Free Republic

As they say, “old habits die hard,” especially on Capitol Hill, where legislators are once again trying to sneak a dangerous new national identification database into law, under the public’s radar. Hidden deep within the 800-odd pages of the Senate’s pending immigration reform bill is a provision for a new government ‘photo recognition’ system. This represents the latest in the on-going effort by the federal government to build a database of all U.S. citizens; a process that has accelerated since its initial failure to do so after a number of states balked at the REAL ID Act requirements for a...

It’s an Obama world… The IRS told a pro-life group that it had to promote abortion or they wouldn’t qualify for nonprofit status. World Net Daily reported: The Internal Revenue Service already has confessed to targeting and trying to injure tea party, Constitution and patriot organizations, by demanding answers to arbitrary questions and delaying their applications for a tax status so they could operate. Now WND has learned that the IRS also put an organization in its bull’s-eye that wanted to do nothing more than share its pro-life message with churches. Cherish Life Ministries was created to be a non-profit...

In May 2011, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate the Barack H. Obama Foundation, which was soliciting tax-deductible contributions from the public although it was not tax exempt. The Foundation is named for Obama's father and is based in Kenya. Its founder and chairman is Abon'go Malik Obama, whose father is also the father of President Obama. The IRS not only failed to investigate, but in June 2011 it retroactively granted the Obama Foundation tax-exempt status. Click here to see the letter from Lois Lerner (in photo), Director of the Exempt...

The IRS came after Billy Graham, too, his son charged Tuesday in a letter to President Barack Obama. Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, said that the IRS notified the organizations in September that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010. With the IRS admitting it gave extra scrutiny to conservative political organizations, Graham says he now believes that the review was part of an Obama administration effort of “targeting and attempting to intimidate us.” The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association urging of voters...

What do speed traps, parking tickets, toll roads, speed cameras and red light cameras all have in common? They are all major revenue sources for state and local governments. All over America today there are state and local governments that are drowning in debt. Many have chosen to use "traffic enforcement" as a way to raise desperately needed revenue. According to the National Motorist Association, issuing speeding tickets raises somewhere between 4.5 billion and 6 billion dollars in the United States each year. And the average price of a speeding ticket just keeps going up. Today, the national average is...

Barack Obama's administration has just released a statement stating that any American soldier who openly professes his Christianity can now be subject of a court-martial and may even face imprisonment and a dishonorable discharge. That apparently also applies to military chaplains in in the military. That statement was released to Fox News on the 6th of May: Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense... Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis. Clearly, all this either stands or falls or what exactly is meant by "proselytization." The Obama government realizes this. There has been...

I’ve been wondering how the IRS was going to determine whether taxpayers were complying with the individual mandate contained in Obamacare. I needn’t have wondered. The IRS is a bureaucracy and what do bureaucracies adore almost as much as taxpayer-financed trips to Vegas for conferences? Forms, of course. When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form. The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. As confirmed by IRS testimony...

When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form. The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.

Then the identity verification could become a necessary step to prove one's identity before ordinary activities, like opening a bank account, buying a car or boarding a plane, David Kravets from Wired Magazine suggested. 'Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in,' he wrote. Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union, told Wired that this measure could 'change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things. More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.' Mr...

<p>A more than 800-page bill for immigration reform, which the Senate has begun debating, carries a measure privacy advocates worry could lead to the creation of a biometric database of every adult in the United States.</p>

Most of Colorado’s congressional delegation and Gov. John Hickenlooper have signed a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration asking the agency to turn the state into a testing ground for unmanned drones — even while acknowledging that the public remains uneasy about how they might be used by both the government and private individuals. Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is leading the charge ... In a speech at the National Press Club Wednesday, Udall was careful not to use the word “drone” too heavily, opting instead for the industry-preferred “unmanned aerial system,” or UAS.

In early April, Army Reserve soldiers in Pennsylvania were told in a redeployment briefing that evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics were "extremists," the same category as al Qaeda. Later that month, the Southern Baptist Convention's website was blocked on Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps bases due to what the military's software filter told Web users was "hostile content." And in early May, news reports said that an anti-Christian crusader had proposed new rules for the Pentagon so that military-service members could be court-martialed for sharing their faith. But the initial reports on these matters were exaggerated, taken out...

The Foundation for Individual Rights In Higher Education (FIRE) is the premier non-partisan organization fighting to protect free speech and other constitutional rights on campus.  The FIRE defends everyone’s rights, regardless of political affiliation.We have cited The FIRE numerous times here and at College Insurrection, and they have submitted a few guests posts on campus issues.The FIRE is not an organization prone to hyperbole.So when I received this email late this afternoon from FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley, it got my attention: THIS. IS. OUTRAGEOUS. The government has mandated speech codes on all campuses. I hoped I would never see this day, but...

Ron Paul is robo-calling his supporters to sign a petition against the inclusion of a National ID card in immigration reform negotiations. From the petition: Right now, freedom-stealing Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), banding together with other statists from both parties, are scheming to sneak a massive power grab into a new “immigration reform” bill. If passed, it would require every American to obtain a National ID card to work legally in the U.S. – and you can bet it will be only a matter of time until they’re required even for simple purchases. Ron Paul calls...

'Act of faith' did not cost track team win, student's reaction to official did An act of faith has cost an area track team a win and a chance to advance to the state championships. This past weekend, the Columbus High School Mighty Cardinals had just won a boys relay race when a runner’s final gesture got them disqualified. As he was crossing the finish line, Derrick Hayes pointed up to the sky. His father believes he was giving thanks in a gesture to God. “It was a reaction,” father KC Hayes said. “I mean you’re brought up your whole...

The liberationist philosophy underpinning Obama’s co-ed, gay-friendly military holds, on the one hand, that sexuality is inherently fixed and thus beyond the control of individuals, and on the other that sexuality is subject to re-shaping “through changes in culture.” The social engineers of the military promised that age-old problems between men and women thrown together in close quarters would suddenly vanish under enlightened training. It hasn’t happened. Out of the military’s confused culture of loose moral philosophy, strict feminism, and combustible masculinity has come an endless stream of reports on sexual misconduct in the ranks. This week Congress mulled over...

Washington D.C., May 8, 2013 / 12:08 am (CNA).- Uncertainty over what constitutes coercive “proselytism,” which is barred by military policy, has led to concern and criticism of recent statements by the U.S. Department of Defense. “Service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one's beliefs (proselytization),” Defense Department spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Christensen said May 2. Military commanders take action on complaints of religious harassment “based on the gravity of occurrence on a case by case basis,” he said in a statement. Christensen...

According to an article published at Breitbart.com., entitled "Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith, Christians in the military, including chaplains, could be court martialed and charged with treason for sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. I don't pretend to be an expert on constitutional law, but I would think that this would be unconstitutional for many reasons. Of course, I felt that way about Obama Care until Chief Justice John Roberts weighed in, much to my utter surprise and disappointment. (I may never get over that) But if I can be allowed to reason in my common...

Dan Sandini at Daylight Disinfectant recently posted video from the “May Day” protests in Portland, Oregon, and one of them alarmingly shows a group of young individuals dancing around a golden calf. Sandini’s description of the video reads: Warning: Video can not be “unseen.” ”It is useless to resist it,” or so go the lyrics. On May 1 2013, Occupy Portland dragged an idol of a Golden Bull down to O’Bryant Square. Dressed as Egyptian belly dancers they then proceeded to sing and dance about it. You just can’t make this stuff up folks. About three minutes 34 seconds of...

You may have missed it this weekend, but President Obama gave the commencement address at Ohio State. Here’s the memorable line: PRESIDENT OBAMA: Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems…They’ll warn that tyranny’s always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted. That’s interesting, because the people who actually began this “brave...

Christians are being persecuted all over the world.  Churches are being burned and destroyed, girls are being raped and ancient Christian communities reaching back 2,000 years are being obliterated.  And the world yawns.  Most shockingly, many Christians in the West, worse than yawning, look away and in some cases embrace the perpetrators and blame our allies.This begs the obvious question:  Why do so many Christians in America and Europe seem to not care about what is happening around the world to their fellow disciples of Jesus?  Why are we looking the other way while the brutal murder, persecution, rape and...

Two privacy rights groups sued the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Monday after both agencies allegedly failed to provide more information about how it uses automatic license plate readers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California claim they filed requests for records on ALPR policy and training, along with a week’s worth of ALPR data, eight months ago under the California Public Records Act. The LAPD and the sheriff’s department, however, allegedly refused to hand over the requested documents, according to the complaint.

City of Dearborn Apologizes for Arresting Christians at 2010 Arab Festival; Settlement Reached in Lawsuit In June of 2010, a few of us were on our way out of Dearborn's annual Arab International Festival, when some young Muslims began asking us questions, which we were happy to answer. Here's unedited footage of our last 20 minutes or so at the festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkfVAeG3rn4 Nearly three years later, thanks to our lawyers Robert Muise and David Yerushalmi, the City of Dearborn has apologized for arresting us. Detroit, Michigan (May 6, 2013) — After more than two years of intense motion practice and...

<p>On Wednesday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said President Barack Obama needed to clear up and "renounce" the "un-American" and "amoral" reports from the Pentagon that U.S. soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their Christian faith. She called on Obama to do so "today, right now."</p>

I was doing a radio interview this morning and the host asked me why the Department of Homeland Security needed 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. The easy answer for me was, “They don’t.” Of course the follow-up question for him was, “Then why are they buying it?” And that’s the billion-dollar question isn’t it. What is the federal government going to do with all that ammo? Why do they need it? Why are they buying it? It’s unprecedented. Are we on the cusp of physical domination by the United States Federal Government? And, if so, how will the American people...

U.S. President Barack Obama gives the commencement address to the graduating class of The Ohio State University at Ohio Stadium on May 5, 2013 in Columbus, Ohio. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule...

Just when you thought the crap couldn’t get any creepier in Obamaland, BOOM, it does and things just got a little bit more … how shall I say it … peculiar. Can we still use the word “peculiar”? We can? Good. Cue Twilight Zone music, por favor, and allow me to proceed. So, what am I talking about you ask? Am I referring to the forced lesbian kissing class in a Red Hook, New York middle school? No, silly. That was like two weeks ago. Duh. That’s so yesterday. Or, as Jay Carney said of the Benghazi Massacre, “That was...

The percentage of Americans that are working for themselves has never been lower in the history of the United States. Once upon a time, the United States was a paradise for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but now the control freak bureaucrats that dominate our society have created a system that absolutely eviscerates them. This is very unfortunate, because by murdering small business, the bureaucrats are destroying the primary engine of job growth in this country. One of the big reasons why there are not enough jobs in America today is because small business creation is way down. As I mentioned...

With just a few clicks of a mouse, kids as young as 12 can have free condoms delivered to their doors in California. News of the program's expansion to two new counties comes as the federal government approves the "morning-after pill" without a prescription for girls as young as 15. -snip The Condom Access Project has been around for a year. Late last month, it expanded to San Diego and Fresno counties, bringing the number of counties it serves to seven. As part of the project, anyone between 12 and 19 years old in those counties can confidentially request a...

Members of a boys 4 X 100 meter relay high school track team in Texas were left in tears last weekend after the University Interscholastic League of Texas disqualified them from competing in the state championships because the team's anchor runner made a "religious gesture" as he crossed the finish line to win their regional title. The runner, Derrick Hayes reportedly lifted a finger to the sky in celebration, as he wrapped up the win for Columbus High School. According to his father, K.C. Hayes, he was simply pointing to God. But UIL officials disagreed and slapped the team with...

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: "Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense...Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis...”. The statement, released to (Fox News) follows a Breitbart (News Report) on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith. (From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians--including chaplains--sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military...

A high-ranking Coast Guard official said at a National Day of Prayer event that religious liberty in the U.S. military is being threatened and that service members are being told to hide their faith in Christ, according to a taped remarks obtained by Fox News. “As one general so aptly put it – they expect us to check our religion in at the door – don’t bring that here,” Rear Admiral William Lee told a National Day of Prayer gathering on Capitol Hill. “Leaders like myself are feeling the constraints of rules and regulations and guidance issued by lawyers...

An Air Force spokesperson said personnel are not allowed to proselytize but are free to express their personal religious beliefs so long as it “does not make others uncomfortable.” But a critic pointed out an Air Force officer was told to remove a Bible that was on his desk. “When on duty or in an official capacity, Air Force members are free to express their personal religious beliefs as long as it does not make others uncomfortable,” Lt. Col. Laurel Tingley said in a statement to Fox News. “Proselytizing (inducing someone to convert to one’s faith) goes over that line.”...

The United States Department of Defense is waging another war, but not against another country.  Their target?  Christians in our own military. Obama appointees at the Pentagon have jumped into bed with Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religions Freedom Foundation, who will be a consultant in developing new policies on religious tolerance in the military.  The new policies will include a court-martial for military chaplains who share the Gospel during spiritual counseling of American servicemen and women. Weinstein wrote an angry column for the Huffington Post in which he said, “Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters...

Pentagon personnel responded to Breitbart News’ report about court-martialing service members who share their faith in the military, which the Pentagon confirmed on May 1, and the Air Force on May 2 separately confirmed a second time. Now the Pentagon claims the opposite. But these new statements instead only compound the problem, as the Pentagon’s new definitions for terms squarely contradict what the dictionary says those terms mean. All this has taken place as the first flag officer in the military has stepped forward to defy the unconstitutional policy. In an official statement yesterday, Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a spokesman...

Did the Pentagon bar Christians from talking about their faith while serving in the military? Not exactly, but a new push to aggressively stop proselytizing has chaplains nervous, according to the Deseret News: The latest salvo came this week when conservative blogger Todd Starnes wrote on Fox News and the Christian Post that the Pentagon confirmed that “religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense.�The regulation is not new. In August, the Air Force issued a policy telling its chaplains that they must balance an airman’s right to religious exercise with a prohibition against government establishment of religion....

PC Amok: A congressman asks why emails describe supporters of traditional marriage as members of hate groups while the Pentagon vets a religious tolerance guide with a group that compares Christian evangelism to "rape." When Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently appeared before Congress, he was grilled by Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., about an email sent by an officer at Fort Campbell, Ky., to three dozen subordinates, warning them to be on the lookout for soldiers connected with "domestic hate groups." Among the groups listed in the 14-page email by Lt. Col. Frank Rich, the Second Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment Commander...

President Barack Obama had better clear this up today, right now. Surely he is just allowing his handlers to throw up this kind of ridiculous, amoral, un-American trial balloon. I call on Obama to address this immediately with the American public, clear it up, and renounce these reports as the nonsense they surely in God's name must be. - Sarah PalinBreaking: Pentagon Confirms May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: "Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense...Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis...”. The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith. (From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians--including chaplains--sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military...

Religious liberty groups have grave concerns after they learned the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group that compared Christian evangelism to “rape” and advocated that military personnel who proselytize should be court martialed. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is calling on the Air Force to enforce a regulation that they believe calls for the court martial of any service member caught proselytizing. President Mikey Weinstein and others from his organization met privately with Pentagon officials on April 23. He said U.S. troops who proselytize are guilty of sedition and treason and should be punished –...

“Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”

Have you ever gotten a parking ticket or been stopped for speeding? I have. The thought of simply ignoring it never occurred to me. It appears that about three-quarters of the people in Virginia just rip them up. According to the AP, Nearly half the fines and fees levied by Virginia courts went unpaid over the past five years, according to a state audit. And for traffic cases, it was much, much worse. District courts assessed more than 80 percent of the total fines and costs because that's where traffic cases go. The collection rate for the traffic court was...

Senator Rand Paul‘s media tour following his “misunderestimated” statements on drones brought him to Glenn Beck‘s radio show Friday, where the two men discussed the prospects of a terrifying future where police cars have “robotic firing arms” that take down criminals with the push of a button. If that ever happens, Beck told Paul, “the Second Amendment is absolutely dead.” After confirming earlier in the week that he would be OK with armed drones being used to kill American citizens if they were, say, coming out of a liquor store brandishing a gun, Paul explained to Beck he’s not talking...

Not a single one of us expected to find any humor in President Obama’s stupid jokes at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but the sheer level of cocky arrogance he displayed is frightening. And the sheer level of liberal media, politically correct bias in selective journalistic editing was in full display over at the Huffington Post Saturday night. The president swaggered up to the microphone Saturday night to the rap song, “All I Do is Win,” and told the roomful of mostly liberal journalists and movie stars this was what Rush Limbaugh had warned them about – “Second term, baby,”...

The YouTube channel Patriot News Organization on Thursday uploaded a training video from the Department of Homeland Security that depicts a fake news broadcast about a police SWAT team raiding an American house and arresting "extremist" members of a “local militia group” for possession of illegal firearms and planning to commit terrorist attacks. “Very disturbing video straight from DHS website - they use it to help train all of the deputized agencies during a crisis, even hospital administrators, media faces, everything and everyone that would be involved in such an event,” reads the Patriot News Organization’s description of the video....

(GunNews.com) — Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has initiated a rulemaking process “to remove unnecessary legal barriers” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule that may prevent states from reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is the database that houses information on individuals prohibited by law from possessing firearms. This is one of the 23 executive actions the President announced in January. “Through the public comment process, we will use the data and information provided by states, health providers, patient advocates and others to determine how...

America's political and cultural left is, step by step, demonizing and marginalizing Christians and Christian values, to the point that even the congenitally apathetic should be concerned. Fox News' Todd Starnes reports that the U.S. military has blocked access to the Southern Baptist Convention's website on an undetermined number of military bases because it supposedly includes "hostile content." Just a few weeks before, as noted in this space, an Army briefing labeled evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics as religious extremists. The information about the Southern Baptist Convention's website surfaced when an Air Force officer reported that he was unable to...

The U.S. Military has blocked access to the Southern Baptist Convention’s website on an unknown number of military bases because it contains “hostile content” — just weeks after an Army briefing labeled Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics as examples of religious extremism, Fox News has learned. The Southern Baptist Convention is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination known for its support of the pro-life movement and its strong belief in traditional marriage. Southern Baptist chaplains reported that SBC.net had been blocked at military installations around the nation. An Air Force officer told Fox News that when he tried to log on...

This is the image posted at Drudge (the name of Allah)...And this was the what was actually recorded by John the Revelator as "666"...Curious to say the least!

Manasquan, NJ --(Ammoland.com)- Since breaking the story of NY State Gun Owner Daivd Lewis being ordered to turn in his gun’s by NY State Police skyrocketed to the center of the National conversation on Gun Control/Gun Rights last week, going viral overnight and being discussed as the lead story on “The Blaze“, “The Glenn Beck Show”, NY State talk radio, local NY State News Stations and the Megyn Kelly Show on Fox News on Friday. But now, even more disturbing revelations have come to light. NY State Talk Radio Host Tom Bauerle discussed on his program that several sources inside...