Free Republic

With the Biden administration a lost cause and Indiana passing only limited vaccine protection measures, St. Joseph County citizens were wise to take matters into their own hands.On April 4, the commissioners of St. Joseph County, Indiana passed a resolution against vaccine passports, saying they would “unduly and unnecessarily restrict the freedom of Americans; harm patient privacy; and have a negative financial impact of individuals of color and other marginalized communities.” It is a bold move for a community, and taking ownership of an issue where you live is smart. That’s why I’ve worked to help this resolution pass in...

There are some things we should ALL be able to agree on, left or right. Murder and rape are bad, love and kindness are good, and what happened last Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol should never, ever happen in a democratic society. While conservatives are more than correct to drag the media for downplaying the Black Lives Matter summer of riots, er, love, none of us should fall into the trap of in any way justifying the mob action that took place. It was dangerous, illegal, counter-productive to any intent to help Trump or the cause of election reform, and...

2020 punctuated the generations-long decline of our republic. Will that half of America that sent Trump to drain the swamp care anymore after believing themselves disenfranchised in 2020?“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” Never has...

Since 2015, George Soros has pumped tens of millions of dollars into local races in Texas, Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington, Florida, and New York, as well as swing states. Since 2015, George Soros has been executing a plan to reshape the country through local district attorney elections by pumping unprecedented amounts of money into races that typically only see candidates spend in the low five figures.HereÂ’s why he has an interest in these local races. Soros is exploiting the reality that all politics are local in some way. To transform America, you have to transform the way towns and cities...

Voting is our people’s greatest mechanism for change. It is arguably our only avenue for which we peaceably exercise our free will to guide the course of a nation which delicately and admirably struggles to balance personal freedoms with the collective good. Too much of the national conversation surrounding calls for change in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death fails to stress the closest mechanism of change that can have an immediate and direct impact on the intersection of policing policy and race relations: voting in local elections. Sadly, in today’s America, it’s more important to stand in line for...

I seriously admire one thing in particular about most tea party members. If you ever wonder how a relatively small group of people have so much impact on state, local and national policy, the answer is simple: They show up. They outwork most other groups. They go to meetings, study the issues and rally the faithful to the cause. They make sure their voices are heard (and man, are they heard). ItÂ’s also easy to say they make the most noise, but thatÂ’s because theyÂ’re often the only outside voice in the room when issues are being decided. In short,...

Although Malia Cohen has the power of incumbency, and Tony Kelly beat Cohen in the first round of ranked choice voting in the 2010 election, a number of other candidates are vying for the District 10 supervisorial seat on this November’s ballot. In addition to the two Potrero Hill residents, four Bayview and one Visitacion Valley inhabitants have indicated that they’re running: Shawn Richard, DeBray Carpenter, Diane Wesley Smith, Marlene Tran, and Ed Donaldson. Tran’s entry into the race late last month creates a new dynamic in the City’s only seriously contested supervisorial race this year. Tran, the sole Asian-American...

This one is truly a “man bites dog” story. Never before has a campaign for a seat on a local community college board mattered so much to so many, and we have Dave Wilson in Houston to thank for it. For Dave Wilson has proven that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Dave Wilson would’ve made C. Thomas Howell’s character in the 1980s cult classic movie Soul Man proud. The Caucasian Wilson took a page right out of that movie’s controversial playbook by leading voters in a largely black district to believe he was also black in order to win...

Even with Republicans holding unprecedented political power across the South, Democrats remain mostly in charge of urban centers in otherwise conservative states. Yet increasingly that control is threatened, not at the ballot box, but by Republican-led legislatures reaching into local governing decisions, often over objections. In Georgia and North Carolina, GOP efforts range from regionalizing the Charlotte airport, the Atlanta metro transit system and the Asheville water system to redrawing district lines for local offices to benefit Republican candidates. Republicans insist there’s no power play at work as they do battle with Democrats such as Charlotte Mayor Antony Foxx, who...

When Todd Koeppel moved to the area near Spring Valley, Wisconsin, little did he know the freedoms he had on his own property. Like many people throughout history, knowledge of one's freedom does not come until it is threatened or taken away. This happened last year to St. Croix County's Town of Cady, where Koeppel resides. Last June the Town Board voted to end their long history of property freedom for what Koeppel describes as, "A huge, 184 page, highly restrictive, and intrusive zoning ordinance written by a Dane County attorney." Prior to last year, Cady, like fewer and fewer...

A man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle shot the gun into the air, accidentally killing a 15-year-old Amish girl driving a horse-drawn buggy more than a mile away, a sheriff said Tuesday.

Post on Yahoo group by a mother in New Jersey, where parents and the Board of Education have been debating the selection of a new Superintendent:==== "So to all the board members that don't participate on this list and feel they don't have to answer here, but have no problem holding a meeting without explaining to the public how important this meeting is and giving them the transparency to participate, screw you. Screw you for not believing we have the intelligence to understand or want to understand these very complex issues. Screw you for thinking that we can participate as...

Filmmaker Bob Bowdon joins me to discuss his award-winning documentary The Cartel, an exposé of the problems behind the current state of our public education system. (I've written a review of it here.) Plus! All Politics Are Local with a special call-in from Florida, Your Tax Dollars at Work, and The Stuff You Can't Make Up featuring WA state silliness and The Blind Leading The Blind... literally.

... Both, that is, are in the grip of the mad worship of "progress," whose goal is always left conveniently vague. Neither party understands that it is good for human beings to do what they can to govern themselves locally, not simply because they will do a better job of it than will distant bureaucrats, but because it is essential to their dignity as human beings that they make law (or custom, more integral to human life and more venerable), rather than, like everlasting adolescents, merely comply with it. Neither party, in other words, has anything kind to say about...

The Minnesota Court of Appeals today upheld a lower court's ruling that struck down a law that expanded access to concealed weapons permits because the Legislature passed the law improperly. The enacting bill was tacked onto another piece of legislation to get it through the state Senate, which had resisted voting on the measure as a standalone bill.... More than 25,000 people took advantage and got a permit before Ramsey County Judge John Finley declared the law unconstitutional. His ruling suspended the new law and reverted the permitting process back to the prior law. Five-year permits issued under the 2003...

I'm running for mayor of a small Minnesota town, population 5500. I wanted to solicit helpful advice from wise fellow FReepers: Q: f I were YOUR mayor, what is the first thing you would want me to do? (in your community, what's your #1 concern) Q: What do you expect from your city government? What DON'T you want them to do? Q: How should the city try to attract business and industry to town? So, if you were face-to-face with YOUR mayor, what would you say or ask? I realize that every town and city are different, with wildly divergent...

The politics of race flared up in Lynette Boggs McDonald's Clark County Commission race this week in an unusual way: as a result of the black commissioner's own comments likening Democrats' treatment of blacks to slavery. Boggs McDonald, a former Democrat who has held local offices as a Republican since 1999, was quoted in Thursday's Las Vegas Sun as saying she regrets having been a Democrat. "From my perspective, there is one last plantation in America, and it's called the Democratic Party," Boggs McDonald said. In an interview Friday, the commissioner said she was simply trying to explain her beliefs...

In a meeting that erupted into a shouting match, members of the Ward 8 Democrats voted yesterday to table a motion to remove the group's first vice president from office for calling a new member "poor white trash." Eugene Dewitt Kinlow, president of the political organization, read aloud a statement disassociating the group from the slur used by Mary Cuthbert at a meeting last month. "These comments are embarrassing," Kinlow said. "Our party welcomes everyone. We are aware there are increasing tensions between newcomers . . . and blacks and whites in our ward, as in other wards across the...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - When a meeting of the local board of aldermen in the North Carolina town of Carrboro is considered newsworthy to the South African Sunday Times, something is bound to be out of kilter. Like 162 other municipalities nationwide, Carrboro passed a resolution earlier this year condemning the US invasion of Iraq. But the small town of 17,240 residents then went a step further, passing a second resolution that expressed solidarity with France and that nation's antiwar stance - an action that made the international news briefs of papers from Ottawa to Paris. The same town officials...

<p>The Independence Party of Minnesota lost a gubernatorial candidate Thursday and picked up a passel of recruits from the DFL and Republican parties to carry the IP banner in legislative races, including former DFL Rep. Edwina Garcia of Richfield.</p> <p>Christine Jax, the state commissioner of Children, Families and Learning, dropped out of the race for the IP endorsement to succeed the party's headliner, Gov. Jesse Ventura.</p>