Free Republic

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In recent months, there has been a good deal of discussion of change in the United States. Sadly, over the last two centuries, the direction in which this country has been changing seems to be away from liberty and towards more control. The present changes are hardly unprecedented and certainly not unforeseen. In this essay I will examine two authors, Hilaire Belloc and F.A. Hayek, who present a useful analysis of our present situation. In 1912, Hilaire Belloc published The Servile State, in which the Englishman prophesied that the world was moving to a reestablishment of slavery. This book made...

Justification and Options for Creating U.S. Capabilities Establishing security is the sine qua non of stability operations, since it is a prerequisite for reconstruction and development. Security requires a mix of military and police forces to deal with a range of threats from insurgents to criminal organizations. This research examines the creation of a high-end police force, which the authors call a Stability Police Force (SPF). The study considers what size force is necessary, how responsive it needs to be, where in the government it might be located, what capabilities it should have, how it could be staffed, and its...

This talk was originally delivered to a Campaign of Liberty chapter on December 3, 2009. Video will be available shortly. Today President Obama will tour Allentown, Pennsylvania, in my home congressional district as part of a "Main Street Tour" to show his concern for economic plight of the masses. Many of the people I have spoken with while campaigning innately realize that government is at fault — or at least complain a lot about how the government should "fix" the economy. Unfortunately, many do not have enough of a grasp of economics to understand exactly how the government is ruining...

Rachel Porcaro knows she's hardly rich. When you're a single mom making 10 bucks an hour, you don't need government experts to tell you how broke you are. But that's what happened. The government not only told Porcaro she was poor. They said she was too poor to make it in Seattle. It all started a year ago, when Porcaro, a 32-year-old mom with two boys, was summoned to the Seattle office of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She had been flagged for an audit. She couldn't believe it. She made $18,992 the previous year cutting hair at Supercuts. A...

A form of totalitarianism is developing in Washington, as federal bureaucrats turn the screws on private citizens and job providers to obtain compliance with rules and mandates. As higher taxes and more intrusive regulations take hold (while the dollar continues to sink), more and more Americans are turning to barter and other forms of private commerce between individuals. CraigsList, for example, is reporting an 80% jump in bartering activity by private citizens. And there has been a surge of interest in sites such as Barterquest.com as well. Of course, the rise of the "black market" (i.e. the free market) is...

Mark Tijssen, a major in the Canadian military, stands in front of a meat smoker containing the remains of a pig that could cost him thousands of dollars in fines. Tijssen's family home was raided by members of the Intelligence and Investigations Section of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ottawa Police last month while he was preparing a pizza dinner for children on a Friday night. Mark Tijssen's family has been slaughtering their own animals and handing that skill from father to son for at least three generations. But changes to Ontario's Food Safety Act has landed him and...

Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis has introduced the “Firearms Freedom Act” (HB1230) – prefiled for the 2010 legislative session. The bill “Asserts the right of the State of Missouri to regulate the intrastate use and acquisition of certain firearms pursuant to the reserved powers of the state over intrastate commerce and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.” While the bill’s title focuses solely federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment’s mandate that powers not delegated to the federal government are “reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.” It states:...

The Libertarian Party is stuck in a loop that sustains its electoral irrelevance. Now is the perfect time for a strategy change. America has long used third parties as forums for statements of dissatisfaction with the big two. But while Theodore Roosevelt, Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and Ross Perot generated considerable heat, they were populist flares who soon burned out. Every four, years the Libertarian Party picks a presidential candidate who tallies meager vote totals. In 2008, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr received 523,686 votes -- 0.4% of the national total. Clearly, the purpose of the exercise isn't to win....

Motorists who receive minor parking or traffic tickets in Indianapolis, Indiana are being threatened with fines of up to $2500 if they attempt to take the ticket to court. A local attorney with the firm Roberts and Bishop was so outraged by what he saw in Marion County traffic court that he filed a class action suit yesterday seeking to have the practice banned as unconstitutional. "The deck is stacked against the motorist," lawyer Paul K. Ogden wrote. "To penalize that person for seeking justice seems wrong. I know it is done for the purpose of discouraging baseless challenges to...

Electronic cigarettes look like the real thing. And in New Jersey, lawmakers want to treat them the same way. That's why the Assembly voted unanimously today to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to people under 19, and prohibit adults from smoking them at work and in public places. The Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee also gave unanimous backing to the legislation. E-cigarettes look like the actual cigarettes but don't contain tobacco. A metal tube with a battery heats up a nicotine solution allowing smokers to breathe in vapor. They have not been approved by the Food and...

Who’s In Charge? – The Regulators Big Brother is alive and living in Washington, D.C. but he is not well. A malaise of weaknesses and failures, unearthed during the recent credit crisis, continues to permeate through various regulatory agencies such as the Federal Reserve Board, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and threatens the very survival of the American financial system. The U.S. Federal Reserve System was established by an Act of Congress in 1913, directly as a result of the banking crisis and stock market crash of 1907. While Congress had no constitutional authority to pass...

The financial reform bill working its way through the House of Representatives, that includes Ron Paul's "Audit the Fed" provision, has gotten so morphed and horrific that Ron Paul is not even going to vote for it. The evil bastards have added an amendment to the Bill that will allow the Fed to pump any amounts of money it so chooses to "financial holding" companies deemed TBTF, without approval from anyone. William Greider explains: The sales pitch for financial-reform legislation pending in the House claims it would put a stop to “too big to fail” bailouts for the leading banks....

cut n paste link here: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20091211/1afedpay11_st.art.htm?loc=interstitialskip

The Obama administration's pay czar is limiting the cash compensation for executives at companies that received the largest taxpayer bailouts to $500,000. The 25th through the 100th top earners at Citigroup, GMAC, American International Group and General Motors also must take more than half their compensation in stock, and at least half must be delayed for three or more years, said Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department's Special Master for Executive Compensation.

DALLAS — The search for suspects who raped an SMU student last weekend led police to a southeast Dallas neighborhood off Jim Miller Road and Red Bud Drive. Ruben Moontiel also saw SWAT officers near his home on Red Bud Saturday afternoon while he landscaped his front yard. No sooner had he gone inside to tell his wife police were suiting up outside when SWAT kicked in his front door. "I felt humiliated," Moontiel said. His wife, Agueda, said Dallas SWAT officers rushing into her home trampled over her foot and fractured it. DPD detained the entire family for four...

George W. Bush's State of the Union address must have baffled anyone who voted for him based on his pledge to cut the size of government. That speech has been properly and efficiently pilloried by Joseph Stromberg, Alan Bock, and others. The speech was both Wilsonian and Clintonian, which is to say that it proposed a political solution for all human problems and backed this idea with a promise of massive increases in federal spending on just about everything. But should we really be so surprised? Contrary to popular myth, every Republican president since and including Herbert Hoover has increased...

Courtesy Oleg Volk, A Human Right "W-III" (a screen name that combines his initials with an affinity) must not have gotten word from the Brady Campaign that I "denigrate law enforcement." A retired peace officer, he corresponds with me frequently and cordially, offering tips and comments, or to let me know he's shared a link to one of my columns with his friends. He even freely uses the term "Only Ones" to describe those in his former profession who do not share his support for an armed populace--funny how the only ones that angers are authoritarians who don't think "We...

A Stanford Professor has used United Nation security officers to silence a journalist asking him inconvenient questions during a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen. Professor Stephen Schneiders assistant requested armed UN security officers who held film maker Phelim McAleer, ordered him to stop filming and prevented further questioning after the press conference where the Stanford academic was launching a book.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why Does Interpol Need Immunity from American Law?   [Andy McCarthy] You just can't make up how brazen this crowd is. One week ago, President Obama quietly signed an executive order that makes an international police force immune from the restraints of American law.Interpol is the shorthand for the International Criminal Police Organization. It was established in 1923 and operates in about 188 countries. By executive order 12425, issued in 1983, President Reagan recognized Interpol as an international organization and gave it some of the privileges and immunities customarily extended to foreign diplomats. Interpol, however, is also...

Buckeye Firearms Association is a single issue, non-partisan PAC concerned with gun rights. As such, the debate on health care reform occurring across the U.S. is not something that would be within our normal sphere of coverage. However, my good friend Chad Baus posted a story a few days ago highlighting how the Centers for Disease Control has begun researching gun violence and the impact of gun violence on health care costs. This immediately set off alarm bells in my head as the pieces fell into place. Why, you ask? Health care reform is a brilliant way to regulate guns...

- View the Preliminary Crime Statistics For the third year in a row, our Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report shows that violent crime, property crime, and arson have decreased. The latest report compares January-June 2009 figures with the same time period in 2008.Crimes reported to our Uniform Crime Program are down collectively: violent crime overall decreased 4.4 percent, property crime is down 6.1 percent, and arson fell 8.2 percent. Individual crimes are also decreasing across the board: Murder (down 10.0 percent);Forcible rape (down 3.3 percent);Robbery (down 6.5 percent); The 2009 crime statistics are preliminary; the final report will be issued...

Justin Raimondo detects yet another death of neoconservatism and yet another resurgence of non-interventionism on the right. As usual, he takes isolated examples, misinterprets them and then grossly exaggerates their importance. It is great news that many Tea Party protesters support something like a non-interventionist foreign policy. As many of them were originally Ron Paul supporters, just as I was, it makes sense that quite a few of them do support this. It would be even better news if there were any reason to believe that most of the Republican Party and conservative movement shared their foreign policy views. The...

OKLAHOMA CITY - The voters of Oklahoma will have the opportunity to preserve the existing health care system in Oklahoma under legislation sought by three state legislators. State Reps. Mike Ritze and Mike Reynolds and state Sen. Randy Brogdon announced today that they will file legislation enacting the "Freedom of Healthcare Choice Act," allowing voters to preserve the existing healthcare system in Oklahoma regardless of congressional action at the federal level. The legislation will allow a vote of the people to opt out of the proposed federal system. "It's clear the overwhelming majority of Americans want the current doctor-patient relationship...

A truly sad story about a 23-year-old Panama City man dying while being subdued by Bay County sheriff’s deputies has reawakened the debate about the legalization of marijuana. On December 11, 2009, Andrew Grande choked on a plastic bag full of marijuana as police attempted to arrest him on a violence charge. A video shows police valiantly trying to save his life once it became apparent that he was having difficulty breathing. Two talk show hosts in Panama City have been discussing the case in the early morning hours — and revealing a divide on the right. Burnie Thompson of...

..Jim DeMint and John Ensign are going to force a vote on the issue. Democrats will be forced to take a position on whether or not the federal government can force individuals to buy products on pain of criminal penalty. “I am incredibly concerned that the Democrats’ proposed individual mandate provision takes away too much freedom and choice from Americans across the country,” said Senator Ensign. “As an American, I felt the obligation to stand up for the individual freedom of every citizen to make their own decision on this issue. I don’t believe Congress has the legal authority to...

For eight long years under George W. Bush, conservatives endorsed a don’t ask, don’t tell foreign policy–they did not really ask why their country was at war and Republican leaders did not tell, or bother, Americans with any of the gory details. Missions were accomplished, we fought them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here and troops were supported by simply supporting the wars they fought, with little to no dissent. But why were we fighting? What was “victory?” How many had to die? What was the cost? Conservatives did not ask-Republican politicians did not tell. But...

Homewood's fire chief says if a church wants to hold Christmas Eve candlelight services, it'll have to pay four off-duty firefighters $100 each to monitor safety during the service. Pastors of several churches in Homewood say they had no knowledge that the city requires a permit for candlelight services or of the payment of firefighters to monitor the services. Homewood Fire Chief John Bresnan said the permit law has been on the books for more than 10 years and that he has required Dawson Memorial Baptist Church, which he attends, to request a permit and have firefighters on hand at...

Have you read the headlines the past few months? Obama has proposed trillions of dollars in new taxes, and trillions of dollars of irresponsible, unsustainable big government spending. With no way to pay for it all…except to wipe out small businessmen and women, and wipe out the upper middle class…and enslave our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt and heavy taxes for a lifetime. It is, plainly and simply, the VERY definition of Socialism. Let’s say it out loud- Obama is a Socialist. If liberals and the biased liberal media won’t face facts…I’m going to put the facts...

Three police officers were shot early Monday evening and a suspect injured during a drug raid at 12 Hollis St. in the city’s West End, the police said. Police Chief Dean M. Esserman said the officers were wearing coats and jackets labeled Providence Police and were making a forced entry at an address for which they had a search warrant. Two were shot just as they crossed the threshold, Esserman said from Rhode Island Hospital, where the police were gathering in droves in a show of respect for their injured colleagues.

Upwards of 40 percent of all land in the United States is already under some form of government control or ownership -- 800 million to 900 million acres out of America's total 2.2 billion acres. The government now appears poised to wield greater control over private property on a number of fronts. The battle over private property rights has intensified since 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Kelo v. City of New London case that the government could take property from one group of private landowners and give it to another. Outraged over that ruling and a series...

Fellow Citizens of the 3rd Congressional District of Virginia, My name is James Quigley and I am officially announcing my campaign for Congress as a Libertarian against the incumbent, Bobby Scott (Democrat), of the 3rd District of Virginia. Over the course of the last few years our country has become less of a Free Market Democratic Republic and more akin to a Corporatist Oligarchy while the wealth of the poor and middle classes have been transferred to the few and powerful. Although Mr. Scott has spoken publicly against such interests, his actions and legislation has done little to stop this...

The Government Is Monitoring Facebook And Twitter By Noel Sheppard Created 2009-12-14 11:59 "The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters." So ominously began an editorial [1] in Sunday's New York Times. Those with accounts at such websites should pay attention, for according to the Times, and other sources, Big Brother is watching you: The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of...

At a time when the White House is projecting the largest deficit in the nation's history, Uncle Sam is trying to recover billions of dollars in unpaid taxes from its own employees. Federal workers owe more than $3 billion in income taxes they failed to pay in 2008. According to Internal Revenue Service documents, 276,300 federal employees and retirees owe $3,042,200,000. The IRS tracks the voluntary compliance rate of federal employees and retirees each year, and each year feds come up short. The one bright spot in this year's report is that after several years of a steady increase, the...

Hat tip to Radley Balko for this one.Just when you thought you'd seen it all...no. To the ever-growing list of insults to human dignity we can now apparently add the musical categorization police. Jazzman Larry Ochs has seen many things during 40 years playing his saxophone around the world but, until this week, nobody had ever called the police on him.That changed on Monday night however, when's Spain's pistol-carrying Civil Guard police force descended on the Sigüenza Jazz festival to investigate allegations that Ochs's music was not, well, jazz. Let's put aside, for the moment, that what we call "jazz"...

-snip- Until 2008, Barbour had been stingy with the pardon. In 2006, I wrote a story for Reason magazine about Cory Maye, a black man in Jefferson Davis County, Miss., convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for shooting and killing a white cop during a botched drug raid. My reporting spawned an outpouring of support for Maye, including from gun rights and home defense advocates on the right, who were outraged over a death sentence for a man who by all appearances thought he was defending his home from apparent intruders. -snip- Over the last two years, as...

New Hampshire fired the first shot. Although 7 other states have similar pending resolutions and bills, Oklahoma is the first to actually pass one. Another 27 states are expected to make similar moves in the coming months. That’ll leave the country split 71-29. Now, before you get too excited, bear in mind that all of this was likely Obama’s goal. Boiled down, all of these state measures are threats of secession. Recall, if you will, Obama’s obsession to be the 21st Century Abraham Lincoln, and his ominous calls to recreate and rebuild America. Who was Lincoln? Why, he was...

Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) pointed out some rather astounding language in the Senate health care bill during floor remarks tonight. First, he noted that there are a number of changes to Senate rules in the bill--and it's supposed to take a 2/3 vote to change the rules. And then he pointed out that the Reid bill declares on page 1020 that the Independent Medical Advisory Board cannot be repealed by future Congresses:

This is a great video. It should be played where the politicians can hear it, loud and continuously. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc_-L4fyLUo

President Barack Hussein Obama is proceeding to destroy America and has opened up a six-front war to do so: 1. He has a Democratic controlled Congress that is willing to rubber-stamp his wildest schemes, without even reading them…as we’ve already seen. The Democratic Party is now aiding and abetting the demeaning and destruction of America and has become the voice of leftist extremism. The moderates have disappeared or been transformed, issuing only occasional squeaking and whining before following the liberal party line drawn by Mr. Obama. Where have all the Democratic moderates gone? 2. Mr. Obama has immense executive authority,...

...Anger and opposition to Washington's policies and edicts--no matter now egregious--hardly ever translate into anything beyond words of frustration. And Washington politicians don't pay much attention to rhetoric--not even their own. You see, the wizards in Washington and on Wall Street have us figured out. Along with their compatriots in the propaganda press corps, they know that no matter how loudly we scream, how much we protest, or how angry we become, the system is rigged to protect them. The best we the people can seem to come up with is "throwing the bums out" every two or four years....

Bill of Rights Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Amendment II A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Amendment III No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor...

Reporting from Phoenix - The day after the federal government told Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that he could no longer use his deputies to round up suspected illegal immigrants on the street, the combative Arizona sheriff did just that. He launched one of his notorious "sweeps," in which his officers descend on heavily Latino neighborhoods, arrest hundreds of people for violations as minor as a busted headlight and ask them whether they are in the country legally. "I wanted to show everybody it didn't make a difference," Arpaio said of the Obama administration's order. Arpaio calls himself "America's toughest...

John Stossel has broadcast the following email: It’s finally here – my new Fox Business show! Fox fittingly has titled it, Stossel. It premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. It will repeat Fridays at 10 p.m., where I’ll be up against my old program, 20/20. FBN has given me an opportunity to do 44 TV shows on what I am passionate about: economic liberty. For my first shows, at least, I will experiment with a studio audience. I’m inviting both friends, and people who will scream at me and tell me free markets are evil. If you are in the New...

Here is video of Rev. Franklin Graham talking to CNN's Campbell Brown about the War in Afghanistan and President Obama's speech in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Franklin Graham said "true Islam cannot be practiced in this country (America). You cannot beat your wife, you cannot murder your children if you think they commit adultery, as they do in these other countries." He pointed to Saudi Arabia as an example of a whole nation devoted to Islam that lives this way. Graham said wherever Islamic Sharia Law is practiced, this is how people are treated. Campbell Brown was disbelieving. Graham...

Congress -- and possibly Citigroup -- may be gearing up to start funding the organized crime syndicate ACORN again. The current federal funding ban expires Dec. 18. On Tuesday evening the House Appropriations Committee rejected on a party line vote of 9 to 5 an amendment offered by Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa) that would have blocked federal funding of the radical advocacy group. The amendment was needed because the Obama administration thumbed its nose at a provision in spending legislation that banned ACORN funding until the end of next week. In a ruling revealed late last month by the Justice...

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry........ The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

If there is one label more than any other that principled advocates of individual liberty are often stamped with it is that they are “extremists.” How can you be so extreme, it is said, what is wrong with a compromise between personal or economic freedom and some “reasonable” degree of government regulation, welfare legislation, and social intervention? The first response that should be given when confronted with such an accusation is to inquire, with what is the friend of liberty being asked to compromise? The real answer, of course, is that the friend of liberty is being asked to compromise...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, frustrated by the Justice Department's failure to explain the dismissal of charges against New Black Panther Party members who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during last year's elections, has subpoenaed the department demanding records showing how the case was handled. David P. Blackwood, the commission's general counsel, said Tuesday in a letter to the Justice Department that efforts since June to obtain an explanation had proceeded "without any success" and the "dearth of cooperation" had prompted the commission to issue subpoenas. "We are both mindful of the sensitivity of the subject matter involved and...

WASHINGTON – Officials tell The Associated Press that the Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people's health and must be regulated. The EPA will announced its findings at a news conference Monday. The announcement is timed to boost the Obama administration's arguments at an international climate conference — beginning this week — that the United States is taking actions to combat global warming, even though Congress has yet to act on climate legislation. Under a Supreme Court ruling, the so-called endangerment finding is needed before the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases released...