Free Republic

America great? Justice James Wilson "It is the BEST form of government which has EVER been offered to the WORLD" He was one of six founding fathers to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. President Washington appointed him to be a Justice on the Supreme Court. His name was James Wilson. Born in Scotland, James Wilson was one of the first to argue against British dominance. In 1774, James Wilson wrote "Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament," reasoning that since the colonies had no representation in Parliament, the Parliament...

A series of Special Forces military training exercises -- including gunfire with blanks -- is being staged across 21 North Carolina counties starting Aug. 30, and the Army is telling the public not to be alarmed at the suspicious-looking activity. (Source: Video screenshot | U.S. Department of Defense) August 21, 2019 at 1:34 PM EDT - Updated August 21 at 1:34 PM NORTH CAROLINA (Mark Price/Charlotte Observer) - A series of Special Forces military training exercises -- including gunfire with blanks -- is being staged across 21 North Carolina counties starting Aug. 30, and the Army is telling the...

300,000 miles on horseback -Francis Asbury, Circuit Riding Preacher "one of the builders of our nation" The King of England was the head of the Anglican Church from the time of Henry VIII. Beginning in 1535, all English subjects, including those in English colonies, were required to the Oath of Supremacy: "I (state your name) do utterly testify and declare in my Conscience, that the King's Highness is the only Supreme Governor of this Realm ... in all Spiritual or Eclesiastical things ... So help me God." For most of England's history from 1535 to 1829, not to take the...

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!" wrote Sir Walter Scott in his poem "In Marmion" (1808, canto VI, stanza XVII). On AUGUST 19, 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Peter Carr: "He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." The Greek philosopher...

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men & women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it."-Judge Learned Hand "A conservative among liberals, and a liberal among conservatives," he was not consistently conservative enough for Republican President Warren G. Harding and he was not consistently liberal enough for Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt. As a result, he was passed over several times to be a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. His name was Learned Hand, who served as a judge for over 50 years, first on New York's District Court, then...

Yale President Ezra Stiles addressed Connecticut's General Assembly, May 8, 1783, regarding General George Washington being chosen to command the Continental Army: "The memorable battle of Bunker Hill. (June 17, 1775) ... convinced us ... that Americans both would and could fight with great effect. ... Whereupon Congress put at the head of this spirited army, the only man (George Washington), on whom the eyes of all Israel were placed ... This American JOSHUA was raised up by God, and divinely formed by a peculiar influence of the Sovereign of the Universe, for the great work of leading the armies...

America's laws are largely derived from English Common Law. Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, published 1765-1769 by Oxford's Clarendon Press, articulated English Common Law in a way that powerfully influenced America's founders. Blackstone's work is considered the definitive pre-Revolutionary source of common law by United States courts. Blackstone wrote: "The principal aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which were vested in them by the immutable laws of nature." Blackstone drew upon previous documents highlighting Creator-given rights, which then crystallized in America's Declaration of Independence. Historian Dr. Marshall Foster...

After his education, he was commissioned in the French military in 1785, and quickly advanced. Napoleon's expertise in the use of mobile artillery and the military tactics of "envelopment" and "divide and conquer" resulted in him becoming one of the greatest military commanders of all time. Beginning in 1792, France experienced a Reign of Terror. King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were were beheaded in 1793. When the French Revolution began, Napoleon was an artillery officer. In April of 1795, Napoleon was ordered to help smash a counter-revolution of Catholic royalists in War in the Vendée. Napoleon claimed to...

President William Howard Taft had stated at a missionary conference in 1908: "No man can study the movement of modern CIVILIZATION from an impartial standpoint, and not realize that Christianity and the spread of Christianity are the basis of hope of modern CIVILIZATION in the growth of popular self government. The spirit of Christianity is pure democracy. It is equality of man before God - the equality of man before the law, which is, as I understand it, the most God-like manifestation that man has been able to make." In 1923, in his last public address, titled "The Road Away...

Hundreds of Google employees are calling on the company to pledge it won’t work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s the latest in a year full of political and social pushback from the tech giant’s workforce. A group of employees called Googlers for Human Rights posted a public petition urging the company not to bid on a cloud computing contract for CBP, the federal agency that oversees law enforcement for the country’s borders. Bids for the contract were due Aug. 1. It is not clear if Google expressed interest. The company did not return...

Officials promoting so-called "red-flag laws" should be evaluated for fitness to serve. Why? Because their so called "extreme protection orders" are blatant constitutional violations and have no place in an American system of justice. This much is obvious. Empowering your neighbors, roommates, former lovers, relatives or people who have a grudge against you to use armed police to attack you, without warning or probable cause, does you serious criminal harm and must be stopped cold. \ Encouraging the public to "red flag" each other is what dictators did in the Soviet Union, communist China and elsewhere. Leftist sympathizers in America...

He was reading the script of a 1938 radio drama based on the novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, who died AUGUST 13, 1946. Herbert George Wells was from an impoverished lower middle class family. He failed as a draper and chemist assistant before going into literature. H.G. Wells wrote many best-selling science fiction novels, such as: The Time Machine, 1895; The Island of Doctor Moreau, 1896; The Invisible Man, 1897; The War of the Worlds, 1898; The First Men in the Moon, 1901. H.G. Wells space novels inspired the imagination of Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945). Goddard...

"O Beautiful, For Spacious Skies, For Amber Waves of Grain ..." Almost chosen as the National Anthem in 1926, "America the Beautiful" was written by Katherine Lee Bates, born AUGUST 12, 1859. Daughter of a Congregational minister, Katherine Lee Bates taught high school, then English literature at Wellesley College. She hosted gatherings at her home for students and literary guests, including Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and William Butler Yeats. Of her 1893 Colorado journey, Katherine Lee Bates wrote: "Some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon....

Mandatory versus voluntary. Though court cases have sought to limit "mandatory" school-sponsored prayer, students continue to have the right to "voluntarily" pray! Brad Dacus, President of Pacific Justice Institute, stated (www.legaltopray.com): “In every case defending students’ rights to pray, the students have prevailed, even teachers have the right to pray in school." President Bill Clinton stated at James Madison High School, July 12, 1995: "The First Amendment does not require students to leave their religion at the schoolhouse door ... If students can wear T-shirts advertising sports teams, rock groups or politicians, they can also wear T-shirts that promote religion...

Herbert Hoover: Indian Reservation, Engineer, WWI Relief, President, Middle East, Communism, Constitution, the Bible Herbert Clark Hoover was born AUGUST 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. At the age of 6, his father died. Herbert was sent to live on the Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma with his Quaker uncle, who was an Indian agent. There he made many Indian friends and attended the "Indian Sunday-School." Herbert Hoover was the only U.S. President to have lived on an Indian reservation. His Canadian-born Quaker mother, Hulda, taught Sunday School and spoke at the Friend's Meeting House. She died when he was...

Please do not have a cow, my proposal is an improvement in speed and confidentiality. Imagine my zip code is 55555-1212 and I have a valid state-issued photo ID with that zip code on it. If some gun seller wanted to see if I'm a barred person, he would enter 55555 into the ATF website. He would get back a numerically ordered list of nine-digit zip codes of barred persons who have been issued state identification cards/licenses with nine-digit zip codes for 55555 that are still valid. This might have fifty zip codes on it. The gun seller would check...

After the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the Northwest from May 1804 to September 1806, meeting natives tribes along the way. Several years later, in 1831, three Nez Perce Indians and one Flathead Indian, traveled 2,000 miles, all the way from the Oregon Territory to St. Louis, Missouri, looking for the "Book to Heaven." The Bishop of St. Louis was Rev. Joseph Rosati (1789-1843), who later sent Pierre De Smet as one of the "Black robe" missionaries to the Indians. Bishop Rosati wrote in the Annals of the Association of the Propagation...

Scandals in politics have been motivated by personal gain, greed, love of power, lust, or simply a conviction that one's political agenda is so good it justifies bending the law. This ungodly behavior was observed by Machiavelli in The Prince (1513), who recorded the evil tactics of Cesare Borgia: "the ends justifies the means." In 1798, Yale President Timothy Dwight described how the Jacobins acted this way during the French Revolution: "Adultery, assassination, poisoning, and other crimes of the like infernal nature, were taught as lawful ... provided the end was good." Saul Alinsky advocated this in his nefarious Rules...

"Mr. Creator, will you tell me why the peanut was made?" -George Washington Carver & Successful Black Entrepreneurs George Washington Carver was born a slave during the Civil War, possibly in 1865, but there are no records. Within a few weeks, his father, who belonged to the next farm over, was killed in a log hauling accident. Shortly after the Civil War, bushwhackers from the Democrat South kidnapped infant George with his mother and sister. Moses Carver sent friends to track down the thieves and trade his best horse to retrieve them. The thieves only left baby George, lying on...

The First Great Awakening helped unite the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War. The embers of it began a Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s. Thomas Jefferson noted in his Memorandum Book: "I have subscribed to the building of an Episcopalian church, two hundred dollars; a Presbyterian church, sixty dollars, and a Baptist church, twenty-five." On July 14, 1826, the Boston newspaper Christian Watchman printed an unverified story that Jefferson dined at Monticello prior to the Revolutionary War with Baptist Pastor Andrew Tribble. The story described how Jefferson inquired of Pastor Tribble how Baptist church government worked, then Jefferson...