Free Republic

Gov. Malloy wants Connecticut to become the first state in the nation to ban sales of guns and ammunition to anyone on the federal government’s terror watch lists. He says he will do it by Executive Order and does not need the approval of the State Legislature. The announcement was seen live on News 8 and wtnh.com this afternoon. The Governor said he does not know if anyone in Connecticut is on the ‘watch list’ but is working directly with the White House to gain access, saying that if Congress won’t act, then the states will. According to some reports,...

On Thursday, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy announced plans to issue an executive order barring anyone listed on federal terrorist watch lists from purchasing a gun in the state. But while the idea of “no fly, no gun” has found growing support following the mass shooting in San Bernardino last week, including that of President Obama, experts say such a policy may be unconstitutional. The problem lies with the terrorist watch lists themselves, which are both secret and routinely updated without the typical due process given to those who are accused of breaking the law, such as court proceedings. Without a...

If we don't take action against gun violence, then we are complicit in it. That's why on Thursday I announced my intent to sign what would likely be a first-in-the-nation executive order, pending federal government approval, to ban those on government watch lists from buying guns in Connecticut. We have a moment in America to do the right thing. And we in Connecticut are seizing it. It's become routine to watch so many families across the nation hold their breath, hoping - and praying - that loved ones come home. It often feels like these are daily, yet life-changing, tragedies....

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposed Thursday to use an executive order to ban gun sales to those on federal no-fly watch lists. The Democratic governor said state officials are working with the federal government to get access to the lists. "If you cannot fly due to being on a government watch list, you should not be able to purchase a firearm while on that watch list as well," Malloy told reporters at the Capitol. "This is basic common sense. The American people get it." The legislature and Malloy previously enacted gun limits that expanded the state's assault weapons ban...

In recent months the mainstream media have become increasingly bold in their attacks on the core human rights of their fellow American citizens. One failing tabloid in New York called for the five million members of the world’s oldest and largest civil rights organizations to be branded as terrorists. The NY Times just published a front-page op-ed that called for the outright elimination of “some large categories of weapons and ammunition,” and numerous times progressives have called for forced disarmament, including a recent fact-challenged post on Arianna’s blog. So let’s game out the progressive Left’s confiscatory fantasies. It might go...

HARTFORD – Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced Thursday that he is directing the state to deny gun permits to anyone on federal government "watch lists,'' making Connecticut the first state to seek to block firearms sales to individuals who are prohibited from flying. "You are a governor for a reason ... to protect your citizenry. I am frustrated that our nation is having the wrong debate [about gun control and terrorism] and I'd like to see us focus on the right one,'' Malloy said.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review the ability of cities and states to prohibit semiautomatic high-capacity assault weapons that have been used in some of the nation’s most deadly recent mass shootings. The justices decided not to reconsider a lower court’s decision in a case from the city of Highland Park, Ill., near Chicago. But seven states — Maryland, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York — have similar bans, and all of the prohibitions remain in place. Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia said the court should review the ban, which “flouts” the court’s Second...

Maria Hasankolli, the Connecticut mom who was arrested after police found her eight-year-old son walking to school while she overslept, had her court appearance yesterday. Here is what she wrote to me: "So I just left court. I was informed that "risk of injury to a minor" (my charge) carries with it a ten year sentence, five thousand dollar fine, and five years probation. My case was continued to January 6th, 2016."

We are all free to say what we think, and must be, for without this freedom we will no longer be America. More on that below. But you always hope what is said will be constructive, helpful, maybe even at some point heartening. You have a responsibility as an adult to do your best in this area. But as soon as the story broke Wednesday afternoon, and while it was still going on, there were accusations and bitter words flung all over the Internet. The weirdest argument came almost immediately. A person named Chris Murphy, who is a U.S. senator...

Since the start of the Syria's civil war in the spring of 2011, the U.S. has admitted 2,311 Syrian refugees and resettled them in 36 different states. According to data from the State Department's Refugee Processing Center the top three destinations for Syrian refugees since the beginning of the conflict are California, Texas, and Michigan. From March 15, 2011 through December 1, 2015, California received the most (261) Syrian refugees, Texas received the second most with 242, and Michigan has received the third most with 217. Other states that have received Syrian refugees since March 2011 include: Arizona (182), Illinois...

Relations between Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama are not quite as bad as they have been made out to be - and things could yet improve in the coming months, according to former leading Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. Speaking at Haifa University Tuesday, Lieberman - who served as Senator from 1988-2012, during which time he was nominated as the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate - did acknowledge that the personal relationship between the two was far from perfect. Lieberman was the keynote speaker at the opening of the third session of the Ruderman Program for American Jewish Studies at the...

Mayor de Blasio said his son Dante has been active in protests over racial issues at Yale — and they both agree the school should drop the name of a prominent defender of slavery. Dante, a freshman, is assigned to Yale’s Calhoun College, named for John C. Calhoun, a U.S. vice president and South Carolina senator who vehemently backed slavery as a “positive good” for the nation. “He’s very concerned, and he certainly notes the fact that the college he’s in, Calhoun College, is named for someone it shouldn’t be named for,” de Blasio told reporters Monday. “ That’s quite...

A group of 24 Senate Democrats urged the president Monday to dodge Congress and act on his own to make new rules on gun control, after Congress has failed to move any gun bills. The senators, led by Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, requested the White House take an immediate step to change the law that now allows sellers who do not have a federal license to sell guns to individuals at shows, online and elsewhere without conducting background checks. The letter said Democrats would keep trying to pass a gun bill, but said Obama should explore...

The state of Connecticut will continue to accept more than 1,600 refugees from Syria, Gov. Dannel Malloy told NBC Connecticut on Monday morning. This comes as governors in several other states announced they would stop accepting them.

With the Litchfield hills and Connecticut in our rear-view mirror as we move our 101-year-old manufacturing company to South Carolina, we are nostalgic, excited, and disappointed.

Two of America’s three branches of federal government have declared war on parental authority. President Obama’s Department of Education has been explicitly attacking schools that have the audacity to prefer traditional morality. However, making sense of the Education Department’s actions requires looking at the Obergefell same-sex “marriage” decision. The Obergefell decision explains why the Department of Education will not stop until it has eliminated parental authority to teach traditional morality to their children.The Department of Education has recently targeted an Illinois public school. The school allowed a (biologically male) transgendered student to participate in girls’ sports. The student was...

...the screaming in the dark you do on campus is more or less the same screaming in the dark you did in the crib, the same howl for the same reason.

The first time I saw a friend wearing blackface I was a freshman in college. I was stunned. I was hurt. I was enraged. But more than anything, I was confused. He thought it was funny, albeit controversial. But to me it wasn’t a joke; it was pointed mockery. I imagined him laughing and joking as his friends painted his skin. I couldn’t understand why he would so callously and easily disrespect me and those like me, for fun. Now I have come to expect such acts, and the conversations that surround them, as routine displays of disrespect and cultural...

Monday on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” while discussing a new pro-Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) super PAC ad featuring an anti-gun control message that references Presidents Barack Obama’s gun control push after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to disavow the ad.

Half a century ago, student activists liberated themselves—partly, at least—from in loco parentis: the paternalistic notion that college administrators should serve as watchful guardians, restricting students’ activities and rights in order to provide a safe environment for them, the way a mother or father would. Today, students across the country are determined to undo this liberation. At Yale University, a group of aggrieved minority students have demanded the resignations of administrators who wisely rejected calls for emotional coddling. Nicholas Christakis, the master of Yale’s Silliman College, and his wife, Erika Christakis, an early childhood educator at Yale, conveyed to students...