Free Republic

Although conspiracy theories abound as to who orchestrated President John F. Kennedy’s murder 50 years ago, there is little doubt regarding who actually pulled the trigger and shot the 35th president: left-wing radical Lee Harvey Oswald. He was involved with a number of liberal causes and had been a member of the American Civil Liberties Union; he had officially joined just weeks before he took Kennedy’s life, and when questioned after murdering Kennedy, Oswald specifically asked for an ACLU attorney. Savodink said that Oswald’s fellow marines called him “Oswaldskovich” because of his fascination with communism and the U.S.S.R. Whatever theories...

Where is the slack for Martin Richard, youngest victim of the jihad bombers? How about cutting some slack to his younger sister Jane, who has undergone no fewer than 11 operations on her left leg, which she lost below the knee? We demand slack for the hundreds of victims of the devout Muslims who blew up the Boston Marathon. The ACLU is a dangerous and depraved organization whose mission by objective is to destroy these United States. Huge props to the judge that booted the litigious jihad jackboots from weighing in on jihad Tsarnaev’s trial. ACLU fights for Boston...

A Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Christian pastor and school bus driver was terminated last week after he violated two warnings issued by the school district and the subcontractor company that he worked for in which he was asked to refrain from leading students in prayer. George Nathaniel, who pastors the Elite Church of the First Born and Grace Missionary Baptist Church, received separate complaint letters from the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district and Durham School Services, a school bus operating company, in addition to his reassignment for different bus routes. However, Nathaniel dismissed their reprimands and continued his daily prayers during the children's school ride....

A federal trial to determine whether Wisconsin's controversial voter identification law discriminates against minorities is scheduled to begin on Monday in a case seen as a possible precedent for similar laws in other states. Voter ID laws - which require government-issued identification before voting - have become a political and racial flashpoint across the United States. Democrats generally oppose the measures and many Republicans back them. The trial in Milwaukee combines two federal lawsuits filed on behalf of dozens of individual voters by several organizations including the League of United Latin American Citizens, Milwaukee Area Labor Council and the American...

Gun rights groups are throwing their weight behind efforts on Capitol Hill to rein in the National Security Agency (NSA). The National Rifle Association (NRA) is among a number of groups that have signed on to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the secretive government agency. The NRA has also endorsed bipartisan legislation proposed by House and Senate Judiciary committees that would end the NSA’s collection of bulk phone records. Another Second Amendment advocate, the Gun Owners of America, expects to back NSA legislation as well. “There are issues that, maybe at first blush, wouldn't seem like a...

DENVER (CBS4) – There’s more controversy over legalized marijuana after some members of the Denver City Council want to limit open consumption. Marijuana advocates say the city may be violating the spirit of Amendment 64. Under the proposal smoking marijuana at a park or other public places could lead a fine of almost $1,000 and a year in jail. But what’s causing alarm to marijuana smokers is how Denver might be defining how much is too much in the privacy of a person’s property. People were passing out free joints in Civic Center Park last month and Denver Mayor Michael...

Early Monday morning it was revealed supervisors within the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms have censored whistleblower John Dodson by denying an outside work application to publish a book about Operation Fast and Furious. The family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry is expressing their support for Dodson and want his book to be published. "The family of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry stands behind ATF whistleblower John Dodson and supports his attempts to publish his manuscript pertaining to the flawed gun trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. Recently, ATF officials told Dodson that...

An Ohio school district has agreed to keep a portrait of Jesus Christ off school property and pay a $95,000 fine in the face of legal pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union. The Jackson City School District, located in Jackson, reached a deal on Friday after the ACLU, along with the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation, sued the district in February, citing “unconstitutional” actions and charging that students and visitors to the school “will continue to suffer permanent, severe and irreparable harm and injury,” according to the lawsuit. The picture had been hanging in Jackson’s high school since 1947...

That was awkward. In the clearest sign yet of the potent effect of the government shutdown on the Virginia governor’s race, Republican Ken Cuccinelli avoided being photographed with Ted Cruz at a gala they headlined here Saturday night—even leaving before the Texas senator rose to speak. Backstage, a source said, Cuccinelli urged Cruz to work with Democrats to end the federal shutdown. But he did not make that point, or even acknowledge Cruz, in short public comments to some 1,100 social conservatives. Cruz has become the face of GOP intransigence, and the conservative attorney general’s effort to distance himself from...

On Jan. 16, Jagjeet Singh, 49, a long-haul truck driver from California on his way to pick up chickens for delivery in Texas, was pulled over for driving with a flat tire in Pike County, Miss. Officers at a weigh station operated by the Department of Transportation demanded that Singh turn over his "kirpan," a 3-inch ceremonial blade carried by all Sikh men and frequently sewed into the waistband of their trousers, according to the ACLU. "Contending, wrongly, that his kirpan was illegal, the DOT officer demanded that Mr. Singh turn it over. Mr. Singh tried to explain that he...

More than a dozen women’s health care providers in Texas sued the state Friday, attempting to block as unconstitutional key provisions of a strict new abortion law that drew massive protests and threw the Legislature into chaos before it was approved this summer. The 32-page complaint was filed in Austin by the providers and Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union. The new law requires doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, only allows abortions in surgical centers and bans the procedure completely after 20 weeks, while also limiting medical abortions. …

"Take your DACA and shove it!" - by John HillStand With ArizonaArizona Governor Jan Brewer is under fire from pro-illegal alien "rights" groups like the ACLU and La Raza for refusing drivers licenses to illegal alien "youth" granted virtual amnesty under Barack Obama's DACA program. They have sued repeatedly to try and stop her. But rather than back down, Brewer has doubled down. Brewer has now directed her Department of Transportation to expand her denial of drivers licenses to ALL illegal aliens granted a reprieve from deportation by the Obama DHS or ICE, regardless of circumstances. The left has erupted...

If I told you that one out of three African-American males is forbidden by law from voting, you might think I was talking about Jim Crow 50 years ago. Yet today, a third of African-American males are still prevented from voting because of the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs has disproportionately affected young black males. The ACLU reports that blacks are four to five times more likely to be convicted for drug possession although surveys indicate that blacks and whites use drugs at similar rates. The majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, but three-fourths...

The National Rifle Association said on Wednesday it supports a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups to strike down the U.S. government's broad telephone surveillance program, citing potential violations of gun owners' privacy rights. In a brief backing the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against senior U.S. government officials, the NRA said the collection of vast communications threatens privacy and could allow the government to create a registry of gun owners. Civil rights groups filed the lawsuit earlier this year after documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed a massive government program to collect and store...

A year after taking over the troubled Highland Park School District, the charter school management company now overseeing the district is reporting improved scores in reading and math. The Leona Group cited improved reading and math testing scores for grades 2 through 8 from the fall of 2012 to the spring of 2013 in the new Highland Park Public School Academy System. The improvement is significant because Highland Park is at the center of an ACLU class-action lawsuit that claims the state failed to ensure students were reading at grade level and the state "should know" the Leona Group "is...

Former Illinois GOP Chair Pat Brady, who was pushed out by party conservatives because of his vocal support for same-sex marriage, is writing his next chapter by tackling the same issue. Starting in November, Brady plans to begin lobbying Republican state lawmakers on passing same-sex marriage on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has tapped Brady and his consulting firm, Next Generation Public Affairs, to help push the legislation through the Illinois House. “Illinois is one of the top-priority states, urgency-wise. I’m working for them at their direction,” Brady told the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday. “I’m concentrating...

Earlier today, J. Christian Adams reported comments made by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) regarding the Voting Rights Act. Sharing the podium with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, Sensenbrenner told a Washington audience Monday that he wants to “fix” the part of the law that the Supreme Court recently struck down. Sensenbrenner said he wants to fix the law so that it is immune to court challenges. “The first thing we have to do is take the monkey wrench that the court threw in it, out of the Voting Rights Act, and then use that monkey wrench to be able...

Democratic State Senator Dan Sutton of Flandreau, South Dakota accused of fondling a male page. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/24/AR2007012401966.html Carl Stanley McGee, 38, prominent gay activist, assistant secretary for policy and planning and top aid to democrat governor Deval Patrick of Massachuttsettes, accused of sexually assaulting a 15 year old boy in a steam room at a Florida resort. http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1072114 Bernard Vincent Ward, former chief legislative aide to Senator Barbara Boxer, self proclaimed "Lion of the Left" on bay area radio, admitted transgressions too numerous to mention. http://prosites-prs.homestead.com/ward_new.pdf Davidson County Democratic Party Chairman Rodney Mullins resigned Thursday morning amid child pornography allegations, according...

Several Republican lawmakers are urging a federal district court in California to block the removal of a war memorial cross in a San Diego public park that was declared unconstitutional in 2011. "We're urging the court to permit a private organization to obtain and operate the war memorial – a remedy that would remove any constitutional questions and protect this longstanding tribute to our men and women in uniform," Sekulow said in a statement. The legal fight over the Mount Soledad cross began in 1989 when atheist Philip Paulson sued the city of San Diego.

A government program to screen immigrants for national security concerns has blacklisted some Muslims and put their U.S. citizenship applications on hold for years, civil liberties advocates said Wednesday. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said in a report that the previously undisclosed program instructs federal immigration officers to find ways to deny applications that have been deemed a national security concern. For example, they flag discrepancies in a petition or claim they didn’t receive sufficient information from the immigrant. The criteria used by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to blacklist immigrants are overly broad and include traveling...