Free Republic

US De Blasio Removes Paintings Of Founding Fathers, Replaces Them With More Diverse Artwork Emma Colton Contributor New York City’s de Blasio family reportedly trashed paintings of founding fathers in the mayor’s mansion and replaced them with more diverse historical figures. According to the New York Post, the Big Apple’s mayoral family junked a handful of paintings depicting George Washington and other unspecified founding fathers from the historical Yellow Parlor in the Gracie Mansion for more diverse artifacts that will reportedly better represent the history of America. The Yellow Parlor, where guests of New York’s mayor have been entertained for...

THE SUPREME COURT may soon take up a challenge to a Texas abortion law mandating safety standards so strict that abortion providers claim it will force all but a handful of the state's remaining clinics to close. The case, Whole Woman's Health v. Cole, could lead to the court's first significant abortion ruling since 2007. Under the controversial law, signed by Governor Rick Perry two years ago, abortion practitioners must have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and abortion clinics must meet the same building and equipment specifications as outpatient surgical centers. Advocates challenging the law argue that such restrictions...

Every day brings us closer to what I'm convinced will be a VERY UGLY time in what remains of America, the IDEA! The "progressives" (aka "communists") will continue pushing until they provoke a reaction from those who still remember what freedom was. As was the case in 1775, the flash point will almost certainly be a thrust to seize private firearms and related items. It is then that we will see what their plans are for those MILLIONS OF ROUNDS of ammunition and thousands of weapons now in the hands of previously UNARMED bureaucracies. Oh, did I mention that millions...

In a bid to outflank her socialist rival contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for more stringent government regulation of big businesses. Under her proposed policy, the federal government would order firms that were “too large and too risky to be managed effectively to reorganize, downsize, or break apart.” That the federal government, which has not been managed effectively for many decades would possess the necessary expertise to assess the effectiveness of diverse business operations might seem dubious. Nevertheless, Clinton maintained that “the government has the right and the...

An Australian electrical engineer named Dr David Evans discovered a mathematical error in the model used to predict global warming that exaggerated the impact of carbon dioxide 10-fold. Basically, the effects of CO2 on climate are far lower than has been assumed. While most reasonable people would find this reassuring, Philippe Sands QC, an international law specialist and Professor of Law at University College London, did not. Alleging that “the publicity given to Dr. Evans’ finding could seriously undermine efforts to mitigate climate change,” Sands argued for “the suppression of contradictory evidence and arguments that might thwart action.” “In theory,...

A U.S. judge on Friday approved a deal between conservationists and Montana officials to restrict road-building and logging in roughly 22,000 acres of state forest lands that make up core habitat for federally protected grizzlies. The agreement resolves a lawsuit brought by conservationists after the state had sought to open 37,000 acres , mostly in the Stillwater State Forest, to timber harvesting despite what environmentalists said would be the destruction of prime grizzly bear territory. ... U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy in a decision last year found the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by...

accounting for roads that have been decommissioned along with roads considered “unauthorized,” the mileage of road closures on U.S. Forest Service (USFS) land in Montana balloons to 21,951 miles. On Monday, Media Trackers reported that a study commissioned by the state legislature earlier this year and reported to the EQC last week found that 9,784 — or nearly 31 percent — of the nearly 32,000 miles of roads in Montana managed by the USFS were “level 1 roads,” meaning they are closed to motorized traffic and only open for “administrative use.” However, the 32,000 total miles of roads does not...

Administration insiders are hinting that President Obama has become impatient with Congressional inaction on gun control legislation in the wake of a rash of mass murder shootings and will bypass that body and enact new controls based on his own authority. The gist of his decree is said to require dealers who sell more than 50 guns a year to obtain a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and do extensive background checks on persons who want to purchase weapons from them. Though he declined to specifically acknowledge the rumor, Press Secretary Josh Earnest attempted to...

Today two Oregon ranchers were sentenced to five years in federal prison under terrorism statutes for setting preventative fires on their own land. We are gravely disappointed at this outcome. “Elderly Harney County rancher Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, a former OFB Board member and Harney County Farm Bureau president, have already served time in federal prison for their mistakes and paid their debt to society for the less-than-140 acres of BLM land that was accidentally impacted by the fires. “This is an example of gross government overreach, and the public should be outraged. “Today’s verdict is also hypocritical...

In the United States these days, about 95 percent of all new "laws" are written by bureaucrats rather than approved by Congress. A pair of recent news stories documents the dangers of bureaucrats gone wild. Last week, the U.S. officially defined 70,000 ways we can get sick or die. These classifications must be used by health care providers and insurance companies. Bloomberg News reports that "Doctors have already begun mocking the diagnostic list, picking out the most absurd and arcane, such as Z63.1: 'Problems in relationship with in-laws,' or V91.07XA: 'Burn due to water skis on fire.'" Unfortunately, this new...

Meet the 46 U.S. Senators Guilty of Treason U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch just announced America’s partnership with the United Nations to initiate a “global police force.” Her efforts are consistent with other politicians who reject the Second Amendment, not to mention the first several articles of the U.S. Constitution. In April 2013 the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the first international treaty written to regulate a $60 billion global small arms trade. Only Iran, Syria, and North Korea opposed the treaty. In opposition to Obama and Kerry, the U.S. Senate voted 53-46 against the United Nations (U.N.) Arms Trade...

The sudden implosion of the supposedly inevitable ascension of establishment Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to the office of Speaker of the House, now occupied by his mentor John Boehner, has shown the Capitol Hill Republican establishment to be a fragile edifice ready to collapse. Paul Ryan. Conservatives should not be suckered into propping it up any longer by abandoning their battle to elect principled conservatives to run the House of Representatives. But that is exactly what is going on in Washington right now as those establishment politicians who stand to lose out if new leadership is elected and...

In response to the latest mass shooting during his presidency, President Obama is seriously considering circumventing Congress with his executive authority and imposing new background-check requirements for buyers who purchase weapons from high-volume gun dealers. Snip The proposed executive action aims to impose background checks on individuals who buy from dealers who sell a significant number of guns each year. The current federal statute dictates that those who are “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms need to obtain a federal license — and, therefore, conduct background checks — but exempts anyone “who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of...

A federal judge ordered the State Department Wednesday to request former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton not delete any government business emails she may still have, but said he doubts he can force her to do anything. Judge Reggie B. Walton said since Mrs. Clinton used her own BlackBerry and computer devices, and kept her email server at her home, he doesn’t have authority over the records she created on those. The ruling is a significant victory for Mrs. Clinton and the Obama administration, which has argued it has already gone above and beyond its duties under the law in trying

MADISON, Wis. – Gerald Nichol says he has had no problem with the way the state Government Accountability Board has operated over its eight years in existence. And Nichol, chairman of the troubled political speech regulator, said he’s good with GAB’s involvement in predawn, paramilitary-style raids on the homes and offices of conservative targets in the unconstitutional John Doe investigation. Those October 2013 raids included armed officers serving a warrant on a 16-year-old boy who was home alone. Though the teen’s father was the target of the political probe, the boy was told he couldn’t call his parents, or even...

American prisons to free 6,000 drug traffickers in biggest-ever inmate release October 30 will see 6,000 drug dealers freed from American jails as the country struggles to cope with the world's largest prison population By Harriet Alexander, New York 07 Oct 2015 Six thousand drug traffickers are to be freed from American prisons at the end of this month, in the country's largest-ever mass release of prisoners. The men and women will be freed as part of a plan to reduce overcrowding. America is the world's biggest jailer, and a quarter of the whole world's prison population is in the...

On Wednesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced at the United Nations that her office would be working in several American cities to form what she called the Strong Cities Network (SCN), a law enforcement initiative that would encompass the globe. This amounts to nothing less than the overriding of American laws, up to and including the United States Constitution, in favor of United Nations laws that would henceforth be implemented in the United States itself – without any consultation of Congress at all. The United Nations is a sharia-compliant world body, and Obama, speaking there just days ago, insisted that...

Two allotments delayed pending more studies. A coalition of environmental groups have forced public land managers to delay a grazing permit decision on Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Grand Canyon Trust, Western Watershed Project, Wild Earth Guardians, National Resource Defense Council, Wildlands Defense, the Sierra Club and Durango-based Great Old Broads for Wilderness collectively filed a 27-page protest against the proposed Flodine and Yellow Jacket grazing allotments on the monument ... they want the two allotments permanently closed to grazing ... The groups challenged a recent decision plan by the BLM to issue 10-year terms for the allotments, located...

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Obama took the same attitude towards executive amnesty. Either Congress could give him what he wanted by legalizing illegals or he’d give himself what he wanted by legalizing illegals unilaterally. The president no longer loses in our system of (giggle) separation of powers, at least if he has a complacent caucus from his own party in Congress that’s willing to defend him on every power grab at their branch’s expense. Hillary’s building on that precedent now, in the middle of a surprisingly tough primary campaign, to stroke one of the few political erogenous zones...

Melissa and Aaron Klein of Oregon, who were ordered by a state agency to pay two women $135,000 after they refused to take part in their same-sex wedding plans, may now face seizure of their assets. An administrative judge fined the couple after they declined to bake a cake for the lesbian couple, citing their religious objections. The fine was ordered by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, which had accused the Klein couple of violating the Oregon Equality Act of 2007. According to reports, the agency is docketing the judgement and is exploring various options for collection.Docketing the...