Free Republic

Have we gone stark raving mad? The question is brought to mind by the gun law signed last week in Georgia by Gov. Nathan Deal. You might have thought that since the United States couldn’t possibly have more permissive firearms laws than it does now, nothing more could be done to coddle the gun lobby and tip the balance of our statutes away from law enforcement. Alas, you would be wrong. -snip- Oh yes, and while conservatives claim to hate the centralization of power, this law wipes out a series of local gun regulations. The gun supremacists just don’t trust...

Elkhart County Sheriff Brad Rogers is standing firm in his decision to travel last week to the Nevada ranch of Cliven Bundy, site of a showdown between the federal government and critics of federal overreach. He dubbed the effort a "peacekeeping mission," responding in a Facebook post Sunday to a critical Goshen News editorial. "The knowledge and experience I gained from this trip is going to serve Elkhart County in the near future when something occurs here," he wrote in the post. "I was also there on a peacekeeping mission to keep people from getting killed, on my own time!"...

John A. Boehner apologized in a closed-door meeting with Republicans Tuesday morning for comments over the recess that some in the GOP Conference perceived as mocking opponents of comprehensive immigration overhaul — and the speaker reassured lawmakers there is no conspiracy to bring up such a bill over their objections. Boehner said he meant to make a joke, but not at his members’ expense, when he flippantly noted at a Rotary Club meeting in his district last week that some Republicans are reluctant to consider an immigration rewrite. At a press conference after the meeting, Boehner told reporters the same...

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, now speaking to the NRA Annual Meeting’s Leadership Forum, held at the Lucas Oil Stadium: “One hundred million gun owners will not back down, not now, not ever. Freedom has never needed our defense more than now.” “The core values that we believe in the things we care about most are changing and eroding: our right to speak, our right to gather, our right to work, our right to practice our religion and raise our family and protect them they see fit. Those aren’t old values or new values. They are core...

If I suddenly told you I was hiring Johnny Cochran to be my attorney, you’d think – well, first of all, you’d think it was peculiar, since Johnny Cochran is dead. Maybe I’m looking to save some money. But, assuming I mean the metaphorical Johnny Cochran, you’d be pretty sure I’m in some kind of really serious trouble. Or if your wife mentioned she had hired a lawyer, and you found out the attorney specializes in . . . divorce. You’d probably start checking some apartment listings. Which brings us to the strange case of President Obama’s decision to hire...

LAS VEGAS (KSNV MyNews3.com) — Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., called for Congressional hearings into the BLM’s stand-off with cattle rancher Cliven Bundy. Heller requested the hearings during a joint appearance today with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on the KSNV-TV News 3 program “What’s Your Point?” Nevada’s junior senator noted that he wants to determine “who drove” BLM policy into the tense standoff that ended Saturday. Heller said that he took issue with the BLM “coming in with a paramilitary army. It made a lot of people very uncomfortable.” “It’s obvious,” Reid noted, “the federal government can’t just walk...

Employees of U.S. intelligence agencies have been barred from discussing without authorization any intelligence-related matter - even if it isn’t classified - with journalists, under a new directive issued by Director of National Security James Clapper. Intelligence agency employees who violate the policy could suffer career-ending losses of their security clearances or out-right termination, and those who disclose classified information could face criminal prosecution, according to the directive signed by Clapper on March 20. Under the order, only the director or deputy head of an intelligence agency, public affairs officials and those authorized by a public affairs official may have...

'Remember, this is the 19th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing' CUPP: "I'd be reluctant to compare Bundy to Timothy McVeigh. I think what Harry Reid said was despicable. But I agree with Bill. There's a role for civil disobedience. I'm not sure this is the best quality example of it. This is a guy who didn't start out to start a revolution, he just wanted to pay his grazing fees, and there are better ways to go about it." ANCHOR: "'Just didn't want to pay his grazing fees' -- about a million dollars in grazing fees." CUPP: "No, that's...

"PeakNation™ time to put the chocolate bunny down and get back to work. On a day when many across the country were celebrating a resurrection, well-known and well-respected prognosticator Stu Rothenberg stated one thing that won’t be resurrected come November is liberal Senator Mark Udall’s political career." Rothenberg on CNN. 12 second video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylz5G_f-XIM

A Nevada cattle rancher appears to have won his week-long battle with the federal government over a controversial cattle roundup that had led to the arrest of several protesters. Cliven Bundy went head to head with the Bureau of Land Management over the removal of hundreds of his cattle from federal land, where the government said they were grazing illegally. Bundy claims his herd of roughly 900 cattle have grazed on the land along the riverbed near Bunkerville, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, since 1870 and threatened a "range war" against the BLM on the Bundy Ranch website after...

DOJ requesting $2 million for ‘Gun Safety Technology’ grants Attorney General Eric Holder said on Friday that gun tracking bracelets are something the Justice Department (DOJ) wants to “explore” as part of its gun control efforts. When discussing gun violence prevention programs within the DOJ, Holder told a House appropriations subcommittee that his agency is looking into technological innovations. “I think that one of the things that we learned when we were trying to get passed those common sense reforms last year, Vice President Biden and I had a meeting with a group of technology people and we talked about...

President Barack Obama is proposing drastically cutting, and then eliminating, two missile programs pivotal to U.S. security, The Washington Free Beacon reported. The Tomahawk and Hellfire missiles are on the chopping block, according to Obama's budget proposal, which will cut by $128 million the Tactical Tomahawk in 2015 and eliminate it completely after that. ... It's a major turnabout from last year, when the Navy planned to buy 980 Tactical Tomahawks, the primary cruise missile in use throughout the fleet, according to Defense News. In 2015, the Navy would buy just 100 Tomahawks, the last the branch would purchase. The...

While the nation’s (and news media’s) focus on Malaysian Airlines flight 370 gave Democrats a couple of weeks to catch their collective breath, the 2014 election cycle continues to look increasingly dangerous for President Barack Obama and his party. The most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal (March 5-9) and CBS News/New York Times (Feb. 19-23) surveys contained little in the way of good news for Democrats — and recent GOP Senate recruiting successes in Colorado and New Hampshire put two more Senate contests into play. Strategists in both parties agree that Democratic enthusiasm isn’t where it needs to be, especially...

Democrats this week unveiled legislation that aims to correct some of the legal conflicts revealed last summer during recall elections of two Senate Democrats that nullified mail balloting and contributed to the Democrats’ loss. During an impromptu media availability hosted by Senate Democrats on Monday, lawmakers proposed a measure that would modify a provision in state statute that allows a person to petition onto a recall election ballot 15 days before the election date. The provision was highlighted during a Denver District Court case this summer challenging the recall elections of then-Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs and then-Sen....

The White House won’t be shedding any tears. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, known for her critical reporting on the Obama administration, resigned on Monday, bringing an end to months of hard-fought negotiations stemming from her dissatisfaction with the network, sources familiar with her departure told POLITICO. Attkisson, who had been with CBS News for more than two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsize influence by the network’s corporate partners, and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt that her work was no longer...

The Oak Tree Gun Club in Santa Clarita, California, which was briefly associated with the Armatix smart gun, is now rapidly backpedaling away from the fledgling technology as fast as it can. “Our facility does NOT carry the Armatix pistol, never has,” officials with Oak Tree told one media outlet on Feb 27. This was just a week after James Mitchell, the “extremely pro-gun” owner of the Oak Tree Gun Club, boasted to the Washington Post that his firearms shop was the only outlet in the country selling the Armatix iP1. The Aramtix iP1, made by a German firm that...

WASHINGTON: Midway through his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health Committee, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia asked Vivek Murthy, nominee for US surgeon general, whether he had met Dr Raj Shah, USAID administrator, and the highest-ranked Indian-American in the Obama administration. No I haven't, Murthy replied. You should, Senator Isakson advised him; you guys have the same background and same heritage, and you can learn from the great job he has done at USAID. The exchange, coming just hours after Microsoft elevated Satya Nadella as the CEO, served to highlight how people of Indian-origin are increasingly breaching the glass ceiling...

By NRA-ILA The number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. for sale to American customers hit an all-time high in 2012, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (BATFE) new Firearms Manufacturers and Export Report. American firearm manufacturers produced roughly 8.3 million firearms for sale in the U.S., a new record, up 33 percent from the 6.2 million produced for American customers in 2011. The report shows not only that Americans valued firearms in 2012 more than ever before, but also that they particularly valued the kinds of firearms that gun control supporters have tried the hardest...

Liz Wahl, an anchor for Kremlin-funded propaganda network RT, announced her immediate resignation on the air Wednesday afternoon. She cited the network’s inability to objectively cover Russian president Vladimir Putin and the country’s armed occupation of Ukraine. “Personally, I cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin,” she said. “I’m proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth. That is why, after this newscast, I’m resigning.” Wahl’s grandparents came to the United States during the Hungarian Revolution to escape Soviet occupation, she told viewers, and she decided she...

California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa told Fox News Wednesday his House committee could move as early as next week to consider holding former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt. Lerner refused earlier in the day to testify on her role in the agency’s targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups. Her decision to plead the Fifth Amendment marked the second time in 10 months that she asserted her constitutional right not to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of her refusal, “at some point Lerner must testify” or be...