Free Republic

A Guatemalan man who has been deported four times is charged with three counts of "transporting an alien for financial gain" by a federal grand jury. Rolando Gomez-Gomez was also charged with one count of "reentry of a previously removed alien." Gomez-Gomez was arrested in Summit County on Tuesday after a traffic stop by a Summit County Deputy Sheriff who is also a task force officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations. The deputy asked Gomez-Gomez, who was driving a van, for his license. The deputy says Gomez-Gomez gave him a fraudulent Guatemalan driver's license. During...

Reading about all the young ignorant, uneducated, “millennials” who proudly label themselves “socialists” or “social justice warriors” (same thing) reminded me of a question posed by my old friend Professor Walter E. Williams in a speech he gave at my university several years ago. The question is: What would you call a system that used force, violence, coercion, and intimidation to compel one person to work for the benefit of another person or persons? Whenever I ask this of one of my undergraduate classes it usually takes about five seconds for someone to blurt out, “slavery!” Exactly. The class then...

President Donald Trump has signed into law the Frederick Douglass Act, a bill authorizing $430 million to combat human trafficking. The measure, which was introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), is designed to boost government efforts to prevent sex and labor trafficking and protect victims both nationally and internationally... The release also included a statement from Kenneth B. Morris Jr., the great-great-great-grandson of Douglass. "If my great ancestor were here today, I believe he would be driven to lead the struggle against contemporary forms of slavery," Morris stated.

The Trump Administration has told California and seven other states that they cannot offer unemployment benefits to federal workers who aren’t getting a paycheck. Gov. Gavin Newsom last week encouraged thousands of California workers furloughed due to the federal government shutdown to apply for unemployment insurance, vowing that “we’ll cover you – we have your back.” But Wednesday, the California Employment Development Department was among those sent a memo from the Department of Labor which states that federal employees who are working without pay “are not unemployed and are, therefore, not eligible for UCFE” (Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees). Newsom...

The bloodiest war that the United States ever fought did not take place on a foreign battlefield, but raged on American soil, as brother took up arms against brother over the issue of slavery. The war began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861, and ended in the Spring of 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. The modest brick structure standing forlornly in a field in central Virginia belies the magnitude of the human tragedy, with an estimated 620,000 killed – almost as many as...

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md) used the deferral of paychecks for federal employees due to Congress’ failure to approve the appropriation of funds to cover this expense as an inspiration to liken Trump to a pre-Civil War slave driver. “Back in 1860 millions of people were forced to work without being paid,” Hoyer observed. “We called that slavery. Now, with President Trump refusing to compromise by accepting our Party’s refusal to budge an inch on his request for $5 billion to fund border security as a precondition for Democrats to approve funds for ending the government shutdown, federal employees...

Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif), chairperson of the 55-member Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the most numerous in our nation’s history, has set the Caucus’ sights on “reversing the trauma inflicted on people of color by the Trump Administration over the past two years. We will use our tremendous power and influence to undo Trump’s evil plan to force millions of voters off of welfare and into the labor economy.” “The notion that a job is the answer to curing poverty and improving one’s life is a myth,” Bass contended. “Curing poverty has been the task of government since the 1960s’ Great...

My New Year’s wish for the coming year is for more of my fellow Americans and others to learn some basic history and try to get a grip on reality. Someone who writes for The New York Times under the name of Michelle Alexander wrote a column published last week, “Who Deserves Citizenship?” One of her choice sentences: “But for slavery, genocide, and colonization, we would not be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world — in fact, our nation would not even exist.” Hmm. Both North and South America were colonized by European countries that practiced slavery, and...

WASHINGTON – Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) told PJM that the federal government should conduct a study of reparations for descendants of slaves to be able to determine the best way to “repair some of the damage" that slavery has caused to the African-American community. Jackson Lee became the lead sponsor of H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, after Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) resigned from Congress. The legislation seeks to “address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865...

Kenya runs the risk of losing control of the Port of Mombasa if it should default on loans from state financial institution China Exim Bank, according to a new report from Kenya's auditor general. The terms of a $2.3 billion loan for Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) specify that the port's assets are collateral, and they are not protected by Kenya's sovereign immunity due to a waiver in the contract. "The payment arrangement agreement substantively means that the Authority's revenue would be used to pay the Government of Kenya's debt to China Exim bank if the minimum volumes required for [rail]...

BENIN CITY, Nigeria — Jude Ikuenobe sensed the car following him before he saw it. Heart pounding, he turned around. Under the Libyan desert sun, the highway stretching behind him was so hot it shimmered in the distance. Nobody’s there, he tried to reassure himself for the tenth time since he had stepped out a few minutes earlier in search of water, along with three of his friends. The sandy side streets were deserted, every shop and café shuttered. It was a Friday afternoon, which meant even the armed militias who ruled Sabha, a sprawling oasis city 480 miles inland...

"One of the biggest arguments against the Democratic Party is centered around racism, so we ask the question, are the Democrats racist? Through-out the years, their members/affiliates have made blatant and also subtle racist remarks which the party does not deny (mostly). The interesting part, though, is that their main line of defense is a claim that doesn’t really have any grounds to it. The claim is that the Democratic and Republican parties have at some point switched stances in terms of racism." *Warning: This article was written by me, if posting it is not appropriate let me know and...

Two Christian business owners in Phoenix are hoping their legal challenge to a local ordinance will usher in a happy new year for them. Artists Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski (pictured) believe in traditional, biblical marriage – a belief that brought them into conflict with a Phoenix ordinance as owners of Brush & Nib Studio in the capital city (see more details on this case). The Arizona Supreme Court will decide in January whether to rule in favor of Duka and Koski – or uphold a lower court's ruling that says the artists must comply with an ordinance that requires...

Major Muslim leader makes this message to all Americans: “In two years America will be land of Muslims and all Christians will be our slaves” (VIDEO)

Facebook has come under fire for a "barbaric use of technology" that allowed the sale of a child bride to be held on its site. An auction was held on the social media platform for a 16-year-old girl in South Sudan which sought payment for her hand in marriage. Facebook said the post was taken down as soon as the company learned of it, but that wasn't until after the girl was married. According to children's rights organization Plan International, the girl was bid on by five men, some of whom were reportedly high-ranking South Sudanese government officials. Activists are concerned that...

In 1841, Andrews hatched a plan to make his political and moral beliefs a lived reality: He would convince Great Britain to buy up all the land in Texas on the condition that they free Texas’s slaves. The idea was not as outlandish as it might sound. In 1833, Great Britain had done something similar in abolishing slavery on its plantations in the West Indies. There, slaveholders were paid a total of $20 million sterling in recompense for their lost property, though they retained the land. And Texas had already reached across the Atlantic for economic aid. The South Carolina...

Saudis have always run a brutal dictatorship. We needed the oil. They owned the Bushes. We looked the other way. Obama bowed before them literally. We look the other way with China, which is an even more brutal dictatorship (in terms of murdering their own citizens). Why is the CIA leaking stories to CNN about Jamal Khashoggi's murder? Why is the MSM running story after story about this to shape American popular opinion? I'm confused why they want me to care. Please fill me in on the real explanation. Thanks.

... The right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil is derived from the Fourteenth Amendment adopted in 1868: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This is the common law doctrine of jus soli, or right of the soil. Opponents of birth citizenship try to obscure this plain meaning by interpreting “subject to the jurisdiction” as applying only to those who owe allegiance to America. Because alien parents owe allegiance to a different sovereign, the argument goes,...

As a work of presidential prose, James Buchanan’s inaugural address on March 4, 1857, is widely considered one of the most forgettable ever given by an American leader. As The New York Times put it dryly at the time: “Little if any impression has been made by the inaugural.” Still, it would not take long for Buchanan’s unimpressive inauguration to become one of the most significant in history. For one thing, it was the first to be photographed. It was also the first inaugural given after the creation of the Republican Party, the last before secession and ultimately the last...

Evelyn Chumbow of Cameroon says she was only nine years old when she was trafficked into *forced labor in the Washington, D.C., area.* Chumbow, who's now in her mid-30s, says she was sold by her uncle to a woman from her home country of Cameroon who had a home and a business in the United States. She said she came to the United States with the expectation that a better life awaited her. “The image that I had of the U.S. is completely from what I saw on television -- you know, '[The] Cosby Show' and '[The] Fresh Prince of...