Free Republic

The government shutdown is being felt close to home for some locals. They say they're being forced out of private homes on Lake Mead because they sit on federal land. Joyce Spencer is 77-years-old and her husband Ralph is 80. They've been spending most of their time in the family ice cream store since going home isn't an option. The Spencers never expected to be forced out of their Lake Mead home, which they've owned since the 70s, but on Thursday, a park ranger said they had 24 hours to get out. "I had to go to town today and...

The weapons-at-school hysteria generally peaks with a suspension. Not so for a high school student in Georgia who is facing felony charges because the contents of a tackle box in his car. 17-year-old Cody Chitwood was busted during a random sweep of the Lassiter High School parking lot by police and this student who has never been in trouble before now faces prosecution, large fines, prison time, and the loss of his plans to join the Air Force in the future due to a hysterical overreaction that has resulted in his arrest. Cody Chitwood, 17, is a senior at Lassiter...

Just months after he gave a speech earlier this year that challenged America’s leadership in President Obama’s presence, Dr. Ben Carson was targeted by IRS agents who requested to review his real estate holdings and then conducted a full audit without finding any wrongdoing. “I guess it could be a coincidence, but I never had been audited before and never really had any encounters with the IRS,” Dr. Carson said in an interview Thursday with The Washington Times. “But it certainly would make one suspicious because we know now the IRS has been used for political purposes and therefore actions...

A student at a high school in Anaheim Hills said administrators ordered her to change out of a T-shirt that promoted the National Rifle Association. Sophomore Haley Bullwinkle said when she wore her NRA shirt to Canyon High School last month, she landed in the principal’s office for violating the school’s dress code that forbids offensive, violent or divisive clothing. “They were treating me like I was a criminal,” she said. “I was not allowed to wear that at school because it promoted gun violence.” The shirt, which was a gift from Bullwinkle’s father when he became a card-carrying member...

The National Park Service has ordered the closure of a Virginia park that sits on federal land, even though the government provides no resources for its maintenance or operation. The Claude Moore Colonial Farm announced on Wednesday that NPS has ordered it to suspend operations until Congress agrees to a deal to fund the federal government. According to Anna Eberly, managing director of the farm, NPS sent law enforcement agents to the park on Tuesday evening to remove staff and volunteers from the property. “You do have to wonder about the wisdom of an organization that would use staff they...

A pretend game of cops and robbers landed a Florida elementary school boy with a very real suspension after he made a pretend gun with his thumb and index finger. The mother of 8-year-old Jordan Bennett said her son was only playing with his friend at Harmony Community School in St. Cloud. She fears his one-day suspension, which was handed down Friday, wrongly labels Jordan as a violent person. “There was nothing in his hand. He used his thumb and index finger,” Bonnie Bennett told WKMG-TV. “It was a game. He made no threatening advances or threats to harm anyone....

At an event in Birmingham, Ala. Monday night, former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson revealed that he had received a visit from the Internal Revenue Service following his much-noted remarks at a National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year. “I had my first encounter with the IRS this year, unsurprisingly after the prayer breakfast,” Carson told an audience that at the annual Business Council of Alabama Chairman’s Dinner, according to a report from Cliff Sims of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Yellowhammer News Carson’s February speech February made him a conservative darling for criticizing President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care reform law, while...

The National Security Agency has admitted that analysts have abused their authority to spy on love interests on several occasions. In response to a letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the NSA identified 12 incidents since 2003 in which analysts intentionally misused their intelligence gathering powers. In one case, an analyst spied on a foreign phone number she discovered in her husband's cellphone, suspecting that he had cheated on her. She intercepted phone calls involving her husband, investigators discovered. The analyst resigned before any disciplinary action could be taken. On one analyst's first day of access to the NSA system,...

A man in Crawford County, Mich., was arrested and charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon on Sunday after he called authorities about a trespassing suspect on his property, his wife tells TheBlaze. There are also serious allegations being made about officers demanding that video footage of the incident — taken by the man’s wife — be deleted. Thomas Donald, a military veteran, was reportedly out hunting with his 11-year-old son and armed with an “unloaded” single-shot .410-gauge shotgun (his son chose to use a crossbow instead) when he confronted a man riding a dirt bike on his 10...

(Credit: Heather Donald, YouTube) A military veteran in Crawford County, Michigan has been arrested and charged with a felony assault with a deadly weapon even after HE was the one who called the cops in the first place when he found a man trespassing on his property.When the man’s wife tried to video tape what was happening the cops told her to turn off the camera and tried to take it.  (You can see the video below… only because the wife figured out how to restore the “deleted” file)The Blaze has reported that Thomas Donald was out hunting with his...

Maine law allows police to arrest victims to make sure they testify http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/m...-they-testify/ CHELSEA, ME — A battered woman was arrested by police in an effort to force her to testify against her abuser. She was detained without charges, locked in a cage, and a bail was set. The startling practice of arresting the victim is actually legal in Maine, thanks to a seldom used statute. Jessica Ruiz, 35, was the alleged victim of domestic violence at the hands of 45-year-old Robert Robinson, Jr., in an April incident. On September 17, police arrested Ruiz to make sure she testified against...

I’ve always paid my taxes and have never been arrested or charged with any crime in my life. I am a successful small-business man. But in January of this year, I woke up to find that my business’ entire bank account — more than $35,000 — had been wrongly seized. Later that same day, I was writing checks to my vendors. A federal agent strolls in. She tells me my hard-earned cash was taken by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). I was shocked. I’ve broken no law, committed no crime and was never warned my store could be in trouble....

The Obama administration on Tuesday defended its effort to regulate the tax return preparation business for the first time in U.S. history, basing its case largely on a 19th century law dealing with horses lost or killed in the Civil War.

A suspended seventh-grade student in Virginia Beach, Va., could be expelled for the rest of the school year for shooting an airsoft gun with a friend in his yard as they waited for the bus to come. Khalid Caraballo, 12, and his friend, Aidan, were suspended for “possession, handling and use of a firearm” because they “shot two other friends who were with them while playing” with the airsoft guns, WAVY-TV reported. …Caraballo answered “no, sir,” when asked if he took the toy gun to the bus stop or to school. “We were in our yard. This had nothing to...

It's deja vu again: A Wisconsin woman visiting the 9/11 Memorial yesterday was arrested after a security guard screening her bag spotted a gun in the purse. Ursula Jerry, 41, had a .380-caliber semi-automatic Kel-Tec gun in her purse. The Wall Street Journal reports, "The weapon had two rounds in the magazine-none were in the chamber, the official said." Jerry also told cops, "I travel with this from home on Amtrak to New York City. I don’t mean harm to anyone." Jerry has a permit for the gun in Wisconsin, but not NYC. Responsible gun owners would know that New...

After the recent Firearms Freedom Act ruling, there will be no firearms freedom in America, at least if the the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has anything to say about it. It agreed with a lower court’s decision that if a gun is made in state, sold in state, that the federal power to regulate interstate commerce applies. Sadly, this is consistent with previous court rulings even though it’s not consistent with the original, legal meaning of “interstate commerce” under the constitution. A moderate law was passed in Montana that would prevent guns produced in the state from being...

The Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, but don’t try to pass out copies of it at Modesto Junior College in California. A student at the school who tried to pass out pocket-size pamphlets of the very document that memorializes our rights got shut down on Sept. 17 – a date also known as Constitution Day. Campus authorities told Robert Van Tuinen, who caught the whole thing on videotape, he could only pass out the free documents at a tiny designated spot on campus, and only then if he scheduled it several days in advance. ................. She explains that...

Daniel Webster famously observed that, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” We often see arguments over taxes framed as conflicts between the compassionate and the miserly. If you care about the poor, we are told, you will support higher taxes to provide them with better services. Any cautions about taxation are often dismissed as selfishness, stinginess or even greed. But who is really victimized when the power to tax is abused or mismanaged? The Washington Post recently ran a series of articles exposing years of extensive incompetence and abuse in the collection of property taxes which put...

Bristol CT --(Ammoland.com)- During a closed door meeting in the judge’s chambers during a case Judge Robert C. “Brunes” Brunetti exposed his bigotry for fundamental civil rights in front of at least three defense attorneys. The violation came during the case of State of Connecticut v. Bruce Worley, docket number H17B-CR13-0055722S.Judge Brunetti expressed his contempt for the right to keep and bear arms, as spelled out in both the Second Amendment to the US constitution and Article 1, Section 15 of the Connecticut Constitution by stating in chambers that “No one in this country should have guns” and that he...

IRS employees were “acutely” aware in 2010 that President Obama wanted to crack down on conservative organizations and were egged into targeting tea party groups by press reports mocking the emerging movement, according to an interim report being circulated Tuesday by House investigators.