... “Democrats – who are so quick to blame Republicans for our broken gun laws – could not stand united,” Bloomberg said. “And Republicans – who are so quick to blame Democrats for not being tough enough on crime – handed criminals a huge victory, by preserving their ability to buy guns illegally at gun shows and online and keeping the illegal trafficking market well-fed.”

Three Democratic governors who successfully pushed their state legislatures to toughen gun laws are asking Congress to do the same. “We need the federal government to take the lead and enact reasonable laws to reduce gun violence by, at a minimum, ensuring that more gun purchasers pass a federal background check,” Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Dan Malloy of Connecticut wrote in a letter to Senators on Wednesday. “The American people are clear on this issue – more than 90% support background checks prior to gun purchases. They understand that if you can’t pass...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that he will support the Assault Weapon Ban against what he calls conspiracy theorists, black helicopters and false flags: “I’ll vote for the ban because saving the lives of police officers, young and old, and innocent civilians, young and old, is more important than preventing imagined tyranny,”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that he would support a new ban on assault weapons as an amendment to pending gun control legislation. ""I will vote for Dianne Feinstein's assault weapons ban," Reid said in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor. "I will vote for assault weapons ban because maintaining law and order and saving lives is more important than preventing imagined tyranny." "Today I choose to vote my conscience, not only as Harry Reid, a United States Senator, but also as a husband, a father, a grandfather, and — I hope — a friend to lots...

"I will vote for assault weapons ban because maintaining law and order and saving lives is more important than preventing imagined tyranny."

Democrats, including Hoyer, today blamed the Boston Marathon bombings on the Republicans. According to them, the Republican Sequester so damaged our intelligence community that it caused the Marathon bombers to get away with it. Took then just 24 hours to blame conservatives for the lives and limbs lost. I am no fan of the Democrats, but this lowers the level of their loathsomeness to a new bottom.

Anti-gun New York Sen. Charles Schumer went so far overboard with remarks about an alternative measure to his background check bill during a weekend interview that it appears he is trying to demonize the package because it presents a more palatable option to his colleagues in the Senate. It is Schumer’s “background check” bill that the alternative measure introduced by Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey could derail this week, and the New Yorker clearly isn’t liking it. In a report broadcast by Westchester County’s News 12 and Newsday, Schumer alleged, “This legislation could change Times Square into the OK...

In an apparent slip of the tongue, Harry Reid this morning referred to the gun-control bill he brought to the Senate floor as “anti-gun legislation.” “On the anti-gun legislation before the Senate, we are making good progress on the effort to schedule a series of votes on amendments to the anti-gun-violence legislation before the Senate.” Some, however, are questioning whether the Senate minority leader accidentally revealed his true feelings. GOP Sentaor Ted Cruz, a leading opponent of the bill, asked whether Reid’s statement was a ”Freudian slip.” He said in a Tweet:

In The Republic, Plato argued that philosophers must be made kings for the ideal city-state to be born. In the pages of The New Republic, Cass Sunstein argues for the benevolent paternalism of the nanny state and its philosopher-kings. It’s an old Sunstein theme and the one that brought him to the attention of politicians who dearly love to imagine themselves in the roles of those philosopher-kings. One of those politicians, Barack Obama, even made Sunstein his Regulatory Czar. Sunstein debuted as the philosopher-king of the technocrats with his book Nudge. Now having left his D.C. Czardom, Sunstein is back...

Women. Love ‘em; bright, responsible, caring and extremely hard working. My dear teacher wife epitomizes all of these qualities as did my late mother. Men? Don’t get me started. Yes, there are a number of committed, concerned and brave (especially military and law enforcement) members of my gender, but not enough to reverse the extraordinary decline that is modern-day America. Excepting a few bubbleheads like Palin, Brewer, Bachmann, Angle, Haley, Coulter and a handful of other distaff talkers and Tea Party types, the lion’s share of the blame for our current political havoc falls squarely on the shoulders of men....

Grover Norquist, champion of Islamism infiltration, is working to advance the cause of tax reform by backing an illegal alien amnesty that will impose a whopping economic burden on the country… leading to higher taxes. The contradiction is obvious. If you’re going to legalize 12 million undocumented Democrats plus all their family members then you are tremendously boosting the welfare state on the receiving end and the voting end. The only way that the pro-amnesty side can win the amnesty debate is by not having it. And that means going after any sources of facts and taking them down. The...

Big Brother: The government we entrust our medical records to under ObamaCare has its EPA sharing confidential data on farmers with green groups and the IRS reading your email. Smile and wave at the EPA drone. The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged that it released personal information on potentially thousands of farmers and ranchers to environmental groups, violating their privacy rights and acting in collusion with private groups with private political agendas. In Nixonian fashion, the EPA has provided these environmental groups with the dossiers of farmers it has gathered to help them create an enemies list of potential polluters....

Project Vote Deputy Director Amy Busefink is busy lobbying the Texas legislature on election-integrity issues — trying to stop Texas from checking to see if Texas voters are registered in multiple states. She recently organized a letter of various left-wing groups trying to stop legislation before the Texas House Elections Committee. Members of the Texas legislature shouldn’t take Busefink seriously — she has a history of participating in voter fraud. Busefink enters her plea in court to voter fraud. Busefink sent a letter on April 8, 2013, to the Texas House Elections Committee asking them to block a law that...

During an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said expanded background checks are "not enough," and private gun sales cannot continue because they allow terrorists to buy guns in the United States. "Can a terrorist currently buy a gun in this country? Yes. Can a felon? Yes. You go to a gun show and virtually no questions are asked," Feinstein claimed. Joe Scarborough chimed in later in the segment to echo Feinstein's claim, asserting, "So now we have al Qaeda terrorists saying, 'Kill Americans, it's easy, just go to gun shows, get an assault weapon.'"

While most in the media have harped the bipartisan compromise concerning universal background checks by manchin and toomey, little notice has been given to the fact that feinstein has reintroduced her assault weapon ban as amendments to the manchin/toomey bill. To see the amendments, go to thomas.loc.gov at the url posted. Then go to 'amendments'. Next, click on each amendment (e.g.711), then 'text of amendment as submitted' to see text of the amendment.

PHOENIX, AZ --(Ammoland.com)- Can you imagine what a tough uphill struggle the anti-gun-rights people would have if the “news” media wasn’t falling all over itself to support the anti-rights side? Connecticut just drafted 138 pages of gun law basically in secret, enacted it before it could be read and digested by those who signed it – and certainly not by the public it pretends to legitimately control -- and in doing so ended up requiring federally licensed agents in the state to violate federal law, or flatly deny citizens their rights. Just on practical grounds this is a disaster. But...

President Obama is an old hand at absorbing attacks from his left flank. He got plenty of incoming hostility Wednesday during a conference call staged by a liberal advocacy group to highlight perceived flaws in his budget proposals. But it’s a novel—and not altogether pleasurable—experience for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to serve as target practice for the left.

A professor at the University of Southern California (USC) appears to have used a fall semester 2012 political science class to deliver sustained and angered attacks on Republicans, who he characterized as old, white, racist, and “losers.” In a 15 min. video secretly captured by USC student Tyler Talgo, political science Professor Darry Sragow also appears to endorse the illegal suppression of Republican votes. “You lose their information on the election in the mail,” he suggested when a student asked him how to keep Republicans from voting. “I mean there is lots of ways to do it [SIC].” A teaching...

(CNSNews.com) - In the message he issued along with his budget proposal on Wednesday morning, President Barack Obama said he wants to see 4-year-old children in the United States enrolled in public schools.

Remember all those who denied that firearms confiscation as a result of New York’s new gun laws was too “insane” to even consider? That it was strictly in the realm of paranoid conspiracy theorists and the “it cant happen here crowd”? Those were and remain some of the standard replies to anyone who even thought about the possibility, let alone gave voice to it, despite the fact that Gov Cuomo and numerous other officials made public comments about such a plan, as I discussed in my article “Feinstein & Cuomo Admit Planning Australian Style Government Gun Buy Back” . Elected...

AMHERST, N.Y. (WIVB) - The NYS SAFE Act is billed as a necessary law to protect the public and keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. But Hamburg attorney Jim Tresmond says his client was notified by letter that his gun permit was suspended upon the recommendation of State Police, who learned the man is on anti-anxiety medication."Claiming that he had taken some psychotropic medications, and that he no longer could be eligible for the pistol permit," Tresmond said.The permit holder lives in Amherst and Tresmond accompanied the man as he turned in his seven handguns used...

Controversy has surrounded the Boy Scouts of America this year, as same-sex activists have pressured the organization to abandon its long-held values and allow homosexual members. Now, they are trying to remove the Boy Scouts' tax-exempt status. Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter to members of the California Legislature Friday to explain the significant legal and policy problems of a proposed bill designed to punish nonprofit youth organizations like the Boy Scouts of America. The bill would strip organizations like the Boy Scouts of their tax-exempt status if they won’t abandon their long-held values and allow themselves to be strong-armed...

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) thinks Senate Republicans are lying when they say they don't support a new gun legislation.

That America created only 88,000 jobs in March, less than half the number anticipated, was jolting news, indicating the recovery that the White House has boasted about may not be at hand. But in that March jobs report, there was more disturbing news. While unemployment fell to 7.6 percent, the reason it fell is alarming. Half a million U.S. workers (495,000) disappeared from the labor force. They dropped out. They are no longer even looking for a job. Worse, this appears to be an inexorable trend. The participation rate of eligible workers in the United States has fallen to 63.3...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Last week on this program a young man of 13 years old called. A young boy called from Wilmington, Indiana. He was a very, very bright, articulate guy who called here to tell me that he finally had proven to himself that global warming was a hoax. He'd gone to his local library. He'd researched it and he had found it, and he told me why he thought the left and liberals don't recognize it as a hoax is because they don't want to. So I offered the young man an iPad. I said, "Somebody like you...

The father of a Connecticut child is furious after discovering that his son’s school is teaching students that Americans don’t have a Second Amendment right to bear arms. “I am appalled,” said Steven Boibeaux, of Bristol. “It sounds to me like they are trying to indoctrinate our kids.” Boibeaux’s son is an eighth grader at Northeast Middle School. On Monday his social studies teacher gave students a worksheet titled, ‘The Second Amendment Today.’ “The courts have consistently determined that the Second Amendment does not ensure each individual the right to bear arms,” the worksheet states. “The courts have never found...

President Obama makes his second trip to Connecticut on Monday since the Sandy Hook massacre, delivering a speech in Hartford where he is expected to be joined by Newtown families. The president is trying to keep the outrage over the deaths in the forefront of the public, while lawmakers continue fighting over the gun control package the president proposed in the wake of Newtown.

Rachel Maddow talks about a group of counter protesters that showed up at a "moms for gun reform" event in Indiana.Her disdain for the pro gun rights protesters is obvious as she makes comments like:"You can tell who the counter protesters were because they were the ones showing off their weapons, circling around the moms' group." and"You know what? It *is* intimidating to be in the presence of a loaded AR-15 assault rifle, especially when it is not held by, say, an instructor on a range or, say, a cop or somebody else who is there to ensure your safety...