Free Republic

--snip-- As a result of the rulings in Heller and McDonald, the Second Amendment, which was adopted to protect the states from federal interference with their power to ensure that their militias were “well regulated,” has given federal judges the ultimate power to determine the validity of state regulations of both civilian and militia-related uses of arms. That anomalous result can be avoided by adding five words to the text of the Second Amendment to make it unambiguously conform to the original intent of its draftsmen. As so amended, it would read:   “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the...

April 11, 2014, 01:06 pm Obama denies visa to Iran diplomat By Justin Sink The White House said Friday it would not issue a visa to Iran's next ambassador to the United Nations, who has ties to the Iranian hostage crisis. “We have informed the United Nations and Iran that we will not issue a visa to Mr. Hamid Abutalebi,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. Abutalebi has admitted that he worked as a translator and negotiator for the student group that held Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran for 444 days. "We’ve confirmed what we’ve conveyed....

An official says four students were believed to be seriously injured at a high school near Pittsburgh, where a student with a knife stabbed or slashed others, injuring as many as 20. Westmoreland County emergency management spokesman Dan Stevens says not all of the 20 injured were cut by the knife, though most were. Some suffered scrapes and cuts in the mayhem that ensued at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville on Wednesday morning.-

Today, I write with some good news some of you may have already heard. On March 20, in Greenville, N.C., a federal jury unanimously sided with me in my claims that the University of North Carolina–Wilmington (UNCW) violated federal law in a 2006 promotion decision. Specifically, the jury found that my First Amendment–protected speech was a “substantial or motivating factor” in the defendants’ decision not to promote me to full professor. They also found that defendants could not prove they would have made the same decision in the absence of my speech activity. The case now moves to the judge...

The US Senate has unanimously passed a bill barring known terrorists from entering the United States as ambassadors to the United Nations. The move came in response to the decision by Iran to appoint Hamid Aboutalebi, who participated in the 1979 hostage-taking of Americans in Tehran, as its UN ambassador. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf had called the decision "extremely troubling", and at least 29 Republican Senators had appealed to the Obama administration to deny Aboutalebi a visa to enter the US. One of those Senators was Ted Cruz (R-TX), who said he would not make do with a simple...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy is planning sea trials for a weapon that can fire a low-cost, 23-pound (10-kg) projectile at seven times the speed of sound using electromagnetic energy, a "Star Wars" technology that will make enemies think twice, the Navy's research chief said. Rear Admiral Matthew Klunder, the chief of Naval Research, told a round table group recently the futuristic electromagnetic rail gun had already undergone extensive testing on land and would be mounted on the USNS Millinocket, a high-speed vessel, for sea trials beginning in 2016. "It's now reality and it's not science fiction. It's actually...

A Dutch former top banker who came under fire for taking a large pay-off after the nationalization of his troubled bank was found dead along with his wife and daughter on Saturday in what police called a family tragedy. Jan Peter Schmittmann, 57, ran the domestic

The U.S. Navy believes it has finally worked out the solution to a problem that has intrigued scientists for decades: how to take seawater and use it as fuel.

Hours after the Drudge Report suggested on Sunday that "Republicans expand[ed] Obamacare" in the headline for the site's lead story, an "alert" from the office of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, countered that they had actually "chip[ped] away another piece" of the law. The recent change "eliminated a cap on deductibles for small group policies offered inside the law's health care exchanges as well as outside," the Associated Press explained. "Successfully repealing this Obamacare provision is just one part of Republicans' larger effort to repeal the full law and replace it with better solutions focused on lowering health care costs...

Well, they tried to do it quietly. It didn’t work out.Originally, O-Care placed caps on deductibles in plans offered by small businesses, which meant less flexibility for employers in what they could offer their workers. That’s bad news for young and healthy employees who don’t visit the doctor much and would have preferred a plan with low premiums and a higher deductible. It’s also bad news for people who use health savings accounts to make high deductibles more affordable. So, last week, the House leadership agreed to insert a provision in the “doc fix” bill (the one that “passed” via...

In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God’s side. The West is Gomorrah.

Bill Maher appeared on Fusion’s America with Jorge Ramos this week, and at one point the host brought up the rumor he heard that Maher owns a gun. After confirming that it’s true, Maher said the difference between him and conservative gun owners in America is that he doesn’t “love” his gun, he just keeps it on hand in case of an emergency.“Of course, I think the Republicans are insane about guns,” Maher told Ramos, “because they love guns, which is a sick position to have in the first place, to love something like a gun? I don’t love my...

RUSH COUNTY - There are new reports about what investigators are discovering as they search collection of historical artifacts so huge it fills a Rush County home and several outbuildings. An organization representing Native Americans believe human remains are buried among thousands and thousands of artifacts collected by Donald Miller in the U.S. and around the world. The FBI investigation and massive effort to recover thousands of invaluable artifacts is being watched by the American Indian Movement. Until recently, its local chairman lived only a half-hour away from the Rush County site. "We are glad something like this has happened,"...

Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich was pressured to step down after it was revealed that he donated $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8 ballot measure against gay marriage. In a story twist, it was revealed that the Internal Revenue Service was responsible for a leak in which they turned over the donor records of the campaign to a gay rights group. Follow TLR on Google+ The controversy heated up when dating website OKCupid asked users not to access their site using the browser as an act of protest, which initiated a firestorm that resulted in Eich’s resignation. Curiously enough, Eich presided over...

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee says a proposal to allow illegal aliens to receive permanent legal residency by enlisting in the military won't be in the underlying text of a must-pass defense bill, dealing a serious blow to a push to enact the immigration measure. “I do not intend to include the ‘ENLIST’ Act in the proposed National Defense Authorization Act that I will submit to the Armed Services Committee next month. I have reached this conclusion without regard to my views on the underlying policy, but because I do not believe that the Chairman’s mark should...

INDIANAPOLIS – FBI agents have seized thousands of artifacts from Native Americans, Russia, China, and other nations from a 91-year-old man's private collection in rural central Indiana. The items, which also came from Haiti, Australia, New Guinea and Peru, were collected by Donald Miller of Waldron over eight decades, FBI Special Agent Robert Jones said at a news conference. "The cultural value of these artifacts is immeasurable," Jones said while refusing to disclose details of any of the individual items taken from Miller's property. Some items were acquired improperly, but Miller, who traveled extensively, obtained others legally or before laws...

<p>The FBI has swooped into an elderly man’s Indiana home and seized thousands of artifacts he collected — he says legally — during his decades of travel to hundreds of destinations, including Haiti, Australia, New Guinea and Peru.</p> <p>Donald Miller, 91, accumulated the artifacts over the past 80 years, said FBI Special Agent Robert Jones, during a news conference.</p>

RUSH COUNTY, Ind. - The FBI says a 91-year-old Indiana man who collected thousands of archeological artifacts over his lifetime may have acquired some of them improperly. At a news conference Wednesday, the FBI could not say if Donald Miller would face charges for his collection in Waldron. Dozens of agents were at Miller's farm to collect and process the artifacts. It happened in Waldron, a classic, quiet, one-stoplight Indiana town (snip) Several people in Waldron said the house was like a museum, that school groups and Scout troops would go on regular tours. The FBI has around 100 agents...

100 agents make a man prove that he obtained his collection properly.WALDRON, IN — Around 100 FBI agents swarmed an elderly man’s house in rural Indiana.  The Federal government has set up a command post with trucks and military-style tents.  The feds showed up to sort through his lifetime collection of world artifacts that he had gathered over the course of his 91 years.   The agents claim they want to make sure he “acquired the items properly” — effectively making him prove his innocence — even though the man has not been accused of breaking any laws. Don Miller,...

Thousands Of Artifacts Seized At 91-Year-Old Indiana Man's Home Federal agents, art experts and museum curators descended on the home of a 91-year-old man in central Indiana on Wednesday to take control of a huge collection of artifacts from Native American, Russian, Chinese and other cultures. FBI Special Agent Robert Jones told reporters that the collection's cultural value "is immeasurable," reports RTV6 The Indy Channel.