Free Republic

An upstate New York lawmaker said the loss of manufacturing jobs in the state last month is due to an anti-gun administration that has ignored pleas from local officials to be involved in the negotiating process. “Remington talks have come to a halt,” said Assemblyman Marc W. Butler (R.-Newport), whose district includes the Village of Ilion, where the Remington Outdoor Company has been located for almost 200 years. “We are losing 105 jobs at the Ilion primary plant,” said Butler. In February he predicted long-term consequences of Remington’s decision to expand to Huntsville, Ala., instead of Ilion, N.Y. The small...

In a stunning op-ed released Friday, the NY Times finally admitted that “assault weapons” are a made-up political term fabricated by anti-gun Democrats. Op-ed writer Lois Beckett also admitted that once the term was manufactured and used to outlaw a class of weapons that dishonest anti-gun Democrats had used to con an entire nation, nothing happened.

Sen. Ted Cruz Objects to Democrats Attempt to Repeal Free Speech Protections

“The constitutional amendment before us,” Harry Reid said Tuesday, describing a proposal to give federal and state governments the authority to regulate political giving, “isn’t about limiting free speech.” Harry Reid, may I present the American Civil Liberties Union. I am sure you two have met before. Writing in June that the nonprofit “strongly opposes” the so-called Udall amendment, the ACLU’s Laura Murphy and Gabriel Rottman called the Democratic proposal “deceptively complex,” “unnecessary,” “redundant of existing law,” “dangerous for liberties,” “vague,” “overbroad,” “exceedingly dangerous to democratic processes,” and “the first time the amendatory process has been used to directly limit...

Man Confronts Reporter for Photographing Private Building from Public Road PINAC reporter Jeff Gray was video recording from outside an indistinguishable building in Jacksonville today when it began speaking to him, a booming female voice telling him he was not allowed to take photos. The voice, which was obviously coming from somewhere inside viewing him with a camera, almost seemed to be able to hear Gray speaking back, telling him he must walk to the building’s front gate, which he did, careful not to enter the property of the building. A man then came walking out, acting as if he...

(RNS) Arkansas State is removing a Christian cross decal from the back of its football helmets after a complaint that it violated separation of church and state, the university said Wednesday (Sept. 10). Athletics director Terry Mohajir said he wanted to fight the decision because the decal was intended to honor former player Markel Owens and equipment manager Barry Weyer, who both died this year. However, Mohajir said he had little choice but to follow advice from the university’s legal counsel to remove or modify the symbol. “My job is to support our players and our coaches in their expression...

A stinging rejection of same-sex marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana, issued by a unanimous and unequivocal U.S. appeals court, has brought hope to those fighting the laws that the Supreme Court will feel pressure to rule soon in their favor. The ruling from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago came Thursday, the same day 32 states asked the Supreme Court to settle the issue once and for all. Fifteen states that allow gay marriage, led by Massachusetts, filed a brief asking the justices to take up three cases from Virginia, Utah and Oklahoma and overturn bans....

Keep quiet. That’s the message being sent by New York State Board of Elections, which disregarded the First Amendment to enact new “emergency regulations” on political speech that could become permanent at the end of this month. Intended to regulate spending by independent groups during campaign season, the regulations are so expansive that almost anyone, citizen or organization, hoping to have their say on any issue could find themselves in bureaucratic dire straits. Imagine you hear a radio ad where your state representative — let’s call him Fred — claims to oppose higher taxes. But you know that Fred voted...

Eucharistic Adoration. Credit: Elisa Pires via JMJ Rio 2013/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Oklahoma City, Okla., Aug 28, 2014 / 04:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A lawyer who helped recover a stolen Host that organizers of an Oklahoma City black mass intended to desecrate said that the Church’s legal victory could have far-reaching effects. “I don’t think we’re going to see Satanists doing this again, or they’ll going to understand we’re going to come after them, anywhere, any time this happens,” attorney Michael W. Caspino of the Irvine, Calif.-based law firm Busch & Caspino told CNA Aug. 27. “We’ve now gutted the...

Helmetta, New Jersey (My9NJ) - Steven Wronko is a Helmetta, New Jersey resident who recently taped local police officer, Richard Recine, saying that he doesn't have to follow the U.S. Constitution because President Obama doesn't. .... Well now, the Helmetta town council met last night to discuss an ordinance that would ban the unauthorized taping of a public official in a public municipal building, such as the recording Wronko uncovered of officer Recine. .... Wronko went to city hall to file an OPRA request related to the animal shelter because he suspected neglect. That is when and where officer Recine...

Fox News host Andrea Tantaros is drawing fire for these comments, made on Outnumbered: [This has been happening] "for hundreds and hundreds of years. If you study the history of Islam…this isn't a surprise. You can't solve it with a dialogue. You can't solve it with a summit. You solve it with a bullet to the head. It's the only thing these people understand."

The government of the United States is suing the town of St. Anthony, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb with a population a little over 8,000, to force the town to allow development of an Islamic center in an area reserved for industrial development. It is a minor news story, but one that sheds light on broader legal and cultural trends. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports: The federal government on Wednesday sued the small north-metro city of St. Anthony, contending that its City Council violated federal law in 2012 by rejecting a proposed Islamic center. … “An injustice has been done,”...

Health insurance companies in California may not refuse to cover the cost of abortions, state insurance officials have ruled in a reversal of policy stemming from the decision by two Catholic universities to drop elective abortions from their employee health plans. Although the federal Affordable Care Act does not compel employers to provide workers with health insurance that includes abortion coverage, the director of California’s Department of Managed Health Care said in a letter to seven insurance companies on Friday that the state Constitution and a 1975 state law prohibits them from selling group plans that exclude the procedure. The...

July 8, 2014 - I regret to inform you that satanists are planning a "Black Mass" on city property at the Civic Center in Oklahoma City on Sunday, September 21, 2014. Please spread the word to all your friends so we can stop this sacrilege. Your voice and prayers were decisive at Harvard University ­-- the "Black Mass" there was stopped. Canceled. Saint Michael won a great victory that day. And God can win again. Please help TFP Student Action gather 50,000 petitions. Your petition, together with many more, will be presented to the Civic Center, as well as the...

The U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner claims campus speech codes need to be tightened as college students are still “developing” and cannot yet handle certain information. Speaking during a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) briefing on sexual harassment law in education, Democrat Michael Yaki likened restricting free speech on college campuses to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 decision to ban the death penalty for minors. During the briefing, Yaki said hostile environments on college campuses can occur from fraternities holding “slave auction[s]” or celebrating Latino culture by “making everyone dress as janitors and mop floors.” “Certain factors in how the...

Is the Internal Revenue Service a threat to religious liberty? As the IRS continues to come under well-aimed fire for harassing conservative groups, on Friday it secured a final court order formalizing what amounts to a secret agreement to monitor the pulpits of ill-favored churches. The serious danger, as former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams told Fox News, is that the IRS will start treating “theology as politics,” and regulate it accordingly. Lovers of liberty should be very concerned. According to a June 27 IRS letter to the Justice Department, 99 churches merit “high priority examination” for allegedly illegal...

First Amendment: Government's assault on religious liberty has hit a new low as the IRS settles with atheists by promising to monitor sermons for mentions of the right to life and traditional marriage. A lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) asserted that the Internal Revenue Service ignored complaints about churches' violating their tax-exempt status by routinely promoting political issues, legislation and candidates from the pulpit. The FFRF has temporarily withdrawn its suit in return for the IRS's agreement to monitor sermons and homilies for proscribed speech that the foundation believes includes things like condemnation of gay...

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, angrily sputtered during a congressional hearing Friday that the White House should not be held up to scrutiny, saying that there was no right to know what it was doing behind closed doors. "You don't have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government," Norton said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. It was, to put mildly, a significant departure from the more traditional liberal stance that openness and transparency...

The chairman of the Federal Election Commission today blasted Democratic colleagues opposed to his effort to protect conservative media after they imposed rules on the publisher of Rep. Paul Ryan's new book, opening the door to future book regulations -- or even a ban. “By failing to affirm this publisher’s constitutional right, statutory right, to disseminate a political book free from FEC conditions and regulations, we have effectively asserted regulatory jurisdiction over a book publisher,” warned Chairman Lee E. Goodman, one of three Republicans on the six-person FEC. “That failure reveals a festering legal uncertainty and chill for the free...

To direct the Federal Trade Commission to prescribe rules prohibiting the marketing of firearms to children, and for other purposes.