Free Republic

“The Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.” These were not the words of a radical social justice warrior from “Black Lives Matter,” or even a liberal Democrat in Congress. They were the deliberate and percipient observations from one of the most substantive and constitutionally faithful of Supreme Court Justices -- the late Antonin Scalia. The tragedy of Scalia’s untimely passing is amplified by the need for voices such as his in the current fight between iPhone manufacturer Apple and the federal government, over forced access to an encrypted phone...

While delivering remarks in New Hampshire this week critical of Ted Cruz's thoughtful position on the use of waterboarding, one of Donald Trump's supporters yelled out to him that this made Cruz a word not fit for pages of this site. Not wanting such a crude, but biting, criticism of his opponent to be left hanging in the air, Trump did what we all could have guessed he would do -- stop his speech, chuckle, and then repeat it into the microphone to make sure every person and media representative present heard. It was classic Trump. To say that Trump's...

Last Friday, President Obama wrote 46 letters to men and women across the United States that will change their lives. “Dear Jerry,” Obama wrote to one man, “I wanted to personally inform you that I will be granting your application for commutation.” Jerry, like the others, is a convicted drug offender who, Obama claims, should long ago have served his time and been released back into society. Instead, tens of thousands of other low-level drug offenders continue to fester in federal prison; the consequence of overzealous, 1980s-era mandatory minimum sentencing requirements that have led to dangerous overcrowding in the federal...

The other day, Steve Hayes had this piece up at the Weekly Standard. In it, he noted that Cruz was running a video positing himself as the heir to the Ron Paul Revolution. You'd never even know Rand was running. Rand Paul, after all, was the fusion candidate who was going to bring libertarians and conservatives together along for a ride against the left. It has not happened. Rand Paul's campaign has imploded. And now, if you scroll down in this article towards the end you will find this blurb: "Former Georgia congressman and Libertarian candidate for president Bob Barr...

A yearlong investigation into whether Clinton administration aides left the White House in fraternity-party disarray as they vacated the presidential premises has turned up about $15,000 in damage, according to a government report released Tuesday. Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) asked the General Accounting Office last June to look into allegations that Clinton staffers had ripped phone cords from walls, left obscene voicemail messages, defaced bathrooms and vandalized computer keyboards by removing the "W" keys when they left the White House. A number of items, including a 12-inch presidential seal and several antique doorknobs, were assumed stolen. "The Clinton administration treated...

Totaling an astounding 24,030 membersHOUSTON, Texas - Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz today rolled-out his Second Amendment Coalition at a rally in Johnston, Iowa. The group represents gun rights advocates across the country who believe in the fundamental constitutional right to bear arms for the purpose of self-defense. The coalition already has 24,030 members, including 1,084 members in the four early primary states. The coalition will be co-chaired by Gun Owners of America President Tim Macy, former Congressman Bob Barr, President and Co-Founder of Heroes Hunting Sgt. Patrick Perkins, Richard Rogers and Dave Funk."The right to self-defense is an essential component...

As President, Bill Clinton infuriated many in the gay community by signing into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which blocked federal recognition of same-sex marriages, and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which required gay members of the military to remain in the closet about their sexual orientation or be ejected from service. Arguably, Clinton didn't exactly have a lot of room to maneuver. DOMA passed by an overwhelming, veto-proof majority. While it was introduced by Republicans in 1996 (by Bob Barr, who would eventually run for president as a Libertarian Party candidate in 2008 and apologize for sponsoring the...

via The Iowa Statesman. Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz today named former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr the National Chair of the “Liberty Leaders for Cruz” coalition. The campaign also released a video of eight leaders in the Liberty movement who are actively working for the Cruz campaign, featuring their personal stories of why they supported Ron Paul, and why in 2016, they support Ted Cruz for President. Additional coverage at Reason. – Fmr. Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) was the Libertarian nominee for President in 2008, winning on the sixth ballot at a divided and fractured convention. After a...

Reminds leadership to keep their promises to the American people WASHINGTON, D.C. –  U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today delivered a speech on the Senate floor highlighting the many examples of Republican leadership surrendering to President Obama’s demands, including funding Planned Parenthood and the catastrophic Iran nuclear deal. Sen. Cruz’s speech followed an attempt to permit a vote on his amendment to end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and the Iranian nuclear deal. His colleagues refused to allow him the courtesy of a roll-call vote on his motion, which would have allowed for consideration of his amendment.  The text of...

For months, the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has quietly been courting libertarian-leaning supporters -- people who once supported Ron Paul and ostensibly would have been inclined to back his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in the 2016 race. On Tuesday, Cruz released a video showing eight former Ron Paul liberty movement supporters -- a number of them from Iowa -- who are now backing Cruz. The campaign announced that former Congressman Bob Barr will chair a Liberty Leaders for Cruz" coalition comprised of libertarian-leaning Republicans. As Paul's campaign has floundered and Cruz remains in the middle of...

Cruz #1 in Fox News’s Weekly Analysis of Candidates’ Ranking in 2016 RaceHOUSTON, Texas – Yesterday, in the weekly update of Fox News’s Presidential Power Index, Digital Politics editor Chris Stirewalt offered his analysis on America’s Newsroom with Gretchen Carlson for why Ted Cruz replaces Jeb Bush as this week’s number one pick to win the 2016 GOP Primary, citing Cruz’s strong positioning to compete against the party’s establishment candidate.To view the full TV segment, please click here. Excerpt of segment transcript included below:Gretchen Carlson: Time now for the 2016 Presidential Power Index, where we look every week at who’s...

Releases Video of Former Ron Paul Organizers Endorsing Ted Cruz for PresidentHOUSTON, Texas — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today named former U.S. Congressman Bob Barr National Chair of the “Liberty Leaders for Cruz” coalition. The campaign also released a video of eight leaders in the Liberty movement who are actively working for the Cruz campaign, featuring their personal stories of why they supported Ron Paul, and why in 2016, they support Ted Cruz for President.Watch the video“The U.S. government is crushing liberty at nearly every turn. Our Constitutional rights are under attack like never before and we must fight...

Imagine waking up to the news that a Quaker county sheriff is denying concealed carry permits to citizens because of his religious objection to violence; or, a Muslim DMV supervisor in Dearborn, Michigan has ordered his staff to refuse to issue driver’s licenses to women out of a religious objection to women behind the wheel. These are among the realities that await should we make Kim Davis, the embattled County Clerk from Rowan County, Kentucky, an archetype for “religious freedom” in America. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson replied to a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in which he...

On September 16, 2013, civilian contractor Aaron Alexis entered a building at the Washington Navy Yard, where he walked to the fourth floor bathroom and loaded a shotgun. Within six minutes of the first shots fired, Alexis had murdered 10 people; and before police killed him more than an hour later, the death toll would rise to 12. It was the second deadliest shooting on a U.S. military base in American history; occurring only four years after Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist turned radicalized Muslim terrorist, killed 13 service men and women in Ft. Hood, Texas. When the news broke...

As if there are any more reasons to show that Ron Paul should not be the GOP Presidential candidate, there is this bit from 2008 in which Paul endorses four(!) candidates for President, including the Marxist whack-job Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. How unhinged to you have to be, intellectually, to endorse not only four people, but four whom also hold diametrically opposing views on the role of government. This alone shows that Ron Paul is not a serious thinker. In fact it shows him to be a reactionary flame thrower, willing to completely abandon principles when he doesn't get...

Republican congressional hopeful Bob Barr picked up the endorsement of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Thursday and criticized a key part of the House GOP blueprint for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws. “He was a great U.S. attorney, a great congressman,” Arpaio said. “That is why I am here to help him.” A former Libertarian presidential candidate, Barr is competing in a crowded Republican primary to replace U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey in Georgia’s 11th congressional district. Barr called Arpaio an “international spokesman for good, solid, tough law enforcement.”

From Sharon Rondeau's notes on the audio of Boyles' interview of Volin at the link: Regarding his Sheriff’s Kits, Volin said “I have doctors calling me and asking for 20 copies.” He said that Obamacare is slashing work hours and that people are “getting angry” about Obama’s actions, which then translate to their looking harder at the questions surrounding Obama. In response to Boyles’s question about an announcement from the Cold Case Posse next month, Volin responded that new information will be released, perhaps in “the middle of March,” and that prosecutions will follow. In December, Tea Party Power Hour...

As Lewis Carroll reminded us in 1872, “The time has come, the walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax – Of cabbages – and kings – And why the sea is boiling hot – And whether pigs have wings.” Here we are, 142 years later, and the time has come to talk not of cabbages, kings, or pigs with wings, but the rule of law in America. The time has come to talk of removing Attorney General Eric Holder. When President Barack Obama nominated Eric Holder to serve as our country’s...

They’re at it again. The U.S. Department of Justice is getting set to meddle in a local criminal matter. The office of the Attorney General of the United States was created in 1789, but it was not until nearly one century later, in 1870, that the federal Department of Justice was formally established. In the decades since, as the federal government has grown from one of limited and focused powers, to a leviathan reaching into virtually every aspect of our lives and businesses, the Justice Department has increased in size, scope and power accordingly. Much of the work in which...

If Richard Nixon were alive today, he would likely be fielding midnight phone calls from Barack Obama. Not since Richard Nixon was driven from office by the Watergate scandal four decades ago, has the American public been privy to such an unfolding spectacle of scandal and corruption in a presidential administration. From “Operation Fast and Furious,” to the Benghazi debacle and cover-up, to the IRS harassment of conservative organizations, to the Department of Justice campaign against the Associated Press, and now reports the Department has used its power to intimidate FOX News reporters -- the hits just keep on coming....