Free Republic

Chicago is a dangerous town, but gun control hasn’t made it better. The city forbids the law-abiding from having guns, leaving the bad guys to rule the streets. The result is one of the highest murder rates in the country. President Obama’s plan isn’t to reverse from a failed course, but to apply federal gun registration and confiscation of certain weapons nationwide. Addressing students at Hyde Park Academy last week, Mr. Obama recalled the recent murder of Hadiya Pendleton, a teenager. “It’s not unique to Chicago,” he said. “It’s not unique to this country. Too many of our children are...

Former Illinois congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. pleaded guilty on Wednesday to federal conspiracy charges of using campaign funds to purchase personal and luxury items, bringing what’s likely a grim end to a fast-rising political career. Jackson was charged Friday with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and making false statements. He is accused by prosecutors of spending $750,000 in campaign funds for personal use. Prosecutors also say that Jackson failed to report $28,000 in gifts he received. In U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Jackson told Judge Robert Wilkins that he was guilty of the charges against...

Warning that we need to “get weapons of war and massive ammunition magazines off our streets,” in his State of the Union, Obama kept repeating congress must vote on the three types of gun bills he supports. The most obvious thing that was left out of the talk was that none of the laws now being proposed would have done anything to stop the various attacks that Obama cited as justifying the laws. Nor does the evidence show that the previous Assault Weapon Ban from 1994 to 2004 reduced crime. Were some of the killers mentally ill? Undoubtedly, “yes,” but...

Liberalism is on the run. The New York Times is selling everything that isn’t nailed down. It is trying to sell the liberal Boston Globe. It sold its papers in Florida. It sold its share of the Boston Red Sox. The Times is the voice of American liberalism. Its voice is turning into an old man’s croak. It stands on the street corner. “Paper, Mister? Buy a paper?” “Our plan to sell the New England Media Group demonstrates our commitment to concentrate our strategic focus and investment on The New York Times brand and its journalism,” said Mark Thompson, chief...

More than half of U.S. citizens believe that most or all of the country's 11 million illegal immigrants should be deported, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday that highlights the difficulties facing lawmakers trying to reform the U.S. immigration system. The online survey shows resistance to easing immigration laws despite the biggest push for reform in Congress since 2007. Thirty percent of those polled think that most illegal immigrants, with some exceptions, should be deported, while 23 percent believe all illegal immigrants should be deported. Only 5 percent believe all illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in...

It’s not hard to see why. For this story, CBS 21 researched what government programs are available to a single mother of two making $19,000 a year. What we found was incredible. Our family would be eligible for $14,976 in free day care, another $13,400 for Head Start and Early Head Start, $7,148 in housing vouchers, $6,500 for weatherization projects, $400 to pay heating bills, $480 a year for a cell phone, with an extra $230 for a land line, and $182 in free legal advice. The family would get more than $6,028 in food assistance and another $6,045 in...

Gun control may still be very much a topic for national conversation, and the prospects of some variety of gun control legislation may look better for anti-gun forces than they have in nearly 20 years, but a Justice Department internal memo from early in the year that just got leaked to the public may scuttle all of that. The memo comes from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a subgroup within the Justice Department, which defines itself this way: The National Institute of Justice — the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice — is dedicated...

PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY, Va. (WTVR) – The 25-year-old father who said he shot and killed two men who broke into his Prospect-area home Sunday morning told CBS 6 senior reporter Wayne Covil he did not know the men he killed. The man said he and his two-year-old son were sleeping when he heard a loud crash inside his home off Route 460 early Sunday morning. The man said he grabbed a handgun and left his room to investigate. Soon he found three men inside his home. The men exchanged gunfire that lasted less than a minute, the man said. One...

Each year, law enforcement agencies across Georgia seize millions of dollars in cash and property from individuals who have never even been charged, much less convicted of a crime. They keep it for their own use, and there’s little oversight of how they use it. That needs to change. Ideally, law enforcement should not be able to seize any cash or property from anyone who hasn’t been convicted of a crime, and they should have to go to court to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the property they want was connected to the crime that person...

Investigators called to 8975 Folsom Blvd. found a man dead inside a business, reportedly shot by a storekeeper while trying to rob the place. Update: Authorities have identified the alleged robber as 30-year-old Derick Hunter of Citrus Heights. -- A man shot dead at a Folsom Boulevard business near Rosemont was trying to rob the store, according to the storekeeper who reportedly shot him Sunday, sheriff's officials said. Investigators called to 8975 Folsom Blvd. about 3 p.m. found a man dead inside a business, reportedly shot by a storekeeper while trying to rob the place, said Sacramento County sheriff's Sgt....

Public health officials have launched a new, coordinated effort to contain a persistent outbreak of tuberculosis in downtown L.A.’s skid row, including searching for more than 4,500 people who may have been exposed to the disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have dispatched scientists to Los Angeles to help local health officials figure out why the disease is spreading and how to stop it. Nearly 80 tuberculosis cases have been identified and 11 people have died since 2007, most of them homeless people who live in and around skid row. Scientists have recently linked the outbreak to one...

How would you feel if you received a letter from the U.S. Government informing you that because of a physical or mental condition that the government says you have it is proposing to rule that you are incompetent to handle your own financial affairs? Suppose that letter also stated that the government is going to appoint a stranger to handle your affairs for you at your expense? That would certainly be scary enough but it gets worse. What if that letter also stated: “A determination of incompetency will prohibit you from purchasing, possessing, receiving, or transporting a firearm or ammunition....

Iran has now agreed to meet the P5+1 (the United Nations Security Council permanent members plus Germany) in Kazakhstan on February 25, which is a feather in the cap for President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Meanwhile, in Iran the continuing plunge of the riyal below 40,000 to the US dollar is exacerbating ferocious in-fighting between the faction of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the two conservative factions who repelled the president's power grab early last year. One of the key reasons for the collapse of the riyal is that vast amounts of riyals are being printed to finance Iran's energy subsidies, which now...

Gasoline expenditures in 2012 for the average U.S. household reached $2,912, or just under 4% of income before taxes, according to EIA estimates. This was the highest estimated percentage of household income spent on gasoline in nearly three decades, with the exception of 2008, when the average household spent a similar amount. Although overall gasoline consumption has decreased in recent years, a rise in average gasoline prices has led to higher overall household gasoline expenditures. However, these expenditures as a percentage of overall household income are still low when compared to the early 1980s, when the estimated portion of household...

Today, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) President Karen Ignagni issued a press release in support of bipartisan legislation (H.R. 1370, S.1880) co-sponsored by Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) and Jim Matheson (D-UT) to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health insurance tax. While much of the dialogue on healthcare reform centers on the federal mandate of health coverage for all Americans – which many conservatives call the largest tax increase in U.S history – less attention is being given to the massive sales tax increase on the purchase of health insurance also implicit within the legislation that will dramatically escalate costs...

Though Democrats denied it during the 2012 campaign, Obamacare cut Medicare by $716 billion in order to partially fund $1.9 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next ten years. A big chunk of those Medicare cuts came from the market-oriented Medicare Advantage program. Cleverly, the Obama administration postponed the Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election, so as to persuade seniors that everything would be just fine. But the election is over. On Friday, the administration announced that it would be significantly reducing funding for the popular program. Obama’s proposal, according to one analyst, “would turn almost every plan...

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke is calling proposals to seize firearms unconstitutional and warns of dire consequences if such plans are enacted. “This is about attacking the Second Amendment, it’s about going after the wrong crowd,”. Clarke blasted gun-control proposals triggered by presidential executive orders and said he would not enforce unconstitutional laws. “First of all, to me that would be an act of tyranny,”. ‘So the people in Milwaukee County do not have to worry about me enforcing some sort of order that goes out and collects everybody’s handgun, or rifles, or any kind of firearm and makes them...

The fight to force the federal beast back inside its constitutional cage is continuing in the Sooner State. On Tuesday, a bill focused on preventing the enforcement of ObamaCare mandates inside the sovereign borders of Oklahoma passed out of the House Public Health committee. By a vote of 7-3, the Public Health committee approved House Bill 1021, and it will now be considered by the House Calendar Committee. State Rep. Mike Ritze, a board-certified family practice physician and surgeon, is the author of the nullification bill. HB 1021 nullifies the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as “ObamaCare,”...

Until three months ago, when he dropped out of the race to become the Republican nominee for governor, Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling had to keep mum about his unhappiness with the GOP’s shift to the right. He couldn’t say, as he did in an interview here Tuesday, that he thought the Republicans had become so extreme that they were alienating voters and blocking the commonwealth’s progress. (snip) To say all that previously would have meant giving up any chance of beating Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a tea party favorite, for the nomination. As it happened, Cuccinelli and his allies...

Here’s something to think about for those who say that the only reason Republicans won a majority of House seats last November is favorable redistricting. I agree that Republicans did have a net advantage in redistricting in the 2010 Census cycle, but not an overwhelming one: Republican advantages in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania were offset to a significant extent by Democratic advantages in Arizona, California and Maryland. But there’s another factor that gives Republicans an advantage in equal-population districts: clustering. Democratic voters, particularly in the two Obama elections, tend to be clustered in black, Hispanic and gentry...

What if I told you police in your town could desensitize themselves to the idea of shooting a (armed) child, pregnant woman, or young mother, for just a couple of bucks? The "No More Hesitation" series from Law Enforcement Targets Inc. offers exactly that. For less than 99 cents per target, police can shoot at real-life images "designed to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training." Update: The marketing team at Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. sends along this helpful explanation for the "No More Hesitation" series: "The...

The attorney, the civil attorney Benjamin Crump, the Martin family hired to pursue financial justice against various interests in the Trayvon Martin shooting is now fighting to stop his deposition about the circumstances surrounding the very witness, “DeeDee” (W8) that he identified to create the arrest affidavit that frames the entire cause for financial justice, vis-a-vi arrest/trial, which lead to the civil claims he desires, and are contained in the probable cause affidavit. Talk about ridiculous circular logic. Subsequently, the attorney representing and attempting to hide Benjamin Crump, now argues the defense is not asserting any affirmations of contradictions between...

The Ohio man known to America as “Joe the Plumber” is raffling off an AR-15 rifle to protest discussion of a ban on assault weapons. “Despite what national news commentators say, the AR 15 is NOT an ‘assault weapon’ or ‘weapon of mass destruction,’” he wrote at JoeForAmerica.com. “In honor of this magnificent rifle, JoeForAmerica.com is giving away a new AR 15 to the lucky man or woman who wins this drawing.” Joe the Plumber, whose real name is Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher, sprang onto the national stage during the 2008 campaign when President Barack Obama and then-GOP presidential candidate John...

No fewer than 572 San Francisco city workers and executives made more than Gov. Jerry Brown last year. More than 1,500 city workers made more than state Attorney General Kamala Harris. And that's without overtime. "That's pretty staggering," said Tom Dalzell, head of the California Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets pay for state lawmakers. --SNIP-- The days when the headline-grabbing "$100,000 club" was made up of a handful of top managers and overtime earners are long gone. Last year, city controller's records show, roughly a quarter of the city's 36,000 full- and part-time workers made more than $100,000 - without...

Twice burned, Republicans are treading carefully around tea party groups as they pursue a Senate majority that slipped through their fingers in 2010 and 2012. "You'd have to be an idiot not to prepare" for primary election challenges from the right, no matter the state, says Rob Jesmer, who was executive director of the GOP Senate campaign committee when flawed, conservative candidates captured primaries, only to lose winnable races in the fall.

WASHINGTON -- I am indebted to Amity Shlaes for gently correcting a joke of mine that dates back to July 8, 1972. On that date in the New York Times, I joshed that President Calvin Coolidge "probably spent more time napping than any president in the nation's history" and therefore was a successful president. My joke was a play on an earlier joke by H. L. Mencken, and now Shlaes has corrected both of us. She has written a very impressive biography titled simply "Coolidge," wherein she never mentions Cal's naps but rather what made him the most successful president...

Add Bob Dole—former senator, former presidential candidate, grievously wounded in World War II—to the list of Republican heavy-hitters urging the Senate to confirm the embattled Chuck Hagel as defense secretary. “Hagel’s wisdom and courage make him uniquely qualified to be Secretary of Defense and lead the men and women of our armed forces,” Dole said in a statement released by the White House. “Chuck Hagel will be an exceptional leader at an important time.”

WASHINGTON -- A sharp jump in the cost of vegetables led wholesale prices to rise at a seasonally adjusted rate of 0.2% in January compared with the previous month, the biggest increase since the summer, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The Producer Price Index for finished goods. one of several gauges of inflation, had dropped for three straight months, including a 0.3% decline in December, before January's rise. The main driver of January's increase was a 0.7% jump in food prices. The costs of fresh and dry vegetables were up 39% from December, as cold weather in California and elsewhere...

The list in full (English): 1. It is possible to know the intention and the mission of the drone by using the Russianmade “sky grabber” device to infiltrate the drone’s waves and the frequencies. The device is available in the market for $2,595 and the one who operates it should be a computer know-how. 2. Using devices that broadcast frequencies or pack of frequencies to disconnect the contacts and confuse the frequencies used to control the drone. The Mujahideen have had successful experiments using the Russian-made “Racal.” 3. Spreading the reflective pieces of glass on a car or on the...

Modern Republican leaders, with the exception of the Reagan Administration, have been partners in the expansion of government, indeed in the growth of a government-based “ruling class.” They have relished that role despite their voters. Thus these leaders gradually solidified their choice to no longer represent what had been their constituency, but to openly adopt the identity of junior partners in that ruling class. Republican leaders neither parry the insults nor vilify their Democratic counterparts in comparable terms because they do not want to beat the ruling class, but to join it in solving the nation’s problems.... (excerpt)

In a blatantly partisan move, the staff of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) successfully subverted state law to facilitate online voter registration in North Carolina by the 2012 Barack Obama campaign. In doing so they coordinated with partisans behind closed doors, lied about the NC Attorney General’s Office concurring with the SBE staff on the issue, and dodged oversight by their own board and the legislature. The end result was to add thousands of people to the North Carolina voter rolls illegally. The SBE staff’s audacity is so breath-taking that it’s hard to believe, so let us...

We’re hearing from the family of a man whose home is at the center of a scary late-night encounter with a total stranger. Police say a man was so intoxicated he thought he was trying to get into his home, which is actually a block away. But the elderly homeowner thought he was a burglar, so he fired a warning shot through his front door. It happened around 1 a.m. Saturday off West Platte Ave in Colorado Springs. A drunken man mistook the house for his. Knocking on the door turned into pounding, then running charges as he tried to...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, but still remained at levels consistent with a steady improvement in labor market conditions. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 362,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's claims figure was revised to show 1,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-time applications to rise to 355,000. The increase in claims last week pushed them toward the upper end of their range for this year.

RINO-hunting, the long-popular political sport that morphed in 2008 into a sort of hysteria-driven obsession, lately has become a suicide mission. RINO, of course, refers to Republicans In Name Only and is the pejorative term used against those who fail to march in lockstep with the so-called conservative base. I used “so-called” because, though the hard-right faction of the party tends to be viewed as The Base, this isn’t necessarily so. My guess is there are now more RINOs than those who, though evangelical in their zeal, are poison to their party’s ability to win national elections. Yet, as always,...

JEFFERSON TWP, Ohio (WDTN) - A business owner shoots an intruder in Jefferson Township after a breaking and entering. Matthew Dale Foster was booked into Montgomery County Jail Saturday morning on breaking and entering, he has not been formally charged. Deputies responded to the 6000-block of Dayton-LIberty Rd. early Saturday morning on reports of a breaking and entering in progress. The owner had a suspect at gunpoint while officers made their way to the location. When law enforcement arrived, they discovered the suspect had been shot.

New Britain residents complained to city leaders that plows clearing snow throughout the night during Blizzard Charlotte kept them awake. During the storm, plows, dump trucks and payloaders worked almost nonstop for days until the city was cleared of snow. However, that noise did not sit well with residents, who heard it at 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. "That's a little rough," said Al Pienkowski of New Britain. A city council member said he's looking into the current noise ordinance after getting a complaint from a resident the Monday after Blizzard Charlotte hit. She told the council member that for...

Alec Baldwin’s latest squabble with the media may have him in some serious hot water. An NYPD rep told FOX 411 the 54-year-old actor is being investigated following an altercation he allegedly got into with a New York Post photographer. “Our hate crimes task force is reviewing the case,” the rep said. -snip- The duo said they encountered an angry Baldwin who told Palmeri “I want you to choke to death” and fired a racial slur at Miller, who is African American. Miller, who is a retired NYPD detective, told police the actor called him a “coon,” a “drug dealer”...

The mainstream media marches in lockstep with the White House in an attempt to convince the public that good people must give up some of the most effective defensive firearms they can have to protect themselves and their families, because bad people have misused them. A Fox Channel regular noted last month that CNN has become pretty much a 24/7 telethon for “gun control.” Everyone knows that the twisted Adam Lanza was the one who murdered twenty little kids and six helpless adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, yet few in our society can name Dawn Hochsprung, the courageous principal...

President Obama has returned to Washington, from his solo vacation. He finally talked with the press on the ride back. Via the pool report: AF1 wheels down Andrews at 7:45pm. POTUS came back to have a 10-minute off the record talk with pool at the end of the flight. Reggie Love departed AF1 soon after POTUS, apparently a guest for the weekend. Marine One wheels up 7:55 pm

TOWSON, Md. (WJZ) — A local doctor took his own life while facing allegations he took pictures and videotaped his patients without their knowledge. Police searching his home say they found an extraordinary amount of evidence. Meghan McCorkell spoke with a patient who’s worried she’s a victim, too. Baltimore City police say they’ve contacted some of the victims but say the numbers coming forward could be huge. Police say Dr. Nikita Levy–a former OB/GYN at Johns Hopkins–took his own life inside his Towson home. It’s the same house where Baltimore City police served a search warrant. Inside they say they found...

Following Pope Benedict's surprise resignation earlier this month, it didn't take long for conspiracy theories to come out of the woodwork. To a certain extent, this is expected — a Pope hasn't resigned in centuries, and certain aspects of Benedict's time at the top of the Vatican have been controversial — not least the damaging 'VatiLeaks' scandal. Today, Italy's La Repubblica newspaper added fuel to the fire, alleging that Benedict's resignation was prompted by a report prepared by three Cardinals on conflict and corruption in the Vatican — including what it says is the "inappropriate influence" of a gay lobby...

The Real Danger Of The Fed's Easy Monetary Is Not The Risk Of Hyperinflation Comstock PartnersFebruary 21, 2013, 2:56 PMThe Fed's current attempt to control long term rates, "QE to infinity", is based on the hope that by providing cheap money, banking and financial firms will lend and thereby stimulate the economy. This would be a sound plan if the problem with the US economy was a shortage of credit. With corporations holding back cash and depending on productivity gains to drive earnings, the typical recovery scenario where the private sector borrows money for investment and drives job growth and...

JUNEAU, Alaska - A controversial bill that would criminalize federal gun regulation in Alaska is on track to be scheduled for a vote.

States across the country are trying to protect gun ownership from the long arm of Washington by proposing bills declaring that firearms made and kept within their borders are not subject to federal restrictions. Nine states have proposed such legislation since President Obama and fellow Democrats in the Senate began trying to tighten federal gun laws in the wake of several mass shootings that occurred within months of each other. “There’s a lot of momentum,” Montana activist Gary Marbut told FoxNews.com on Monday. Marbut was behind the original Firearms Freedom Act, which says the Commerce Clause allowing Congress to regulate...

Senior U.S. administration officials held secret talks in North Korea on at least three occasions in 2011 and 2012, The Asahi Shimbun has learned. Although the visits had potential implications for Japan, Washington did not inform its security partner at the time and only informally confirmed one of them when the Japanese side pressed, government and other sources in Japan, South Korea and the United States said. The U.S. State Department even warned the Foreign Ministry against making further inquiries, saying they would harm bilateral relations, the sources said. U.S. military planes flew from an air base in Guam to...

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel declined to sign a letter circulated by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2007 calling upon then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to press Arab allies of the U.S. to recognize Israel’s right to exist “and not use such recognition as a bargaining chip for future Israeli concessions.” Seventy-nine Senators eventually signed the letter, which was sponsored by Schumer and by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

A homeowner fatally shot a man as he climbed through a window and into his home Monday afternoon, Dallas police say. The shooting took place at a home on the 2200 block of Morrell Avenue at about 4:15 p.m. Police said the homeowner heard a noise inside his residence and shot a man, later identified as 33-year-old Deyfon Pipkins, aka BJ, as he climbed through the window. "The homeowner heard a noise. He came around the corner, saw the individual trying to climb into the window and according to the law, the castle doctrine, he used deadly force," said Sgt....

On Thursday, NFL quarterback Tim Tebow canceled his appearance to speak at First Baptist Church of Dallas next month after Tebow came under pressure from the sports media to do so.

The same hackers that hit Facebook’s computers on Friday infected the computers of some Apple employees, the company acknowledged Tuesday. The incident, the widest known cyberattack against Apple-made computers to date, occurred when the Apple employees browsed to a special website that had been infected with malware custom-written for the Macintosh platform, Reuters reported.

The U.S. Air Force is developing tiny unmanned drones that will fly in swarms, hover like bees, crawl like spiders and even sneak up on unsuspecting targets and execute them with lethal precision. The Air Vehicles Directorate, a research arm of the Air Force, has released a computer-animated video outlining the the future capabilities of Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). The project promises to revolutionize war by down-sizing the combatants.