Free Republic

If you love the United States Constitution, then by definition you love government. That's what the Constitution does. It creates a government. What we as Tea Partiers do not love is progressivism or any other movement and/or ideology that seeks to pervert the Constitution and build government that will control every aspect of our lives. Loving government doesn't mean loving big government. We do not love big out of control bloated disrespectful government. But anti-government means anarchy, and Tea Partiers are not anarchists. Anarchists do not love the United States Constitution. This is ground where we cannot under any circumstances...

Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge. That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war. The Mueller investigation is about removing President Trump from office and overturning the results of an election. We all know that. But it’s not the first time they’ve done...

Thomas Jefferson warned if allowed, the courts court could be the undoing of the Republic! With the mounting examples of judicial tyranny (much so far against President Trump)... is it time to “just say no” and demand that “case law” be abolished until voted on by Congress and signed by the president? This is not new… in Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall and the court gave themselves the authority of “Judicial Review”... a de-facto VETO (used many times) of the will of the people. They “found” this authority under Article III of the Constitution, similar to how...

Generally speaking, conservatives learn their lessons from tragedies like the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, while leftists figure out how to exploit them. For the second time, the “Republican” mayor of Orange County, Florida, Teresa Jacobs, is sticking her finger in the air to see which way the political winds are blowing on gun issues after the Parkland shooting. Due to term limits, the mayor has turned her attention to running for Orange County’s school board chairwoman. In hopes of winning the seat, the mayor has thrown law-abiding gun owners under the bus to appease Orlando’s left-wing anti-gun lobby. As...

IntroductionFew ideas were more widely accepted in early America than that of the danger of peacetime standing armies.[1] This anti-standing army sentiment motivated colonial opposition to post-French and Indian War British policies, intensified after the Boston Massacre, influenced the writings of most founding fathers, and remained politically relevant well after the Revolutionary War ended. This sentiment remained largely unchallenged until the introduction of the U.S. Constitution to the public for ratification. The Constitution’s “army clause,” which allowed the U.S. Congress to raise and support armies with biennial funds, sparked a nation-wide debate that pitted tradition against innovation, precedent against necessity,...

First. That there be prefixed to the Constitution a declaration, that all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people. That Government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right of acquiring and using property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their Government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution. Secondly. That in article 1st, section 2,...

"If they try to remove Trump, (there) won't be a Constitution Crisis; it'll be a Revolution Crisis," a call in guest told a popular U.S. talk show host recently. With a population of 325 million and over 300 million firearms, America’s gun owners have no intention of allowing gun grabbers to steal their lawfully owned firearms. Amendment II of the US Constitution states "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The militia acts of 1792 and 1903 are giving militia groups...

In the latter half of 1788 the man whom history praised as the “Father of the Constitution” opposed an Article V general convention of the states. Recall from last week’s squib the various state demands for a convention after the establishment of the first Constitutional congress. While few were entirely comfortable with the draft Constitution of September 17th 1787, Federalists in several states won over enough Anti-Federalists once they felt confident the new government would call an Article V convention to sort out the various amendments recommended by most of the eleven state ratifying conventions. Although to all outward appearances...

The aim to eliminate poverty, especially under sanction of law, results in all sorts of injustice, including taking from one group of people in order to give to another without the consent of either. That is not charity. It is compulsion, and God admonishes against it. (2 Corin 9:6-8) Moreover, like all social programs, the lofty goal of eradicating poverty breeds corruption among those who administer the agenda. Emotions are manipulated to loosen the purse strings of well-meaning citizens to contribute to a cause that no human could ignore. Yet very little of the money raised or taxed to address...

Asked the right question, a suspect will often incriminate himself. Asked why the Iran deal isn't a treaty, Secretary of State John Kerry basically answered it's because we've killed the Constitution. Secretary Kerry, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, pumped another bullet into the legal foundation of the American system of government ratified by We the People nearly 227 years ago. Asked by Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., "Why is this not considered a treaty?" — which would mean 67 senators would have to agree before the Iran deal would take effect — former Sen. Kerry's startling and...

The New Deal led to the rise of the administrative state, to which Congress frequently delegates its regulatory power. Its programs were so vast, they required a massive team of people to carry out. Instead of being divided up into three entities — legislative, judicial, and executive, as prescribed by the Constitution — the government is now functionally divided into the political and administrative states. ... Under this re-imagined structure, decisions are no longer made by the people. They are made by special interests: the bureaucrats regulating the issue, interest groups, and corporations. The massive bureaucratic state makes it so...

Among the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation was the near impossibility of amending them to meet pressing needs regarding taxation and commerce. In 1787-1788, the lower threshold to amend the Constitution per Article V overcame Anti-Federalist reluctance to form a new Union. From the time the federal convention sent the draft Constitution to the Confederation Congress and states, many Anti-Federalists demanded a second convention, preferably before federal elections and the establishment of a new government. Not only the Anti-Federalists, but very few Federalists were entirely satisfied with the Constitution as written. The difference was that Federalists were satisfied that...

What is the duty of the Church concerning poverty? This is one of those areas where the Church has unfortunately surrendered its influence by either adopting the mission of the government or embracing the worldview of the culture, neither of which is consistent with what the Bible teaches. The Bible, in fact, speaks very plainly about the poor. And since the duty of the Church is to preserve knowledge of God, it is incumbent upon us to correct misunderstandings regarding the proper role of God’s people in this and other areas. In so doing, we preserve a free and civil...

On Wednesday, 25 April, 2018, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a Constitutional Carry bill, SB 1212, 59-28.  The bill had already passed the Senate unanimously on March 6th, 2018, but as a bill removing wildlife refuges as gun free zones. From kfor.com: Other critics say constitutional carry would put law enforcement at risk, but the bill's author says that shouldn't be put above a citizen's right. "I do not support the rights of law enforcement to feel not threatened or safe to the detriment of my own constitutional rights," said Rep. Jeff Coody, the bill's author. After amended,...

What is the proper role of Government? We have witnessed the perspectives of those in government; we have heard the answers in presidential debates. But what was envisioned by those who DESIGNED our constitutional republic? Wouldn’t you like to KNOW what government is supposed to be doing? The interesting thing is, we don’t have to guess, we don’t have to make it up, we need only look to the framers of our Constitution. It is simplistically elegant, the way they described the role of the Senate and the House. Yet even the simplest of explanations seem to have eluded the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that aims to reduce the federal government’s role in K-12 education. Trump is giving Education Secretary Betsy DeVos just short of a year — 300 days — to identify areas where Washington has overstepped its legal authority in education, and modify and repeal regulations and guidance from her department, if necessary. A report will be returned to the White House and eventually made public, officials said. Trump complained that the government over the years has forced states and schools to comply with ‘‘federal whims.’’ He said the order will...

Long ago I made the mistake of wading unprepared into The Federalist Papers. In 1970 your humble blogger was a high school sophomore who bit off more than he could chew. I found Publius’ prose thick and rambling with incomprehensible sentences the length of paragraphs. Little did I know then that the style of the primary writer, Alexander Hamilton, is among the toughest for modern readers to comprehend. Unfortunately, Glenn Beck’s The Original Argument was forty-one years into the future. Had it been around in 1970, I would have devoured it.1 So, I tossed the Papers aside and didn’t revisit...

James Madison and Federalist supporters of the Constitution carried the day in the Confederation Congress. Although Congress did not express explicit support, it sent the Constitution anyway to the states for submission to ratifying conventions. Most notably, Congress did not attach the amendments recommended by Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee. To Lee, amending the Constitution before ratification made simple sense. Just a few preventive amendments may mean the difference between a republic and an aristocracy likely to slide into oligarchy. So, as the Anti-Federalist forces gathered, the nationwide question remained: Should an imperfect Constitution be amended before the ratification of nine...

New York State plans to restore voting rights to about 35,000 New York felons on parole who previously were barred from casting a ballot until they completed their parole, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday.

Only six states do not have some sort of right to keep and bear arms amendment or clause in their state Constitution. They are California, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and  New York. California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York show the lack of a state constitutional protection with their highly restrictive firearms laws.Two outliers on that list are Iowa and Minnesota. State constitutional protections of the right to bear arms provide protection when the federal Constitution fails to do so. The U.S. Supreme Court has been reluctant to protect Second Amendment rights for a decade. Getting to the U.S....