Free Republic

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...

A freshman state legislator joined a Republican field seeking a U.S. Senate seat Thursday, setting his sights on a robust Minnesota network for presidential candidate Ron Paul as a possible route to the party nomination. State Rep. Kurt Bills announced his campaign on a busy intersection in Rosemount, just up the street from a high school where he teaches an early morning economics course before heading to the state Capitol each day. The former city council member said he'd make the nation's debt and deficit the focus of his campaign, though he wouldn't offer hints of how he'd solve it....

John Hanson Story John Hanson (1721-1783) When we think of the President of the United States, many people do not realize that we are actually referring to presidents elected under the U.S. Constitution. Everybody knows that the first president in that sense was George Washington. But in fact the Articles of Confederation, the predecessor to the Constitution, also called for a president– albeit one with greatly diminished powers. Eight men were appointed to serve one-year terms as president under the Articles of Confederation. The first was John Hanson, in 1781. His exact title was the “President of the United States...

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...

Washington (CNN) -- Briefly back in Congress doing his day job, Ron Paul met with high school students outside his office. True to form, he signed copies of the Constitution and wryly told them with a chuckle, "No one around here reads it very much. I'd like to get everybody to read it." [...] What Paul did not do was attend a closed-door gathering of House Republicans. In fact, the GOP presidential contender is known to never attend these meetings. But Paul's Republican colleagues who did go had no shortage of opinions about his strong showing in the presidential race...

Rep. Ron Paul will drop off the campaign trail in South Carolina on Wednesday and fly back to Washington to cast a vote against raising the debt ceiling, his campaign said Tuesday. ... Mr. Obama said late last month the federal government was once again close to breaching the legal limit on how much it can borrow, and he requested Congress raise the ceiling again. Opponents would need to pass a resolution disapproving of the increase and have it signed into law, or else override a presidential veto, to bloc the increase — which is highly unlikely. But returning to...

He has a solid, unshakeable base. His poll numbers are rising, not sinking. He hasn’t had to go negative. He hasn’t had to deliver a speech to get past his newsletter-induced Reverend Wright moment. Oh, and one other thing: he’s in this race ’til the finish line. His name is Ron Paul, and you have the establishment to thank for his shocking march from the margins to something almost mainstream. In retrospect, at least, there’s really nothing shocking about it. At every step, he has been boosted up and pushed forward by the horrendous failure of the establishment to remove...

S.C. Sen. Tom Davis – the leading fiscal conservative in South Carolina state government and one of the most coveted endorsements of the 2012 “First in the South” presidential primary – will announce his support for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul on Sunday. Davis will endorse Paul’s candidacy at a campaign event Sunday evening in Myrtle Beach, S.C. – confirming a report published earlier this week on Buzzfeed. Paul’s campaign has described Davis’ forthcoming endorsement as “consequential” and “game-changing.” Why? Click here. A first-term State Senator, Davis wields a disproportionate impact given his stellar fiscal voting record and his advocacy on...

Ron Paul Is More Conservative Than Rick Santorum. By Joe Deaux 01/11/12 - 04:02 PM EST NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- During a Republican presidential debate Saturday, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had a spat about who was more conservative as each clawed for blocks of Republican voters needed to topple front-runner Mitt Romney. According to a study done back in 2004 though, Paul was the more conservative of the two by a fairly healthy margin. A list put together at voteview.com found that out of the 3,320 individuals (1 being the most liberal and 3,320...

Now that Ron Paul has achieved electoral respectability in the Republican primaries, the media is in high dudgeon over his extremism. Paul, according to the procurators of good taste at the New York Times, "long ago disqualified himself for the presidency" by, among other things, "peddling claptrap proposals" such as "cutting a third of the federal budget."

While other candidates were speaking at coffeehouses and diners on the day before the Iowa caucuses, Ron Paul was greeted by a crowd of 500 and scores of national media who packed a downtown hotel ballroom for a morning event. “This is almost like a real rally,” the Republican presidential hopeful exclaimed. “This is great!” Polls show Paul in a position to pull off an upset victory in the caucuses Tuesday night, an accomplishment that, if it happens, would amount to one extremely sharp stick in the eye of the GOP establishment. The turnout had Paul’s supporters crowing. “For somebody...

Ask any conservative about Ron Paul and you will usually hear the following statement: "I love him on fiscal policy but his foreign policy is naive and dangerous." You can also throw in the obligatory "He hates Israel." If someone had asked me about Paul from 9/12/01 through October of 2011, I'd have said the exact same things. Something about my certitude always felt a bit uncomfortable, though, because I admired the "good parts" of Ron Paul (and later, his son Rand). Having participated in the Tea Party movement since its inception, and then witnessing the phony propaganda concocted to...

The RevPac event I attended on Monday night was an quite an experience. First of all, the choice of setting seemed designed to highlight some of the recurring themes in Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. While most of his primary opponents have held Manhattan fundraisers targeting donors in this city’s ever-dwindling, yet still potent, financial services sector, the rigidly anti-corporatist, free market dogma of the Paul campaign-highlighted by the appearance of bearish Euro Pacific CEO Peter Schiff-lent a new dimension to what would otherwise have been a routine campaign fundraiser. The optics of the event were pleasing, which I suppose was...

BRUTAL. And we still have a month to go until the Caucus.

The dueling-perspectives political panel is compatible with the aims of CNN, MSNBC and the other progressive broadcasters. Here is how it works: You invite a member of the Republican establishment – often a RINO, preferably a bimbo – to do battle with a lefty from similar circles. The sides are ideologically so close that, in all likelihood, the panelists hang out after the show. This format is positively postmodernist. Why? Because, by presenting the public with two competing perspectives you mislead viewers into believing that indeed there are two realities, and that it is up to them to decide which...

<p>“I think the downturn in the economy occurred in the year 2000,” Paul told CNN, adding that there have been no new jobs since then “and yet we’ve had a 30 million increase in population.”</p> <p>“Just go out and talk to the people – unemployment rate in the true numbers (is) over 20%, so there’s been a depression,” Paul said after an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”</p>

His point is actually correct, a large part of the reason many schools way over-charg­e for tuition is that they know student will be lent them money and the students will often spend 50-60K a year “(or more) on tuition as opposed to finding the best deal for their money because the figure “i can just borrow it” not taking into account the crippling effects of being in your mid-twenti­es with 300K or so in debt. getting of the student loan program (for but the truly neediest cases,, and even then limiting it to no more than 15K a year)...

In a wide-ranging interview on Meet the Press today, Ron Paul talked about his plan to cut $1 trillion in spending, his hope that the government will eventually get out of the housing market, and his frustration at the U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. Paul also lamented the “uselessness” of some of the arguments in the GOP primary debates. “I mean, arguing over who mows Mitt Romney’s lawn,” Paul said. “In the midst of a crisis, a sovereign debt worldwide crisis, the biggest in the history of the world, and the financial system of the world is about...

<p>WASHINGTON — Republican presidential contender Ron Paul said Sunday he wants to end federal student loans, calling it a failed program that has put students $1 trillion in debt when there are no jobs and when the quality of education has deteriorated.</p>