Free Republic

Cop Smiles And Waves To The Camera After Murdering Innocent Man With His Bare Hands

Imagine if I were to tell you there is a large group of government employees, with generous salaries and ridiculously cushy retirement pensions covered by the taxpayer, who enjoy incredible job security and are rarely held accountable even for activities that would almost certainly earn the rest of us prison time. When there is proven misconduct, these government employees are merely reassigned and are rarely dismissed. The bill for any legal settlements concerning their errors? It, too, is covered by the taxpayers. Their unions are among the strongest in the country. No, I’m not talking about public-school teachers. I’m talking...

So it wasn’t surprising when, in July 2011, the Fullerton political establishment rushed to the defense of officers who had beaten a 130-pound homeless schizophrenic named Kelly Thomas. The public saw the published photo of Thomas’ horribly swollen and bruised face, yet the mayor went on TV saying he had seen worse injuries in the Vietnam War and that it was unclear what killed Thomas, who died in a hospital days after the whomping. We also learned that police officers confiscated the video camera of a bystander and were allowed to watch the surveillance video of the incident and essentially...

The Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) is spearheading a return to the non-interventionist policies of Robert Taft of the 20s to the early 50s. Taft was defeated at the 1952 Republican National Convention for the nomination by Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is telling that Barry Goldwater attended that convention as an Eisenhower, not a Taft delegate. The neo-non-interventionists are destined for far more success in the Republican Party than any economic libertarian will ever find in the Democratic Party. As usual, history is instructive. Our Wars of 1812, Mexican-American and Spanish-American were strictly imperialistic. Our entry into WWI was engineered by...

Duck Dynasty is one of our favorite television programs. Obviously, we are not alone. Duck Dynasty has been a ratings success for the A&E television network. It averages 14 million viewers an episode. The question the main stream media should really be asking is - why? Maybe, just maybe, if they paid attention, they might learn something about this wonderful Nation and the longing in the human hearts of real, regular folks. Perhaps if political observers paid attention, they might actually recognize a growing resistance movement... I am tired of the agendas of the Cultural Revolution winding their way into...

On January 2, David W. Eckert was stopped by police in Deming, NM for running a stop sign. What happened next is extremely difficult to comprehend. Deming Police Officer Robert Chavez had Eckert exit his vehicle, and patted him down. A lawsuit filed by Eckert says this was “without reasonable suspicion.” According to court documents, the officers who stopped Eckert thought he was “clenching his buttocks.” They brought in a dog to sniff for drugs, and the dog “alerted” to the driver’s seat. Two deputies from the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department told Chavez that Eckert was known to insert drugs...

Police used a taser to electric shock a disabled man because he was standing on a bus, as he always does. The man prefers standing because of his spinal injuries, which make it uncomfortable for him to sit.

The case highlights the dangers of marrying policing and profit. “The profit incentive is so incredibly dangerous,” said Scott Bullock, legal counsel for the libertarian-oriented Institute for Justice, which is representing the Jalalis. He told me that officials “set aside policy goals and go after the money,” especially in tough budgetary times. The case also illustrates the inherent problems when a nation’s laws are so contradictory and confusing that well-meaning people can’t easily follow them. One can debate medical-marijuana law. It’s an unsettled matter that is winding its way through the courts. Even the federal prosecutor handling the case admitted...

As Americans obsess over NSA spying, abuse by the IRS and other assaults on our freedom, I can't get my mind off the thousand other ways politicians abuse us. In their arrogance, they assume that only they solve social problems. They will solve them by banning this and that, subsidizing groups they deem worthy and setting up massive bureaucracies with a mandate to cure, treat and rescue wayward souls. Their programs fail, and so they pass new laws to address the failures. It's one reason that 22 million people now work for government. Some of the things they do seem...

We all know that a palindrome is a word or sentence that reads the same backwards as forward. But what should we call an essay that when read backwards, has the opposite meaning? This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite.

Some of the most terrifying words the parents of a newborn will ever hear are “there is a problem with the baby.” Sometimes the dreadful news comes later after a tragic childhood accident or disease. When such children grow to adulthood they are joined by an even larger number of those who lived perfectly healthy lives as children only to become disabled in some way as adults. Adults with a disability of some kind are many times unable to work or unable to make enough money from working to support themselves or their families, especially during periods of economic downturn...

We have had the “War on Drugs” since the 70’s. In the 80’s, the “War” went from just skirmishes to an all out nuclear war on drugs. Now, thirty years later what have we accomplished? Has the “War on Drugs” become just another epic government failure like the “War on Poverty” with the only thing accomplished being massive government spending and an equally massive erosion of our Constitutional Rights? My perspective on the “War on Drugs” is a little different from most people. I practiced law for 24 years. Ten of those years were as a prosecutor. The rest were...

Does anyone know exactly when it was that the government started cooking the books on unemployment, and counting people who have given up and left the work force, as "no longer being unemployed"? Seems to me that that one change in statistic-keeping set the stage for moving people from work onto welfare, and I think it was made during Clinton's regime? Or was it Carter? It appears to allow them to move people transparently from work to welfare, and the unemployment statistics only look half as bad as they really are. Look at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm The U3 is the figure that...

Plan on purchasing, owning, transporting and/or operating a firearm in your lifetime? Do not relocate to the state of Illinois. The state has one of the worst gun laws in the country and the Illinois Police and the Illinois Attorney General really need to stop pursuing innocent gun owners, sellers, and users, and pursue those who actually commit crimes that injure or harm others. Stemming from a public safety initiative, Illinois implemented a law in 1968 that says a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card must be issued by the Illinois State Police before a resident can possess or purchase firearms...

Recent momentous events at Cato have drudged up some age-old questions about libertarianism and politics: how should libertarians interact with politics and political candidates? Should libertarians compromise “full freedom” by promoting half-measures in the form of less-than-perfect candidates who are better than the alternatives on some matters but perhaps worse on others? Many of the most long-standing divisions within libertarianism are partially a result of different answers to these questions. Some regard all interactions with politics and politicians as inherently corrupting and a tacit endorsement of governmental oppression. Others feel that a refusal to engage in politics is a one-way-ticket...

VIDEO: In this red-hot 16 minute debate, libertarian Wayne Allyn Root, obliterates a pitiful, whiny, parasitic, anti-freedom socialist. It's interesting and noteworthy how the broadcaster seems to label those rightfully afraid of socialism as being afraid of the "big, bad, wolf". Watch how quickly the socialist pulls out the race card (and how Wayne Allyn Root dismantles it). This is universally done by the left, regardless of whether the debate is with a democrat, socialist, or communist. Along with class warfare, it's the only tool they have. It's laudable how Root maintains his composure and pleasant disposition, even in the...

The Kelo vs. New London case saw the Supreme Court expanding the government’s eminent domain powers to include taking property and giving it to other private citizens for the purposes of economic development and enhancing tax revenues. It was a terrible blow to property rights in America. And now, in perhaps a fitting end to the sad chapter in American jurisprudence, the City of New London is now using the property the fought to seize all the way to the Supreme Court as a dumping ground. Video below, and a letter to the editor noting the irony of the city...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQscE3Xed64

When we usually speak of taxes we tend to personalize it. For all the hyper-morality we tend to wax fancy about on the macro level, taxes are the one thing we always seem to have to do a little philosophic double-take on. Messing with your money is messing with your own self, your own identity. Really, it is.Income tax, of course, effects most of us--but seemingly, unfortunately, never enough of us. Property tax is in the news every time the liberal sadists here throw a school levy up for vote. Usually we're all connected in some way to the guilt-fest,...

Sentinel events arise in everyone’s personal history like a volcano in the middle of a barren plain – obvious and undeniable. I was taking a music composition course in the bell tower on the quadrangle at the University of Michigan when President Kennedy was shot. As the giant bells inexplicably began to toll, the date and time were etched forever in my memory. While an intern at Yale-New Haven Hospital, I watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon from the house staff break room. And on an otherwise ordinary morning in September 2001, I watched, horrified, a small TV...