Free Republic

Prepare to be outraged.....Shocking Surveillance Video Captures Cop Brutally Beating Female Shoplifter In Front Of Her 1 Yr Old Child in Iowa. I worked in corporate loss prevention a long time ago...let me tell you...this is beyond lawsuit...these cops should be in prison. Video: http://www.ktrh.com/pages/michaelberry.html?article=11556885

<p>The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.</p>

The email service reportedly used by surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden abruptly shut down on Thursday after its owner cryptically announced his refusal to become "complicit in crimes against the American people."Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply with government surveillance."I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or...

The discussion that will take place next year in the Utah Legislature over law enforcement raid-style search warrants is a necessary topic to debate. Certainly, the use of a battering rams to combat minor offenses is something that should not occur. A libertarian group, the Libertas Institute, and others, including the American Civil Liberties Institute, will lobby for limits on police use of force during search warrants for minor crimes. When this discussion occurs, it must focus on the safety aspects — to police and suspects — that these raids provide. These raids, as conducted now, are too dangerous. One...

In his first interview since his supervised release from prison, the filmmaker behind “Innocence of Muslims” told The Daily Caller that he “has no regrets” and promises more films and books about Islam. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is the only person who has been imprisoned in the aftermath of the organized Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which the ambassador and three other Americans were killed. He was wholly unconnected to the attack and was imprisoned on technical probation violations. “The first reason I am writing this book is to tell the world we...

Cleveland police officials said Friday they're disciplining 75 of officers for their involvement in a police chase that ended in the shooting deaths of an unarmed man and woman, The Plain Dealer reports. The pair were shot at 137 times while in their car, parked in a middle school parking lot. No officers were injured in what police called a "full blown-out" firefight. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine told reporters in February that "there is nothing normal about this case. ... This is a tragedy." In November, about 60 police vehicles pursued the two suspects in a 25-minute chase spanning...

Surveillance Society: The government says spying on U.S. citizens is acceptable since it's merely a means of fighting foreign terrorists. But what if the government used espionage in investigations of common criminals? The program is so sneaky that officials are trying to cover it up. "Law enforcement agents," says Reuters, "have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin — not only from defense lawyers, but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges." Criminal investigations should be launched, and suspects deprived of liberty, only "when there's a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent...

The bad news is that governments do a lot of things they shouldn’t do. The good news is that I never run out of material.I’ve even created some sub-categories, such as my U.S. vs U.K. government stupidity contest and my great-moments-in-local-government series.But I never thought I would have a special category about bureaucrats vs. Bambi.1. Bureaucrats in Virginia filed three misdemeanor charges against a man for the horrible crime of rescuing a deer that was hit by a car.2. Bureaucrats in Maryland fined two men $90 each for not having life jackets when they had the gall to rescue a...

Illinois State Police have launched an investigation into why police in Park Forest shot a 95-year-old man with a bean bag round, leading to the man’s death. WBBM Newsradio’s John Waelti reports World War II veteran John Wrana met his demise at the hands of Park Forest police officers last week, after allegedly threatening nursing home staff and paramedics with a cane, butcher knife, and shoehorn at the Victory Centre assisted living center. But Wrana family attorney Nicholas Grapsas denied Wrana ever wielded a knife, and questioned why police needed to use force on an elderly man, when the staff...

The Fourth Amendment protects us from random invasions of our homes by police, right? We know we're secure in our "persons, houses, papers, and effects" unless the cops demonstrate probable cause to a judge and get a warrant. Except... Except when they don't. The fact of the matter is that police have a lot of leeway to bust your door down and take a look around if they fear that waiting for a warrant could lead to loss of evidence or danger to people. Or lead to something, anyway. That end run around the Fourth Amendment is called "exigent circumstances,"...

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency’s dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say. -SNIP- “The other agencies feel they should be bigger players,” said Mr. Edgar, who heard many of the disputes before leaving government this year to become a visiting fellow at Brown University. “They view the N.S.A. — incorrectly, I think — as this big pot of data that they could go get if they were just able to pry it out of...

RUTLAND — Joshua Severance says his Second Amendment rights to openly carry a firearm were violated, but Rutland police say they were following the law when they handcuffed and briefly detained the Milton man this week. In a case that appears destined to end in a courtroom, Severance, 26, says he was walking down a residential Rutland street Monday afternoon with his shirt off and his 9mm Beretta semiautomatic handgun holstered on his hip when a city police cruiser stopped in front of him and an officer ordered him to place his hands on the hood. “I figured they wanted...

Until Wednesday morning, you'd probably never heard of something called "XKeyscore," a program that the National Security Agency itself describes as its "widest reaching" means of gathering data from across the Internet. According to reports shared by NSA leaker Edward Snowden with the Guardian, is that in addition to all of the other recent revelations about the NSA's surveillance programs, by using XKeyscore, "analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the Internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used." David Brown, who co-authored the recent book "Deep State: Inside the...

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American...

The U.S. Department of Justice has revealed in a court filing it agrees with the philosophy of the German government that bureaucrats can punish homeschooling parents. The agency contended parental rights to keep children free from instruction that violates faith essentially are negligible when the government’s goal is an “open society.” The arguments were made in a pleading before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that urges the judges to send a German homeschooling family, the Romeikes, back to Germany where members likely would face persecution. “The goal in Germany is for an ‘open, pluralistic society,’” wrote the government’s...

The Justice Department has agreed to pay $4.1 million to a California college student left in a Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell last year, according to two people familiar with the case. Daniel Chong was detained in an April 2012 drug raid in San Diego and left in a windowless holding cell for four days without food or water. He says he drank his own urine to stay alive. The people familiar with the case spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the settlement before it is officially announced. His attorney filed a $20 million claim against the government...

It’s been a rough couple of days for any freedom loving American. Two big stories broke in relation to the NSA scandal and neither bodes well for the future of privacy in this country. Yesterday’s big story came from CNET. That is significant in and of itself because CNET is not exactly what you would call a site for political news junkies. CNET is more for the computer savvy techies. They are reporting that the feds are applying intense pressure to gather passwords. CNET reports: The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users’ stored passwords, according to...

A young man was exercising his Second Amendment and Wisconsin Constitutional rights in Wisconsin when he was stopped by police, questioned and arrested for Obstruction of Justice and Disorderly Conduct.  Police allege that initial reports of Mr. Hoffman placed him within 1,000 feet of a school.  It is not clear if Mr. Hoffman was within a 1,000 feet of a school when he was accosted. At opencarry.org, MKEgal has written some cogent comments: 3) Since the WI Supreme Court has ruled that it is NOT obstruction to refuse to give your name, or to remain silent, that charge is bogus...

A new Cook County Sheriff’s team is crisscrossing the suburbs to seize guns from thousands of people whose Firearm Owner’s Identification Cards have been revoked. More than 3,000 people in Cook County have failed to surrender their revoked FOID cards to the state. Sheriff Tom Dart said he thinks many of them continue to possess firearms.

Full title: "Bank Breaks Into Ohio Woman’s Home, Repossesses Her Belongings – But That’s Not the Most Shocking Part of the Story"Having your belongings repossessed by a bank is an awful experience, but it’s probably a lot worse when it’s done by accident. That’s what one central Ohio woman claims happened to her. “Katie Barnett says that the First National Bank in Wellston foreclosed on her house, even though it was not her bank,” 10TV.com reports. “They repossessed my house on accident, thinking it was the house across the street,” Barnett explained. Barnett added that she was away when the...

Confiscation? What are you talking about? We would never….. Posted on July 22, 2013 by Miguel Part of a letter from the friendly folks at NYPD, Licensing Division to NY City Gun Owners: See? If you surrender your weapon (under threat of coming down on your sorry ass with all the power that the City of NY and Mayor Bloomberg can exercise) , it cannot be confiscation! Now, who are you gonna believe? Us or them paranoid rednecks from the NRA? Related Article on Gun Watch: Gun Registration is Gun Confiscation 

Wyoming --(Ammoland.com)- The war on freedom is hitting much closer to home, Platte County Wyoming to be exact. Like you, I am outraged at the actions of President Obama, Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein’s attempt to repeal the Second Amendment. And just as in Washington D.C. — the control freaks are at work right here in Wyoming. Remember during the last session when WY state “educators” stormed the capitol in Cheyenne — demanding that our pro-gun legislation was killed in committee?Well now they are scheming at the “local” level to rob you and me of our God-given rights.The Platte County...

After reporting that she'd been raped to Dubai police, a 25-year-old Norwegian woman who was on a business trip to the United Arab Emirates city found herself being jailed on "suspicion of having sex outside of marriage." Following the report of her rape to police, the 25-year-old had her passport and personal possessions seized and was immediately placed in a jail cell. It took three days before she was able to gain access to a phone and contact her family to let them know what had happened to her. ... the 25-year-old was given a sentence of 16 months

It may turn out that within the IRS abuse of Tea Party, conservative, Jewish and other groups was another layer of abuse: women. Catherine Engelbrecht so far has the most harrowing story to tell, of abuse by multiple executive branch agencies after she founded the grassroots election security watchdog True the Vote. Now former Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is naming names, saying that her tax information was compromised the very day she announced her Senate candidacy. That same day, the IRS slapped a lien on a house that it believed she owned, only to withdraw that lien when...

Rochester, N.Y. -- She says she had no warning that someone was going to search her car after she left to catch her flight. So the woman contacted News10NBC. We found out it happened to her because she valet parked her car. Those are the only cars that get inspected. So if security feels it is necessary to search some cars in the name of safety, why not search all of them? Laurie Iacuzza walked to her waiting car at the Greater Rochester International Airport after returning from a trip and that's when she found it -- a notice saying...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Chances are, your local or state police departments have photographs of your car in their files, noting where you were driving on a particular day, even if you never did anything wrong. Using automated scanners, law enforcement agencies across the country have amassed millions of digital records on the location and movement of every vehicle with a license plate, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings, the scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, uploading that information into police databases....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department says it is looking into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin to determine whether federal prosecutors should file criminal civil rights charges now that George Zimmerman has been acquitted in the state case.

Ron Kelly, a 20-year Army veteran, recently tried to buy a .22-caliber rifle at the Wal-Mart in Tomball, Texas. He was turned away because he failed the FBI background check. He appealed the rejection, and last month he got a Justice Department letter explaining that he was legally disqualified from owning guns, after handling them in defense of his country for two decades, because of a 42-year-old marijuana conviction. As a high school student in Durham, North Carolina, he had been caught with a small amount of pot and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession, receiving a sentence of probation because...

As expected, the Judge in the George Zimmerman case ruled that in addition to Second Degree Murder, she will instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of Manslaughter, as required by Florida case law. In a surprise move this morning, the prosecution asked the Judge to drop the Aggravated Assault charge and to instruct the jury on Third Degree Murder, which is murder in the course of committing a felony. The felony the State wanted as the predicate was Aggravated Child Abuse (Jury Instruction) because Trayvon Martin was 17 at the time of the shooting. According to Don West,...

Watching Fox News Channel coverage of Zimmerman trial. Judge has just sprung another surprise against Zimmerman, saying jury can consider Martin's death as child abuse so jury can convict based upon that, too, and perhaps convict him of voluntary manslaughter. This trial is a travesty.

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become ALMOST A PARALLEL SUPREME COURT, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

Bias: Evidence revealed so far in the Trayvon Martin murder trial shatters the media narrative that shooter George Zimmerman acted as a rabid racist hunting down an angelic black boy. For a full week last year after the tragedy, NBC "Nightly News" and "Today" ran audio tape of Zimmerman allegedly telling a 911 dispatcher, "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." To an audience that didn't know better, that was damning evidence — a seemingly open-and-shut case of racial profiling. Only, it was a frame-up. NBC producers doctored the recording to portray Zimmerman as a...

A Christian street preacher has been arrested and questioned about his beliefs after saying that he thinks homosexuality is a “sin”.Tony Miano, 49, a former senior police officer from the US, was held for around six hours, had his fingerprints and DNA taken and was questioned about his faith, after delivering a sermon about “sexual immorality” on a London street. Mr Miano, who served as a Deputy Sherriff in Los Angeles County, said his experience suggested that the term “thought police” had become a reality in the UK. He said he was amazed that it was now possible “in the...

A family is suing the city of Henderson, Nevada for violating their Third Amendment rights — the constitutional prohibition against quartering soldiers in a private home during peacetime without the owner’s consent. The Mitchell family says that’s essentially what happened when Henderson police allegedly arrested them for refusing to let officers use their homes for a “tactical advantage” in a domestic violence investigation into a neighbor, according to an official complaint. Police officers contacted Anthony Mitchell on July 10, 2011, with a request to use his house as a lookout while investigating his neighbor. When Mitchell told police that he...

Video: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9e3_1373034153

A Louisiana lawman is livid over the federal government’s decision to cut off funds for two programs to help troubled young people -- all, he says, because he refused to sign a pledge to bar prayer or any mention of God at their meetings. Julian Whittington, the sheriff of Bossier Parish, Louisiana, told Fox News that the Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights de-funded $30,000 for their Young Marines chapter as well as a youth diversion program. Federal officials objected to a voluntary student-led prayer in the department’s youth diversion program and an oath recited by the Young Marines...

Full title: Prosecution attempts to silence Jared Marcum with gag order; reporter covering story threatened with arrest WOWK has been the only news outlet following every new development in the case of Jared Marcum, the Logan County, West Virginia student who was suspended, arrested and is now facing an obstruction charge after refusing to change his NRA shirt at school. On Monday morning, June 24, Jared's case took yet another turn. Nearly two weeks before Jared, the 14-year-old at the center of the "T-Shirt Control Controversy", was scheduled to be back in court, he found himself inside of the Logan...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Taking climate change efforts into his own hands, President Barack Obama is proposing sweeping steps to limit heat-trapping pollution from coal-fired power plants and to boost renewable energy production on federal property. Obama, in a speech Tuesday at Georgetown University, was to announce he's issuing a presidential memorandum to launch the first-ever federal regulations on carbon dioxide emitted by existing power plants, moving to curb the gases blamed for global warming despite adamant opposition from Republicans and some energy producers.

The IRS has hypocritically ignored the Constitution, having targeted groups whose names included what America once stood for: patriotism, freedom, and the Constitution. This will be emphasized on June 20, when Judicial Watch, the people's watchdog over the government, holds a public panel discussion with some of those who were victimized. American Thinker interviewed Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch's president, and some of those who were harassed and abused by the IRS. Fitton is not surprised by the Obama administration's actions and regards them as a continual Democratic tactic. He told American Thinker how, during the entire Clinton presidency, his group...

The immigration bill the Senate began debating this month will create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the US.The immigration bill will create a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country. Mother Jones reported: Pointing to a section of the bill that mandates a CIS “photo tool” database to enhance E-Verify checks (PDF), Wired last month ominously warned that it “would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the US” through the collection of state-issued photo IDs....

<p>George Orwell was right. He was just 30 years early.</p> <p>In its April cover story, Wired has an exclusive report on the NSA's Utah Data Center, which is a must read for anyone who believes any privacy is still a possibility in the United States: "A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks.... Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.�... The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013." In other words, in just over 1 year, virtually anything one communicates through any traceable medium, or any record of one's existence in the electronic medium, which these days is everything, will unofficially be property of the US government to deal with as it sees fit.</p>

In April 8th grade student Jared Marcum was SUSPENDED and ARRESTED for wearing a NRA T-shirt to school. Local law enforcement officials confirmed Jared Marcum was arrested over the T-shirt. It was offensive. WOWK 13 Charleston, Huntington WV News, Weather, Sports Now it looks like Jared could face up to a year in jail. Guns Save Lives reported: According to a report by WTRF the prosecuting attorney is moving forward with that charge and a judge is allowing the case to move forward. Fourteen year old Jared Marcum could face up to a $500 fine and up to a year...

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that." If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney who serves on the House...

PELL CITY, Alabama -- St. Clair and Bibb county authorities are confirming there were roadblocks at several locations in their counties Friday and Saturday asking for blood and DNA samples. However, the samples were voluntary and motorists were paid for them as part of a study, they said. According to Lt. Freddie Turrentine of the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department, it isn't the first time such roadblocks have occurred in the area. "They were here in 2007," said Turrentine, the supervisor in charge of the roadblocks, which took place in several locations in St. Clair County Friday night, early Saturday...

Submitted by Brannon LeBouefExecutive Summary: Yes, some guns were confiscated in New Orleans, LA (NOLA) following hurricane Katrina, but it was nowhere near as widespread as some would have you believe. They were isolated incidents and the majority of those were done by out of town LEO and MIL.What you are about to read are my personal experiences and recollection of events as I saw them. While not all-inclusive, I think they lend a fiar account of what really happened on the ground. Realities:While it has been nearly 8 years since the events of Hurricane Katrina, which in my opinion...

This week brought more bad news for Joshua Welch, the Baltimore-area second-grader who was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a breakfast pastry into something resembling a gun. School officials have denied an appeal to have the suspension expunged from the boy’s permanent record, reports The Baltimore Sun. Robin Ficker, the attorney representing Welch and his family, said he will now take the matter to the Anne Arundel County school board. Under local regulations, he has 30 days to do so. “If this school can’t educate a seven-year-old without putting him out of school, how are...

Anger was mounting in Congress on Tuesday night as politicians, briefed for the first time after revelations about the government's surveillance dragnet, vowed to rein in a system that one said amounted to "spying on Americans". Intelligence chiefs and FBI officials had hoped that the closed-door briefing with a full meeting of the House of Representatives would help reassure members about the widespread collection of US phone records revealed by the Guardian. But senior figures from both parties emerged from the meeting alarmed at the extent of a surveillance program that many claimed never to have heard of until whistleblower...

After you read this- you will wonder what country we are in. Tom Francois is an outspoken critic of Barack Hussein Obama- and has a robust Twitter presence. He also likes to dabble with his "paint" program to create funny cartoons. He has never threatened the President in any way, manner or form. On April 11, 2013, he heard relentless pounding on his door shouts of "Police!" The officers introduced themselves as members of The Secret Service and asked if they could "take a look around." Since Tom had nothing to hide (and he didn't want any return visits) -...

The family of the 7-year-old boy from Ann Arundel County elementary school who was suspended for making a gun shape out of a pastry has tried to clear the boy’s record. This story made headlines across the country as the gun control debate has taken center stage among many elementary schools as some school administrators flex their muscles with a “zero tolerance policy” that excuses itself from common sense. But according to the Baltimore Sun school officials denied the boy’s family’s appeal on Monday, not allowing the boy’s record to be expunged of the incident. Robin Ficker, attorney for Park...

BOULDER, Colo. - Boulder police say they have a right to enter unsecured homes if residents leave an open door. Boulder police Sgt. Michael Everett tells the Boulder Daily Camera entering unsecured residences is a standard procedure for most law enforcement agencies, including Boulder police. He says the practice is not likely to stop. Chrissy Smiley called police to complain after she returned to her south Boulder condominium after walking her dogs Thursday and found a card from a Boulder police officer sitting on her dining room table letting her know he had been there. Boulder police officials told The...