Free Republic

A Long Island woman’s insistence that she owns a BMW landed her in a psych ward at Harlem Hospital. The doctors believed she was delusional and suffering from bipolar disorder — but she was actually telling the truth, a lawsuit claims. Kam Brock’s frightening eight-day “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” ordeal at the mental facility included forced injections of powerful sedatives and demands she down doses of lithium, according to medical records obtained by PIX11 from her attorney. Brock said it all started at a traffic light in Harlem after she was pulled over by an officer for allegedly...

Drug Enforcement Administration agents have been accessing personal medical files without a warrant, generating a backlash from doctors and privacy advocates who say the practice is intrusive and unconstitutional -- and have taken the agency to court. “It’s just not right,” Texas attorney Terri Moore said. The controversial record searches are part of the government's effort to crack down on illegal “pill mills” and prescription drug abuse. But they've set up a clash over privacy rights, and a legal battle is now playing out in the 5th and 9th Circuit appeals courts. Lower courts have issued conflicting rulings to date,...

First, the GOOD news: Though still disturbing, the number of police officers killed each year has fallen back to mid-1960s levels. Most of THOSE lamentable 60s deaths were the result of actions by criminals suspects or really bad people during law enforcement efforts at apprehensions. Now, the BAD news: We are seeing something very, very different today. We are witnessing the random executions of cops by those who appear to have been animated by the unfortunate race-baiting and other efforts to disrupt our culture by certain members of the political class and the consequent break-down in the rule of law....

Second Amendment advocates are firing away at a decision by Honolulu officials to destroy $575,000 worth of perfectly good handguns in a move one critic called the “height of anti-gun stupidity.” Some 2,300 Smith & Wesson 9 mm handguns, including at least 200 that are brand-new and in unopened boxes, were issued to the city’s police department. But with the 2,200-member force upgrading to lighter and less expensive Glock 17s, the guns were set to be permanently holstered. While it is customary throughout the country for departments to auction the guns to law-abiding citizens, including the police who once carried...

While the US has had a surge in violence over the past several years, its defining feature was the generally chaotic and uncoordinated nature of each such - usually lethal - act. That changed over the weekend when the FBI announced three US citizens - Brian Cannon, 37, Terry Peace, 47, and Cory Williamson, 29, - were sentenced to 12 years in prison for "conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction in attacks against federal government agencies. The defendants planned to attack critical infrastructure while motivating militia groups in other states to rise up and join them in removing...

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr. There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry. Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats...

In a bid to position himself as the "Big Brother" candidate in juxtaposition to what he characterized as the "Angry Uncle" candidacy of Donald Trump, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush called for an end to "private encryption of any and every kind." "When private individuals encrypt their communications it makes it difficult, if not impossible, for government authorities to carry out their jobs," Bush complained. The source of the problem, according to Bush, is the resistance of communications companies to the idea of providing a covert "back door" by which government officials can discretely access an individual's phone and email...

Just three weeks after ISIS attacked a Muhammad cartoonist event in Garland, Texas, the FBI began circulating an intelligence bulletin that alerts state, federal and local law enforcement about the likelihood of attacks against Muslims by “militia extremists.” The bulletin, marked “sensitive” and not for distribution without FBI authorization, cites evidence gathered since 2013 that American militia groups are planning attacks on mosques, Islamic centers and possibly individual Muslims. The document is dated May 28, 2015, and was leaked to Public Intelligence, an online information site committed to exposing government secrets and data. Public Intelligence posted the document on its...

"security has to preside...and be pre-eminent" "if anyone wants to listen to my phone calls, it's fine" "I think we have to err on the side of security" "we don't love it, but we have probably not much of a choice" "it doesn't seem to be very popular, what [Rand Paul's] doing" "Most people seem to feel the way I do" "My best trait will be security"

The federal government has a plan to kill all cell-phone service in certain areas when officials decide it’s necessary. But you aren’t allowed to see the plan. And the fact that you cannot learn what might justify its use or who has the authority to push the kill button is the focus of a new case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Pulling the plug on local cellular service already has been done. In 2011, officials with the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco cut off service inside four transit stations for three hours after a BART security officer...

President Obama discussed initiatives he's put in place to change the tense dynamic between "many communities of color" and the police on the one year anniversary of teenager Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Mo. "I convened a task force on community policing to find commonsense steps that can help us drive down crime and build up trust and cooperation between communities and police, who put their lives on the line every single day to help keep us safe. And I've met personally with rank and file officers to hear their ideas," said Obama in his weekly address. Obama said that...

Federal authorities today arrested a former Madison County deputy for his role in the roadside arrest and brutal beating of a Tennessee handyman in August of 2012. Deputy Justin Watson, who quit the force in April, was the only one named in the federal indictment.

Citizen seems to notice a police officer driving around and around his neighborhood while he is working on his boat in his driveway. Police officer doesn't like being filmed by someone in his own yard and decides to stop and pull gun on him.

A California academic whose criticisms of science behind the nation’s most expensive diesel emissions rules has won a legal victory and effectively erased his termination. James Enstrom, an epidemiologist and researcher at UCLA for 35 years, learned last week he had won $140,000 and retains his ability to keep an office and use laboratory facilities on campus. He’ll also have the ability to gain an appointment to perform additional research. “It’s gratifying to get any kind of decision against the university,” Enstrom told Land Line Magazine by telephone Monday. “It’s really a brutal process. They go out of their way...

BALTIMORE – After 10 people were shot — seven of them in one incident — overnight in Baltimore following the city’s most violent month in decades, police announced Sunday that 10 federal agents will embed with the city’s homicide unit for the next two months. The special agents detailed to the city from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Secret Service represent a “flipping of the script of sorts,” Interim Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said. “That’s a bit unusual because local police departments —...

This week, the Republican-led House passed a bill, the “PASSPORT REVOCATION ACT,” to give President Barack Obama the power to revoke or deny passports to individuals who his administration SUSPECTS may be affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations. While the bill sounds sensible, in that preventing possible radicals from fleeing into the arms of the Islamic State group makes sense, it gives Obama the right to deprive Americans of their constitutional rights without a jury trial. The bill allows the government to effectively ROB you of your passport if it THINKS you are guilty, regardless of whether you are actually guilty....

When Obama spoke to BBC last week he stressed his frustration over not being able to secure more gun control and suggested that the guns outweigh terrorism as a threat to Americans’ safety. Obama’s exact words: “If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands.” In the lead up to this statement, Obama mentioned “mass killings” with guns but did not mention mass killings or attempted mass killings in which those holding the...

Now that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has forcefully terminated the John Doe investigations in Wisconsin, the targets of those probes can now speak openly of their experiences at the hands of politically motivated prosecutors. Some of those experiences began leaking out a few months ago, courtesy of David French and his mainly unnamed victims of the Government Accountability Board’s jeremiad against Scott Walker supporters. The court decision offers a few more description of the nighttime and dawn raids on homes and the prosecutors’ abuse of the rights of those targets, but now with the case at an end, the victims...

This was a video from a Facebook user who started recording a conversation between him and his friend and a Pinellas county (Florida) environmentalist saying bbq smoke out of your yard is illegal!

For years, the cities have been robbing the suburbs but they now have a scheme that will quickly end in a takeover of the suburbs by a leftist federal government. HUD announced enforcement of its new 377-page rule called the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule which will allow them to move people from poor crime-ridden areas into “wealthy” suburbs. It was announced by leftist Julian Castro Monday. The rule has force behind it. Federal monies will be withheld and lawsuits accusing residents of racism will be filed. Any town that takes federal funds will be transformed. It is not only...