Free Republic

Texans cherish the memory of Davy Crockett's heroic death at the Alamo in 1836 but few know what led him there or why he fought so valiantly. Throughout his life, Davy Crockett was renowned for his love of liberty and fierce loyalty to the Constitution. Originally a Democrat, Crockett found he could no longer identify with the party's positions which he believed were straying from our country's founding principles. As a man who believed in individual liberty and the principle of congressional restraint this shift was unacceptable to him. He left the party in 1833 and joined the Whig party...

Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has said it is unconstitutional, Louisiana still puts hundreds of people in prison every year just because they are too poor to pay court-ordered fines, court costs and costs of probation, according to a recent investigative report by the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. This misuse of the criminal legal system, often called "pay or stay" is flatly illegal. As The Marshall Project reported, the U.S. Congress outlawed the use of debtors' prisons -- jails for people too poor to pay off their debts -- under federal law nearly 200 years...

Forty-six years.That’s how long William Wilberforce labored to see the end of slavery in the British Empire. His work began in earnest in 1787 when he first came into contact with abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, Hannah More and Charles Middleton. These activists found a kindred spirit in Wilberforce, whose conversion to the Christian faith had given birth to an abiding concern for social reform—so much so, in fact, that he wrote in his diary, “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.”The dark and dehumanizing practice of slavery weighed heavy on him. He first...

Does U.S. President Obama have a foreign policy or should we call it a "dangerous farcical policy." Is he even control of the White House? By now, most people have heard the story of how, "11 Secret Service agents" and "as many as 10 U.S. military personnel," hired prostitutes, drank alcohol, and possibly used illicit drugs -- all in "security preparation" for the president to attend the Summit of the Americas in Columbia. Besides the security debacle, Obama's diplomatic effort, "wasn't exactly smooth sailing." But there's a subtle clincher to Obama's ridiculous Columbia trip which belies his true incompetency, a...